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 BJ1311 .H68 1915 
 
 Morals in evolution: ,,?,,,stu|J,Y,..i,n ,,9,9!!JP?''^' 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 203 498 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
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 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
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MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 

MORALS 
 IN EVOLUTION 
 
 A SrUDT IN COMPARAriVE ETHICS 
 
 BY 
 
 L. T. HOBHOUSE, D.Litt. 
 
 UARTIN WHITE PROFESSOR OP SOCIOLOGY IH THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON, 
 
 LATE FELLOW AND ASSISTANT TUTOR OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD, 
 
 FORMERLY FELLOW OF MERTON COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 
 
 1915 
 
Printed in Great Britain 
 
 ^ 
 
 3.^^- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The purpose of the present work is to approach the theory 
 of ethical evolution through a comparative study of rules of 
 conduct and ideals of life. In this branch of evolutionary 
 science theory and fact sometimes tend to fall apart. Hypo- 
 theses may be formed by the method of brilliant conjecture 
 without any firm basis in the actual history of the moral con- 
 sciousness, while that history as revealed in the mass of recorded 
 customs and doctrines concerning conduct sometimes tends to be 
 lost in a mass of anthropological detail wherein it is impossible 
 to see the wood for the trees. The attempt made in these volumes 
 is to ascertain the main features of development, and by piecing 
 them together to present a sketch in which the essentials of the 
 whole process will be depicted in outline. 
 
 In this method of handling the subject, no hjrpothesis as 
 to the causes of evolution is required. Even the hypothesis 
 of evolution itself is not strictly necessary. Our object is to 
 distinguish and classify different forms of ethical ideas — a 
 morphology of ethics comparable to the physical morphology 
 of animals and plants. The results of such a comparative 
 study, if firmly based on recorded facts, would remain standing 
 if the theory of evolution were shattered. At the same time, 
 here as elsewhere, the results of classification when seen in 
 the light of evolutionary theory acquire a wholly new signifi- 
 cance and value. They furnish us with a conception of the 
 trend of human development based not on any assumption as 
 to the underlying causes at work, but on a matter-of-fact com- 
 parison of the achievements reached at different stages of the 
 process itself. 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 Little, therefore, wiU be said here of the psychological forces 
 which underlie the ethical consciousness; little of the socio- 
 logical and other factors which accelerate or retard development. 
 These lie for the most part outside our immediate province. 
 It is the essential facts of development itseK that we are seeking 
 to ascertain. Such an inquiry encounters many difiaculties of 
 its own. Vast and complex subjects must be handled with a 
 brevity which to one specially interested in them will appear 
 quite inadequate. The conclusions of a hundred specialisms 
 must be used by one who from the nature of the case cannot 
 himself be a specialist in any of them. Hence the openings alike 
 for error of detail and for disproportion of general handling are 
 great. Nor is it possible to avoid subjects of controversy. For 
 the study of development, the ethics of civilization are not less, 
 but, if anything, more important than those of savagery, and 
 have therefore received closer attention in this work. But the 
 complexities of civilized ethics, interwoven as they are with 
 rehgious and poUtical doctrines, can only be treated within the 
 limits of a general sketch by keeping strictly to what is distinctive 
 and fundamental in each system, and of this only so much is 
 selected for discussion as is deemed to have a bearing on ethical 
 development. In such selection the general philosophic bias of 
 the inquirer is only too apt to have an influence. Further, it is 
 a part of the plan of the work to estimate critically the position 
 of each system in the line of ethical development, and in such 
 criticism it is still harder to put aside all preconceived opinions. 
 The alternative would be to omit the ethicsVf Christendom and 
 the problems of modem thought altogether. This I felt would 
 mutUate the inquiry, and I have accordingly endeavoured to 
 treat these subjects precisely on the same footing and in the same 
 spirit as others, that is to say, as phases of development to be 
 critically but quite impartially examined. In the sketch of 
 modern philosophy, however, I have briefly set forth the analysis 
 of the fundamental problems which expresses my own views, 
 and in the final chapter I have drawn some broad conclusions 
 from the general trend of ethical development. 
 My obligations to other writers are, I hope, adequately 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 acknowledged in detail. Dr. Westermarck's important work on 
 the Origin and Groivth of the Moral Ideas would have been of 
 immense value to me had it appeared a little earher. It is 
 particularly satisfactory to me to find that so far as we cover 
 the same field my results generally harmonize with his, and 
 this notwithstanding a material divergence in ethical theory. 
 On almost every page of some of my chapters references to his 
 volume might be added to my footnotes, and with certain 
 questions raised by his inquiry I have dealt in an appendix. 
 I have to thank many friends for advice as to reading on special 
 subjects. Among them I should Uke to name Mr. Hagberg 
 Wright of the London Library, Mr. LI. Griffith, and the late 
 Mr. W. T. Arnold. Prof. VinogradofE and Dr. Estlin Carpenter 
 have most kindly read large portions of the MS., and suggested 
 many valuable criticisms, though of course neither of them is to 
 be held responsible for anything that is here printed. Lastly, 
 I have to thank Dr. Slaughter, Secretary of the Sociological 
 Society, and Miss M. Harris, for undertaking the heavy and 
 responsible task of verifying the references. 
 
 L. T. HOBHOTJSB. 
 
 Wimbledon, June 1906. 
 
 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION 
 
 Apaet from emendations on a few points of detail, to which 
 reviewers or correspondents have kindly drawn my attention, no 
 alterations have been made ia this edition. I may take this 
 opportunity of thankiag Mr. G. P. Deas for useful information 
 as to the Scottish Marriage Law, and I may perhaps be allowed 
 to add that no greater service can be done to a book of this 
 kind than the pointing out by specialists of errors of commission 
 or omission in their respective provinces. 
 
 November 1907. 
 
viii - PREFACE 
 
 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION 
 
 Foe the present edition the whole work has been revised and 
 a good part rewritten. For this purpose I have largely made use 
 of work done by myself in collaboration with Mr. G. C. Wheeler 
 and Mr. M. Ginsberg, and published under the title of The 
 Material Culture and Social Institutions of the Simpler Peoples, 
 by Messrs. Chapman & Hall. The numerous references to that 
 work must be taken as so many acknowledgments to my 
 colleagues, and I have further to thank Mr. Ginsberg for help 
 in the verification of references. My thanks are also due to 
 Mr. R. R. Marett for valuable criticisms of the chapters dealing 
 with early rehgious thought, and to Mr. F. H. Griffith, Mr. S. A. 
 Cook, Dr. Estlin Carpenter and Dr. F. B. Jevons for useful 
 suggestions. Also, since this book was first written, I have had 
 the good fortune to be associated in academic work with Prof. 
 Westermarek, Prof. Seligmann, Dr. Rivers and Dr. Haddon, 
 from all of whom I have learnt something which I trust has 
 contributed to the improvement of the work. 
 
 L. T. HOBHOUSB. 
 
 Highgate, 
 
 April 1916. 
 
^ 
 
 % 
 
 , "L 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE STANDARD 
 
 OHAP. PAGE 
 
 I THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF COMPARATIVE ETHICS 1 
 
 II FOEMS OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION .... 38 
 
 III LAW AND JUSTICE 70 
 
 IV MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN . . 132 
 V WOMEN IN THE CIVILIZED WORLD .... 179 
 
 VI THE RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES . . 233 
 
 VII CLASS RELATIONS 270 
 
 VIII PROPERTY AND POVERTY 318 
 
 SUMMARY 354 
 
 PART II ^ 
 
 THE BASIS 
 
 I THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT .... 865 
 II ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT . .419 
 
 III THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 459 
 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 Alabaster = Alabaster, E. : Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal 
 
 Law, 1889. 
 Am61ineau = Am61ineau : La Morale Egyptienne, etc., 1892. 
 Annales = Annales du Mxis6e du Congo beige. 
 Apastamba = The Sacred Laws of the Aryas, as taught in the schools of 
 
 Apastamba, etc. Translated by Georg Biihler. Books of the East. 
 
 vol. ii. 
 Azara = Azara, F. D. : Voyage dans I'Am^rique M6ridionale. 
 
 B.A. = Reports of the British Association. 
 
 Bancroft = Bancroft, H. H. : Native Races of the Pacific States. 
 
 Batchelor = Batohelor, J. : The Ainu of Japan. 
 
 Baudhayana = The Sacred Laws of the Aryas. Translated by Georg 
 
 Biihler. Part II. VSsishtha and BaudhHyana : Sacred Books of the 
 
 East, vol. xiv. 
 Baumann = Baunmann, O. : Durch Massailand zur NilqueUe. 
 Beveridge = Beveridge, P. : The Aborigines of Victoria and Biverina. 
 Blackstone = Blackstone : Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1766-9. 
 Boaz = Boaz, Dr. F. : On the Indians of British Columbia. Reports of 
 
 the British Association, 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891. 
 Bodenstedt = Bodenstedt, F. M. : Die VSlker des Kaukasus. 
 Breasted = Breasted, J. H. : Ancient Records of Egypt. 
 Brough Smyth = Brough Smyth : The Aborigines of Victoria. 
 Bruns = Brans, C. G. : Fontes Juris Bomani Antiqui (4th ed.). 
 Bryce = Bryce, Lord : Studies in History and Jurisprudence, 1901. 
 Budge = Budge, E. A. W. : Book of the Dead, 1901. 
 Burgdt = Burgdt, J. B. M. van der : Dictionaire fran9aise-Kirundi. 
 Busolt = Busolt, G. : Die Griechischen Staats-u. Rechtsaltertiimer, in 
 
 I. E. P. von Miiller's Handbuoh der Klassisohen Altertumswissen- 
 
 sohaft, Bd. TV, 1891. 
 
 Calvin = Calvin, J. : Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated 
 
 by J. Allen, 1838. 
 Cambridge Expedition = Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits, 
 
 1904. 
 Catlin = Catlin, G. : Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and 
 
 Conditions of the North American Indians, 1841. 
 Chamberlain = Chamberlain, A. E. : Report on the Kootenay Indians of 
 
 S.-E. British Columbia. Reports of the British Association, 1892. 
 Codrington = Codrington, R. H. : The Melanesians. 
 Corpus Juris = Ed. Richter, 1879-81. Note. References to the Council 
 
 of Trent are taken from the earlier edition, 1839. 
 Coudreau = Coudreau, H. : Chez nos Indiens. 
 Crooke = Crooke, W. : The North- Western Provinces. 
 Curr = Ciu'r, E. M. : The Australian Race. 
 
 Dalton == Dalton, E. : Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, 1872. 
 
xu 
 
 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 Dawson = Dawson, J. : Australian Aborigines. 
 
 De Groot = De Groot. J. H. H. : The Religious Systems of China, etc., 
 
 Dhammapada = Translated from the Paii by F. Max MviUer. Sacred 
 Books of the East, vol. x. , ,, -o f 
 
 Dorsey = Dorsey, J. A. : Omaha Sociology. Reports of the Bureau ot 
 Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, 1881-2. 
 
 A Study of Siouan Cults. R. B. E., xi. 
 
 Douglas = Douglas, Sir R. K. : Society in China, 1894. 
 
 Driver = Driver, S. R. : A Critical and Exegetioal Commentary on Deuter- 
 
 ^°An"lntroduotion to the Literature of the Old Testament, 1897. 
 
 Dunoker = Duncker, M. : The History of Antiquity. Translated by 
 M. E. Abbott, 1877-83. 
 
 Ehrenreich = Ehrenreich, P. : Beitrage zur Volkerkunde Brasiliens. 
 
 Koilig. Museum fiir Volkerkunde, Bd. II. , , „ ^ r ttt ^ 
 
 EUis = Ellis, A. B. : The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold Coast ot West 
 
 Africa, 1887. ^ , „r . Ai: • 
 The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West Africa, 
 
 1894. 
 Erman = Erman, A. : Life in Ancient Egypt. Translated by H. M. 
 
 Tirard, 1894. 
 Eschwege = Eschwege, C. W. von : Brasilien. 
 Esmein = Esmein, A. : Histoire de la procedure criminelle en France, 
 
 etc., 1882. 
 Eyre = Byre, E. J. : Journals of Expeditions. 
 
 Farnell = Famell, L. R. : The Cults of the Greek States, 1896. 
 
 Fletcher and La Fl^che = Fletcher, Miss, and La Fl^che : The Omaha. 
 
 Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, 
 
 xxvii. 
 Fraser = Fraser, J. : The Aborigines of New South Wales. 
 Frazer = Frazer, J. G. : The Golden Bough, a study in Comparative 
 
 Religion (2nd and 3rd editions). 
 Friedlander = Friedlander, L. : Darstellungen aus der Sittengesohiohte 
 
 Roms, etc., 1888-90. 
 
 Girard = Girard, P. F. : Manuel ElSmentaire de Droit Romain, 1896. 
 Goddard = Goddard, P. E. : Life and Culture of the Hupa. University 
 
 of California Publications, vol. 1. 
 Grinnell = Grinnell, G. B. : Blackfoot Lodge Tales. 
 
 Pawnee Lodge Tales. 
 
 Grotius = Grotius, Hugo de : De Jure Belli et Paois. 
 
 Haddon = Haddon, A. C. : Reports of the Cambridge Anthropological 
 
 Expedition to Torres Straits. 
 Hagen = Hagen, B. : Die Orang Kubu auf Sumatra. 
 Hall = Hall, W. E. : A Treatise on International Law, 1904. 
 Hammurabi. See Johns. 
 Hamack = Hamaok, A. : Outlines of the History of Dogma. Translated 
 
 from the third German edition by J. Millar, 1894-9. 
 
 Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 1894. 
 
 Harrison = Harrison, J. E. : Prolegomena to the study of Greek Religion, 
 
 1903. 
 Hill-Tout = Hill-Tout, Ch. : British North America. 
 HoUis = Hollis, A. : The Masai. Idem. The Nandi. 
 Hose and McDougall = Hose, Ch., and McDougall, W. : The Pagan Tribes 
 
 of Borneo. 
 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS . xiii 
 
 Howard = Howard, G. E. : History of Matrimonial Institutions, 1904. 
 Howitt = Howitt, A. W. : The Native Tribes of S.-E. Australia, 1904. 
 Hunter = Hunter, W. W. : The Indian Empirg. Trubner's Oriental 
 
 Series, 1878, etc. 
 Huth = Huth, A. H. : The Marriage of Near Kin, etc., 1887. 
 
 I. A. E. = Internationales Arehiv fur Ethnographie. 
 Ihering = Ihering, K. von : Evolution of the Aryan. Translated from 
 the German by A. Drucker, 1897. 
 
 Geist des rOmischen Rechts, auf den versohiedenem Stufen seiner 
 
 Entwickelung, 1891. 
 
 im Thurn = im Thum, E. F. : Among the Indians of Guiana. 
 Ingram = Ingram, J. K. : A History of Slavery and Serfdom, 1895. 
 
 J. A. I. = Journal of the Anthropological Institute. 
 
 Jastrow = Jastrow, Morris : The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, 1895. 
 Jenks = Jenks, E. : Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, 1898. 
 Jevons = Jevons, P. B. : An Introduction to the History of Religion, 1902. 
 Johns = Johns, C. H. W. : The Oldest Code of Laws in the Wqrld (Ham- 
 murabi). 
 Johnston = Johnston, Sir H. H. : George Grenfel and the Congo. 
 
 Uganda Protectorate. 
 
 J. R. A. S. = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. 
 
 K. and K. = Fison and Howitt, A. W. : Kamilaroi and Kumai. 
 Kohler u. Peiser = Kohler und Peiser : Aus dem Babylonisohen Reohts- 
 leben. 
 
 Hamnmrabi's Gesetz, 1904. 
 
 Koran = Koran, Parts I and II. Translated by E. H. Palmer. Sacred 
 
 Books of the East, vols, vi and ix. 
 Kuenen = Kuenen, A. : The Religion of Israel to the fall of the Jewish 
 
 State. Translated from the Dutch by A. H. May, 1873. 
 
 La Cour and Appel = La Cour, P., and Appel, J. : Die Physik auf Grand 
 ihrer geschichtlichen Entwickelung, etc. tjbersetzung von G. Siebert. 
 
 Lafiitte = Laffitte, P. : A General View of Chinese Civilization, etc. Trans- 
 lated by J. C. Hall, 1887. 
 
 Lang, G. S. = Lang, G. S. : The Aborigines of Australia. 
 
 Lang, J. D. = Lang, J. D. : Queensland, Australia. 
 
 Lecky = Lecky, W. E. H. : History of Eiiropean Morals from Augustus 
 to Charlemagne, 1877. 
 
 Legge = Legge, J. : The Chinese Classics, 1861-72. Vol. i, Confucian 
 Analects, etc. ; vol. ii. Works of Mencius ; vol. iii, The Shoo-King 
 (two parts); vol. iv. The She-King (two parts). 
 
 Leist = Leist, B. W. : Graeco-italische Rechtsgeschichte, 1884. 
 
 Letourneau = Letourneau, C. : La Condition de la Femme dans les 
 diverses races et civilisations, 1903. (La Femme.) 
 
 La Guerre dans les diverses races humaines, 1895. (La Guerre.) 
 
 L'6volution de I'Esclavage dans les diverses races humaines, 1886. 
 
 (L'Esolavage.) 
 
 Ling Roth = Ling Roth, H. : Natives of Sarawak. 
 
 Loskiel = Loskiel, G. H. : GJeschichte der Mission unter den Indianem. 
 Luther = Luther, Martin : Luther's Primary Works, edited by Wace and 
 Buohheim, 1896. 
 
 Magyar = Magyar, L.j Reisen in Siidafrika. 
 
 Manu = Manu, Laws of. Translated by Georg Biihler. Sacred Books 
 
xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 Martin = Martin, K. : Die Inlands tamtne der Malayischen Halbinsel. 
 Martius = Von Martius : Beitrage zur Ethnographie Amerikas. 
 Maspero = Maspero, G. : The Dawn of Civilization : Egypt and Chaldea. 
 Edited by A. H. Sayce. Translated by M. L. McClure, 1901. 
 
 Reoueil de Travaux, relatifs & la philologie et d, I'arch^ologie Egyp- 
 
 tienne et Assyrienne. Public sous la direction de G-. Maspero, 1870. 
 (Reoueil.) 
 
 Meissner = Meissner, B. : Beitrage zum Altbabylonisohen Privatrecht, 1893. 
 
 De Servitute Babylonico — ^Assyriaca, 1882. 
 
 Metz = Metz, J. F. : The tribes inhabiting the Nilgherry Hills. 
 Mommsen = Mommsen : Zum altesten Strafreeht der Kulturv5lker, 1905. 
 Montefiore = Montefiore, C. G. : Lectures on the Origin and Growth of 
 
 Religion, as illustrated by the Religion of the Ancient Hebrews. 
 
 Hibbert Lectures, 1892. 
 Mooney = Mooney, J. : The Kiowa. Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology 
 
 of the Smithsonian Institution, xvii. 
 Morgan = Morgan, L. H. : Houses and Houselife of the American 
 
 Aborigines, 1877. 
 
 The League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois, 1851. (Iroquois.) 
 
 Miiller = Muller, P. W. K. : Batak-Sammlung. VerOf. aus dem K. 
 
 Museimi fur Volkerkunde, Bd. III. 
 Miiller = Muller, W. Max : Die Liebespoesie der Alton Aegypter, 1897. 
 Muir = Muir, J. : Original Sanscrit Texts on the Origin and History of 
 
 the People of India, 1868-84. 5 vols. 
 Munzinger = Munzinger, W. : Ostafrikanische Studien. 
 Murdoch = Murdoch, J. : Point Barrow Expedition. Reports of the 
 
 Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, 1887. 
 
 Nieboer, Dr. = Nieboer, H. J. : Slavery as an Industrial System. 
 
 Old = Old, W. G. : The Book of the Simple Way of Laotze, 1904. 
 
 Oppenheimer = Oppenheimer, H. : The Rationale of Punishment. 
 
 Oppert = Oppert, J. : La Condition des Esclaves &. Babylone, etc. Ex- 
 traits des comptes rendus de I'Acad^mie des Inscriptions, 1888. 
 
 Orbigny = Orbigny, DessaUnes, A. D'. : Voyage dans I'Am^rique 
 M6ridionale. 
 
 Overbergh = Overbergh, Cyr. von : Collection de monographies ethno- 
 graphiques. 
 
 Parker, Mrs. = Parker, Mrs. K. L. : The Euahlayi Tribe. 
 Paulitschke = Paulitsohke, Ph. : Ethnographie Nord-Ost-Afrikas 
 Petemiami, Dr. = Dr. Petermann's Mittheilungen aus Justus Perthes' 
 
 Geographisohem Anstalt. 
 Petrie, Flinders = Petrie, W. M. Flinders : Religion and Conscience in 
 
 Ancient Egypt, 1898. y^ ^ 
 
 Pike = Pike, L. O. : History of Crime in England, 1873-6. 
 PoUook and Maitland = Pollock, Sir Frederick, and Maitland, F W ■ 
 
 iheHistory of English Law before the time of Edward I, 1898 
 Post _ Post, A. H. : Afrikanische Jurisprudenz, 1887. (A J ) 
 — - Orrundnss = Grundriss der Ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, 1894. 
 
 of Fth^T"' "^i H- =«^yr'^°* Government. Reports of the Bureau 
 of Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution I 
 
 °^Tt^oi:^^l^^, ll^^' °' ^^'^'°"^^- Con^^butions to N. A. 
 
 - *t™Siniion^y*rj.°kt^r8^ ^^"^'^^"^ ^'°- *^^ ---'^ 
 ^' ^iStiTut^r'*^ °^ ^^^ ^'"^^"' °^ Ethnology of the Smithsonian 
 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv 
 
 Beclus = Beolus, E. : Primitive Folk. Studies in Comparative Ethnology, 
 1889. 
 
 Beed = Reed, W. A. : The Negritos of Zambales. ^ Department of the 
 Interior. Ethnological Publications, vol. ii, part i. 
 
 Risley = Risley: Tribes of Bengal. 
 
 Rooheforte, de = Rooheforte, de : History of the Antilles, 1665. 
 
 Ross = Ross, B. R. : Notes on the Tinnehs and Chepewayans. Reports 
 of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, 1866. 
 
 Roth = Roth, W. E. : Ethnological Studies among the N.-W.-C. Queens- 
 land Aborigines. 
 
 Saussaye, de la = Saussaye, P. C. de la : Manual of the Science of Religion. 
 
 Translated from the German by B. S. Colyer-Fergtison. 
 Sayce = Sayce, A. H. : Records of the Past, etc., 1873. New Series, 1890. 
 Schoolcraft = Historical and Statistical Information respecting the Indian 
 
 Tribes, etc., 1851-60. 
 Schooloraft-Drake = Drake, F. S. : The Indian Tribes of the United 
 
 States. Based on Schoolcraft's " Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge." 
 SohrSder = Schroder, R. : Lehrbuch der deutschen Reohtsgesohichte. 
 " Simpler Peoples " = The Material Culture and Social Institutions of the 
 
 Simpler Peoples. By L. T. Hobhouse, G. C. Wheeler, and M. Ginsberg. 
 Skeat and Blagden = Skeat, W. W., and Blagden, C. O. : Pagan Races 
 
 of the Malay Peninsula. 
 Spencer and Gillen (I) = Native Tribes of Central AustraUa, 1899. 
 
 (II) = Northern Tribes of Central Australia, 1904. 
 
 Staroke = Starcke, C. N. : The Primitive Family, 1889. 
 
 Steinen, von = Steinen, Carl, von den : Unter den NaturvSlkem Zentral- 
 
 Brasiliens. 
 Steinmetz = Steinmetz, S. R. : Reohtsverhaltnisse von eiageborenen 
 
 Volkem in Af rika vmd Ozeanien. 
 Stenin, von = Stenin, P. von : Die Kurden des Gouvernments Eriwan. 
 
 Globus, LXX, 1896. 
 Stephen = Stephen, Sir J. F., : A History of the Criminal Law of England, 
 
 1883. 
 Swanton = Swanton, J. R. : The Thlinkeet. Reports of the Bureau of 
 
 Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution, xxvi. 
 
 Teit = Teit, J. : The Lillooet Indians. Edited by F. Boaz. Publications 
 of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. ii, part 5, 1900. 
 
 The Thompson Indians of British Columbia. Edited by F. Boaz. 
 
 Publications of the Jesup Expedition, vol. i. 
 
 Thomson = Thomson, J. : To the Central African Lakes and Back. 
 Thouar = Thouar, A. : Explorations dans I'Am^rique du Sud. 
 Thurston = Thurston, E. : Castes and Tribes of Southern India. 
 Tsohudi von = Tsohudi, J. J. von : Reisen durch Siidamerika. 
 Tylor = Tylor, E. B. : Primitive Culture, 1903. 
 
 VioUet = VioUet, P. : Histoire du droit civil frangais, 1893. 
 
 Waitz, G. = Waitz, G. : Ddutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, 1880. 
 Waitz, T. = Waitz, T. : Anthropologic der Nattnrvolker, 1859-72. 
 Westermarck = Westermarck, E. : History of Human Marriage, 1901. 
 
 Origin and Growth of the Moral Ideas, 1906. 
 
 Wilamowitz = Wilamowitz-MSUendorf, U. von : Staat und Gesellschaft 
 
 der Griechen lind ROmer. 
 Wines = Wines, F. H. : Punishment and Reformation, etc., 1896. 
 Wissowa = Wissowa : Religion und Kultus der R6mer, 1902. In I. E. P. 
 
 von Muller's Handbuch der Klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, Bd. 5. 
 
xvi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 
 
 Z. f. V. R. = Zeitsohrift fiir Vergleichende Rechtswissensehaft. 
 
 Zend Avesta = Zend Avesta, Part I, The VaudidSd, translated by James 
 Darmesteter. Part II, The Sir6zahs, etc., translated by James 
 Darmesteter. Part III, The Yasna, etc., translated by L. H. Mills. 
 Sacred Books of the East, vols, iv, xxiii, xxxi. 
 
 Z. E. = Zeitschrift fiir Ethnologie. 
 
 Zimmern, A. E. = The Greek Commonwealth. 
 
 Zimmern, H. = Beitrage zur Kenntniss der babylonischen Religion : Die 
 Beschworungstafeln Surpu. Ritualtafeln fiir den Wahrsager, Besoh- 
 worer und Sanger : Delitzsch u. Haupt Bibliothek, 1896. 
 
 Zu Wied = Wied, Prinz M. zu : Reise in Brasilien. 
 
MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 PART I 
 
 THE STANDARD 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 GENERAL CHABACTBBISTICS OF ETHICAL EVOLUTION 
 
 1. The object of the present work is to trace the evolution of 
 the ethical consciousness as displayed in the habits and customs, 
 rules and principles, which have arisen in the course of human 
 history for the regulation of human conduct. In no part of the 
 world, and at no period of time, do we find the behaviour of 
 men left to unchartered freedom. Everywhere human life is in 
 a measure organized and directed by customs, laws, behefs, ideals, 
 which shape its end and guide its activities. As this guidance 
 of life by rule is universal in human society, so upon the whole 
 it is peculiar to humanity. There is no reason to think that any 
 animal except man can enunciate or apply general rules of cbn- 
 duct. Nevertheless there is not wanting something that we can 
 call an organization of life in the animal world. How much of 
 intelligence underlies the social life of the higher animals is 
 indeed extremely hard to determine. In the aid which they often 
 render to one another, in their combined hunting, in their play, 
 in the use of warning cries, and the employment of " sentinels," 
 which is so frequent among birds and mammals, it would appear 
 at first sight, that a considerable measure of mutual understand- 
 ing is impUed, that we find at least an analogue to human custom, 
 to the assignment of functions, the division of labour, which 
 mutual rehance renders possible. How far the analogy may be 
 pressed, and whether terms like " custom " and " mutual under- 
 standing," drawn from human experience, are rightly applicable 
 to animal societies, are questions on which we shall touch pre- 
 sently. Let us observe first, that as we descend the animal scale 
 the sphere of intelligent activity is gradually narrowed down. 
 
2 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and yet behaviour is stiU regulated. The lowest organisms have 
 their definite methods of action under given conditions. The 
 Amoeba shrinks into itself at a touch, withdraws the pseudo- 
 podium that is roughly handled, or makes its way round the small 
 object which wiU serve it as food. Given the conditions, it acts 
 in the way best suited to avoid danger, or to secure nourishment. 
 We are a long way from the intelligent regulation of conduct 
 by a general principle, but we still find action adapted to the 
 requirements of organic life. 
 
 2. Thus in the lowest grades of the organic world behaviour 
 is aheady regulated, and regulated to some purpose. It will 
 repay us to consider very briefly the method of this regulation, and 
 to observe how it changes as we ascend the organic scale. In 
 the lowest grades of life, then, whether plant or animal, we find 
 behaviour pretty rigidly determined by the structure of the 
 organism itself. The sensitive plant or the protozoon does not 
 act at random, but it is so constructed that when stimulated in 
 a particular way by some outer object it responds to this stimulus 
 by some definite motion. In this way, for example, the tentacles 
 of the Venus' Flytrap close over the luckless insect which has 
 settled upon its leaf, a touch on any one of the spines of the leaf 
 causing the two halves of the leaf-end to fold inward as on a 
 hinge. The insect is thus enclosed, and certain glands upon the 
 leaf secrete the digestive juice to aid in its assimilation. ^ In the 
 same apparently mechanical manner the tentacles of a sea- 
 anemone close over a small object which lodges among them. 
 Actions of this kind, which may generally be called reflexes, for 
 the most part serve a function which we can readily discover and 
 assign in the life of the organism ; for example, in the instances 
 mentioned they secure its food. But though they serve this 
 purpose it is almost certain that we should be mistaken in re- 
 garding them as purposeful or inteUigent in character. Reflexes 
 of this type proceed with equal certainty and regularity, whether 
 in the particular case they happen to be good or bad for the 
 organism. We can most easily understand their character by 
 considering any one of the numerous reflex actions which we our- 
 selves perform. If a small foreign object — a speck of dust or a 
 crumb of food — gets into our windpipe, we cough ; that is to say, 
 a series of muscular contractions is set up whereby the foreign 
 
 ' Lloyd Morgan, Animal Intelligence, p. 26. Observe that innutritious 
 objects, such as particles of sand, do not cause a regular contraction of the 
 tentacles, though their impact is followed by a secretion. In other words, 
 the re-action only follows in its completeness in cases where it serves a 
 purpose. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 3 
 
 body is expelled. This serves a purpose which is very useful 
 to us, but it is not done by the aid of our intelligence. It is 
 done by ovir nerves and muscles upon their own account without 
 the aid of our wiU, and even, as we know, sometimes against our 
 will. Similarly, if an object comes straight at our eyes, we 
 bhnk, and we do so even though we know we are not going to 
 be hit. The blink normally serves the purpose of protecting 
 the eyes, but the number of people who can refrain from bUnk- 
 ing when it is known to be useless is comparatively small. We 
 blink on any given occasion, not because as intelligent persons 
 we wish to protect our eyes, but because a certain structure of 
 nerves and muscles exists in us, which, being touched as it were 
 by the stimulus of something coming straight at the eyes, is 
 brought into operation automatically. This structure is ordi- 
 narily useful to us. Similarly, it was useful to our ancestors, 
 and the biological theory is that it has grown up and been 
 perpetuated in us because from generation to generation it has 
 on the balance been found useful. Those in whom it failed would 
 be likely to lose their sight, and with their sight they might well 
 lose their Uves, and losing their lives they would fail to leave 
 descendants, and so their stock would become blotted out. Con- 
 versely, the same conditions would favour the perpetuation and 
 increase of a stock in which the structure was well developed. 
 This explanation may be applied to all the simplest methods 
 of adjusting responses to stimulus. In every generation those 
 individuals who best responded to the circumstances in which 
 they were placed from time to time would tend to survive in the 
 largest numbers. The physical structure best suited to give these 
 responses would thus be perpetuated, and while the variations 
 for the worse would be eliminated the variations for the better 
 would be preserved. In this way, according to the biological 
 theory, physical structures arise which fixedly determine the 
 most suitable kind of response to the kind of stimuli which 
 most frequently affect organisms of any given species. Thus, 
 without the exercise of any intelligence on the part of any in- 
 dividual organism, without the formation of the idea of a purpose 
 at any single point in the whole history, oertaiti fundamental 
 purposes are, nevertheless, served, and the conditions which 
 secure that they should be served are perpetuated. Here, then, 
 we have a form of the regulation of behaviour proceeding without 
 the intervention of any intelligent agency.^ 
 
 ^ i. e. in the evolving organisms themselves. Whether the whole 
 " plan " ot evolution implies a " planning " Mind is a deeper question 
 which I do not raise here. I touch on it below; Part II. chap. viii. 
 
4 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 3. As judged from the point of view of its efficiency in pre- 
 serving the r^ce, this method of regulating conduct has many 
 defects. It is excessively rigid and excessively narrow. If a 
 given contraction must follow a given touch, the results may 
 upon the whole be good, but they may also in many instances 
 be bad. Poisonous substances may be swallowed instead of 
 nutritious food; dangerous enemies may be approached as 
 though they were prey. Observation of young animals reveals 
 many instances of this want of adaptation, and many of the 
 actions, which at first sight so wonderfully dovetail into one 
 another as to suggest a marvellous foresight of what the animal 
 will require, turn out on further investigation to be blind re- 
 sponses to a physical stimulus which very often lead to fatal 
 results. One instance may suffice here : — ^The larva of the 
 Sitaris beetle provides for its future career by attaching itself 
 to a bee which finds it in aU necessaries. But it is not any 
 knowledge of the bee and what the bee will do for it which 
 impels the larva, for it will similarly attach itself to any hairy 
 object which may come near — for example, to any other hairy 
 insect; and probably a large number perish in this manner.^ 
 The larva is so constructed, in fact, that contact with, or proximity 
 to, a hairy insect sets up the motions requisite for attaching the 
 larva to that insect. In a sufficiently large proportion of cases 
 the insect thus clung to is a bee, and by this means this particular 
 structure enables the Sitaris beetle to perpetuate itself. But it 
 can easily be seen that action wiU be far more efficiently regulated 
 if the inherited structure can make some allowance for the 
 difference of circumstances, if some plasticity, some capacity for 
 modffication should arise, and this, in point of fact, we find when 
 we pass from the mechanical refiexes which we have hitherto 
 considered to the instincts of higher animals. 
 
 Instinct is a relatively permanent condition of an animal, 
 which will set it upon a train of actions, and in carrying out 
 these actions, considerable variations may be possible according 
 to the particular circumstances in which the animal finds itself 
 placed. Thus in the springtime it is the instinct of birds to 
 pair, to build nests, to tend their eggs and feed their young. 
 There is no doubt at all on a survey of the whole evidence that 
 the impulse to build nests and, broadly speaking, the method 
 of building them are hereditary. But though hereditary, they 
 are also modifiable. The method of nest-building is varied, the 
 materials used are varied. The old bird builds his nest better 
 than the young one, showing that even here practice makes 
 1 Cambridge Natural History, vi. 272. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 5 
 
 perfect. The oriole, which usually conceals its nests from snakes 
 and hawks, builds quite openly in villages where these enemies 
 are not to be feared.^ The orchard oriole builds a shallow nest 
 on stiff branches, but on the slender twigs of the weeping willow 
 builds deep, so that the young are not thrown out by the swa3dng 
 of the nest. Even in the feeding of the young, cases are recorded 
 in which apparently inteUigent adaptation of the ordinary practice 
 through some special circumstances proves to be well within the 
 power of the bird. 
 
 As opposed to reflex actions, and as opposed to the popular 
 idea of instinct, the facts show that, particularly as we ascend 
 the animal scale, instincts are not perfect at birth, but are 
 improved by practice. They are not rigid, but are capable of 
 adaptation to varying circumstances; they are not, as it were, 
 planned out by the inherited nature of the individual in all 
 their detail. Yet nevertheless they rest upon a hereditary 
 basis which has grown up under those same conditions which 
 we have aheady seen laying down and fixing the structure 
 which determines reflex action. It is important here to observe 
 closely what these conditions are. We must bear in mind that 
 it is not the survival of the individual which, upon the principles 
 laid down by the biologists, will determine the growth of that 
 structure upon which reflex action and instinct alike depend. 
 If we personify Natural Selection, we may say that what it has 
 in view is not the individual but the stock, or if we avoid personi- 
 fication and thereby lengthen our statement, we must say that 
 the conditions which determine the growth and perpetuation 
 of a given structure are not that that structure should preserve 
 the Ufe of each individual in which it exists, but that it should 
 tend to preserve the breed of that individual. In the main these 
 two objects fall into one, since it is only by having its own Jife 
 preserved for a certain time that an individual can bring young 
 ones into existence; but where they diverge, the young should, 
 according to the logic of the argument, get the preference from 
 natural selection, and so, in point of fact, the act of procreation 
 is in some instances fatal, and throughout the animal world the 
 actions necessary for reproduction are as important and as closely 
 determined by the structure of the individual as the actions neces- 
 sary for the maintenance of its own life. But on this point a 
 very important difference emerges as we ascend the animal scale. 
 In the lower layers of organic creation, the maintenance of the 
 stock is principally secured by the vast numbers, running up even 
 to millions, of individuals which may spring from a single indi- 
 * A. R. Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 114, etc. 
 
6 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 vidual in the course of one season. In the higher ranks of animal 
 life the birth-rate rapidly diminishes. Each individual produces 
 a few, or, in the end, a single young one annually, or perhaps 
 even less frequently, and makes up for its infertility by the care 
 which it devotes to the rearing of its more Umited family. There 
 is every reason to regard this parental affection, which begins 
 in such elementary methods as the attachment of eggs to a 
 suitable object and proceeds from the very rough nest-building 
 found among a few species of fish and among the lower birds to 
 the high degree of parental affection shown by the most intelligent 
 birds and mammals, as instinctive in character and based upon 
 hereditary impulses. The cat tends its young by instinct just 
 as truly as it hunts mice by instinct, and, broadly speaking, the 
 conditions under which each instinct has arisen are the same. 
 Each fulfils the requirements of race maintenance and enables the 
 animal to leave behind it progeny like itself. 
 
 Precisely the same account may be given of the gregarious 
 tendencies which become more developed and more' useful to 
 the species as we ascend the animal scale. Not only the social 
 insects whose case presents peculiar difficulties, but many of the 
 higher birds and mammals live in societies which are much larger 
 than the natural family, and these societies are in a rudimentary 
 way organized, that is to say, the members help one another. 
 They play together, sometimes they hunt together; in a large 
 number of interesting cases they employ sentinels who warn 
 them of danger by an alarm note. " Ibex, marmots and moun- 
 tain sheep whistle, prairie dogs bark, elephants trumpet, wild 
 geese and swans have a kind of bugle-call, rabbits stamp on the 
 ground, sheep do the same, and wild ducks, as the writer has 
 noticed, utter a very low caution quack to signify the enemy in 
 sight." 1 Here again there is no reason to doubt that the basis 
 of behaviour is instinctive, but the instinct is modified as life 
 proceeds. Strange as it may seem, young animals have no special 
 instinct which bids them follow their own mothers. They will 
 follow any large animal moving as their mothers do. They do not 
 even know by instinct how to suck. A young lamb, for instance, 
 will take whatever comes nearest into its mouth, say, a tuft of 
 wool on its dam's neck, and it is only by degrees, guided perhaps 
 by smell, that it acquires the right method of feeding itself .^ 
 
 4. Thus, though the basis of the family and social life of the 
 higher animals is laid in certain tendencies or characteristics 
 
 1 Cornish, Animals at Work and Play, p. 48. 
 
 ' Lloyd Morgan, Habit and Instinct, pp. 114, 116. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 7 
 
 inherited from their forbears, these tendencies do not set down 
 rigid lines of behaviour which are perfect from the outset, but 
 rather supply a kind of basis upon which thft, experience of the 
 individual itself may operate. This brings us accordingly to a 
 new factor in the regulation of behaviour. When a young chick 
 has emerged from the egg it will peck readily, and on the whole 
 with surprising accuracy, at any small object lying on the ground 
 that catches its eye. Some of the things that it pecks at it will 
 swallow — yolk of egg, for example, gratifies its cannibal tastes, 
 and having once swallowed a bit of yolk it will peck at another 
 with increased avidity. This pecking we may regard as a reflex 
 and ascribe to an inherited mechanism which is set going by the 
 stimulus administered to the eye by the sight of the object. 
 But if instead of yolk of egg the chick happens to peck at a 
 piece of orange-peel, or at a certain caterpillar which has appar- 
 ently an unpleasant taste, it wUl check itself in mid-career, 
 or, if too late to do so, will swallow the object with gestures 
 which we take as signs of disgust, and we have some ground for 
 this interpretation because after a very few experiences--^some- 
 times indeed a single instance— the chick learns to avoid objects 
 of that kind; it continues to peck at the yolk, but rejects the 
 caterpillar. Here, then, a new factor has intervened. The chick 
 started with its hereditary mechanism wound up, as it were, for 
 the purpose of pecking at any small object that it came across, 
 but its own experience has an effect upon this mechanism. It 
 stops its working in relation to certain objects while it permits 
 or even encourages and perfects it in relation to others. On the 
 strength of our human experience we attribute to the chick 
 pleasurable and painful feelings. We assume that the taste of 
 the one object was pleasant and that of the other disgusting. 
 Whether we have a right to draw this inference is a question 
 which need not be argued here. Our main point for the present 
 is that experience modifies an inherited mode of reaction, and it 
 will be convenient to call this experience pleasurable or painful 
 according as it tends to encourage and perfect the reaction, or to 
 discourage and finally put a stop to it. Clearly, the power of 
 thus learning by experience will be of immense advantage to a 
 species in the way of making its behaviour more plastic and 
 adapting it more closely to the requirements of its life. But the 
 utihty of this new mode of regulating conduct will depend upon 
 one condition — ^the feelings of the animal must in the main 
 correspond with the actual requirements of its life. If all the 
 distasteful food were nutritious and all the pleasant food poison, 
 the only result of the operation of experience would be to bring 
 
8 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the chick to a premature grave. But the feeling which the 
 chick experiences is as much determined by the inherited structure 
 of its brain and nerve organism as was the original tendency to 
 peck. This inherited structure has grown up under precisely 
 similar conditions, that is to say, it must upon the balance have 
 assisted the ancestors of the chick in maintaining their stock and 
 not tended to their destruction. What has happened, therefore, 
 is that, in addition to a mere tendency to peck, the chick also 
 inherits the structure which enables it to feel, and to feel in the 
 main in a way that accords with the requirements of its life. 
 The feelings of the individual, then, become the means by which 
 within certain Umits the behaviour of that individual is regulated, 
 and thus far greater plasticity is gained for the behaviour itself. 
 The animal which can thus learn by experience can afford to 
 make its mistakes, and the more so as it has the fostering care of 
 a mother to protect it from those mistakes which would be fatal. 
 
 Thus the range of adaptation has increased. In place of the 
 direct response coming mechanically, whether well or ill suited 
 to circumstances, in reply to some direct physical stimulus and 
 persisting without variation through the life of the organism, 
 there is room for a variation of behaviour according to the 
 nature of the object with which the animal is brought into 
 contact, as revealed by the experience of previous dealings with 
 similar objects. The result is that a larger class of objects can 
 be dealt with, and behaviour can be adequately adapted to the 
 needs of the organism over a wider field. It is easy to see how 
 this greater adaptability, arising from the power of the animal 
 to utilize its own experiences, will work in with that plasticity 
 of adaptation which we saw in the higher instincts. Instinct 
 is always pressing the animal along the course which will satisfy 
 it. If it can learn by experience what things satisfy and what 
 things do not, it will be so much the better able to choose that 
 course. 
 
 Now the kind of experience thus far described does not carry 
 the animal beyond the direct and immediate results of a given 
 reaction. One kind of act gives pleasure and another pain, and 
 these pleasures and pains must, it would seem, be feehngs of 
 the agent itself; and though the act is suited to the feeling so 
 as to secure the pleasure or avoid the pain, we cannot yet say 
 that the animal acts with the inteUigent purpose of securing 
 the pleasurable or avoiding the painful experience The full 
 reasons for this caution need not be given here. It is sufficient 
 to say that this method of learning by experience retains many 
 ot the features of a mechanical process, and where an animal 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 9 
 
 can learn so much and no more, we are to regard its behaviour 
 rather as determined by the results of its past experience 
 operating upon its brain structure than by aft intelligent appre- 
 hension of the future experiences which its action wiU secure 
 for it. We shall best regard acts of this kind as still within the 
 region of impulse, and as only one step upon the way to behaviour 
 regulated by an idea of what is to happen in the future, and by 
 desire or aversion for that happening. But we should remark 
 that, stUl within the animal world, the capacity for learning by 
 experience reaches a higher level. The dog, for example, which 
 is scolded or beaten, let us say, for lying with its dirty paws upon 
 a sofa, learns to avoid that sofa in the presence of its master for 
 the future. But, in so doing, the dog will show a somewhat 
 higher grade of intelligence than we find in the cidck, for, as we 
 Icnow only too weU, it will, if possessed of an ordinary measure of 
 canine obstinacy, avail itself of the sofa if nobody is looking on, 
 and make a hurried descent if it hears somebody coming. There 
 is in this an element of intelligence which, when all the evidence 
 is put together, appears to carry us beyond that simple modifica- 
 tion of an inherited method of action which we find in the case of 
 the chick. The dog does not simply avoid the sofa, he does not 
 merely and stupidly associate a sofa with the beating, he continues 
 to like the sofa and to get what he can out of it ; he knows that 
 it is some particular person who will punish him, and he may even 
 disregard the presence of those members of the household whom 
 experience has shown him to be less strict. In a word, his 
 action has all the appearance of being intelligently adapted to 
 obtaining one result and avoiding another. He seems to project 
 himself into the future by however short a distance, and to 
 know what wiU happen to him under certain conditions; and 
 thus, as the result which he achieves appears to be the deter- 
 mining factor in his action, we may admit that action to be 
 definitely purposive. He not merely learns to prefer what is 
 pleasurable in itself, and avoid what is painful in itself, but to 
 do things which experience shows would have pleasurable 
 results in the future, and avoid things which have painful results. 
 We may say that he desires the one and has aversion for the 
 other, and though it would not be strictly accurate to say that 
 he desires pleasure, it is true to say that he desires what is pleasant 
 and has an aversion for what is painful, and in this sense pleasur- 
 able and painful feehngs are still the guides, or indirectly the 
 guides, of his action. 
 
 But the dog's behaviour is not determined by his own feel- 
 ings alone. The same intelligence which enables him to make 
 
10 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 this modest forecast of the future, also endows him with the 
 power to recognize the individuals about him. He knows his 
 master and his mistress; he distinguishes friends and enemies, 
 human or animal, and, as we know, he is ready to fly to the 
 assistance of the one or to the destruction of the other. He has 
 every appearance of entering into the moods, as far as he can 
 appreciate them, of those around him, and if we are sometimes 
 inohned to an uncritical over-estimate of the dog's under- 
 standing, still a fair consideration of the whole of the facts leaves 
 no reason to doubt that substantially we are correct in attribut- 
 ing to him knowledge of other individuals, and interest in what 
 they do or suffer. 
 
 It is by no accident that the evidence of attachment and 
 affection to other individuals, and of attention to the mate and 
 the young in its higher developments, belongs almost exclusively 
 to animals of the grade at which this higher form of intelligence 
 begins to appear. Though the love for the young and the 
 attachment to comrades have instinct for their basis, yet, as we 
 have already seen, that instinct is highly plastic in its methods 
 of effecting its ends, and in that plasticity evidences of in- 
 teUigence frequently appear. Thus we shall not go wrong in 
 attributing to the higher animals in their simple social life, not 
 only the elementary feelings, the loves and hates, sympathies 
 and jealousies which underlie all forms of society, but also in a 
 rudimentary stage the inteUigence which enables those feelings to 
 direct the operations of the animal so as best to gratify them. 
 
 5. Thus, when we come to human society we find the basis 
 for a social organization of life already laid in the animal nature 
 of man. Like others of the higher animals, man is a gregarious 
 beast. His interests lie in his relations to his fellows, in his 
 love for wife and children, in his companionship, possibly in his 
 rivalry and striving with his fellow-men. His loves and hates, 
 his joys and sorrows, his pride, his wrath, his gentleness, his 
 boldness, his timidity — all these permanent quaUties, which run 
 through humanity and vary only in degree, belong to his in- 
 herited structure. Broadly speaking, they are of the nature of 
 instincts, but instincts which have become highly plastic in 
 their mode of operation, and which need the stimulus of experience 
 to call them forth and give them definite shape. 
 
 The mechanical methods of reaction which are so prominent 
 low down in the animal scale fill quite a minor place in human 
 life. The ordinary operations of the body, indeed, go upon their 
 way mechanically enough In walking or in running, in saving 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 11 
 
 ourselves from a fall, in coughing, sneezing or swallowing, we 
 re-act as mechanically as do the lower animals ; but in the dis- 
 tinctly human modes of behaviour, the place taken by the 
 inherited structure is very different. Hunger and thirst no 
 doubt are of the nature of instincts, but the methods of satis- 
 fying hunger and thirst are acquired by experience or by teach- 
 ing. Love and the whole family life have an instinctive basis, 
 that is to say, they rest upon tendencies inherited with the 
 brain and nerve structure; but everything that has to do with 
 the satisfaction of these impulses is determined by the experience 
 of the individual, the laws and customs of the society in which 
 he lives, the woman whom he meets, the accidents of their 
 intercourse, and so forth. Instinct, already plastic and modi- 
 fiable in the higher animals, becomes in man a basis of character 
 which determines how he will take his experience, but without 
 experience is a mere blank form upon which nothing is yet 
 written. 
 
 For example, it is an ingrained tendency of average human 
 nature to be moved by the opinion of our neighbours. This 
 is a powerful motive in conduct, but the kind of conduct to 
 which it wiU incite clearly depends on the kind of thing that 
 our neighbours approve. In some parts of the world ambition 
 for renown will prompt a man to lie in wait for a woman or 
 child in order to add a fresh skull to his collection. In other 
 parts he may be urged by similar motives to pursue a science 
 or paint a picture. In all these cases the same hereditary or 
 instinctive element is at work, that quality of character which 
 makes a man respond sensitively to the feelings which others 
 manifest towards him. But the kind of conduct which this 
 sensitiveness may dictate depends wholly on the social environ- 
 ment in which the man finds himself. Similarly it is, as the 
 ordinary phrase quite justly puts it, " in human nature " to 
 stand up for one's rights. A man wiU strive, that is, to secure 
 that which he has counted on as his due. But as to what he 
 counts upon, as to the actual treatment which he expects under 
 given circumstances, his views are determined by the " custom 
 of the country," by what he sees others insisting on and obtain- 
 ing, by what has been promised him, and so forth. Even such 
 an emotion as sexual jealousy, which seems deeply rooted in the 
 animal nature, is largely limited in its exercise and determined 
 in the form it takes by custom. A hospitable savage, who will 
 lend his wife to a guest, would kill her for acting in the same 
 way on her own motion. In the one case he exercises his rights 
 of proprietorship ; in the other, she transgresses them. It is the 
 
12 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 maintenance of a claim which jealousy concerns itself with, and 
 the standard determining the claim is the custom of the country. 
 In human society, then, the conditions regulating conduct are 
 from the first greatly modified. Instinct, becoming vague and 
 more general, has evolved into " character," while the intelli- 
 gence finds itself confronted with customs, to which it has to 
 accommodate conduct. But how does custom arise ? Let us 
 first consider what custom is. It is not merely a habit of action ; 
 but it implies also a judgment upon action, and a judgment 
 stated in general and impersonal terms. It would seem to 
 imply a bystander or third party. If A hits B, B probably hits 
 back. It is his " habit " so to do. But if C, looking on, pro- 
 nounces that it was or was not a fair blow, he will probably 
 appeal to the " custom " of the country — the traditional rules of 
 fighting, for instance, — as the ground of his judgment. That is, 
 he will lay down a rule which is general in the sense that it 
 would apply to other individuals under similar conditions, and 
 by it he will, as an impartial third person, appraise the conduct 
 of the contending parties. The formation of such rules, resting 
 as it does on the power of framing and applying general concep- 
 tions, is the prime differentia of human morality from animal 
 behaviour.'- The fact that they arise and are handed on from 
 generation to generation makes social tradition at once the 
 dominating factor in the regulation of human conduct. Without 
 such rules we can scarcely conceive society to exist, since it is 
 only through the general conformity to custom that men can 
 understand each other, that each can know how the other will 
 act imder given circumstances, and without this amount of 
 understanding the reciprocity, which is the vital principle of 
 society, disappears. 
 
 6. How custom grows and how it is related to individual 
 character may in a general way be imderstood by considering , 
 how the process goes on amongst ourselves. Consider for a 
 
 * It implies all the growth that is involved in the formation of general 
 rules of conduct as opposed to memories or anticipation of particular 
 events, and on the moral side the growth of will as opposed to desire, 
 and the formation of objects of permanent interest — relatively stable 
 sources of happiness — as opposed to objects of temporary pleasure. By 
 desire we are to understand impulse informed by the anticipation of an 
 event. By will, a reaction of character to ends in which a relatively stable 
 and permanent satisfaction is found. Its authority over desire we call 
 self-control, but it is rather control by the self as a whole of one or other 
 of the impulses which conflict with its permanent tendency. It is only 
 when this relatively stable and balanced adoption of permanent ends or 
 abiding principles is psychologically possible that the inculcation of general 
 rules could have any meaning. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 13 
 
 moment the judgments that we pass on our neighbours or on 
 pubUc men, and see how they are formed and how they operate. 
 Many, indeed it is to be feared by far the target portion, are 
 made parrot fashion by the application of the first rough-and- 
 ready rule, the simplest and shortest formula that leaps to our 
 lips. We approve and condemn — generally condemn — in the 
 patter of the tram-car or the railway carriage, fitting on modes 
 of judgment that are flying about from mouth to mouth and 
 scarcely obtain a lodgment in the brain. In these cases we are 
 at best accepting and passing on what we find ready made for 
 us by society. But how did it come to be made, since society 
 is, after aU, ourselves and those, not so greatly differing from us, 
 who went before 1 This points us to a deeper, more original 
 source of the moral judgment, and this, in fact, we find in our- 
 selves in that smaller number of cases in which the subject of 
 discussion stirs some impulse within us, touches some spring of 
 our own nature, moves some hidden sympathy or antipathy that 
 dissipates the patter of the street and speaks out for itself. 
 Whenever this happens we ourselves originate a moral judgment, 
 and we do not need to be told that this judgment has its imme- 
 diate source in some feature of our own character, our sense 
 of justice, our love of our country, our hatred of meanness or 
 cruelty, or whatever it may be. According as one or another of 
 these elements is strong in us, so do we become, as it were, 
 centres from which judgments of one kind or another radiate, 
 from which they pass forth to fill the atmosphere of opinion, and 
 take their place among the influences that mould the judgments 
 of other men. For no sooner has the judgment escaped us — a 
 winged word from our own lips — than it impinges on the judg- 
 ment simiharly flying forth to do its work from our next-door 
 neighbour^ and if the subject is an exciting one the air is soon 
 full of the winged forces clashing, deflecting or reinforcing one 
 another as the case may be, and generally settling down towards 
 some preponderating opinion which is society's judgment on the 
 case. But in the course of the conflict many of the original 
 judgments are modified. Discussion, further consideration, 
 above all, the mere influence of our neighbour's opinion re-acts 
 on each of us, with a stress that is proportioned to various mental 
 and moral characteristics of our own, our clearness of vision, 
 our firmness or, perhaps, obstinacy of character, our self-con- 
 fidence, and so forth. Thus, the controversy wiU tend to leave 
 its mark, small or great, on those who took part in it. It will 
 tend to modify their modes of judgment, confirming one, perhaps, 
 in his former ways, shaking the confidence of another, opening 
 
14 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the eyes of a third. Similarly, it will tend to set a precedent for 
 future judgments. It will affect what men say and think on 
 the next question that turns up. It adds its weight, of one grain 
 it may be, to some force that is turning the scale of opinion and 
 preparing society for some new departure. In any case, we 
 have here in miniature at work every day before our eyes the 
 essential process by which moral judgments arise and grow. 
 Here we have the individual with his spontaneous utterance 
 springing from his own character, guided by what lights he has. 
 Here again we have the clash of judgments so deUvered, the 
 war of ideas, the resultant opinion of society, the consequent 
 re-modelling of their first judgment in individuals, the growth 
 in society of a certain way of looking at things, in short, of a 
 tradition. Individual impulse and social tradition are thus the 
 two poles between which we move. 
 
 Deep as are the contrasts between modem society and primitive 
 life, we have no reason to doubt that there, too, the same forces 
 were at work. The process would be far slower, though in- 
 finitely less mobile, and custom once formed far more set and 
 crystaUized. But the prime factors are the same. There is 
 always the character of each individual as it has grown up imder 
 the conditions of heredity, with its sympathies and antipathies, 
 its impulses social and selfish, its susceptibilities and feelings in 
 which the relations of human being to human being play so 
 prominent a part, uttering itself in judgments which praise or 
 condemn conduct, forming conceptions of good and bad, right 
 and wrong, as things jump with its feelings or displease them. 
 There is always the influence of the society in which each man 
 is born, the interaction between mind and mind and the shaping 
 of individual opinions into a social standard, the modelling of 
 each new generation by the heavy hand of the past. 
 
 7. That the moral standard of man is based on the character 
 of man, though it sounds hke a truism, is a principle which has 
 been but little understood in modern ethics. It has generally 
 been assumed that the alternative lay between resolving the 
 moral code into something essentially non-moral, e. g. self-interest, 
 or admitting an authoritative mode of judgment, intuitive or 
 rational, the deliverance of which could admit of no further 
 analysis. Even the admission that morality has an instinctive 
 basis might seem to remove it from criticism, in view of the 
 common conception of instinct as universal, infallible, and essen- 
 tially non-rational. A juster conception of instinct as something 
 which throughout the animal world is found to vary greatly in 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 15 
 
 individuala, to be quite fallible, often imperfect and capable from 
 an early stage of emplojdng elementary reasoning in its service, 
 enables us to see the genesis of morality in a different light. The 
 instinctive element in human morality is by no means an un- 
 failing power implanted by nature in all men to distiaguish 
 right from wrong. It is a name for human character as it grows 
 up under the conditions of heredity, and it is from this character, 
 with all the faults and foibles along with the virtues thereof, that 
 the moral judgment issues. Human morality is as bUnd and 
 imperfect as man himself. 
 
 With some writers the view has found favour that sympathy 
 is the basis of morality and of society. There is an element of 
 truth in this, but it is too simple a statement. First, it is not 
 sympathy alone that draws men together. Men have need of 
 each other, physical need, and also a moral need for which 
 sympathy is too simple an expression. Men may be drawn 
 together by hate, by the passions of pride, by the love of com- 
 petition — by a thousand motives which are far from being purely 
 sympathetic or wholly good. Even love and affection, though 
 at their best they imply sympathy, are not as such the same 
 thing — otherwise passionate love would not so often be selfish. 
 Secondly, if we take the actual as opposed to the ideal codes of 
 mankind pure sympathy is certainly not their sole basis. It is a 
 factor in them. They enjoin mutual support, mutual forbear- 
 ance, they express in some degree the desire of the impartial on- 
 looker to side with the man who is wronged. Yet in average 
 morality there is a very strong dose of the opposite quality. The 
 workaday rules of conduct belong to the morals of strife, of 
 actual warfare it may be, or it may be of peaceful but not less 
 deadly competition. In the mere apportionment of praise and 
 blame the blame is apt to be by far the more interesting part of 
 the matter and the exercise of censorship has made the very name 
 of moralist one to flee from. The rude mind thoroughly enjoyed 
 the time when " the villain had his flogging at the gangway and 
 we cheered." To the more cultivated a moral flagellation is no 
 less acceptable. It is only the highest ethical thought which 
 rises above the categories of praise and blame to the clear-eyed 
 vision of humanity wherein to " judge " men means merely to 
 learn how to deal with them so that they may serve and not mar 
 the common good. 
 
 Let us, then, understand that human morality from the first 
 rests on the antagonisms as well as the sympathies, the corrup- 
 tions and foibles as well as the excellences of human nature. It 
 does not follow that it is a form of selfishness based on the 
 
16 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 desire for reciprocal benefits. Such a genesis would be out of 
 keeping not only with the content of morality itself, but with all 
 that we know of the origin of instinct. Reciprocity undoubtedly 
 has a weighty influence in the shaping of conduct. It tends to 
 set the average standard. A upon the whole will be content to 
 do for B what B has done for him, and moreover C will expect as 
 much of A. If he does less he is mean, if more he is generous. 
 In the absence of selfish motives, again, the standard is apt to 
 run down. Men do not become dead to obligation, but they 
 interpret it laxly, and in the absence of criticism give all the 
 doubtful points in their own favour. Where there is no compul- 
 sion to give anything, the donor of a penny may swear that he 
 has done more than was required of him. Hence (incidentally) 
 the importance in many matters of public ethics of substituting 
 legal obligation for the good-will of individuals. The best men 
 do their duty already of their own motion. True — but make 
 what they do the law. The result is to raise the whole standard. 
 The worst are worked up to it, the best find still better things 
 to do. AU this may prove that selfish considerations sway 
 mankind, but of the doctrine of self-interest as the primary and 
 only genuine human motive, it is sufficient to say that it bears 
 no relation to the facts of human nature, and implies an incorrect 
 view of the origin of instinct. 
 
 8. Instinct we saw arose under the conditions of animal life, 
 and is therefore bound in the main to subserve and not to hinder 
 the needs of the living animal. There is an analogous condition 
 limiting, and indirectly shaping, the moral judgment, for if the 
 standard of conduct were so perversely formed as to favour 
 actions tending to the dissolution of the social bond, it would in 
 the end be self -destructive. The society which should habitu- 
 ally favour such conduct would perish by its inherent vices, and 
 thus, as Plato urges, the saying that there must be honour even 
 among thieves expresses a very important truth. But the limit 
 thus imposed is a very elastic one, and this factor by no means 
 works so uniformly for good as might be supposed. To begin 
 with, society's shoulders are broad, and they can bear many a 
 burden imposed by human perversity without breaking down. 
 Many injurious customs may arise and flourish as long as they 
 do not touch the social life in a vital spot. Secondly, the prin- 
 ciple cuts both ways, as the example of the thieves itself suggests. 
 If the thieves become too honourable they would give up thieving 
 and their particular form of society would break down. This 
 same consideration holds of all class morality. The members of 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 17 
 
 a privileged class must, if they are to remain a privileged class, 
 carefully resist the encroachment of wider conceptions of the 
 public good. They must combat such concejftions not only in 
 principle but in their detailed application. They must extirpate 
 any mode of thought which they find rising among their mem- 
 bers in which a dangerous impUcation may be detected. Or, 
 failing to extirpate it, they must employ some of those methods 
 of interpretation which long experience has proved useful in 
 drawing the sting out of higher ethical truth. The study of 
 these methods, however, is not our immediate purpose. All we 
 have to remark is that, while the requirements of the social 
 union are an underlying condition limiting the movement of 
 the ethical consciousness, these requirements themselves vary 
 according to the nature of each society, and while there are some 
 changes which would destroy society altogether — as e. g. if a 
 doctrine of universal ceUbacy were to prevail — there are others 
 which would merely destroy the existing form of society by 
 transmuting it into something different, perhaps worse, perhaps 
 better. Historically, both the fundamental requirements of the 
 social order and the more occasional requirements of a given 
 stage in social evolution have deeply influenced ethical growth. 
 But the influence is for the most part unconscious. Men feel 
 in that dim fashion which is popularly caUed instinctive that a 
 given change is pregnant with consequences that would deeply 
 affect the social order, and without thinking the matter out, they 
 are prejudiced for or against the change, according as they are 
 dissatisfied or contented with things as they are. The bearings 
 of any new judgment on the general framework of social Ufe 
 must therefore be set down as a most important factor in 
 determining its acceptance or rejection, though the working of 
 this factor may be obscure and indirect, and may indeed be 
 fuUy accomplished without the deHberate agency of any single 
 individual who has thought the whole matter out. 
 
 But, in fact, as human intelligence expands, these under- 
 lying conditions of ethical movements are no longer left to 
 work out their effects slowly and indirectly in the sphere of 
 the imconscious. On the contrary, the requirements of social 
 welfare are dehberately taken into account in deaUng with new 
 questions, and even established customs and traditions are 
 criticized in the light of experience. Here emerge some of 
 the broad differences between primitive and more advanced 
 societies. 
 
 To Primitive Man custom, as such, is sacred. It is true that 
 it often has some theory to back it. It may be that it was a 
 c 
 
18 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 rule received from the heroes of old, or brought down graven on 
 stone from Sinai, that its violation would, as the Australians 
 hold, produce a variety of bodily ailments, or, as the ancient 
 Babylonians held, expose the offender to the malevolence of 
 witch or demon. But, in reality, the customary is sacred because 
 it is customary, and Sophocles is nearer the true feeling of the 
 ordinary mind when he makes Antigone declare that the moral 
 law is sacred, " because it is not of to-day or yesterday, but lives 
 for ever, and none knows whence it sprang." To the primitive 
 mind — and in all of us there is a good deal of the primitive — it 
 is only the mysterious that is impressive, and custom would 
 lose half its force if its origin and meaning could be rationally 
 explained and logically justified. But thought does not remain 
 permanently at this level. As we follow the ethical movement 
 in its advance, we shall find more and more that the interest 
 shifts from the tradition which men follow half mechanically to 
 the deliberate attempt to re-organize conduct on the basis of 
 some distinct theory of life. A religious movement, a new con- 
 ception of God or the future life, a philosophical theory of man's 
 place in nature, a fresh analysis of human society, shifts the 
 basis and so affects the standard of conduct. At the same time, 
 the converse truth must never be lost sight of. The existing 
 structure of society, the character of physical environment, and 
 the views current in his surroundings of the duties of man, 
 insensibly affect the thought of the profoundest and most 
 original prophet or thinker. Nowhere is the feat of escaping 
 from one's own shadow harder than in the world of ethical and 
 religious thought. Thus, in ethics, custom and theory are in 
 constant and close interaction, and our subject, the comparative 
 study of ethics, must embrace them both. It would include, 
 were it within one man's power to treat it exhaustively, at the 
 one extreme the quasi-instinctive judgment based on the un- 
 thinking acceptance of tradition, at the other the profoundest 
 theory of the thinker seeking a rational basis of conduct and an 
 intelligible formula to express the end of life, and between these 
 two the influences, rational and half rational, which are at work 
 with increased assiduity as civilization advances, re-modelling 
 custom and substituting deliberately-accepted principle, whether 
 true, half true, or false, for bhnd tradition. The one thing 
 common to both extremes and all the intermediate region, is 
 that there are things that men approve and disapprove — con- 
 duct, character, purposes, results — ^that they judge " good " or 
 " bad." The subject of ethics may therefore be defined in the 
 broadest terms as the inquiry into the Conception of the Good, 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 19 
 
 and the business of comparative ethics is to determine the 
 generic character and principal specific variations of this con- 
 ception as actually held by men in different places at different 
 times. Finally, it must inquire whether among these conceptions 
 there is anything that can be called development. 
 
 9. Thus the conception of the Good is the central point of 
 ethics, and whatever belongs essentially to this conception we 
 call ethical. Variations in the conception of the good, for in- 
 stance, we call ethical variations; development in it, if such 
 there be, ethical development. The essential conditions, such 
 as human character, on which the conception depends, are the 
 " ethical " factors in life. 
 
 Now the conception of the Good is the logical foundation of 
 every rule of action — ^that is, of the whole standard of conduct. 
 But it is important to observe from the outset, as bearing on 
 the Hmits of our inquiry, that the standard of conduct may be 
 affected by causes which are not ethical in origin though they 
 may come to have ethical consequences. On one and the same 
 conception of the good, for example, the same conduct may be 
 differently judged, merely because its results were once believed 
 to be good, and are shown by a later experience to be other than 
 was at first supposed. For example, a magical rite may be pre- ' 
 scribed as a duty because it is believed to be efficacious in averting 
 a calamity to one's self, one's family, one's society, as the case 
 may be. If the beUef in magic disappears, the performance 
 of the rite will cease to be obhgatory, although there may be 
 no change in the current conception of the duties to society, 
 family or self. From this simple example we can understand 
 that rules of conduct are affected by the general level of in- 
 teUigence and knowledge. The whole character of man's out- 
 look on the world, the degree in which he understands the forces 
 which surround him, will naturally affect his behaviour in many 
 directions. It may be said that this has nothing to do with 
 ethics, but turns on the obvious distinction between means and 
 ends. The end, which is what men really conceive as " good," 
 is the same, only advancing knowledge alters their view as to 
 the means of securing it. But the relationship is in reality far 
 more intricate and subtle than this. Not merely the working 
 rules of behaviour, but the actual conception of what is good or 
 bad is profoundly influenced by the ideas current of man's place 
 in nature and of the forces which surround him, while conversely 
 the conception of the good that he has formed influences man's 
 ideas about the world and the agencies which control it. What 
 
20 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the gods ordain comes to be thought right, and so to influence 
 character; while, again, if men come to see that what the gods 
 have ordained is wrong, their conception of the gods is altered 
 and a religious revolution is brought about. Here even the 
 silence of the ethical consciousness is instructive. If a barbarous 
 practice, such as human sacrifice, is tolerated as a part of religion, 
 the mere fact that the moral sense does not rise in revolt against 
 it is painful evidence of the stunted growth of that side of human 
 nature. But though ethical conceptions thus influence and are 
 influenced by the general condition of knowledge and the con- 
 ception that man forms of the world in which he Uves, we cannot 
 say that ethical, intellectual and religious development are the 
 same thing. Many advances in knowledge may be made without 
 affecting the conception of the good in the smallest degree. 
 Many religious conceptions have no bearing for good or evil 
 upon ethics. It is best to regard these factors of develop-' 
 ment not as identical but as closely correlated. In particular, , 
 ethical and religious evolution are closely intertwined, and we 
 shall have to trace the second in so far as it is essential to the 
 first. 
 
 Again, individual conduct may be determined not by a con- 
 ception of the good but by the compulsion of law. Here there 
 is at first sight another non-ethical influence, controlHng be- 
 haviour, but here, again, when we look further, we see that the 
 relation is more intimate. Not only are laws founded upon 
 some one's conception of the good (though not always that of the 
 subject who obeys the law), but law in turn affects the concep- 
 tion of the good itself, and as with law so with changes of the 
 social structure generally. Now such social changes take place 
 for the most part without any planning or designing on the part 
 of the society which experiences them. Just as the individual 
 grows with no effort on his own part, and with only a very 
 limited power of regulating his physical development, so society 
 grows, changes, and it may be decays, in ways and from causes 
 of which it is for the most part quite unaware. It is only in the 
 later stages of culture that men begin to study systematically 
 the nature of social forces and the conditions of growth, arrest 
 and decay. No doubt the efforts of the teacher or the statesman 
 to resist glaring evils or develop beneficent tendencies have 
 their effect, and the part played by deliberate reform increases 
 as culture develops. Yet the forces which move society and are 
 ever changing the mutual relations of its members are so vast 
 and so intricate that they still in great measure elude the grasp 
 of the wisest minds, and, as eveiy one knows, the reforms most 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 21 
 
 deKberately planned and most carefully thought out have a 
 hundred unexpected reactions over and above the direct effect 
 which they were designed to produce. Now these slow and 
 silent changes of society are always modifying the ethical 
 standard as expressed in the customs of society. Purely 
 economic changes, for example, will tend to raise one class and 
 depress another. A community in which comparative equahty 
 has reigned may give way to one divided between rich and 
 poor, and from such a division some form of class morality is 
 almost certain to arise. That is to say, the difference in social 
 power will be represented by a differentiation in the social code 
 between the behaviour due to a member of the more powerful 
 class and that due to " inferiors." Such causes as the accumula- 
 tion of capital and the rise of large urban markets have at times 
 made slave labour especially profitable, and slavery has accord- 
 ingly received a great extension, while the class of free citizens 
 has declined. In such cases the society affected appears to the 
 on-looker to have undergone a distinct moral deterioration. So 
 perhaps it has, but it is important to observe that the origin of 
 the decUne is not moral but economic. The true account of the 
 change in most of these cases is probably that a lowered sense 
 of the value of human life or a degradation of the ideal of citizen- 
 ship has come about from the rise or extension of slavery, not 
 that slavery has come about from a lowered sense of the value 
 of human life. For what we call practical purposes, which too 
 often mean simply for unscientific purposes, the distinction may 
 seem unimportant. But let us look a little further. We have 
 assumed a case in which the deterioration proceeds unchecked. 
 Suppose, instead, that it awakes a protest, as among the Hebrews 
 the sharpening contrasts of wealth and poverty awoke the 
 prophets. Suppose the protest successful and the deterioration 
 arrested. Here a distinctly ethical ideal, a judgment of right 
 and wrong, an expression of character, has prevailed, and, 
 instead of being passively shaped by the social tendencies, has 
 subdued the social tendencies to itself. How should we account 
 for the difference between this case and the last ? We should 
 have to admit that though at the outset both communities held 
 the same standard of social justice, yet they held it after a very 
 different fashion. To one it was a principle, or at any rate was 
 capable, when challenged, of becoming a principle. To the 
 other it was a custom merely, due rather to the favour of 
 circumstances than to the wisdom or moral quaUties of the 
 citizens — it was the innocence preserved only through the want 
 of temptation. Thus it is not dif&cult to see that it may make 
 
22 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 a great difference, " practical " as well as scientific, whether 
 a good custom owes its existence to social circumstances or to a 
 deUberate acceptance of it as wise and right. 
 
 Thus, sociological development is not the same thing as 
 ethical development. Social growth may produce a set of 
 institutions of a certain value which no brain created, no human 
 being planned, and which even those who enjoy them do not 
 sufficiently appreciate to maintain them against attack. This is 
 the element of the unconscious in social life. On the other 
 hand, changes may arise from the growth of character or of a 
 reasoned conception of the good, and so far they are due to an 
 ethical development. From the ethical point of view institu- 
 tions depending on a certain degree of ethical advance are of 
 much more value than precisely similar institutions reached by 
 another road, and the difference is hkely to emerge in their 
 subsequent history. For as the non-ethical changes of society 
 affect the standard of conduct, so ethical ideas may in their 
 turn re-act upon social organization. Such a re-action has made 
 a large part of the history of the modem world, and analogies 
 can be traced in ancient times, particularly when, as in the 
 instance quoted among the Hebrews, a tenacious tribe adheres, 
 amid the growth of civihzation, to the ideals of a simpler life 
 and a primitive social equality. An interaction of this kind 
 is the chemistry out of which come great erplosions — social, 
 reUgious and ethical. 
 
 Thus the whole mass of rules and regulations whereby 
 humanity seeks to guide its life is, on the face of it, interesting 
 to the inquirer into comparative ethics. These rules are not all 
 necessarily ethical in origin, nor do all those which are recognized 
 in any given society necessarily express the living character of 
 human beings in that society at the moment. But as showing 
 both what the ethical consciousness has done, and what it has 
 failed to do, they are full of interest and significance for com- 
 parative ethics. Social changes proceeding insensibly through 
 the strengthening of forces in one direction, and their weakening 
 in another, affect the moral standard for good or evil. Beliefs 
 concerning the agencies underlying nature's operations supply 
 grounds good or bad for many judgments. These are the main 
 forces which impinge on the conception of the good, shaping and 
 shaped by it in accordance with the degree of intelligence with 
 which it has been formed, and the firmness with which it is 
 held. We shall accordingly have to deal not only with custom 
 and law, but also with the principal forms of social organization 
 on the one hand, and of reUgious thought upon the other. Only 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 23 
 
 with these before us shall we be in a position to trace the outline 
 of ethical evolution. 
 
 • 
 
 10. We have defined our subject as the study of ethical con- 
 ceptions. It might be suggested that ethics should rather study 
 the history of conduct itself. Such an inquiry, however, would 
 be as Tinfruitful as it would be limitless. We may hope with 
 very considerable difficulty to present a fair comparison of the 
 different moral codes that have been accepted at sundry times 
 and divers places. But to , attempt to estimate how far the 
 conduct of men has conformed to those codes would be quite 
 another thing. There is no social measuring rod by which we 
 could compare degrees of obedience to law. Civilized societies, 
 with their records of criminal statistics, might, indeed, repay 
 investigation from this point of view, though there is no depart- 
 ment in which statistics are more apt to mislead, and that is 
 saying a good deal. But if we were to take ruder societies into 
 account, the means of investigation would wholly fail. All that 
 we can hope to do in comparing different stages of growth is 
 to deal with recognized customs, accepted maxims, and ideas 
 expressed in mythology, in Uterature, or in art. In other words, 
 we could only hope to give the history of those ethical concep- 
 tions which are recognized as rules of conduct, and we must give 
 up as wholly beyond our power the investigation of the degree 
 in which conduct itself conforms to those rules. 
 
 But this is not so much as to say that we are deahng with 
 ideas only, and not with practice at all. In Ethics there are 
 principles and principles, and the distraction between them is 
 often clear enough. A rule of conduct may be a genuine ex- 
 pression of what people actually feel and think, or it may be 
 an ideal bearing as httle relation to common practice as the 
 Sermon on the Mount to the code of the Stock Exchange. In 
 other words, there is a difference between the rule to which 
 society expects you to conform and the rule which it keeps for 
 Sunday use only. Both are rules and both may be broken. 
 Hence to record either of them is to record not what conduct 
 always is, but what it is thought it ought to be. But there is 
 this immense difference : that one rule has behind it the forces 
 of society, and so becomes in fact the normal conduct of the 
 average man, while the other rests on the teaching of the idealist 
 and is perhaps practised only by the best men in their best 
 moments. This broad distinction we must keep in mind, if 
 we would not immensely over-rate the morals of the civihzed 
 world, which, unlike the savage and barbarian world, has almost 
 
24 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 invariably a double code, one for use and the other — as a cynic 
 would say — for ornament. 
 
 Indeed, the modern European has not one or two, but many 
 codes claiming his allegiance — the code of religion, the code of 
 honour, the code of his profession, perhaps the code of his class, 
 and it may be the theories and ideals which he has imbibed 
 from his own favourite teachers. All these codes may, and not 
 infrequently do, conflict. The comparative student has no baro- 
 meter to measure adequately their relative eflHcacy. All he can 
 do is to apply his broad test and ssk whether they are or are 
 not working codes, i. e. rules expressing the average conduct 
 which society expects and enforces, or rules which it is safer to 
 disregard than to deny. But it by no means follows that when 
 he has applied the test he may proceed to leave the highest 
 ideals, " the high which proved too high, the heroic for earth too 
 hard," altogether out of his account. That men have held these 
 views is a fact of great significance for ethical science. It is 
 also a fact of scarcely less significance, that society which cannot 
 practise them is yet forced to do lip-service to them. The 
 historian's point of view is here quite opposed to the cynic's. 
 If, indeed, we were to look at the conduct of modem society in 
 some relations, and in those relations only, we should be apt to 
 say that it cloaked under fine words actions not less savage than 
 those of our rude and barbarous ancestors. But let us be quite 
 fair to ourselves, and admit that the necessity which we feel for 
 clothing base actions in the language of high principles is, after 
 all, a proof that those principles have begun to germinate and 
 take root. The Assyrian king surveys with complacency the 
 number of prisoners he has flayed, impaled, or burnt, and takes 
 it aU as a proof of the special goodness of Ashur to him and his 
 house. We could hardly do the thing so baldly. The white man 
 has no doubt committed great barbarities upon the savage, but 
 he does not like to speak of them, and when necessity compels 
 a reference he has always something to say of manifest destiny, 
 the advance of civilization, and the duty of shouldering the 
 white man's burden, in which he pays his tribute to a higher 
 ethical conscience. It may be said that the amalgam is a degree 
 more detestable, and that Sargon or Assur-Natsir-Pal had at 
 least the merit of frankness. But this would be historically 
 false. There was not the smallest merit in the Assyrian king's 
 frankness, because he saw nothing to be ashamed of. The white 
 man's hypocrisy is more revolting in itself, but, historically con- 
 sidered, is a hint of better things. The ethical conception has 
 a certain value in itself, and the fact that it commands even a 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 25 
 
 theoretical allegiance is not without its encoxiraging side. What 
 men already know to be true will "go near to be thought 
 shortly." • 
 
 Our subject, then, must include the ideal of the apostle as well 
 as the working rule of the lawyer. Its lower limit is the 
 traditional custom followed by the half-unconscious savage. 
 Its upper limit is the philosopher's reasoned and rounded theory 
 of Ufe. Between these extremes aU the judgments that men 
 form about conduct faU within its scope. Only we must bear 
 in mind that there are maxims and laws which state what 
 average men do, and expect others to do, and there are maxims 
 which lay down what, on the basis of some ideal doctrine, they 
 ought to do. Both alike belong to our subject, but of any given 
 law we must know to which class it belongs, and so far as this 
 distinction carries us — but only so far — we are dealing not 
 merely with ethical conceptions but also with the facts of human 
 conduct. 
 
 11. So far for the limits of our subject. A word must now 
 be said as to methods. The nature of the evidence at the dis- 
 posal of the historian of Ethics is fragmentary, and often most 
 unsatisfactory. The difficulty is at its height in relation to 
 primitive and savage tribes. Our object is to deal with ethical 
 evolution, and to do this in fulness we should naturally desire 
 to have a continuous ethical history of mankind throughout the 
 ages. This, of course, is not available, and the anthropologist 
 seeks to eke out the gaps in his knowledge of the past by com- 
 parison with the present, the assumption being that in the 
 existing savage and barbarous tribes we have survivals of the 
 state of things common to the ancestors of civilized man. How 
 far that assumption holds good it is not possible to say with 
 certainty. It is well to remember that a contemporary savage 
 has been the subject of an evolution neither longer nor shorter 
 than that which our own race has gone through. Although the 
 rate of change has been presumably slower, it is not certaia that 
 there has been no change at aU. But without being hyper- 
 critical upon this point, and admitting that by comparison 
 between what we know of the contemporary savage and 
 what we know of the ancestors of civilization we get the 
 most probable view attainable of the earUer epochs of man- 
 kind, we have still to deplore the fact that our information 
 about the contemporary savage is itself in a fragmentary, 
 obscure, and sometimes contradictory condition. These defects 
 arise in part from difficulties which are readily intelligible in 
 
26 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 obtaining accurate information from people speaking a foreign 
 language as to modes of life differing greatly from any of those 
 with which the observer is familiar. There are, however, 
 certain special difficulties in the use of the material, arising 
 from the nature of ethical evolution, which deserve mention 
 here. 
 
 When we compare very different stages of culture we are apt 
 to find a bewildering mixture of sameness and difference. We 
 find some tribe Hke the Dyaks of Borneo with whom the 
 traveller tells us it is a delight to dwell, so courteous are they, 
 so hospitable, so full of brotherly kindliness. We begin to 
 think; there is truth in the idyllic picture of savage life so popular 
 in the days of our great-grandfathers, until we stumble upon 
 the fact that these same Dyaks are inveterate head-hunters, 
 and make a practice of murdering not men only, but women 
 and children in satisfaction of the duty of blood-vengeance, and 
 to obtain the magic virtues inherent in an enemy's skuU.^ At 
 once the demon picture takes the place of the angel, and the savage 
 world is seen as a Gehenna rather than a Paradise. We forget 
 the inconsistencies of our own civilized codes, and can hardly 
 beUeve that men capable of acts so fiendish can have any trace 
 of genuine humanity about them. The fairer view about 
 them is that the Dyaks have a morality of their own, for many 
 purposes as good as ours, but limited by the conditions of their 
 life and coloured by their ideas of the supematural^yTo be 
 judged fairly, in short, both their virtues and their vices must 
 be taken in connection with their Ufe as a whole. What are 
 at first sight the same ideas, the same institutions, are in reality 
 of different value and meaning in different surroundings, and 
 this possible source of error must always be allowed for in drawing 
 comparisons. 
 
 In particular we must guard against misunderstandings arising 
 from the obscurity, the inarticulateness, of primitive thought. 
 Ideas quite familiar to us are often unintelhgible to the savage, 
 and for the words which we use to express them no precise 
 equivalent can be found in his language, but it is a mistake to 
 infer at once that nothing corresponding to our idea exists in 
 the savage mind. If we look at his actions we may find reason 
 to think differently. He acts as though he had the idea, and 
 yet, it may be, he can give no intelligible account of it. Hence 
 at one moment we are tempted to assert that he holds the idea 
 just as we hold it, at another we begin to deny that he holds it 
 at all. Now this is a difl&oulty which we find all along the line 
 ^ See Ratzel, History of Mankind, i. 448. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 27 
 
 in the study of mental evolution. It is felt even more acutely 
 in animal psychology. Here we are constantly tempted to 
 believe that an animal is guided by clear ideas, -^hile the evidence 
 when all put together goes to prove that it is moving towards 
 an end without clearly and fuUy apprehending what that end 
 is. And when we have once grasped the possibility of this 
 pseudo-purposive action, we are tempted to generalize it and 
 deny intelligent purpose in all cases. As in animals, so at 
 a higher remove in man, the primitive mind is guided by feel- 
 ings, by impulses, by necessities, which it can but vaguely 
 understand or formulate. Under their influence it builds up 
 customs which to the inquirer seem logically to imply certain 
 ideas and rules of conduct, but the savage himself, when tested, 
 fails to understand these ideas. He practises them, yet to the 
 bewilderment of the observer, he knows not what they are. 
 
 This difference between rude and developed thought has an 
 important application to Ethics. For example, statements are 
 sometimes met with that this or that tribe is destitute of any 
 conception of the distinction between right and wrong, and such 
 statements are made by men who by experience should be well 
 qualified to speak. Allegations of this kind arise, I think, from 
 the kind of confusion just mentioned. It may be difficult or 
 impossible to bring a savage to understand the meanings of the 
 terms which we use to express right or wrong, virtue or vice, 
 good or evil. Indeed, if we take highly civilized races at 
 different periods from our own, we find a certain difficulty in 
 fitting their ethical terms to ours. There is no word in Plato 
 or Aristotle by which we could translate the English term 
 " duty," for instance, but it would be an extremely unfair and 
 unwarranted inference that the Greeks of Plato's or Aristotle's 
 time were destitute of the sense of duty in practice. Aristotle 
 has no word to use corresponding to our term " rights " and 
 the Roman " jura," but he desiderates such a word, showing 
 thereby how far developing thought may outrun language. 
 When we come to the savage we can well understand that even 
 the simplest ethical conceptions may be beyond his power to 
 grasp as ethical conceptions, but it does not follow that he is 
 without a practical sense of right and wrong. In point of fact, 
 although very few generalizations indeed may be hazarded in 
 the whole of our subject, we were, I think, justified in assuming 
 above that no society can maintain itself, unless certain Unes of 
 conduct are laid down as binding by prevaiUng custom. If 
 men are to live together at all they must know what they may 
 expect and what is expected of them under given conditions. 
 
28 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The merest game camiot be carried on without some degree of 
 mutual understanding, still less the more complicated business 
 of social life. We shall meet a little later with certain primitive 
 tribes, which are to all appearance wholly destitute of any 
 regularly estabUshed means of maintaining order or enforcing 
 penalties. But even in these tribes there is nevertheless a 
 certain body of custom, and something corresponding to what 
 we should call " pubUc opinion " tending to enforce these cus- 
 toms. For example, the sentiment of the neighbours or of 
 the tribe backs a man who avenges a murder and frowns upon 
 a breach of the marriage laws. It is probably true, as a general- 
 ization, that there is no existing tribe without some belief in 
 unseen powers, but it is, I think, a more certain generalization 
 that there is no existing tribe without rules of conduct backed 
 by the general approval of the community. 
 
 We may, I think, go a step further, and say that, generally 
 speaking, the effect of these rules is to extend a certain measure 
 of protection to what we ourselves regard as the fundamental 
 rights both of person and property, to encourage mutual aid 
 and maintain something of a social life. In these broad outhnes 
 ethical principles do not greatly vary. Indeed, the comparative 
 study of Ethics, which is apt in its earUer stages to impress the 
 student with a bewildering sense of the diversity of moral judg- 
 ments, ends rather by impressing him with a more fundamental 
 and far-reaching imiformity. Through the greatest extent of 
 time and space over which we have records, we find a recurrence 
 of the common features of ordinary morality which, to my 
 mind at least, is not less impressive than the variations which 
 also appear. Some of the earUest funeral inscriptions in exist- 
 ence might well bear comparison with those eulogies which 
 were popular a generation or two ago among ourselves. Thus 
 upon some of the Memphite tombs of the earliest Egyptian 
 dynasties, we find it recorded that the deceased had been " the 
 friend of his father, beloved of his mother, sweet to those who 
 lived with him, gracious to his brethren, loved of his servants, 
 and that he had never sought wrongful quarrel with any man ; 
 briefly, that he spoke and did that which was right here below." 
 Let us hope that it was so. At any rate the pious record of the 
 dead man's relations testifies to the virtues which they considered 
 it appropriate to mention. 
 
 Again, if from remote but civUized antiquity we pass to 
 contemporary savage races, we find observers praising, sometimes, 
 no doubt, with undue partiality, those fundamental qualities 
 without which society hardly holds together. Of the North 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 29 
 
 American Indians, for example, so experienced an observer as 
 Catlin was able to write, " It would be untrue, and doing an 
 injustice to the Indians, to say they were ill the least behind 
 us in conjugal, in filial, or in paternal affection." ^ Other writers 
 in this case no doubt give less favourable judgments, and we 
 must allow something for individual bias, but when all is said 
 and done, we can hardly deny to any race of men or any period 
 of time the possession of the primary characteristics out of 
 which the most advanced moral code is constructed. Nor is 
 primitive morality merely negative morality. Primitive man 
 is free in giving, ready to share the little he has with his friend 
 and neighbour, while of hospitality he makes a superstition. 
 The duty of charity in the sense of sharing one's goods with 
 others is in no sense pre-eminently a modem or a civiUzed 
 virtue. 
 
 Yet with this identity there is a far-reaching difference not 
 only in the actual rules of conduct, but in the way in which 
 those rules are understood and appHed, their mental framework, 
 the basis of thought on which they repose. We have spoken of 
 the protection given in primitive custom to rights of person and 
 property. But we must understand that in primitive thought 
 these are not regarded as " rights " in our sense of the term. 
 They do not hold unconditionally, nor is it necessarily " wrong " 
 to violate them. But there are conditions, to our thinking 
 perhaps quite irrelevant conditions, under which they are 
 generally respected, and the neighbours will sympathize with, 
 and perhaps actively support, an injured man who is avenging 
 their violation. Take, as an illustration, the case of property. 
 In many peoples it is honourable to steal, but not honourable 
 to steal from a guest. We all know the story of " the divine 
 Autolycus " in Homer, who excelled aU men in thieving and 
 false swearing, an excellence which, as the bard is careful to 
 relate, was conferred upon him by the special grace of Hermes. 
 But I have no doubt that Autolycus' thieving and false swearing 
 were aU in accordance with rule. Probably he observed the 
 oath when duly taken, and cheated under certain prescribed 
 forms which would avert the vengeance of the gods, and it was 
 no doubt his special excellence that he knew those forms to 
 a nicety. He was evidently a man in good repute, and was 
 doubtless honourable to those to whom he considered himself 
 to owe a duty. There are tribes to this day in which the robbing 
 of a guest is prohibited as long as he remains in the house, but 
 if, after speeding him upon his journey, you can catch him 
 
 1 Catlin, i. 121. 
 
30 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 up in the field, his belongings are lawfully at your disposal. 
 These instances may serve to illustrate some of the difficulties 
 which confront the student of comparative Ethics. He meets 
 with the famihar ideas of civihzed morality in early ethics, 
 but he recognizes them with difficulty; they are the same, 
 yet not the same. The broad explanation is that he is dealing 
 with the unfolding of a germ, and not with an accretion of new 
 elements. 
 
 If, that is to aay, there is ethical progress (and whether there 
 is such is, after all, our main question), it is to be found, not in 
 the development of new instincts or impulses of mankind or in 
 the disappearance of instincts that are old and bad, but rather 
 m the jutionaUzation of the moral code which,_ as_societ;^_ad- 
 vances, becomeTmore^dearly thought ouFand more consistently 
 aSTc^pareSensivBljrappnea: FoFaFfflerrtaTevDhrtien advahc'es; 
 the~ipIiituarcoiisciousriess''Heepens, and the ethical order is 
 purged of inconsistencies and extended in scope. The deity, 
 who is at first much less than a man, becomes progressively 
 human and then, in the true sense of the word, superhuman. 
 Blind adherence to custom is modified by an intelligent per- 
 ception of the welfare of society, and moral obligation is set 
 upon a rational basis. These changes re-act upon the actual 
 contents of the moral law itself, what is just and good in custom 
 being sifted out from what is indifferent or bad, and the purified 
 moral code re-acts in turn on the legislation by which more 
 advanced societies re-model their structure. The psychological 
 equipment of human beings on the one side and the actual 
 needs of social life on the other are the underlying factors 
 determining rules of conduct from the lowest stage upwards, 
 but it is only at the highest grade of refiection that their opera- 
 tion enters fully into consciousness so that the mind can under- 
 stand the grounds and value of the laws which it has itself 
 laid down. The true meaning of ethical obligations — their 
 bearing on human purposes, their function in social life — only 
 emerges by slow degrees. The on-looker, investigating a primi- 
 tive custom, can see that moral elements have helped to build 
 it up, so that it embodies something of moral truth. Yet 
 these elements of moral truth were perhaps never present to 
 the minds of those who built it. Instead thereof we are likely 
 to find some obscure reference to magic or to the world of spirits. 
 The custom which we can see, perhaps, to be excellently devised 
 in the interests of social order or for the promotion of mutual 
 aid is by those who practise it based on some taboo, or preserved 
 from violation from fear of the resentment of somebody's ghost. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 31 
 
 The ghost or the taboo in that case is in a sense the form which 
 moral obligation takes at a certain stage. It suppUes the 
 savage with a theory of the moral basis, an eKplanation of cus- 
 tom and a sanction. How far it reaUy determines custom, or 
 how far it arises as it were ex 'post facto to justify modes of con- 
 duct to which the savage feels himself impelled without know- 
 ing why, are questions of extreme intricacy, and the answer 
 would probably be different in different cases. At this stage 
 it may suffice to remark that in order to understand ethical 
 development, we must not only know what men are bidden to 
 do by law and custom at each stage, but also the reasons which 
 they themselves assign for doing it. We must investigate the 
 basis as well as the standard of morals. It wUl be convenient 
 to take the standard first, to trace the actual rules of conduct 
 laid down by different peoples at different stages- of culture, 
 and proceed from the practice to the theories of conduct. When 
 both aspects of development are before us, we may hope to form 
 a just if an imperfect conception of ethical evolution. 
 
 12. If our data are to throw any light on this evolution, it 
 must be through the adoption of some methods of classification 
 distinguishing the more from the less undeveloped ethical 
 conceptions. But here we touch our greatest difficulty. Moral 
 progress (to assume provisionally that it is a reahty) does not 
 proceed continuously in a straight line. It does not affect all 
 branches of the moral law simultaneously, nor does it advance 
 step by step with the growth of civilization. Even if it be 
 true — and it has yet to be proved — that the highest civilization 
 possesses the highest ethical code, it is certainly not true of 
 every intervening stage in the growth of civilization that it 
 witnesses a corresponding moral advance. On the contrary, 
 as has been already hinted, the very conditions of the develop- 
 ment of society have in some cases been hostile to moral develop- 
 ment for the time being. An advance in the arts of life may 
 well work retrogression in the ethical sphere. Were we to take 
 some of the tests which are often put forward as the special 
 characteristics of civilized moraUty, we should be surprised to 
 find how often a ruder society comes well out of the comparison 
 when measured against one that is more advanced. Take, for 
 example, the position of women. We are often told that this 
 is a true test of civilized morality, yet in point of fact it would 
 be by no means true to allege that the status of woman varies 
 in all cases directly as the civilization of the society to which 
 she belongs. In the English law of Blackstone's day, for ex- 
 
32 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ample, a married woman can scarcely be said to have had a 
 legal personality, so great is the number of her disqualifications 
 as to the holding of property, as to capacity to give evidence, 
 as to the custody of her children, even as to her legal responsi- 
 bility for crimes; and many of these disqualifications lasted 
 on down to the present generation. If we turn to the oldest 
 code of laws in the world, the recently-discovered laws of Ham- 
 murabi, we shall find that few of these disqualifications apphed 
 to married women in Babylonia some 2000 years before Christ ; 
 yet it would be unfair to infer that the civilization of England 
 in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was on the whole 
 inferior to that of Babylonia in the third millennium before 
 Christ. Among many tribes of the lowest savagery, the position 
 of women is relatively good, while there are many more advanced 
 peoples in which their position is Uttle better than that of slaves. 
 Slavery itself, the most direct denial of those elementary rights 
 which form the central point of civilized ethics, is an institution 
 which scarcely begins to flourish except with the rudiments of 
 civilization. In the simplest groups even distinctions of rank 
 vanish, and there is often no authority beyond the personal 
 influence of older and abler men. With civilization the scale of 
 human action grows, and there arise inequalities which often place 
 entire classes or populations at the mercy of others, and this 
 mercy is not always found. Hence civilization knows of oppres- 
 sions and even horrors from which primaeval life is relatively 
 free."^ 
 
 The study of moral advancement, therefore, is no tracing out 
 of a single straight line, but rather the following of a very wind- 
 ing curve. But even that does not express the fuU difficulty 
 for the student, for it is no simple or single ctirve that we have 
 to follow. We have not to deal with one development only, 
 but with many; nor with a uniform evolution, but with a 
 luxuriant diversity; not even with evolution alone, but with 
 dissolution and decay as well. 
 
 How, then, are we to arrange our data ? In the first place, we 
 
 ' In earlier editions I accepted the judgment of Mr. E. J. Pajme {History 
 of the New World called America, ii. 344) : " We follow with a sense of 
 shame and horror man's advance through the middle and higher barbarism 
 to the threshold of civilization, looking back almost with regret to the 
 period of savagery when human progress exhibited a comparatively mild 
 and beneficent aspect." But on a fuller review of the facts I think this 
 an exaggeration. Though some of the simplest peoples, like the Punans 
 or the Veddas, are of mild and gentle type, there are many others in whom 
 the worst evils are conspicuous, only, for reasons pointed Out in the text, 
 on a smaller scale, and the more ordered life of advancing civilization has 
 Its compensating points, even for the oppressed. 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 33 
 
 must try to analyze and classify the conceptions or institutions 
 wMch we find. Por example, we can take the multitudinous 
 forms of the marriage tie and we can show that»there are certain 
 types about which those various forms group themselves, as 
 though radiating from so many distinct centres. And so with 
 other institutions. There are distinct types by describing which 
 we can mark out the main lines of classification. Actual insti- 
 tutions conform to these types in varjdng degree, and the 
 gradations, when completely filled in, form a chain connecting 
 one tjrpe with another. This sort of classification is the first 
 step. 
 
 But how are we to proceed from morphology to development, 
 from the forms which we find to the history and causes of their 
 growth and decay ? Ethical evolution is not self-dependent but 
 is intertwined with the entire movement of society. To under- 
 stand it we must examine its correlation with other elements of 
 the social structure, but it may as well be said at the outset that 
 the cases in which we can say universally that a certain institu- 
 tion belongs to a certain stage of social culture are very rare. 
 On the other hand, we shall find that certain tjrpes of institutions 
 do predominate at successive stages, while above and below that 
 stage they grow rarer till they finally disappear. What is meant 
 wiU perhaps be best explained by an example. The permission 
 of polygamy is a general characteristic of races which fall below 
 the standard of European civUization. In such races the custom 
 that allows it is predominant over the custom which forbids it. 
 Yet of such races there are many in which polygamy is rare. There 
 are some in which it is replaced by polyandry. There are not a few 
 which are monogamous. There are some, and these some of the 
 lowest, in which monogamy is as strict and binding as in Catholic 
 Europe. Nevertheless throughout savagery, barbarism and 
 semi-civUization, the permission of polygamy is the ordinary 
 rule, while in the higher civilization monogamy is the rule. In 
 this limited and restricted sense it is true, after all exceptions 
 are -allowed for, to say that the tendency of the lower culture is 
 to allow, and of the higher to prohibit, the plurality of wives. 
 We may carry the matter a step further and say that polygamy 
 is the special characteristic of peoples above the lowest and 
 below the highest levels of civilization, for though it occurs 
 among lower savages it does not reach so extreme a development. 
 Now this predominance of given types of institutions at given 
 levels of general culture has its significance. The forces econo- 
 mic, ethical, social, intellectual, which tend to shape any in- 
 stitution are multitudinous. Some pull in one direction, others 
 
 D 
 
34 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the contrary way. In such cases we seldom obtain generaliza- 
 tions which hold without exception. The matter is Uke any 
 other which comes under the general Law of Probabilities. 
 There are typical cases representing the normal balance of forces, 
 and round these as a centre radiate deviating cases where the 
 ever varying forces have gathered strength in one direction or 
 another. Further, if there is any influence at work which alters 
 the distribution of forces, there may be several such centres 
 corresponding to difierent degrees in the working out of that 
 influence. This is what we shall find in ethical institutions. At 
 successive stages of general culture certain types predominate 
 without being universal ; that is to say, the forces making for a 
 given type are apparently favoured by the general conditions of 
 one stage and depressed by those of another. 
 
 But to study correlation effectively we need something more 
 definite than the conception of general culture, which, indeed, 
 strictly speaking, includes ethical development itself. We must 
 find some element, not in itself ethical, occupying a leading place 
 in social development, and enabling us by its changes to measure 
 the distance which any given society has travelled from the 
 primitive condition of man. To this end the collective stock. 
 of knowledge , the e(iuijgmeiy;_of_jnethDd s^^^ 
 oeptions whic h constitute the working inteUectual_capital_of. 
 J£Jl_cQnnnunity_will serve us beslT~~Intellectual development in 
 this form is the most conspicuous and most measurable feature 
 of human evolution. For if the human race did in fact evolve 
 from a lower type, it must have started at a zero point in this 
 scale, and in the anthropological record we have on this side 
 peoples whose equipment, though certainly not primitive, is 
 exceedingly crude in shape and slender in amount, while from 
 these upwards we have a rich development including every 
 possible gradation. On this side again, development is un- 
 ambiguous in meaning, definite in direction, and roughly measur- 
 able in degree. It is always towards fuller, more accurate, and 
 more systematic knowledge and understanding of the conditions 
 affecting human life and its environment. It is measurable for 
 all races by the control which it renders possible over these 
 conditions, 1 and in its higher stages, in addition, by the written 
 record of intellectual activity. It is not, indeed, continuous, for 
 it has in historical times suffered periods of arrest and decay, 
 but it is more nearly continuous than any other known movement 
 of humanity, and it tends to more complete continuity and 
 
 ^ With cettain limitations, which will be considered in their place (see 
 below, chaj). ii. pp. 39 and 41). 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 35 
 
 greater speed. It is, in fact, a self-accelerating function. Now 
 does this intellectual enlargement involve, upon the whole, a 
 profounder ethical understanding, a larger scope of the moral 
 will, a firmer grip on the purpose of life ? If we could answer 
 this question, we should have a key, not only to the historic 
 movement of ethical conceptions but to the future evolution of 
 the race, for man grows, and to all appearance will grow, more 
 and more rapidly in power, but whether he wiU use that power for 
 noble ends or, child-like, make of it a gigantic and dangerous 
 toy, is unhappily not so certain. 
 
 The relation between intellectual and moral advance is cer- 
 tainly not simple or direct. In the first place, as already hinted, 
 advance in industrial arts tends to breed social inequality, to 
 complicate the social structure, and set problems which, even 
 with the best will, the wisdom of man finds hard to solve. In the 
 second place, the mere diversion of energy and interest to one 
 side of human endeavour draws on the supply available for 
 another. When the best minds of antiquity were concentrated 
 on the religious problem, knowledge and the arts fell into decay, 
 and when the wiU and intellect revolted, they destroyed much 
 that they are stiU seeking to re-build. We cannot think without 
 rebeUing, and in rebelling it is easier to undo than to re-make. 
 Nevertheless, it is possible that the direction and the goal of the 
 practical and theoretical reason are idtimately the same, and if 
 so, though their paths often cross and their movements collide, 
 we may find running through many strange kinks and quirks of 
 reaction a certain broad parallelisrr; of advance. To examine 
 into these issues, we have to add to our classification of moral 
 institutions and ideas, a classification of societies. This classi- 
 fication wiU yield us not a simple order in time, for intellectual 
 advance is not uniform or continuous, and in the world of to- 
 day all types except the very lowest are still represented, but 
 an order of development. By development here we mean simply 
 advance in the intellectual equipment of knowledge and method, 
 and in the control of the conditions of life depending thereon; 
 and civilizations most advanced in this respect we shall call higher 
 civiUzations. The development tends to correspond to the time 
 order, but the relation is not exact, for development takes time 
 but time does not always bring development. Upon the whole, 
 however, the advance becomes more certain as it proceeds, and 
 the time Order and development order on this side of human hfe 
 are a converging series. 
 
 Now our specific problem wiU be first to describe the types of 
 ethical order and then to inquire into their correlation with this 
 
36 MOEALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 development. Behind these there is a third question. Suppose 
 that we find a distinctive ethics of the higher civihzations, 
 we have yet to ask whether this is the higher ethics. This is a 
 question partly of fact but also partly of value, for, ethically, 
 what is higher or lower ? We are prone to take our own ethics 
 as the highest, and so are provided with a very short and simple 
 answer to the question, for in reahzed articulate knowledge, and 
 consequently in control of mstterial conditions, our civilization 
 is the highest known, and its ethics are our own, and what more 
 would you ? But in reality our own ethics are riddled with 
 inconsistencies, pretences, and absurdities, and a man who would 
 judge whether they are on the balance better or worse than any 
 other, must have an objective standard to guide him— that is, 
 he must have a moral philosophy. It is not my purpose here to 
 add a system of moral philosophy to a treatise sufficiently lengthy 
 on the history of ethics, but I would emphasize at this point 
 that the question of Values is quite distinct from the question 
 of fact — the history of ethics quite distinct from its philosophy. 
 Nevertheless, the real meaning of the history can only be appre- 
 hended when we have determined the question of value; and, 
 in point of fact, the position which people assign to the more 
 distinctive ethical tendencies of our own period must differ 
 radically according to the value which they put on this or that 
 side of human conduct and social relations. I shall therefore en- 
 deavour in its place to indicate in briefest outline the principles 
 on which I believe the ultimate judgment of value — ^that is, the 
 measure of right and wrong — to depend, and I shall apply this 
 standard in estimating the actual moral codes of mankind. It 
 is fair to remark, however, that it is also quite useful to apply 
 our ordinary civilized codes to the judgment of simpler peoples, 
 for one of our questions is how codes actually change, and in 
 relation to this question the agreement or disagreement of any 
 other code with that which, whether it be better or worse, belongs 
 to the most developed society, is material to the appreciation of 
 the course of ethical movement. 
 
 We have, then, before us three problems. v)We have first to 
 classify customs and ideas relating to conduct. Next, having 
 classified societies in accordance with their intellectual develop- 
 ment in the sense explainec^we have to inquire into the relation 
 between ethical thought and practice and this classification — 
 that is, to discover what sort of ethical order belongs to the less 
 and what to the more advanced societies.''- 'Lastly, we have to 
 examine the moral types thus distinguished in the fight of a 
 reasoned standard of value, in order to determine whether the 
 
ETHICAL EVOLUTION 37 
 
 movement is towards the higher or the lower. No theory of 
 moral development is complete which does not deal with all these 
 as distinct but related questions. The limits of a single treatise, 
 of course, imply that none of the three can here be set forth with 
 the fulness which it deserves. I have, in fact, confined myself to 
 those aspects of ethical development which appear most essential, 
 and on the philosophical side to such indications of a view as will 
 enable the reader to form a fair judgment of the method. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 TYPES OF SOCIETY 
 
 1 . The problem of classifying peoples in accordance with their 
 intellectual equipment falls into two quite distinct parts. In 
 the first place, we have the multitude of " uncivilized " peoples 
 known slightly from ancient authors but mainly from contem- 
 porary or comparatively recent research. These peoples do 
 not speak for themselves. They have no trustworthy recorded 
 history because they have no writing, and for the same reason 
 they have no documentary literature, science, theology, or philo- 
 sophy. Nor do they even commumcate their ideas orally to 
 the white man with ease or accuracy. Our knowledge of them 
 is, and must be in the main, an intellectual construction of 
 our own. They are very numerous and present a bewildering 
 variety of types curiously intermingled, marked differences 
 being often presented by neighbouring peoples and baffling 
 attempts at generalization. The " civilized " peoples, on the' 
 other hand, are, for purposes of investigation, the peoples who 
 could write and therefore have a history. Often the history is 
 long enough and full enough to enable us to trace outlines of their 
 development in the actual record, instead of merely inferring it 
 by the aid of comparisons and probabilities. Their individuahty, 
 therefore, is more marked, at least for us, than that of the simpler 
 peoples, and the centres of civilization are few in number and 
 can be referred to by name. Thus, to deal with the uncivilized 
 peoples we need a classification which will enable us to handle 
 them in groups; to deal with civilized peoples one that will 
 rather be adapted to the distinction of phases in growth which a 
 single people may pass through within the limits of our record. 
 
 For the classification of the simpler peoples we require external 
 marks which are easily verifiable, so that even superficial reports 
 of them are not likely to mislead us. We can best find these 
 in the nature and degree of the control over the environment 
 evidenced by the industrial arts. These will not, indeed, afford 
 a complete measure, for even among the simplest peoples some 
 may have put more of their thought into religion or mythology, 
 just as some have undoubtedly combined high artistic sensibility 
 
 38 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 39 
 
 with great poverty in practical resources. But in the absence 
 of writing it must be exceedingly difficult for any body of positive 
 knowledge to be handed on, and without tradKtion no body of 
 knowledge can grow, except in the form of traditional instruction 
 in practical arts,^ and intellectual equipment in the sense defined 
 in the last chapter was confined to the body of positive knowledge 
 and the methods and governing conceptions by which it is 
 organized, refined and applied. Still, the measure is but rough, 
 and in applying it further allowances must be made. One people 
 is confined to an arid region which has debarred it from the 
 beginnings of agriculture, but it may have made a struggle with 
 an untoward environment which should place it above another 
 people more favourably situated and so, in externals, better 
 equipped. Another people, again, may have acquired from 
 neighbours arts which they could not invent, and on a surface 
 view we may rate them too highly. These and similar considera- 
 tions have to be kept in mind in placing any people, and any 
 classification effected at present must only be regarded as a first 
 approximation. 
 
 The simplest method of approaching a classification is to 
 begin with the method of obtaining food, and to correct and 
 supplement it by attention to dwelHngs, clothing, implements, 
 weapons, industry, trade and commerce. ^ With regard to food- 
 gettiag we have, first, the Hunters and Gatherers — ^people who 
 live on the raw products of the earth, largely, especially in the 
 lowest stage, by gathering fruits, berries, roots or acorns, but also, 
 particularly in a slightly higher stage, by hunting and trapping 
 wild animals, and by fishing. There is no agriculture, and in 
 many cases no domestic animal but the dog, and in some cases — 
 generally owing to contact with higher civilization — the horse, 
 or, again, the reindeer. Peoples at this stage may be called 
 Hunters, Fishers and Gatherers, or as a simple though not 
 always quite appropriate title. Hunters. We have divided them 
 into (a) Lower Hunters, who in general Uve largely by gathering, 
 have no substantial dweUings, no spinning, weaving or pottery, 
 and no domestic animals but the dog ; and (b) Higher Hunters, 
 who live more by hunting proper, or by fishing, and have some, 
 
 ^ The fine arts are not taken into account in this classification. It is 
 clear that, though they certainly imply some command over matter and 
 a body of traditional knowledge and skill, they depend on other and quite 
 different factors from those which govern intellectual development in 
 general. 
 
 * The method used is explained and the results given in detail in 
 "Institutions of the Simpler Peoples," chap, i, by G. C. Wheeler, 
 M. Ginsberg, and the present writer. 
 
^ 
 
 40 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 at least, of the arts mentioned. The highest of the class are the 
 fishing peoples of the West Coast of America, who, in general 
 culture, almost deserve to be in a class by themselves, along, 
 perhaps, with one or two other tribes who have made substantial 
 advances in general culture without altering their method of 
 obtaining food. 
 
 Agriculture, in its lowest stage, is combined with hunting and 
 gathering. It accounts at first for but a fraction of the food 
 supply and does not involve the abandonment of nomadic habits, 
 because the ground is only tilled while its first fertiUty lasts, 
 and after one or two crops are taken a new clearing is made for 
 which, very possibly, a new encampment is required. From this 
 we distinguish a second stage of agriculture, when it has become 
 the regular and main source of supply, and from this again a 
 third stage where, in addition to agriculture, other arts and 
 industries are developed or trade begins to play a regular part 
 in the supply of necessaries. Where we find the larger cattle 
 kept, and oxen used in farming, we refer a people to this stage, 
 and generally, in assigning a people to any one of these stages, 
 we should take its dwellings, its handicrafts, and its commer- 
 cial development into account as well as the condition of its 
 agriculture alone. 
 
 Pasture may be regarded partly as an alternative, partly as 
 a supplement to agriculture. We distinguish a lower pastoral 
 stage in which there is no agriculture, and a higher one in which 
 agriculture generally exists, though in a subordinate place, and 
 trade and the industrial arts are well developed. This stage may 
 fairly be set on a level with the highest agricultural stage. 
 
 A settled agricultural people, practising irrigation, using the 
 plough, having draught oxen and other cattle, acquainted with 
 iron or bronze, copper, and gold, having substantial houses of 
 timber or sun-dried brick, spinning and weaving textiles, and 
 making their own pottery, is in material culture sufficiently 
 equipped for a simple civilization, and at the top of our highest 
 classes would be peoples so equipped. Our classification there- 
 fore extends from the lowest known savagery to the verge of 
 civilization. But when we pass the boundary our methods need 
 a change. The food supply can no longer be used, for aU civi- 
 lized peoples lived by a combination of agricultural and pastoral 
 pursuits, or by an industry and commerce which enables them to 
 buy the products of agriculture and pasture. No change either 
 in the methods of tillage or trading, of sufficient magnitude to 
 serve as a class distinction, could be pointed out until we come 
 to the beginnings of scientific farming in the eighteenth century 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 41 
 
 Other arts might give more help. For example, the early 
 Oriental civUizations used copper, and later bronze, but not 
 iron.^ The use of important artificial substanftes such as glass ^ 
 belongs to the maturity rather than the youth of these civihza- 
 tions, and the Egyptians gradually built up a fairly extensive 
 empirical chemistry.* Beyond these arts, if we except the 
 compass, known to the Chinese from the second century B.C., 
 the use of the arch in building, and the elaboration of some 
 of the simpler machines in the art of war, we find relatively 
 httle advance in industrial appHances till we come to the first 
 epoch of inventions in the Middle Ages.* But in the meantime 
 great advances had been made in other departments of thought 
 and knowledge, which no useful classification could leave out of 
 account. In fact, if we look to the early civihzations themselves, 
 what marks them out as the begimiers of historic culture is not 
 so much any new method of dealing with the material world, as 
 the invention of writing, which at once facilitated the organiza- 
 tion of regular government over an extended territory, and made 
 it possible to record and hand on acquired knowledge outside the 
 sphere of the traditional handicrafts. The use of writing is thus 
 the best rough-and-ready mark to distinguish civilized peoples 
 as a class. With its aid the first Asiatic civilizations in Baby- 
 lonia, Egjrpt, and Ancient China built up the first elements of 
 systematic knowledge, in arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, 
 together with some fragmentary and empirical knowledge of 
 chemistry and medicine. If we used a name, we may call this 
 the stage of proto -science — of systematic knowledge in its 
 germinal elements. But from the eighth to the fifth centuries 
 B.C., higher phases of thought appear in many parts of the world. 
 Men begin to reflect on ethics and government as in China, on 
 rehgion and ethics as in Palestine, on ultimate problems of being 
 as in India, and finally on the whole field of knowledge in Greece. 
 
 1 In Egypt iron is found in 1st Dynasty tombs but does not seem to 
 have come into general use till the seventh century (Myres, Daivn of 
 History, p. 60). The Sumerians do not seem to have known iron (King, 
 Sumer and Accad, p. 50) and to have used copper rather than bronze 
 {ib., p. 72). In Crete, the introduction of metal is referred to 2800 B.C., 
 of iron to 1200 B.C. (Hawes, Crete the Forerunner of Greece, p. 280). 
 
 ' Glazed beads appear in prehistoric finds, but glass by itself not before 
 the 18th Dynasty (Flinders Petrie, Enc. Brit., "Egypt," p. 73). 
 
 ' They knew gold, silver, copper, iron and lead, and the alloys of copper 
 with tin and zinc, glass and glazed earthenware. They prepared silk, 
 and had many dye-stuffs, and drugs for medicine and embalming (La Cour 
 and Appel, Phyaik, ii. 325, 355). 
 
 * The Alexandrian experiments with atmospheric pressure and with 
 steam appear to have found little or no practical application until this 
 period. 
 
42 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 What connecting channels there may have been to communicate 
 this impulse, whether in reality it arose independently among 
 different peoples, how far it was prepared by such gradual 
 development of religious speculation which we trace in Egypt 
 during the second millennium B.C., we do not know accurately 
 as yet. But we have clearly to do with a phase of thought of 
 which the oldest civilizations present little or no evidence. It 
 has become deliberate, systematic, definite, and in a measure 
 critical. In Greece criticism is apphed to the foundations of 
 thought itself, so that we have a philosophy, and the field 
 of acquired knowledge is distributed into departments, each of 
 which is systematically explored, so that we have true sciences. 
 Finally, carried on by Arabic culture, Greek thought arrived in 
 mediaeval Europe, and we have the modem development of 
 philosophy and science. The relation of each of these phases of 
 thought to rehgion and ethics we shall consider briefly in their 
 place. Here we may simply distinguish (1) the stage of incipient 
 learning in the ancient East; (2) the stage of reflection in the 
 later East ; (3) the critical thought of Greece, widely affecting 
 subsequent culture; and (4) that of the modem world, which 
 begins to take independent shape from about the sixteenth 
 century — movements too rich in content to be aptly character- 
 ized in abstract terms, and best identified by the peoples among 
 whom, and the periods in which they flourished. 
 
 2. Intellectual development is not the product of one race, still 
 less of one society alone. It is a tradition handed on with suc- 
 cessive improvements from one civilization to another, and that 
 is why it shows a nearly continuous advance. In the field of 
 ethics tradition is not so potent, and it is less easy for one society 
 to stand on the shoulders of another. In place of a continuous 
 development, therefore, we have a succession of forms, of experi- 
 ments in social life we might almost call them, which have their 
 measure of success, and build up societies that endure for a longer 
 or shorter time, but in the end give place to some fresh social 
 type. Whether, on the whole, there is development on this side 
 too, and, if so, whether it stands in any broad relation to intellec- 
 tual development, is a question which we must do our best to de- 
 termine. But we must first consider the forms themselves, and 
 we must begin by examining the general character of the social 
 union. For the broadest distinction between different forms of 
 human society turns on the nature of the social bond itself — ^the 
 tie which keeps the members of a society together while separating 
 them in a greater or less degree from the rest of the world. Not 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 43 
 
 that the bond of union is ever simple or single. The motives 
 that make men live and act together are diverse. But among 
 the conditions which keep society at one and Aaintain its con- 
 stitution in vigour certain leading forces may be distinguished, 
 and at different stages of development one or other of these is 
 often so prominent as to dominate the remainder and give its 
 character to the society as a whole. These forces may, I think, 
 be usefully grouped into three which, we may say, constitute the 
 leading principles of social union. I will call them — 
 
 (A) The principle of Kinship. 
 
 (B) The principle of Authority. 
 
 (C) The principle of Citizenshij). 
 
 It might be expected that I should add religion as a fourth, 
 but it is better to say that the religious factor works all along the 
 line, strengthening each of these three in turn with its authority, 
 though there are some cases in which it becomes so dominant 
 as to give a special character to the bond, and these must be noted 
 in their place. 
 
 (A) Kinship, as a bond of Social Union. 
 
 Now primitive and savage society appears to rest generally on 
 kinship. Thus, the one form of social union which may with 
 entire confidence be caUed natural and universal is the relation- 
 ship of mother and child. But as the children grow up they will 
 want partners in their turn, and by an impulse which rarely if 
 ever fails altogether in any society, will seek them outside the 
 circle of their own parents, brothers or sisters. The simplest 
 social organization, therefore, postulates two or more famiUes 
 Uving together, but constantly united by cross ties of inter- 
 marriage. It may be in such a society that a practice and even 
 a binding custom arise, that a youth is given his mother's brother's 
 daughter in marriage, while her brother, perhaps, takes his sister 
 in exchange.^ If so, or if the group is simply endogamous,^ it 
 is Ukely to remain compact and exclusive, and, indeed, some 
 societies seem hardly to advance beyond this stage. A handful 
 of families, which must in turn be united by countless ramifica- 
 tions of intermarriage, occupy in common a tract of jungle or 
 bush, now camping together, now separating as the need of food 
 determines. Their whole numbers will not amount to more 
 than ten or a dozen families, perhaps not to more than three or 
 
 1 With the Veddas marriage is either with the mother's brother's 
 daughter or father's sister's daughter — probably the former by preference 
 (Seligmaim, The Veddas, p. 65). The statement of older authorities 
 quoted in the first edition of this work, that Veddas married their sisters, 
 was an error arising from a linguistic confusion. 
 
 ' As the wUd Kubu (Hagen, p. 130) and Semang (Martin, p. 363). 
 
44 MORALS IN EVOLTJTION 
 
 four, including from twenty to sixty individuals.^ In such a 
 Gross-familie, enlarged family or kindred group, whatever govern- 
 mental authority there is fuses itself with the domestic authority 
 of the elders, and must depend largely on their personal qualities, 
 though it may be that, whether for his personal prowess or by 
 some rule of succession, some one man is pre-eminent among 
 them. There is here neither government nor law in the sense of 
 an impersonal system capable of over -riding the ties of kinship, 
 for the ties of kinship are society.^ 
 
 But such isolation is exceptional. Under ordinary conditions 
 the little community will be in contact with others, while even if 
 it enters unoccupied territory, it would, if it were fruitful and 
 multiplied, soon extend beyond the limits of the enlarged family. 
 In the latter case relations are maintained, and in the former 
 may be instituted by intermarriage. Suppose two such groups 
 as we have described to come into contact with one another, and 
 suppose the young men of the one to find the maidens of the other 
 fair; it is possible that, sooner or later, they wiU get over the 
 antipathy of their elders, if such there be, to departure from the 
 practice of marriage within the group. The groups wiU inter- 
 marry and so form a larger and looser unity. But the very first 
 marriage is likely, if acknowledged, to fix the status of the woman 
 of the new group and her family. Very likely her brother will 
 take a sister of her suitor in exchange, and her family will occupy 
 towards that of her husband the same relation as any of the 
 families of his own group with which he might previously marry. 
 The new family, that is, will be ranked with a portion of the 
 existing group for marriage purposes, and come under the 
 
 * Among the wild Semang, Martin (Die Inland- Stdmme der Malayischen 
 HcUbinsel) says that the largest group known seems to have had six huts 
 with twenty-seven individuals (p. 860). Of the Kubu, Hagen (Die Orang 
 Kuhu auf Sumatra) speaks (p. 93) of ten to twelve, and elsewhere (p. 95) 
 of three to five huts. All the Veddas of a group are closely related 
 (Seligmann, p. 68). The Botocudo groups may number ten to twenty 
 families (Keane, J. A. I., xiii. 207 — The "horde " is an enlarged family — 
 Von Tschudi, ii. 264). Some of the Australian local groups seem to be of 
 this type and of about the same number (Howitt, p. 59). According to 
 J. Mathew (Eaglehawk and Crow, p. 93), "the cohesion of a community 
 rested entirely upon consanguinity," the aggregation of families wherein 
 the older men had a certain amount of control constituting the com- 
 munity. Among the Central Australians a strong local group had about 
 forty individuals, but owing to the marriage customs of the tribe they 
 would not all be more closely related among themselves than with 
 members of other groups. 
 
 ' So far as the above account refers to the Malay tribes, it must be 
 carefully noted that it is true only of the " wild " communities of the 
 forest, not of the relatively settled people, who have come under Malay 
 influence, and have frequently chiefs and something of an organized 
 government (see Martin, pp. 876-7). 
 
TYPES OP SOCIETY 45 
 
 same rules, whatever they happen to be, permitting or restrict- 
 ing further unions. Thus rules of marriage at first based on 
 blood relationship are extended beyond it, and we get the 
 germ of the system of marriage classes. Indeed, marriage 
 outside the group, far from being opposed, may be favoured 
 by more far-seeing elders, who recognize in it a source of 
 strength.^ Be this as it may, we find above the isolated 
 family group a stage at which the kindred is the nucleus of a 
 wider but much looser organization generally spoken of as the 
 tribe. The effective basis of this wider union is still inter- 
 marriage. The group may indeed, through the working of 
 rules of kinship, become wholly exogamous,^ in which case it 
 will still be thought of as a kindred, or marriage may be regu- 
 lated by rules cutting across the group divisions of the tribe and 
 restricting choice without forbidding marriage within the group 
 limits. In this case the group will cease to be a distinct kindred, 
 and will become a local division of a larger intermarrying tribe. 
 These are famihar forms of tribal organization, which it will be 
 well to illustrate by a concrete case. 
 
 In Australia, a tribe such as the Wakelbura, which is typical 
 of many, occupies exclusively a certain well-defined area. This 
 is divided into lesser areas occupied by divisions of the tribe, and 
 the subdivision may be followed till we come to the local unit 
 consisting of men who are nearly related to one another, along 
 with their wives who are " brought from other localities." * 
 This is one way in which the tribe is divided. But there is a 
 cross division dependent upon the marriage customs. The whole 
 tribe is divided into two moieties which are " exogamous " — 
 that is to say, people must marry outside their own moiety. 
 These moieties, again, are divided into sub-classes, and the sub- 
 classes into totems. The totem is a class of objects, e. g. animals 
 or plants, with which certain human beings have a mysterious 
 affinity. The animal has an influence over the human being, 
 the human being can control or affect the procreation of the 
 animal.* Among the Wakelbura we find such totem names as 
 the Plain Turkey, Small Bee, Opossum, Kangaroo, Emu, Carpet 
 Snake, etc. The totems are also exogamous. 
 
 ^ This is, in fact, alleged as a practice, with the motive assigned in the 
 text, among the natives of East Victoria by R. H. Matthews (Aboriginal 
 Tribes of N.S. Wales and Victoria, p. 97). 
 
 ' As the Narrinyeri (Woods, p. 10). 
 
 ' A. W. Howitt, The Organization of Australian Tribes, vol. i. part 2, 
 1888, p. 101. 
 
 * Atleast among the Central Australians (Spencer and Gillen, I. chap. vi). 
 I do not know whether this holds of the Wakelbuia. 
 
46 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Now the moiety and totem divisions go by " mother-right," i. e. 
 they are inherited through the mother, and it will be seen to 
 follow that the women and children of any local group belong to 
 different totems and the opposite moieties to their husbands and 
 fathers. For example, a man of the Plain Turkey totem cannot 
 marry a Plain Turkey woman. His wife wUl be, say, an Emu. 
 Her children, male or female, will also be Emus. Hence any 
 single local group must contain members of the two moieties and 
 of different totems. The moieties and totems wiE accordingly 
 be scattered among the different local divisions of the tribe. 
 In other words, the two kinds of division wDl cross one another. 
 On the one hand we have the local division corresponding to 
 the actual grouping of men in their daily Ufe. On the other 
 we have a cross division into classes and totems which spread 
 all over the tribe. The magical bond of totemism and the 
 practice of intermarriage connected with it ^ constitute a strand 
 of connection holding the district local groups together. 
 
 Considering the social structure as a whole, we find a smaller 
 unit — ^the local group — based on near kinship and maintained 
 by descent from parent to child, and a wider unity — the tribe — 
 the parts of which are kept in close relationship by intermarriage, 
 the whole structure being permeated by what at a higher stage 
 we should call common religious beliefs, though here the beMefs 
 are really not so much religious as magical.^ These appear to 
 be the typical elements in early society. 
 
 The matrimonial class cutting through the local groups of a 
 tribe does not necessarily lead to any governmental organization. 
 The Active relationships on which it rests are psychologically of 
 feeble efficacy for the purpose of building up a compact society. 
 
 ^ Members of the same totem are also in many tribes bound to mutual 
 defence^^in others not, as the Arunta (Spencer and GiUen, I. 211). The 
 association of the totem with exogamy is also irregular. 
 
 * Hewitt, op. cit., pp. 98-103. With other forms of Australian social 
 organization and the stages of transition to a higher type I need not deal 
 here (see Howitt, I. o., p. 102, and Tribes of South-Eaat Australia, chap. ii). 
 Whether the local group is strictly exogamous depends on the rules of 
 descent. The fundamental rule of marriage in Australia is the division of 
 the tribe into two exogamous moieties, which, as a rule, are further sub- 
 divided into classes barring marriage between the next successive genera- 
 tions, or possibly two generations. The moiety and class may be reckoned 
 by descent through the father or through the mother. Now the child 
 generally (though not always) belongs to his father's group. Hence, if 
 the moiety is also patrilineal the group will be exogamous, as among the 
 Narrinyeri and the Kumai (Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kumai, p. 199). 
 For the variation in the Australian rules of marriage and descent, see 
 especially Howitt, chap, iii., and Spencer and Gillen, I. chap, ii, and II. 
 chap. iii. 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 47 
 
 The relationships are all group relationships, i.e. no distinction 
 in name or in tribal custom is drawn between the blood brother 
 and the tribal brother. A group of tribal bnethers (a) inter- 
 marrying with a group of sisters (b) will have, as children, brothers 
 and sisters of a third group (c). This group relationship clearly 
 does not lend itself to the family structure which hinges on the 
 central position of the common ancestor or eldest male ascendant 
 as representing him.^ But there is an alternative. The kindred 
 may grow in numbers, intermarry with others, and so form 
 a tribal union while preserving the structure of an enlarged 
 family, and perhaps accentuating the powers of the head. 
 It then corresponds better to our traditional notion of a 
 clan — ^that is to say, a kind of enlarged family. In the clan 
 most famiUar to us, where kinship is based on " father-right " — 
 that is, where the child inherits its father's name and status — 
 the government rests on the eldest male ascendant. A man 
 and his wife, their sons with their wives, their grandchildren 
 and great-grandchildren, may dwell together or near at hand, 
 all ruled by the common progenitor. This is the familiar 
 patriarchate of Genesis. But the clan-structure may also be 
 built up on mother-right, in which case the organization is a 
 degree more complex and less compact. Here the centre of 
 the family is the mother, and all her children and daughters' 
 children belong to it. But her husband is not a member of it, 
 neither are her daughters' husbands. They are strangers and 
 sojourners in the abode of their wives, and often have to visit 
 them in secret and avoid aU communication with their wives' 
 relatives. This is the form of society known formerly as the 
 matriarchate, but the term was a misnomer, since the cases in 
 which the eldest woman rules are extremely rare, if they exist 
 at all, while mother-right is common. The headship of such a 
 clan is ordinarily inherited through the mother, but not by the 
 mother, passing from her brother to her son and from her son to 
 her daughter's son. 
 
 The clan, whether maternal or paternal, has certain character- 
 istic features. Take, for example, the Malay Suku, the unit of 
 the original Malay Society. Here membership of the Sukus 
 goes by female descent, the headship is partly inherited through 
 the mother but in part elective, and the head dispenses justice 
 except in the grave cases for which an assembly of heads are 
 gathered together. The clan owns all the land which its 
 
 At the same time men of the same marriage class may stand by one 
 another in a quarrel (Spencer and Gillen, I. p. 211) and the "tribal 
 brothers" protect a man or woman (Koth, p. 140). 
 
48 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 members occupy. The men who marry into it cannot touch 
 their wives' property without the consent of her family. It 
 protects and avenges its members and is collectively answerable 
 for their misdeeds. These are ordinary features of clan-life, 
 though naturally they are worked out with many differences of 
 detail.^ 
 
 As to government, for example, there are many variations in 
 the power of the head and the mode of his appointment. He 
 may have absolute powers of life and death hke the Roman 
 father, or, to take an example from the domain of mother-right, 
 hke the maternal uncle or grandfather among some African 
 people, such as the Barea and Kunama.^ Or he may have little 
 power to act without the consent of the clan. Thus, in the 
 Indian law books his position fluctuates between that of a 
 patriarch and the manager of a joint stock.* He may have the 
 right at will to expel his son from the family, as apparently in 
 the older Babylonian law, or this right may be expressly limited, 
 as in Hammurabi's code.* Finally, he may himself be set aside 
 for incompetence, as is possible at the present day in the joint 
 family of the Deccan and of Montenegro, and could be done by 
 the Phratry under Athenian law.^ 
 
 The clan may also be ruled by a council, as among the Wyan- 
 dots, where a council of four women was chosen by the women. 
 These four selected a chief from among their sons and brothers, 
 and the aggregate of the gentile councils so constituted form the 
 council of the tribe. ^ 
 
 Again, the extent of the clan may vary greatly. Under 
 
 1 Waitz, Anthropologie, 5, i. pp. 139-142. 
 
 ' The theory of Manu, Book VIII, 416, is that all the property is the 
 father's. Among the Kondhs, too, the father is absolute, the sons having 
 no property, but with their wives and children sharing the common meal 
 (J. D. Mayne, A Treatise on Hindu Law, p. 231; Post, Grundriss der 
 Ethnologischen Jurisprudenz, i. 136). 
 
 ' Mayne, 255-298. 
 
 • I assume in the text, for the sake of argument, that the " Sumerian 
 Laws " do represent actual custom of early date. According to the third 
 of these " laws," the father, by disowning his son, could expel him from 
 house and " wall " (?). The mother could deprive him of the house aiid 
 its furniture. On the other hand, the son, for disowning his father, could 
 be thrown into chains and sold, and for disowning his mother, he could be 
 driven out of house and town (Meissner, Beitrdge zum Altbdbylonischen 
 Privatrecht, p. 14). In Hammurabi (sections 168 and 169), the father can 
 only disinherit for a second offence, confirmed by the judgment of a court. 
 In contracts of the period, both the older and newer usages are found 
 (Kohler and Peiser, Hammurabi's Oesetz, p. 134 ff). If the Sumerian Laws 
 form a real code, they are, as Kohler and Peiser have pointed out, distinctly 
 more archaic than Hammurabi. 
 
 ' Post, op. cit., 1. pp. 137, 138. 
 
 ' Powell, Wyandot Government, p. 61. 
 
TYPES OP SOCIETY 49 
 
 rather-right, for example, it may hold together only while the 
 common ancestor lives, or it may continue in being after his 
 death, his eldest son, or next brother, succeeding him, or the 
 succession, perhaps, being determined by free choice. Some 
 writers distinguish the two forms as the Patriarchal Family 
 and Joint Family respectively, and both are common enough in 
 modem India.^- There is no necessary limit at which the family 
 must break up, though naturally the disruptive tendencies in- 
 crease with its size. In India, the presumption of the law is 
 that the family is undivided, but this presumption is naturally 
 weaker in proportion as the relationship is more remote. Often, 
 as in parts of the Malay world, among the Nairs of the Malabar 
 coast, and among the North American Indians, a vigorous joint 
 family system grows up on the basis of mother-right. Some- 
 times a group of families occupy one large house, each family 
 having its own apartments. Among the Iroquois the members 
 of the Long House carried out their harvest in common and had 
 a common store administered by the elder women and distributed 
 by them among the different apartments.^ 
 
 3. The intermarrying clans form a tribe, which, however, may 
 be a very loose organization. Thus, among the Western Dene, 
 we are told that there was no bond between different villages 
 except the gentile tie which would be due to exogamy, and also 
 probably to migration, and here there was no common head of 
 the clan.' As long as the clan maintains the right of protecting 
 its own members the gentile tie will be more effectual than the 
 tribal. Here it is important to remark that the effects of inter- 
 marriage on the social structure differ materially according as 
 mother-right or father-right prevails. Under mother-right the 
 result of marriage outside the clan — " clan exogamy " — is that 
 the man wiU always belong to a different clan from that of his 
 wife and children, who are accordingly more closely dependent 
 on the wife's brother than on her husband.* The result is to 
 
 1 Mayne, 223-232. The ruler, after the father's death, may be the 
 Bldest male — ^the eldest brother, "by consent," according to Narada — or 
 he may be chosen, as among the Todas. 
 
 ' Morgan, HouseUfe, pp. 63, 66. 
 
 ' Morioe, " Manners and Customs of the Western D6n6," in Proceedxnga 
 of the Canadian Institute, vol. vii. p. 142. 
 
 * Thus the uncle (or whatever other relation the particular constitution 
 of the clan may designate) will have the right of protecting or punishing 
 the children, giving the girls in marriage, etc. Tlie children will inherit 
 from him, and in case of divorce they remain in the mother's clan (for 
 sxamples, see Post, i. 72-78). The uncle may even have the right to 
 protect the child against its own father, e. g. among the Barea, Bazen, and 
 E 
 
50 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 introduce a cross division, a cleavage that cuts through family 
 and clan life.^ We have seen this cross division at work among 
 the Australians, but there we thought of it mainly as a bond of 
 imion between little groups of low organization. In relation to 
 a more developed system of kinship, however, its other effects 
 become important. The bond that unites separate clans mars 
 the unity of the family itself. This is very apparent where, as 
 among the North American Indians, exogamy is based on 
 Totemism. The members of the totem are bound to mutual 
 defence, and, as the same totem may be found in quite remote 
 parts — as e. g. there will be Bears or Beavers all over North 
 America, there is a potential bond of union over a wide district. 
 But equally, since the totem is exogamous, no one totem by itself 
 can form a society. In some cases two totems are, one may 
 say, marriage partners, i. e. the men of one must take wives 
 only from the women of another. More generally there is no 
 such restriction, but two or more totems hve together and inter- 
 marry. Thus among the Iroquois there were eight totems — 
 the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron and Hawk.^ 
 All or most of these were found in each of the five " nations " 
 or local communities into which the Iroquois were divided. In 
 each " nation " or local community there would be Beaver men 
 with Bear wives and children. Bear men with Beaver wives and 
 children, the totem bond cutting clean across the family and local 
 divisions. 
 
 This dual relationship became a means of achieving a higher 
 political Union. The famous League of the Five Nations was 
 founded on the fact that each nation contained the eight totemic 
 groups enumerated above, and that the totem tie was held as 
 strong as the local tie — so that two Hawks of different nations 
 would have stood together against a Heron or a Bear of their 
 own nation. This cross division formed a natural basis for 
 union, and its strength was attested by the success and dura- 
 
 Kunama. Cf. Rivers, in The Cambridge Expedition, p. 151. In the Torres 
 Straits a fight would be stopped, if one of the combatants saw his mother's 
 btbther on the other side. The father also had power to stop a fight, but 
 it was less absolute {ib., 144, 145). In some cases both the paternal and 
 maternal gens were bound to help an injured member, e. g. among the 
 Kwakiutl (Boaz, B. A., 1889, p. 833). 
 
 ' The children might even return to the mother's tribe, though brought 
 up with her in that of the father — as among the Thlinkeets (Boaz, B. A., 
 1888, p. 237). This would still further dislocate the family. 
 
 ' Originally these formed two exogamous groups, i. e. Wolf, Bear, 
 Turtle and Beaver could not intermarry, but must take a partner from 
 one of the other four totems. But this restriction broke down (Morgan, 
 League of the Iroquois, p. 83). 
 
TYPES or SOCIETY 51 
 
 bility of the League. What was done consciously by the Iroquois 
 was, if the view suggested be correct, an appHoation of a principle 
 which, operating in less conscious form, has cofltributed in large 
 measure to the formation of organized society. The practice 
 of marrying outside the family would cause every local aggre- 
 gation of peoples to consist of individuals belonging to two 
 families or more, and while the physical tie bound the husband 
 to his wife's children the marriage tie bound both him and 
 them to other famiUes. In this we may, perhaps, find an 
 explanation both of the wide prevalence of varying rules of 
 exogamy and of the horrors attending its breach. If the 
 structure of any society were bound up with the maintenance 
 of exogamy it is in accordance with the normal processes of 
 social evolution that a strongly-felt tradition should assist to 
 safeguard the practice and to condemn and destroy those who 
 break it.^ 
 
 Be this as it may, let us note the form of social union arrived 
 at under mother-right and exogamy. We have (1) the clan, 
 the enlarged famUy, living together and connected by ties of 
 descent through the female. (2) The marriage-relation cutting 
 across the clans and grafting the sons and brothers of one clan 
 on to another as husbands and fathers. On the basis of this 
 connection we may have (3) the local community of several 
 intermarrying clans Uving side by side, and (4) a wider tribal 
 union so far as the unity of the totem or marriage class extends. 
 There is here a possible basis for an extensive but somewhat 
 loose organization, the totem bond tending to weaken rather 
 than to strengthen that of the clan. 
 
 Under father-right the development is simpler. So far as 
 exogamy prevails this will still form a bond of connection be- 
 tween separate stocks, but the wife now passes out of her family 
 into that of her husband, and her children are his. Hence the 
 division cutting across the family is no longer to be found.^ 
 Without it the family group is more closely knit. Yet the tie 
 formed by intermarriage, though less strong than under the 
 other system, would still be very real. The wife becomes a 
 member of the family into which she marries, but she still retains 
 relationship with her blood kindred, and cognatio — relation- 
 ship through either parent — is generally recognized by the 
 
 ^ On the instinctive element underlying exogamy, see below, chap. iv. 
 
 ' Among the Australian tribes, indeed, the totem (or class) divides the 
 family as much under father-right as under mother-right. In either case, 
 one parent is separated from the children. But " father-right " at a stage 
 when the family is so little developed, means much less than the father-right 
 of the clan system. 
 
52 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 side of agnatic, strict male kinship alone.^ A group of such 
 intermarrying families therefore forms a community united by 
 countless interwoven strands of afiBnity and blood relationship, 
 while the component units would be more compact than under 
 mother-right.^ 
 
 1 As e. ST. among the Celts (Vinogradofi, Growth of the Manor, pp. 10-12), 
 and still more strongly among the primitive Germans {ib., 135, 136). 
 
 ^ It is probably owing to the importance of intermarriage as a bond of 
 union in early society that prohibitions of marriage generally extend 
 over a wider circle of relationships in primitive than in advanced peoples 
 (Westermarck, 297 H.), and that they are often highly developed under the 
 paternal, no less than under the maternal system. Thus, in early Rome, 
 marriage was forbidden within the sixth degree of cognatio (Westermarck, 
 308) ; in Manu, between all Sapindas, i. e. to the seventh degree. Manu 
 further opposes marriage between all relations through the male (Manu, iii. 
 section 5. The law is not stated very stringently — a damsel fulfilling these 
 conditions is recommended to twice-born men). The law re-appears in the 
 minor codes. Apastamba, ii. v. 11, 15-16; Gautama, iv. 2-5; Vasishtha, 
 viii. 1, 2; Vishnu, xxiv. § 9, 10. According to J. D. Mayne, pp. 87, 88, 
 though Manu applies the rule to twice-born men only, it is also observed by 
 the Kurumbas, Meenas, Kondhs of Orissa, and Dravidian tribes of S. India. 
 In China, marriage is forbidden to all of the same name (Alabaster, 177). 
 
 Such prohibitions may, of cojxrse, be combined with clan or race or caste 
 endogamy (prohibitions to marry outside the group concerned). The union 
 of exogamy in one relation with endogamy in another leads to much con- 
 fusion in the discussion of the subject, and obscures the functions and 
 tendencies of each rule. Thus, the suggestion that the clan is built up by 
 exogamy may be countered by the production of endogamous clans. This 
 would be fallacious, since the exogamy which helps to build the clan is 
 the prohibition of marriage between near kin, not that of marriage within 
 the clan itself. But the working of endogamy illustrates by contrast the 
 uniting eiJects of intermarriage. In the history of Kome, each step towards 
 a wider union seems to have been accompanied by a breakdown of endo- 
 gamous rules. Originally marriage seems to have been limited to the 
 " gens " (Westermarck, quoting Mommsen and Marquardt, 368), or perhaps 
 the " curia " (see Ihering, Evolution of the Aryan, p. 334). Then the 
 patrician gentes formed a circle of intermarrying clans. The plebs 
 obtained the jtis connvbii in 445 B.C. (Mommsen, I. p. 297), and hence- 
 forward the distinction of patrician and plebeian faded away. Further, 
 the Latini Prisci had the jm» connuhii from an early period (Mommsen, I. 
 p. 100; Girard, 104), and the extension of this form of Latinitas, and 
 still more of Roman citizenship, meant at every stage a widening of the 
 circle within which marriage was possible, till it embraced the whole free 
 population of the empire. At each remove endogamy is the separator, 
 intermarriage the bond of union. 
 
 The line of thought developed in the text points to the conclusion that 
 it is the combination of the tie of intermarriage with that of descent that 
 forms the basis of primitive society. But to lay this down as our positive 
 conclusion would be to go beyond the evidence. There are rude societies 
 in existence, in which no rule of exogamy holds, so that even the union of 
 parent and child is permitted (several instances are given in Westermarck, 
 pp. 290, 291). On the other hand. Post, Grundrisa, i. p. 33) justly remarks 
 that close unions are scarcely ever enjoined, unless to preserve the purity 
 of blood (as among the Pharaohs and the Incas), or possibly to preserve the 
 family property. Such reasons imply a society that is already well estab- 
 lished, from which the need of intermarriage to maintain the social bond 
 
TYPES OF SOQETY 53 
 
 Of course, even in early society the principle of kinship is 
 not as rigid in practice as it is in theory. It admits of an 
 element of fiction, since the inclusion of straftgers and slaves, 
 which is seldom wholly unknown, makes the community of 
 blood in part at least imaginary. But it is altogether in accord- 
 ance with primitive ideas that the make-believe — if the behef 
 is properly made with all due rites and conditions fulfilled — ^is 
 just as good as the reality, and so the adopted son fills the place 
 of a real son. But though he is not really bound by the blood 
 tie, the fictions used to constitute him one of the family are 
 an evidence to us showing how strong the sense of the blood 
 tie is. This sense finds its expression in the family worship, 
 the funeral feast to the dead kindred, and the belief that none 
 but the actual kin, or those who have with due formality been 
 made such, may lawfully do this service to the dead. Hence 
 the fear of calamities, of troubles from unfed and unpropitiated 
 ghosts, if the family should ever die out. Hence, again, the 
 duty of maintaining the family succession, the intense desire 
 for male descendants, and the community of property out of 
 which the funeral feasts are served. The patriarchal family is 
 in ideal an undying unity. Unencumbered by the cross currents 
 of feeUng set in motion by mother-right, it carries the tie of 
 kinship and the affections of the household to their highest 
 development, while it is none the less capable of utilizing inter- 
 marriage or the ramifications of descent to extend the bonds 
 of kinship, and so build up a wider union. Thus, as in the case 
 of the Roman gens, the clan may be a much wider society than 
 any family group connected by a known common descent. 
 Again, distinct clans may be parts of a still wider, if looser union, 
 bound by a sense of kinship. Thus beyond the Greek yivo<s we 
 have the tjiparpia, and beyond that the <f,vX-q, each maintaining 
 
 has already fallen away. On the other hand, in a primitive people where 
 the social order was only in the making, it is certainly reasonable to sup- 
 pose that the objection to marriage between those of the same stock (on 
 whatever principle kinship be reckoned) would tend to keep society together, 
 while a preference for such marriages would tend to break it up. 
 
 The forces binding men together are in reality complex, but if we imagine 
 kinship to be the only one, and then conceive two families living in prox- 
 imity, first with an exogamous, and then with an endogamous rule, we shall 
 be able to understand the function of exogamy. The two intermarrying 
 families will form in all essentials the nucleus of a community. The two 
 which do not intermarry must remain permanently separate. Each may 
 grow, but if the in-and-in tendency persists, kinship still being assumed 
 to remain the sole basis of union, they will tend constantly to split up, the 
 ties between each section being so much closer than those between more 
 distant kin. Thus the practice of intermarriage is the main condition 
 determining the formation and governing the limits of early society. 
 
54 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 a certain bond between its members resting on real or sup 
 posed kinship.i Indeed, the paternal clan has very naturally 
 formed the starting point for the development of nearly all the 
 civilized races, Aryan, Semitic and Mongol, and has left its 
 marks deep in the life of the great nations which have arisen 
 out of it. 
 
 We are led, then, to think of the simplest societies as living in 
 "enlarged families," and of those just above them as forming 
 larger aggregates, principally on the basis of intermarriage. 
 Within these aggregates or tribes the groups remain though modi- 
 fied in various ways, and constitute at first the more vital and 
 effective social organism, the organization of the tribe becoming 
 important as society advances. These points are reflected in a 
 comparison of the accounts of government which we obtain 
 among peoples of different economic grades. Considering first 
 the inner group, we find a considerable number of cases 
 among the Lower Hunters where no effective government can 
 be asserted apart from the household. The proportion of such 
 cases to all those of which we have information falls steadily 
 from approximately one-half among the Lower Hunters to one- 
 tenth in the second grade of agriculture and to none in the 
 higher economic grades.^ Passing to the government of the 
 tribe, we have considerable difficulty in comparing like with 
 hke.^ But, putting together all the cases in which we find 
 evidence of a recognized government in a definite social unity 
 superior to the clan or local group, we find them numbering 
 from a quarter to nearly a third of the whole among the Hunters 
 and in the lowest agricultural grade, rising to nearly a half in 
 the next grade of agricultural, and to over three-fourths in the 
 highest pastoral and agricultural peoples, where, moreover, in 
 many instances, the organization of government goes altogether 
 beyond the tribal type and reaches that of a petty kingdom. 
 
 4. (B) The Principle of Authority. 
 
 The types of social organization hitherto described may be 
 looked upon as spontaneous growths resting on the natural ties 
 
 ^ Busolt, Staata und BechtsaltertUmer, p. 21 3. 
 
 * Simpler Peoples, p. 51. 
 
 ' It is not always clear, e. g. whether a village containing several clans 
 or joint famihes should be ranked as a " tribe " for this purpose. It is 
 probably one of a number of villages all reckoned as one tribe, so that 
 relatively to them it is an inner group. Compared with a hunting people, 
 on the other hand, it probably contains as many individuals and as complex 
 an internal structure as a tribe. The comparisons we give probably under- 
 estimate, through caution on this point, the extent of the change found in 
 passing from the lowest to the higher economic grades. 
 
TYPES or SOQETY 55 
 
 of blood relationship, intermarriage and neighbourhood. By 
 consequence they are suited to small societies. It is true that 
 they widen out into broader organizations; ijiany clans form 
 one tribal union; a number. of communes form a district, and 
 perhaps own a common chief. Sometimes even, as in the 
 League of the Iroquois, these unions are the deliberate work 
 of barbarian statesmen, so that something more than mere 
 spontaneous semi-instinctive social forces come into play. But 
 these wider ramifications have, as a rule, been loosely and feebly 
 connected. The living energy remains with the small, con- 
 centrated unit. How, then, are larger aggregations built into 
 compact societies ? The most direct method is that of forcible 
 subjection to a single chief or a ruling class. In the primitive 
 tribe the power of the chief is seldom great or even assured. In 
 the commune the headman is little more than a chairman of 
 the folkmoot. But when a people begin a career of conquest 
 two things happen. They themselves must have discipUne, and 
 they need a war-chief with unlimited powers. The war-chief 
 surrounds himself with his following, his comites, who attach 
 themselves to his fortunes, and is a simpleton if he caimot make 
 the state of war or the fear of war so permanent that his own 
 absolute authority becomes indefinitely prolonged. On the 
 other hand, captive prisoners form for the first time an important 
 slave class, or perhaps the lands of conquered peoples are left 
 to them to tUl as serfs under the lordship of favoured individuals 
 from the comitatus of the war-chief. Hence, on the one hand 
 the decay of free institutions among the conquerors, and on the 
 other the growth of classes within society. AU the great civiUza- 
 tions, those of western Europe, of the far East, of Mexico and 
 Peru, of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, seem to have experienced 
 this stage of development. But it should be noted that the 
 despotic system arises, and in some respects finds its most 
 extreme developments, among people stiU in the stage of bar- 
 barism. For example, in West Africa, as in Dahomey and 
 Ashanti, we find the principle pushed to the point that the king 
 is absolute master of the persons and property of every one of 
 his subjects. He can put any one to death at pleasure, any 
 man may be his slave, any woman taken to his harem. The 
 poUtical exaltation of the monarch is often accentuated by 
 a certain phase in the growth of religious conceptions. He 
 becomes a man-god like the Pharaohs ; his person is sacred ; no 
 one may look on him and live — finally he becomes taboo and so 
 full of danger to his subjects that he has to be secluded, and the 
 almighty being ends in becoming a helpless puppet in the hands 
 
56 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of his priests. Perhaps he becomes responsible for good and 
 evil fortune, for sunshine and rain, and if he manages the weather 
 badly, his absolute power will avail him little and his spirit 
 stands in imminent danger of a compulsory migration to another 
 representative of the royal line. Where religion is too advanced 
 for the actual deification of the king, as in western Europe, 
 he may yet be God's representative, and so, e. g. the theory 
 of divine right arose in England when feudahsm passed into 
 absolutism and the king who could not be God Himself proclaimed 
 himself at least God's viceregent. 
 
 The personal power of the king, whatever the theory of abso- 
 lutism may be, is Hmited by hard facts of human nature; 
 monarchs, whatever their courtier priests may say, are not gods, 
 and therefore can in fact rule in person only as much as they 
 can themselves oversee and understand. Hence personal abso- 
 lutism is for the most part limited to a narrow circle. A Csesar 
 or Napoleon may really supervise the afEairs of a great empire, 
 but as a general rule the absolute monarchy which I have 
 described has effective existence only over a comparatively 
 small area. A conqueror of a wider territory has, after all, to 
 divest himself of most of his real authority over it. To retain a 
 nominal supremacy he must parcel it out among his followers, 
 or perhaps leave the native chiefs in possession as tributaries. 
 In either case the ruler of the subject province will probably 
 have much real independence. Where the native prince remains 
 things will go on very much as they did before. The distant 
 great king wiU be known as one who exacts a tribute, but in 
 no other capacity. Where the king institutes one of his own 
 followers or a great noble of the conquering people as the local 
 governor, he retains at first a more direct control. But where 
 the territory is large and the means of communication rude, 
 the position of the man on the spot is the stronger. The great 
 officer acquires much practical independence, and often succeeds 
 in making his position hereditary, and a feudal system replaces 
 absolute monarchy. 
 
 The conflicts between the two principles of local and central 
 authority make up a large part of political history. At the 
 one extreme the monarch succeeds in governing his people 
 through oflScials wholly dependent on his favour. At the 
 other he sinks into the position of being merely the first in 
 rank in an order of practically equal and independent nobles. 
 The latter alternative is apt to be the more depressing to the 
 general condition of the people. But in any case the masses 
 find themselves at the base of the social hierarchy which has 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 57 
 
 now arisen to replace the simpler and comparatively equal 
 conditions of the earlier social order. The best they can hope 
 for is to be let alone, and in fact throughout tUe East the later 
 despotism is merely superimposed on the older organizations 
 which persist beneath its sway comparatively undisturbed, and 
 maintain their vitality while empires rise and fall. Such a 
 state of civilization may, as Egypt, Babylonia and China have 
 shown, persist for thousands of years without essential change 
 in the customs of the people, who in reality take too small a part 
 in the life of a greater community to which they belong to 
 affect or be gravely affected by its vicissitudes. But naturally 
 the tendency of despotic organization is upon the whole to 
 depress the condition of the masses : in some cases large slave 
 populations are formed; in others a caste system arises; in 
 others the tillers of the soil sink into one or other of the many 
 forms of serfdom, while the conquering race are the lords of the 
 land. All these forms of class subordination should be reckoned 
 as expressions of the despotic principle in social organization ; it 
 is not only the form of government but the whole social structure 
 which is infused with this dominating influence. 
 
 We are not, of course, to suppose that any society rests upon 
 force undiluted. In the first place, as already remarked, the 
 old forms of organization generally retain a measure of their 
 vitality in spite of conquest. The conquerors themselves are 
 united by ties of blood by the gentUe, the tribal, or the com- 
 munal bond, they have their own law and customs, resting not 
 on force but upon the deep-lying social principles which have 
 bound them together from of old, and which guide them by 
 some principle of justice, if it be but in the division of the booty. 
 In the second place, they find similar institutions flourishing 
 among the conquered and have to make their account with 
 these ; but further, and in the third place, both from enlightened 
 self-interest and from the inextinguishable element of self- 
 judgment in man which makes him cling to the semblance of 
 right most of all when he is rejecting the reahty, the conqueror 
 cannot bear to rest his title permanently on force alone. He 
 seeks to transmute force into authority. For this he wiU find 
 a means in religion and an instrument in the priesthood. But 
 at the same time the ethical element has its opportunity, and 
 insists with varying degrees of clearness and emphasis that the 
 real authority of the ruler must be derived from his power to 
 govern for the good of the people. The simple but compre- 
 hensive code of despotism merely lays down that one man is 
 divinely appointed to determine what is best for all others, and 
 
58 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 therewith transmutes arbitrary power into righteous authority 
 and slavish subjection into loyal service. 
 
 As to the way in which the duties of a ruler are conceived, 
 we find, of course, every shade of difference in the empires and 
 kingdoms of history. Thus, a military tribe of barbarians will 
 merely raid their neighbours for slaves or for human sacrifice, or 
 they will conquer them for the sake of tribute. But where a 
 more civilized morality prevails, and particularly in so far as 
 conquest ends in an amalgamation of races, and a kingdom 
 comes to be a unity, the ethical principle of the common good 
 asserts itself, and is enforced by religious sanctions. The lord 
 has duties to his serfs, the feudal superior to his vassals, the 
 king to all his subjects. Such duties are by no means peculiar 
 to modern and Christian communities. We find them hardly 
 less prominent in the earliest civilizations. The feudal rulers of 
 Egypt, for example, the princes of the Nomes, always take a 
 special credit for their uprightness as governors, their goodness 
 to the poor, their mercifulness to the weak. A deceased governor 
 under the 12th Dynasty asserts that he was " the staff of 
 support to the aged, the foster-father of the children, the coun- 
 sellor of the unfortunate, the refuge in which those who suffer 
 from the cold in Thebes may warm themselves, the bread of the 
 afBieted which never failed in the city of the South." ^ The 
 Chinese Empire, though in form an absolute despotism, was in 
 ethical principle an empire administered by a divine race for 
 the good of the governed. The duty of the prince to his people 
 was the constant theme of the classical moralists, and their 
 teaching took tangible shape in the right of freely criticizing 
 the emperor maintained by the censors chosen from the educated 
 class. Thus in the settled and homogeneous kingdom we have 
 a regime in which government originating in force is tempered 
 by moral considerations and evolves into some form of recognized 
 hierarchical authority. The law emanates not from society as a 
 whole, but from its central figure and chief ruler. It expresses 
 not the natural conditions of social life, but the will of the 
 supreme lord, the representative it may be of the deity. Or it 
 is the possession of a priestly caste to whom it has been en- 
 trusted by the powers that rule the universe. The essential 
 point is that law is imposed by the ruler upon the ruled, it is a 
 command from a superior to a subordinate, it is not any longer 
 conceived as a custom arising out of the conditions of life among 
 those who have to conform to it, neither is it a rule of action 
 voluntarily adopted for the common good. 
 
 1 Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 338. 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 59 
 
 When consolidated by history, by the gradual blending of 
 ces, and perhaps by common defence against the foreigner, 
 e kingdom gains some of the characteristic* of a free com- 
 unity. Having done so it may, and if it has the opportunity, 
 obably will, start afresh on a career of conquest beyond its 
 irders. If successful, it will build up an empire, and here, 
 ;aui, there will be many gradations in the tempering of force 
 ith higher social and moral considerations. Outside their 
 )rders the great kingdoms of the ancient East appear to have 
 mquered largely to obtain slaves or tribute, and the principal 
 ity of the local governor was to collect taxes, and forward the 
 'oduoe to the supreme lord at Thebes, Babylon or Nineveh. 
 I the Persian Empire we seem to recognize the beginning of a 
 gher stage. At least its kings interested themselves in the 
 ire administration of justice, and Cambyses flays the corrupt 
 dge and covers the judgment seat with his skin to be a memento 
 id a warning to his successor.^ The Bomans went much 
 rther, and developed their conquests into something more 
 !arly resembling a commonwealth by developing local institu- 
 3ns and throwing down barriers between conqueror and con- 
 lered. And in proportion as supernatural sanctions have lost 
 rength the modern empire-states have still more distinctly felt 
 le necessity for some other bond than that of naked force or 
 U-constituted authority to link the scattered parts together, 
 dus the furthest development of the principle of authority 
 )ints to the necessity for that remaining bond of social union 
 bich has yet to be described. 
 
 To sum up the results which the despotic principle — whether 
 3 regard it as authority resting ultimately on force or as force 
 ansmuted into authority — has given us — 
 1st. — As to the forms of Society, we have 
 
 (a) The Absolute Monarchy, where the king is divine and 
 
 lord without restraint of the persons and properties 
 of his subjects. This form has most vitality in 
 relatively small and barbaric communities. 
 
 (b) The Feudal Monarchy, suited to wider areas where 
 
 power is delegated, and the governing class form a 
 hierarchy. 
 
 (c) The Empire, formed by the aggregation of kingdoms, 
 
 overstepping national boundaries and exhibiting very 
 varying degrees of unity and of local freedom. 
 2nd. — ^As to the nature of Government, the conception of a 
 moral duty to the governed develops in proportion to the degree 
 1 Herodotus, Book V. chap. xxv. 
 
60 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of unity achieved, but throughout law is conceived as based 
 upon authority and the social system on the subordination of 
 class to class. For this order a religious sanction is found, 
 generally in the special association of the ruler with the deity, 
 often also in the semi-divine character of the ruling race or 
 caste, or, simply, in the belief in their conquering and civiUzing 
 mission. 
 
 If, finally, we may endeavour to sum up in a sentence the 
 fimction of this principle in human evolution, we may say that 
 it belongs to epochs of expansion in culture and improvements 
 in the arts of life. It is one method by which large communities 
 can be formed with greater facilities for self-preservation and 
 for the maintenance of internal order than the primitive clan or 
 village commune can enjoy. We shall also find that on certain 
 sides the order it imposes is not only more adequate but ethically 
 higher than that attained by the clan. On the other hand, it 
 tends to perpetuate, and in some respects to deepen those 
 distinctions between man and man which, as we shall see, it is 
 a main function of the ethical spirit to overcome. It avoids 
 this error in so far as it embodies or makes room for something 
 of the third principle with which we now have to deal. 
 
 5. (C) The Principle of Citizenship — Personal Rights and the 
 Common Good. 
 
 A paternal government resting ultimately on force, but 
 justifying its position in its own eyes by kindly consideration 
 for the good of its subjects, is not the last word of civilized 
 society. A type of social organization exists in which the rela- 
 tions of government and governed are in a manner inverted. 
 Government is conceived not as itself the source of unquestioned 
 authority, but as a function which certain individuals are dele- 
 gated to perform as servants, " ministers " of the public as a 
 whole. The structure of the laws, the acts of executive govern- 
 ment, are not so many commands issued by a superior and 
 obeyed by the people, but are customs and decisions expressing 
 the character and depending on the resolves of the people them- 
 selves. The subjects of a government have become citizens of a 
 state, and the citizen has rights which are no less important 
 than his duties. These rights hold good as against the govern- 
 ment just as they hold against other individuals, for it is a 
 prime characteristic of the state based on citizenship that it 
 establishes the reign of law, and subjects its own officers to this 
 impersonal sovereign. 
 
 On this side, then, the state stands in strong contrast with 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 61 
 
 the despotic empire. Its government rests not so much on the 
 authority of a superior as on the consent of the bulk of its mem- 
 bers. Compulsion, of course, is stiU necessary»in the enforce- 
 ment of law, but its methods are less violent and at the same 
 time more effective. The severity of punishment diminishes, 
 poUtical offences become rarer, and free discussion and criticism 
 are no longer found incompatible with social order. In the 
 societies which have advanced furthest in this direction all 
 classes are admitted finally to a share or a voice in the govern- 
 ment. In some respects this description recalls the earUer 
 tribe. For there, too, law or custom was the direct expres- 
 sion of the wUl, or, at any rate, of the character and traditions 
 of the people. It came from them and was not imposed on 
 them. So it is not wholly without reason that reformers 
 struggling with the weight of the bureaucratic machinery under 
 an arbitrary government have looked back on primitive life as 
 an ideal state of liberty and freedom from which civihzation was 
 a luckless departure. But this is only a half truth — hardly 
 even so much. There is very little really in common between 
 the "liberty" of the clan or tribe and that which the law 
 secures to the citizen in a civilized state. For, if on one side 
 the state rests on general consent,^ on the other side its constitu- 
 tion is rooted in the personal rights of its citizens. Its com- 
 ponent members or units are not groups, but individuals. In 
 the clan and the tribe, as will appear more fully in sub- 
 sequent chapters, the individual has no legal position, scarcely 
 even the possibility of existence, apart from the body to which 
 he belongs. The family, the clan, or the village, or perhaps 
 all three, are responsible to him for his safety, responsible to 
 others for his wrong-doing, Responsible, we may almost say, for 
 his maintenance. His Ufe is laid down by his place in them, 
 his property is in the main a share in their property, his gods 
 are their gods. He cannot leave them, nor can he enter into 
 obUgations which wiU have the effect of binding them. His 
 position in the group is, as it were, an exhaustive account of his 
 existence, and he has little personal life apart from it. In the 
 state all this is greatly changed. The individual is now a 
 responsible agent. As soon as he comes to mature years he 
 
 ^ Even under this aspect, the state does not really resemble the primitive 
 community as closely as it appears to do. In the latter, custom has a 
 magical or religious sanction, and in its main lines is unalterable. In the 
 state it is freely modifiable by legislation. Thus, in the primitive tribe, 
 though the social structure doubtless rests ultimately on the character of 
 the people, it does not express their free deliberate choice, for free criticism 
 of established custom is not yet a part of their character. 
 
62 MORALS IN EVOLtTTION 
 
 stands or falls by himself. He and no one else is punished if 
 he does wrong, and his engagements place no liabiUty on any 
 one except those who are directly or indirectly parties to them. 
 He is free to alienate his property, to enter into contracts with 
 whom he will, to quit his home, and even to emigrate and 
 abandon his allegiance to the state itself. The minor groups to 
 which he belongs are either mere local bodies created afresh by 
 the state which delegates to them some of its rights and duties, 
 or they are voluntary associations which the citizen himself 
 forms by agreement with others and which fUl an ever larger 
 part in public and private life. He even forms his own church 
 and holds his own creed, and his gods need not be those of 
 the state. At the same time, the responsibilities of the old 
 " natural " groups are taken over and are even amplified by 
 the state, which owes its members protection in the exercise 
 of all rights which it recognizes, and, generally speaking, holds 
 itself bound at need to stand between them and sheer starvation. 
 In a word, the state, and particularly the modern state, recog- 
 nizes the claims of human personality as neither the commune 
 nor the monarchy can afford to do. It exists for a common 
 good, but its function is to maintain private rights. 
 
 There lies in this statement, however, a speculative as well 
 as a practical difficulty, to pause upon which for a moment will 
 help us to understand the nature and development of the state. 
 For if government is circumscribed in its action by the rights 
 of citizens, it would seem that a standard of conduct is being set 
 up which is alien in origin, and may at any time be opposed 
 in practice to the common good. The solution is found by 
 considering in what the common good consists, and what is the 
 foundation of an individual right. The community consists of 
 men and women, who find their happiness in the life which 
 makes the most of their capacities as thinking, feeUng, active 
 beings. In other words, the " good " for each man lies in the 
 realization of what is in him, the development of his personality. 
 Now, since this is an imperfect world, the growth of one per- 
 sonality may be the cramping of another. But, fortunately, 
 there is another possibility, since by developing certain sides 
 of ourselves, far from injuring or cramping, we stimulate and 
 assist the similar development of others. Now what form of de- 
 velopment is best for the individual is a question of the ultimate 
 basis of morals, as to which we shall have something to say at 
 a later stage. But if we judge from the point of view of the 
 common good, as we are now doing, our choice is clear. We 
 can see that one kind of self-development, if attempted by 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 63 
 
 everybody, will be eventually destructive, while another kind 
 will harmonize with itself and grow. In this alone is there the 
 possibility of a good for each which is also a»good for all — a 
 common good. Calling the basis of this kind of self-develop- 
 ment the social personality, we may define the common good as 
 consisting in the development of the social personality, and in 
 its name every member of society has a right to the conditions 
 requisite for such a development, so far as they are generally 
 attainable by social action. On the other hand, no rights exist 
 but those which the common good prescribes. For a right is a 
 claim which one man makes on the actions or forbearance of 
 others, and which is sustained by an impartial judgment. But 
 an impartial judgment is one which looks beyond the individual, 
 and recognizes that the right claimed by one must be maintained 
 for all. But no right could be practically maintained for all 
 which was incompatible with the safety of the community, nor 
 could any right be desirable for all which inflicted net loss on 
 the community. Hence the rights of each are such as it is for 
 the good of all to maintain.^ 
 
 The generic character of the state, then, is that of a community 
 whose structure and character depend on the good-will of the 
 bulk of its members, and whose welfare rests accordingly on 
 their loyalty and public feeling, while it is for them the source 
 and guarantee of the free exercise of their rights as citizens. 
 Thus, the citizen is a fully responsible agent with assignable 
 rights and duties as member of a community. So far as the 
 idea of the community is carried through, i. e. so far as the 
 common good really is common to all belonging to it, the rights 
 and duties must fall to all members alike, excepting only as the 
 needs of the common welfare demand a difference. That is to 
 say, privileges of whatever kind must depend on the exercise 
 of functions which they encourage or render possible, and the 
 taking up of such functions must be open to all who are capable 
 of them. Such is the general character, in the baldest state- 
 ment, of the type of civic community or state, with its two 
 main features, the responsible individual fully seized of civic 
 rights and obligations, and the responsible government express- 
 ing the will of the whole society in law and administration. 
 Thus security under law and the power of the community to 
 make and modify the law express the bare essentials of the 
 state. 
 
 ^ That is, for the good in the long run. There may often be a conflict 
 between expediency and right in the particular case, and hence it is that 
 the opposition arises. 
 
64 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 6. How far the idea of citizenship is pushed is a question of 
 degree on which a great deal turns. The actual number of 
 citizens may be but a fraction of the whole number of people 
 dwelling in a given territory, and while as between these there 
 may be a regime of perfect legality and perfect equality, their 
 relations to the mass of the people may be as frankly based on 
 force as those of any monarchical despotism. Again, within 
 the circle of citizens there may be degrees of civic rights. These 
 differences can only be justified ethically by the belief in an 
 innate and ineradicable difference in capacity to meet civic 
 responsibility on the part of members of different classes. In 
 proportion as this belief is dissolved by experience the obligations 
 of citizenship become universal, and the idea of citizenship as 
 an exclusive right merges in that of personality, with rights 
 and capacities which all may share simply as human beings. 
 According to this conception, which must be understood from 
 what has been said above of the social personahty, what is good 
 in life consists in the bringing out into full bloom of those 
 capacities of each individual which help to maintain the common 
 life. In this development lies a form of happiness for each, 
 which does not conflict, but fits in with and promotes that of 
 others, and does not tend to arrest, but to maintain and carry 
 forward what may be called the growth of the collective mind — 
 the expansion of faculty, the growth of achievement. Every 
 human being, in proportion as he is normally developed, is able 
 to enter into and contribute to the good life so conceived, and 
 that he should do so is the sum and substance of aU his duties 
 to society and all the duties of society to him. But this same 
 principle once pushed through, annuls, ethically speaking, the 
 distinction between citizen and foreigner, for the foreigner may 
 be quite equally capable of the same life, and, if so, is morally 
 seized of the same rights and duties, and if, through difference 
 of race, he is not always equally capable, still his rights and 
 duties cannot fall to zero, but vary only with the degree of 
 his incapacity. Hence the fully-developed state in which 
 the principle of personality is rigorously carried through, must 
 also find itself in definite ethical relation to humanity as a 
 whole. 
 
 The principles thus summarized are applied with greater or 
 less of thoroughness in the forms of state which under varying 
 conditions and on a very varying scale have come into existence 
 at different periods of history. We find the conception of a 
 government resting on civic rights in the city-state of ancient 
 Greece and Italy and of mediaeval Europe ; we find it on a larger 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 65 
 
 scale in the country-state of the modern world. The Grseco- 
 Italian city was more than a clan, a tribe or a village community ; 
 it was an organized political society, with a regtdar government 
 administering written laws. But the government was not, in 
 relation to the free citizens, in any way despotic ; law reigned, 
 not the ruler, and sovereign law was not imposed upon the 
 people from without, but expressed their own traditional 
 character and laid down rules to which they adhered of their 
 own free choice.^ The obedience of the Greek to law was a 
 moral obedience, the loyalty of free men to .an authority which 
 they recognized as a moral authority. " Though the Lace- 
 daemonians are free," says Demaratus to Xerxes, " yet they are 
 not free in all things, for over them is set Law as a master, 
 whom they fear much more even than thy people fear thee. 
 It is certain at least that they do whatsoever that master com- 
 mands ; and he commands ever the same thing — ^that is to say, 
 he bids them not flee out of battle from any multitude of 
 men, but stay in their post and win the victory or lose their 
 life." " 
 
 Thus law in the Greek state expressed not the wiU of a superior 
 but a moral authority, freely recognized by free men, and equally 
 binding on the ruler and the ruled. On this side the city state 
 was contrasted, as the Greeks were fully conscious, with oriental 
 despotism. On the other hand, in its many-sided development 
 of judicial, executive and legislative organs, it stood far removed 
 from the primitive community. The archaic institutions of 
 early society — the clan, the phratry and the tribe — gradually 
 lost their functions. They ceased to be responsible for their 
 members, and the entire execution of justice passed into the 
 hands of the state. In the most advanced cities new divisions 
 were formed on a territorial basis to replace the old spontaneous 
 associations. The individual was responsible before the law 
 for his own acts, and — at least as far as he was a free citizen — 
 could carve out his own career. He was eligible for the highest 
 office, and Aristotle justly defined the good citizen as the man 
 who could both rule and be ruled with a view of life at its best ; 
 
 ' It is an interesting point, as illustrating the transition from the 
 primitive subjection of the popular will to tradition to the later stage of 
 civic freedom, that throughout the best period of Greece the established 
 law retained much of the primitive sanctity attaching to old custom, so 
 that, even at Athens, the Assembly could not finally decide upon changes 
 in the law, but had to refer such innovations to a body selected from the 
 sworn jurymen for the year, while the proposer of a law, held by them to 
 be unjustifiable, was liable to prosecution (see Sidgwick, EK/ropecm Polity, 
 pp. 175, 176). 
 
 ' Herodotus, Book VII. chap. civ. (Macaulay Tr.). 
 F 
 
66 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 indeed, in no other political system have public institutions 
 offered greater scope for individual initiative, nor have collective 
 duties been more generously conceived to meet human needs. 
 Aristotle could define a Greek state as an association for main- 
 taining a good life for its citizens. The object of political in- 
 stitutions was frankly declared to be " that we may make the 
 citizens good." Untroubled by any conflict between the secular 
 and the spiritual power, the Greeks could readily conceive a 
 political society as an association for all the principal purposes 
 of life that are not covered by the smaller association of the 
 household. On this side their ideal of the state has never since 
 been equalled. 
 
 On the other hand, the idea of association was not pushed 
 through. The state was limited to the narrow circle of the 
 freemen, and even within the freemen the oligarchies drew sharp 
 distinctions. Of the true society which formed the Spartan 
 state, only a few thousand Spartiates were reaUy members ; the 
 Perioeci and Helots had nothing to do with the Spartan con- 
 stitution except to conform to its ordinances. The democracies 
 opened citizenship to a wider circle, but here again the great 
 fissure between freeman and slave was maintained. But so far 
 as the non-free were concerned the distinctive character of the 
 state disappears. The free Athenian demos rules the enslaved 
 mass ; ^ the Spartiate rules the Perioecus and the Helot no more 
 by a principle of right than the Great King his motley crowd of 
 subjects. So far as the state includes an unenfranchised popula- 
 tion, it abandons the principle of right and falls back on that of 
 force. But this was not the only drawback to the Greek ttoXis. 
 Its limited scale and the incapacity of the Greeks for a higher 
 form of union proved the opportunity of Macedon and the de- 
 struction of Greek freedom. At Rome the incapacity of the 
 city state to extend its borders and yet maintain the vigour of 
 its free constitution led to the extinction of the Republic ; the 
 Empire could only be consolidated by a bureaucracy. The 
 mediaeval cities escaped slavery. Indeed, as providing a refuge 
 for the fugitive serf they played a part in the movement towards 
 general freedom. But in other respects they repeated many of 
 the features of the Greek ttoXk. We find similar conflicts between 
 oligarchic and democratic tendencies. There is the struggle of 
 the crafts as against the merchants, and the counter tendency of 
 the crafts in their turn, when once fully enfranchised, to become 
 
 ^ It is not, however, always sufficiently recognized that the Athenian 
 democracy did tend to make the position of slaves more tolerable (see 
 below, chap. vii.). 
 
TYPES OP SOCIETY 67 
 
 exclusive corporations. There are difficulties with feudal nobles 
 and with king or emperor from which the Greek state was free, 
 and a consequent exaggeration of the troubles 6t faction and an 
 even greater tendency than in Greece to have resort to the 
 plenary powers of a tyrannis. There is the same limitation of 
 area, and the same difficulty of combined action — witness the 
 inertness of the Dutch cities in rendering aid to one another 
 against Phihp as compared with the determination shown in 
 the defence of each city individually. Internal faction and 
 external exclusiveness together wrote the doom of the mediaeval 
 city. 
 
 7. The experiment of founding a state was to be tried over 
 again in the modern world on a larger scale, when the concen- 
 tration of powers in the hands of the monarch had consolidated 
 the more advanced nations, while personal freedom had, on the 
 whole, been secured for the mass of the people and the religious 
 schism had undermined the structure of ecclesiastical authority. 
 This concentration meant, in the first instance, a period of 
 absolutism, and the reaction against absolutism has filled the 
 greater part of the modem period. Ethically considered, this 
 re-action has two sides. On the one hand, the government comes . 
 to recognize that its position is only justified by its function in 
 serving public order and the general happiness. The doctrine 
 of the plenary power of the king, emerging though it did readily 
 enough from the feudal conception of the supreme over-lord 
 when the feudal checks were removed, was nevertheless alien 
 to the temper of Europe and the spirit of modem Ethics. The 
 doctrine of the ultimate supremacy of the people and the dele- 
 gated power of the supreme ruler had held its place in the civil 
 law and had never wholly disappeared from the academic world, 
 and in the eighteneth century the world of thought was fully 
 ready to accept the doctrine that a government holds power only 
 by its capacity to serve the people's needs. On the other side, 
 the principle of personality won the successive recognition of one 
 right after another — aright to the protection of the tribunals 
 or immunity from arbitrary punishment, freedom in religious 
 matters, first freedom of conscience, afterwards freedom of 
 expression and of public worship, the right to discuss and 
 criticize acts of government, the right of meeting and associ- 
 ation, ultimately the political right to secure these liberties 
 by an indirect share in the government of the country — all 
 the rights which, taken together, make the modern state what 
 it is. 
 
68 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In so far as it rests on these and similar rights, while they in 
 turn depend on the guarantees which orderly government can 
 give, the modem state depends not on forcible control, but on 
 the assent of the great bulk of the governed. Its principle, 
 needless to say, is not always consistently carried through. In 
 particular, governments have almost everywhere waged war 
 with the spirit of nationality where it has come in their way, and 
 have preferred to wander far from the principles of equal political 
 freedom rather than seek some method of accommodating 
 themselves to an inconvenient but very hardy sentiment. 
 Otherwise there is no such permanent cause of internal division 
 as marred the life of the Greek states. Nor has faction ever 
 shown itself so serious in our world. The larger scale of the 
 modern state gives it more prospect of permanence. But here, 
 again, its ultimate fate must depend on the conduct of its ex- 
 ternal relations. The internecine feuds which ravaged HeUas 
 have at times repeated themselves on the larger scale of Europe, 
 and threaten now to take in the whole civilized World. And in 
 modern, as in ancient, times military ambitions and internal 
 liberty are hard to reconcile. The future of the State is bound 
 up with Internationalism. If the rivalries and jealousies of the 
 civilized nations can be so far overcome as to admit of combined 
 action in the cause of peace, there is every reason to expect that 
 within each nation the rule of right wiU be maintained and 
 developed. If, on the contrary, wars are to give way only to 
 periods of armed peace, each country alike must gradually 
 relapse into the rule of a dictatorship. The country state, 
 therefore, can hardly be the final word of politics, but if pro- 
 gress continues it must consist in the quickening into active life 
 of those germs of intemationahsm which the best statesmen 
 of the nineteenth century helped to bring into a precarious 
 existence .1 
 
 We have thus distinguished three principles of social union, 
 each tending to work itself out in more than one form of social 
 organization, according to the varying conditions upon which it 
 operates. We have had — 
 
 (1) The Blood Tie, Kinship, and Intermarriage, from which 
 
 sprang the Clan and the Tribe. Of these there were 
 
 two great divisions : 
 
 (a) The Maternal Clan and its child the Totem. 
 
 (b) The Paternal Clan, the Patriarchate. 
 
 In both classes we find the Joint Household, which may 
 be regarded as at once a clan and a family. 
 
 1 Written in 1905. 
 
TYPES OF SOCIETY 69 
 
 (2) Despotism — ^the Principle of Force and Authority. 
 
 (a) Personal — MUitary or Bureaucratic Despotism. 
 (6) Feudal Monarchy. * 
 
 (c) The International Empire. 
 
 (3) The Principle of Citizenship, the Common Good and 
 
 Personal Right, from which spring 
 
 (a) The City State. 
 
 lb) The National State. 
 The types of social organization that have been sketched 
 are not mutually exclusive. A despotic oriental monarchy may 
 rule over a hundred thousand village communities, each consist- 
 ing of a dozen or a score of patriarchal households in which 
 some residual traces of mother-right and totemism may stiU be 
 found. An independent commune may rest on a clan system 
 founded on mother-right, and such clans may, like the Iroquois, 
 buUd up a federation resting on assent rather than force, and so 
 correspond rather to a state than to a despotic kingdom. ' What 
 we have distinguished are (1) certain principles of organization 
 which, when they work out unencumbered by other principles, 
 form (2) distinguishable types of social structure — types which 
 we may take as landmarks by reference to which we may place 
 other social forms. These types may co-exist as constituent 
 parts of a larger order, or may be blended with one another in 
 various ways. It follows that we cannot say that one of these 
 forms succeeds another in serial order as we ascend the scale of 
 culture. The history of society, unfortunately, is not so simple. 
 All that we can say with some confidence is that the three 
 principles distinguished and the forms of social union arising 
 out of them preponderate at successive stages in the order 
 named. That is to say, that the lowest form of social organiza- 
 tion is the group loosely connected with other groups of the 
 same tribe; that at a somewhat higher stage tribal govern- 
 ment develops ; that above these societies are found organized 
 kingdoms; and that the " state " in the true sense is developed 
 only among peoples of the highest civilization. There is, as 
 it were, a mean point in the scale of social advance belonging 
 to each principle, and though it extends far above and far 
 below we place the principle in the series by referring it to 
 this point. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LAW AND JUSTICE 
 
 1. To the civilized man it seems the m.erest truism to say that 
 the business of Government is to make and execute laws, to see 
 that crime is suppressed, and that its subjects are maintained in 
 possession of their just rights. Not only so, but the broad lines 
 upon which justice is administered are to him so familiar and 
 seem so clearly marked out by reason and common sense that if 
 he were to think of their origin at all he would naturally imagine 
 that here, if anywhere, we had to do with simple and elementary 
 rnoral ideas, implanted in men by nature, and needing no training 
 nor experience to perfect them. Thus, what could be more 
 obvious, to begin with, than the (|i stiJiotion,Qi civil and crimina-l 
 justiceJ_^A may trespass upon the rights ot ±5, btTTTie may"36 
 so without fraud, violence, or any criminal intent. In such 
 cases the loss suffered by B must be made good, but no further 
 pimishment should fall upon A. That is, there is ground for a 
 civil action. Or, on the other hand, in injuring B, A may have 
 committed an offence against the social order. In that case he 
 must be punished as a criminal, and is not to escape merely by 
 making good the loss inflicted on B. He has offended society, 
 and society insists on punishing him* But, further, if A is a 
 wrong-doer, it must be proved that he is a responsible agent. 
 He must have done wrong with intention, and, if so, he alone 
 ought to suffer. Socially, no doubt, his fall must affect his 
 innocent wife and children, but this is a regrettable result; not 
 a consequence which the law goes about to inflict. Lastly, 
 whether in a civil or criminal case, the function of the law is to 
 set up an imgartjaLauthority, before whom the queistion Is 
 argued. BotH^ides are heard. Evidence is cited, and witnesses 
 ,.fiSiJled»- whose tes~timmiy the court Ts free" to^'sift and weigh. 
 Formalities_j,ndjruie^^ to be observed, but apart, perhaps, 
 
 from some which are archaic, they are'devised mainly as safe- 
 guards against wrongful decisions, and the real business of the 
 inquiry is to get at truth as to the material facts. In the end, 
 the decision being given, the court can freely use the executive 
 power of Government to enforce it. 
 
 70 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 71 
 
 Elementary as all this sounds, it is, historically speaking, the 
 result of a long evolution. The distinction between civU and | 
 criminal law, the principle of strictly individunl responsibility, 2» 
 the distinction between the intentional and the unintentional, 3 
 the conception of the court as an impartial authority to try 
 the merits of the case, the exclusive reliance on evidence^ and ^ 
 testimonjr, the preference of material to formal rectitude, the f-/ 
 execution ■ of the court's decision by a publie force — all are f 
 matters very imperfectly understood by primitive peoples, and 
 their definite establishment is the result of a slow historical 
 process. Perhaps no other department of comparative ethics 
 gives so vivid an idea of the difficulty which humanity has 
 found in establishing the simple elements of a just social order. 
 
 2. The growth of law and justice is pretty closely connected in 
 its several stages with the forms of social organization that have 
 been described. In some of the lower races there is, it would 
 appear, scarcely anything that is strictly to be caUed the adminis- 
 tration of justice. Private wrongs are revenged by private 
 individuals, and any one whom they can get to help them. The 
 neighbours interfere in the least possible degree, and how far a 
 man's family, or the wider group to which he belongs, wiU stand 
 by him, is a question which is decided in each particular case 
 as its own merits, or the inclinations of those concerned, direct."^ 
 
 * Take as an example the Andamanese, who hve in small commiinities 
 numbering from twenty to fifty individuals, and have no distinct institu- 
 tions for the maintenance of order or the settlement of disputes. Each 
 group, indeed, has a chief, but his powers are extremely limited, extending 
 to little beyond the right of calling the people together and exercising over 
 them what influence he can. There is no form of covenant, no oath, no 
 form of trial, no ordeal. Justice is left altogether to the aggrieved party, 
 who shoots an arrow at his enemy or throws a burning faggot at him, the 
 neighbours playing their part in the matter by running away until the 
 quarrel is over, which at any rate prevents the spread of the mischief. 
 The law of vengeance is not developed. A relative may avenge the death 
 of a murdered man, but it is not necessary that anything should happen. 
 The neighbours are afraid of the murderer, and he finds it desirable to 
 absent-Jiimself for a while. Not uncommonly a man will show his resent- 
 ment, not by punishing the wrong-doer, but by destroying all the property 
 that he can lay hands upon, including his own. The chief's property alone 
 will be respected. In other words, the Andaman islander, like the Malay, 
 is apt to run am.ok, and such men are not resisted because they are held 
 to be possessed. Conjugal fidelity among this monogamous people is 
 enforced by the husband, but in punishing the guilty party he rvms the 
 risk of retaliation. There appears, however, says Mr. Man, to be an 
 understanding that the greater the provocation offered, the less is the risk 
 incurred by the injured person or his friends, in avenging the wrong — a 
 sentiment which very aptly characterizes the degree in which justice is 
 recognized as a public matter at this stage of social development. There 
 is no definite redress, but an injured man may hope to carry the support 
 
72 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 But even at a very low stage this uncertain and fitful action 
 begins to take more definite shape. There are two possible 
 lines of development, and it will be convenient to begin by tracing 
 them separately, though in actual fact they are intertwined. 
 On the one hand, the metho d of s ejf-redress may be organized 
 and reduced to system under a regular code of recognized custom. 
 On the other, the maintenance of order, the settlement of disputes, 
 the punishment of offences, and the redress of wrongs may be 
 undertaken, partially or completely as the case may be, by_the 
 community acting through its leading men, its chief, or, finally, 
 through a regularly constituted organ for the administration of 
 justice. \ • 
 
 3. As a system vengeance, like other systems, is a product 
 of development. On the whole we hear less of it among the most 
 " primitive " men than among those which stand somewhat 
 higher. Many of the jungle people of Asia, living under the 
 simplest conditions possible, appear to be peaceful, gentle folk, 
 quarrelling and fighting but little among themselves, and if they 
 have no regular law or government, scarcely seeming to feel the 
 need.^ In such little groups, where society can hardly be said 
 to extend beyond the circle of the near kin, all well known to 
 one another and standing in definite personal relations, the con- 
 
 of the neighbours with him in rough proportion to the strength of his 
 case. Injuries done' by a member of another tribe lead to more regular 
 feuds and are avenged, if possible, by a night attack upon the neighbouring 
 camp, which, if successful, results in the slaughter of the males and the 
 destruction or appropriation of the property of the vanquished. The 
 women of the enemy, it may be noted, are not deliberately killed ; at any 
 rate, their death is not, as among some more advanced peoples, a matter 
 for boasting; and the child captive would be treated kindly with a view 
 to its adoption by the captors' tribe. Cannibalism, the frequent con- 
 comitant of savage warfare, is held in horror, but is attributed by the 
 southern Andamanese to the inhabitants of the northern island (E. H. 
 Man, Jowmal of the Anthropological Institute, vol. xii. p. 108 seq.). 
 
 ^ Thus the Punans of Borneo, who support themselves on the wild 
 products of the jungle and have no house, but a shelter of palm leaves 
 supported on sticks, live in small communities of twenty to thirty adults, 
 for the most part near relatives, under the mild and unauthoritative 
 leadership of one of the older men. " He dispenses no substantial punish- 
 ments," and if one or more of his band are displeased with him, they 
 withdraw and form another band. The Punan will avenge the murder 
 of a relative, but he seems rarely to fight with other Punans, unless insti- 
 gated by the more civilized village people with whom he maintains relations 
 (Hose and McDougall, ii. 180-183). Most of the Eskimo, and some other 
 peoples of the,North-West, are very peaceable. Among the Point Barrow 
 Eskimo, Murdoch witnessed no quarrel in two years residence {E. B. E., 
 1887, p. 41). In some cases, among the Western Eskimo, quarrels are 
 settled by a boxing match (Bancroft, p. 65). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 73 
 
 sequences of any quarrel must depend mainly on the character 
 of individuals and particularly on the resoluteness -or weakness 
 of the older men who take the lead, f Such societies, of course, 
 have their customs, which are doubtless felt as binding by their 
 members, but if we mean by law a body of rules enforced by an 
 authority independent of personal ties of kinship and friend- 
 ship, such an institution is not compatible with their social 
 organization. J' They may be more fairly characterized negatively 
 by saying that theyjknowjio lasf in_pur sense, than positively 
 by attributing to them the custom of self -redress. 
 
 Other tribes equally primitive are less peaceable. Among 
 the Lower Calif omians " every man is his own master and 
 administers justice in the form of vengeance as best he is able.^ 
 Among the Botooudos, Zu Wied gives a graphic account of the 
 rise of a quarrel — how it begins, perhaps, with a father striking 
 a child, how its mother rushes to protect it, he turns upon her 
 and her brother comes to her help. Presently both families are 
 engaged with the relatives on both sides, and the affair assumes 
 the proportions of a feud.^ It is, in fact, through the bond of 
 kindred that retaliation develops into a system, and we find it 
 at its height where a number of kindreds live together, inter- 
 marrying, forming one society, even recognizing a common 
 government for certain purposes, but each retaining jealously 
 the right of protecting its members. Theleading characteristics 
 of this stage of development are two — (1) that fedfess'is obtained 
 by retaliation, and (2) that owing* to the solidarity of the family I 
 the sufferer wUl find support in obtaining the redress that he ' 
 seeks. The individual man, woman or child no longer stands 
 by himself or herself, but can count with considerable certainty 
 on the protection of his relatives, who are bound to avenge a 
 wrong done to him, or to stand by him in exacting vengeance, 
 by every tie of honour and religion. Thus vengeance develops 
 into the blood feud. " He that sheddeth man's blood, by man 
 shall his blood be shed," is the earliest law given in the Old 
 Testament, and on this point the Old Testament may be said to 
 be a faithful reflection of the historical facts. 
 
 Though the blood feu d is ^aa,^&spreg§ion._of vengeance, this , 
 vengeance isby no means wholly without regulations aild' rules | 
 of itsjDwn.. {Tnere'TB a, rough justice recognizable in' its WOtking, 
 though it is not the justice of an impartial third person surveying 
 the facts as a whole, f There is no question of a just judge render- 
 ing each man his due, but rather of a united kin sympathizing 
 with the resentment of an injured relation when expressing itself in 
 1 Bancroft, p. 564. ^ Zu Wied, vol. ii. p. 43. 
 
74 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 certain traditional forms. Justice as we understand it — ^the ren- 
 deringto each man his due as judgedliyaji impartial aTithority — 
 i¥ not distinctly conceiVeH as a social duty in primitive etMcs, 
 and that is what, morally speaking, ^ggrentiateg_the primitive 
 ethical consciousness from the ethical consciousness at a higher 
 stage of development. (Yet primitive ethics woi;lis upon rules 
 in which a certain measure of justice is embodied.' Thus, in the 
 first place, custom p rescribes certain rules of retaliation which 
 are recognized as right and proper and have the approval of the 
 neighbours and clansmen. The simplest and earUest of these 
 rules is the famous Ltx Talionis , " An eye for an eye, and a 
 tooth for a tooth," familiar to us from the chapter of Exodus, 
 but far earlier than Exodus in its first formulation. We find it, 
 like many other primitive rules of law, in the recently discovered 
 code of King Hammurabi,^ which is earlier than the Book of the 
 Covenant perhaps by 1300 years, and we find it at the present 
 day among people sociologically at an earlier stage of develop- 
 ment than the Babylonians of the third, millennium before Christ. 
 We find it applicable to bodily injuries,^ to breaches of the 
 marriage law,^ and perhaps we may say in the rules of the two- 
 fold restitution for theft and in the symbolic form of mutilating 
 the offending member even to the case of offences against pro- 
 perty.* In some cases the idea of exact retaliation is carried 
 out with the utmost literahiess— a grotesque literahiess some- 
 times, as when a man who has killed another by falling on him 
 from a tree is himself put to death by exactly the same method — 
 a relation of the deceased solemnly mounting the tree and, much 
 one would say at his own risk, descending upon the offender.* 
 More often, of course, vengeance is simpler. Stripes, mutilation 
 or death are inflicted without any attempt to' imitate the original 
 
 1 Hammurabi, § 195. If a man has struck his father, his hands one 
 shall cut off. 
 
 196. If a man has caused the loss of a patrician's eye, his eye one shall 
 cause to be lost. 
 
 197. If he has shattered a patrician's limb, one shall shatter his limb. 
 200. If a man has made the tooth of a man that is his equal to fall out, 
 
 one shall make his tooth fall out, etc. 
 
 ' See instances in Post, ii. 240, 241. 
 
 ^ The adulterer has to yield his own wife to the injured husband (toe. cU., 
 cf. Waitz, iv. 361). 
 
 'The thief loses eye or hand. Similarly the adulterer or ravisher may 
 be castrated — and with this we may perhaps compare the punishment of 
 the unchaste wife by prostitution, as among the Kamilaroi (Howitt, p. 207). 
 Cf. Fraser, Tribes of N. S. Wales, p. 39. The perjurer loses his tongue 
 or the " sohwurfinger " (Post, I. c). 
 
 ' In the Leges Henrici, Pollock and Maitland, vol. ii. pp. 470, 471. 
 Mutilation is punished by retaliation among the Barea and Kunama, the 
 Whydah, Bogos, and Congo people (Post, ii. 241). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 75 
 
 ofience, though there may very well be a ^admg_olJiia jsngeance 
 in proportion to the original wrong. The homicide is slain, the 
 adultefer~speared, beaten, or mutilated, the thief slain, enslaved 
 or forced to make restitution, the defaulting debtor enslaved or 
 flogged.! ( 
 
 4. But at a fairly early stage in the growth of social order a 
 fresh principle is introduced tending to mitigate the blood feud 
 and so maintain peace and harmony. (For the special vice of the 
 system of retaliation is that it provides no machinery for bring- 
 ing the quarrel to an end./ If one of the Bear totem is killed by 
 a Hawk, the Hawk must be killed by one of the Bears, but it by 
 no means foUows that this wUI end the matter, for the Hawks 
 may now stand by their murdered clansman and take the life of 
 a second Bear in revenge, and so the game goes on, and we have j' 
 a true course of vendetta. Accordingly, peaceable souls, with a j 
 view to the welfare of both families, perhaps with the broader i 
 view of happiness and harmony within the community, intervene 
 with a suggestion of peace. Let the injured Bears take com- 
 pensation in another form, let them take cattle or other things 
 to make good the loss of the pair of hands which served them, i 
 111 a word, let the payment o f damages be a salve to -vindictive 
 feelmgs. In thatl^ay the inci3ent may o^me^tDr^mr end"aiid 
 peace will reign.^ When such a practice becomes a customary 
 
 ^ e. g. among the CJherokees the defaulting debtor was tied to a tree and 
 flogged (Waitz, iii. 131). In other tribes disputes as to money matters 
 were regulated by arbitrators chosen by the conflicting parties. Those 
 who were prevented by illness or any real obstacle from paying their 
 debts, were not compelled to do so, but those who could pay and did not 
 fell into general contempt. 
 
 * Among the Australians we have a still simpler and ruder forin of 
 atonement, suited to the low economic development of the people. The 
 offender must give satisfaction in kind, e. g. having injured a man he must 
 submit himself to a blow on the head or a spear thrust. Thus, among 
 the Whayook', should a man wound a fellow. tribesman, custom requires 
 him to present himself to the sufferer for a similar wound (Curr, The 
 Australian Race, vol. i. p. 339). Among the Koynup and Etecup he must 
 allow himself to be speared on the leg (ih., p. 349). Among the Milya 
 Uppa any " complaint " is wiped out by the offender allowing the sufferer 
 to strike him on his head (J. A. Reid, in Curr, vol. ii. p. 179). Similarly 
 among the Geawegal, Waimbio, Wurunjerri, etc. In many cases, too, 
 wrongs by a member of one local group upon another are wiped out by 
 the offender standing a spear-throwing ordeal in the presence of both 
 parties ; e. g. among the Yuin (Howitt, p. 342, where, though it was a 
 case of homicide, the avengers were satisfied with the first drawing of 
 blood). Generally Messrs. Spencer and GUlen remark that a savage re- 
 gards any offence as wiped out by a suitable proffer of atonement [Northern 
 Tribes, p. 31). This form of atonement leads, as we shall see later, to a 
 certain amount of public or quasi-public intervention. 
 
76 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 institution we^enter tLPon-the stage of compositlorLior offences, 
 a stage peculiarly characteristic of the settling down of barbarous 
 tribes into a peaceable and relatively civilized state, and especially 
 of the growth of the power of a chief whose influence is often 
 exerted to enforce the expedient of composition upon a reluctant 
 and revengeful family.^ As the institution takes shape axegular 
 tariff is introduced, so much for an injury, so much for the loss 
 of an eye, so much for a life, f Often a distinction between classes 
 of crime appears. \ For some it is the rule that composition 
 should be accepted. Others are recognized as too grave to be 
 washed out except by blood. Thus, among the German tribes, 
 murder and rape excited blood revenge, while other injuries were 
 punishable by fine, and the fine is significantly called " faida," 
 as being the feud commuted for money.^ The distinction 
 lasted into the Middle Ages, even in a period when the fine or a 
 part~of Ifwent toTReBig. Our Leges Henrici still' distinguish 
 emendable offences, in which sacrilege and wilful homicide with- 
 out treachery are included, from unemendable offences such as 
 housebreaking, arson, open theft, aggravated homicide, treason 
 against one's lord, and breach of the church's or the king's peace.* 
 These are crimes which in the Anglo-Saxon term had no bot — 
 no b6t or money payment atoned for them — they were b6t-less, 
 boot-less. Even wten the bot was payable it stood at first at 
 the discretion of the injured family to accept or reject it, and we 
 find the Germanic codes in the early Middle Ages setting them- 
 selves to insist on its acceptance as a means of keeping the peace.* 
 If the fine is not forthcoming, of course the feud holds. 
 
 1 But it originates much earlier. We do not, indeed, find it except in 
 the Australian form of the expiatory encounter among the Lower Hunters, 
 but we have twenty-five instances among the Higher Hunters {Simpler 
 Peoples, p. 80). The principle extends to tribes standing as low as the 
 Central Californians, e. g. among the Patawat, the murder of a man was 
 punished by a fine of shell money — ten strings for a man, five for a squaw 
 (Powers, p. 98). 
 
 ^ Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungsgeschichte, i. 437, who, however, denies 
 that the fine was a merely buying off of revenge. 
 
 ' Post, AfriJcanische Jurisprudenz, ii. 30, gives a list of ten African 
 peoples in which composition is allowed for all offences. In three others 
 it is allowed for all cases except the gravest, such as murder ; among the 
 Kimbundas, for all except sorcery and treason ; among the Barolong for 
 all except rebellion, and among the Kaffirs for all except treason, sorcery, 
 and sometimes murder. In mediaeval England there was much local 
 variation in the fines. At Lewes the fine for bloodshed was 7/4, for 
 adultery 8/4, the man paying the king, the woman the archbishop. In 
 Shropshire the fine for bloodshed was 40/-. In Worcestershire rape was 
 not emendable (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 457). 
 
 ' Charlemagne's capitulary of 802 forbids the kin to increase the evil 
 by refusing peace to the manslayer who craves it ( Jenks, Law and Politics, 
 p. 102). In England, down to the ninth and tenth centimes, the aggressor 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 77 
 
 But when injuries are being assessed, not only must there be 
 a distinc tion between^ t he injurie sjthemselves, but also between 
 the pfirioQS mjured. There must be a distinctSon of J^Jj^age, 
 sex; a free-born man is worth more than i slave, a grown-up 
 person than a child, generally speaking a man than a woman, a 
 chief or person of rank than a free man. And so we have the 
 system of " wergilds " familiar to us in the early stages of our 
 own history,^ and again recognizable in the code of Hammurabi.^ 
 
 might elect to bear the blood feud, but by an ordinance of Alfred, the 
 injured party might have the help of the ealdorman to enforce payment 
 (Pollock and Maitland, i. 47). 
 
 ^ Among the Germanic peoples, in the early mediaeval period, the 
 wergild of a noble was generally double that of a free man. A post in 
 the King's service trebled the wergild of the official's hereditary rank. 
 The Liti (H5rige) had, as a rule, half the wer of free men, whilst slaves, 
 according to strict principle had none, but only a valuation. In fact, 
 however, some barbarian codes assigned them half the wer of a litus 
 (Schroder, pp. 345, 346). 
 
 ^ Hammurabi illustrates two subsidiary points. ( 1 ) An offence against 
 a man of higher rank may be unemendable (i. e. punished by retaliation), 
 while the same oSence against a man of lower rank is commutable. (2) The 
 rank of the aggressor may influence the punishment as well as that of the 
 sufferer. Injuries to eye or limb of a patrician are punished by retalia- 
 tion (sections 196, 197), but in section 198, " If he has caused a poor man 
 to lose his eye or shattered a plebeian's limb, he shall pay one mina of 
 silver." Fvirther, by section 199, the slave has no wer — ^for the same injury 
 the aggressor " shall pay half his price." Similarly for the loss of a tooth 
 (sections 200, 201). The provisions for assault and homicide are as follows — 
 
 202. If a man has struck the strength of a man who is great above 
 him, he shall be struck in the assembly with sixty strokes of a cow-hide 
 whip. 
 
 203. If a man of gentle birih has struck the privates j)fji man of gentle 
 birtii, who is like himselfTE^jEaTTpay one miriE^T^iIver. "" 
 
 SOiilT'arpD'or man has struck the~stfengtK~ol a plebeian, he shall pay 
 ten shekels of silver. 
 
 205. If a patrician's eeryant has struck the strength of a free man, one 
 shall cut o& his ear. V 
 
 206. If a man has str'tck a man in a quarrel, and has caused him a 
 wound, that man shall Swear, " I do not strike him knowing," and shall 
 answer for the doctor. 
 
 207. If he has died Of his blows, he shall swear, and if he be of gentle 
 birth he shall pay half a mina of silver. 
 
 208. If he be the son of a plebeian, he shall pay one-third of a mina of 
 silver. 
 
 209. If a man hAs struck a patrician's daughter and caused her to drop 
 what is in her womb, he shall pay ten shekels of silver for what was in 
 her womb. ~ 
 
 210. If that woman has died, one shall put to death his daughter. 
 
 211. If the daughter of a plebeian through his blows he has caused to 
 drop that which is in her womb, he shall pay five shekels of silver. 
 
 212. If that woman has died, he shall pay half a mina of silver. 
 
 213. If he has struck a patrician's maidservant and caused her to drop 
 that which is in her womb, he shall pay two shekels of silver. 
 
 214. If that maidservant has died, he shall pay one-third of a mina of 
 silver. 
 
78 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In one form or another the system of composition prevails or 
 has prevailed almost to this day over a great part of the barbaric 
 world, among the North American Indians,^ in the Malay Archi- 
 pelago,^ in New Guinea, among the Indian hill tribes, among the 
 Calmucks and Kirghis of the steppes of Asia, among the rude 
 tribes of the Caucasus, the Bedouin of the Arabian desert, the 
 Somali of East Africa, the negroes of the West Coast, the Congo 
 folk of the interior, the Kaffirs and Basutos of the South.* j^ 
 
 5. Organized vengeance, then, may be exacted by retaliation' 
 or compounded by money pa3?ments. In either method a rooigh 
 justice is embodied, but it is justice enforced by the strongjiand. 
 Even ~^^a;ver'"aTfrerences separating barbaric vengeance from 
 civilized justice have now to be mentioned. These differences are 
 
 218. If the doctor has treated a patrician for a severe wound with a 
 lancet of bronze and has caused that patrician to die, or has opened an 
 abscess of the eye for a patrician with the bronze lancet and has caused 
 the loss of the patrician's eye, one shall cut off his hands. 
 
 219. If a doctor has treated the severe wound of a slave of a poor man 
 with a bronze lancet and has caused his death, he shall render slave for 
 slave. 
 
 220. If he has opened his abscess with a bronze lancet and has made him 
 lose his eye, he shall pay money, half his price. 
 
 1 Kohler, Zeitschrift fur vergl. Bechtewissenschaft, 1897, pp. 406, 407; 
 Alvord in Schoolcraft, v. 653; Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 331, 332. 
 (Failing a present of a belt of white wampum the family of the deceased 
 appointed an avenger.) 
 
 ' Waitz, V. p. i. 143. The wergild varies from 200 to 1000 gulden, 
 according to the rank of the dead man. In case of poison, the poisoner 
 becomes the slave of the family. A paramour may be enslaved by the 
 husband if taken in the act, but if the matter is brought before a court, 
 money compensation must be accepted. 
 
 ' Post, ii. 256, 257. In the lower grades of culture the practice 
 extends, as might be supposed, with the economic development. Com- 
 paring Composition with Retaliation, we find the following figures (the 
 expiatory encounters are omitted. The two columns do not represent 
 separate individual cases, composition and retaliation usually being 
 optional alternatives) — 
 
 Retaliation. Composition. 
 
 Lower Hunters 44 6 
 
 Higher Hunters 50 25 
 
 Incipient Agriculture .... 17 14 
 
 Pastoral 9 10 
 
 Agriculture 59 43 
 
 Higher Pastoral 8 9 
 
 Higher Agriculture .... 43 49 
 
 (Simpler Peoples, p. 80). 
 
 As public justice develops, composition is first enforced. Then it takes 
 the form of the assignmient of a fine to the injured party by a court. Then 
 all compoimding is suppressed and even becomes criminal. A court may 
 award civil damages for the wrong, but will inflict his due punislmient on. 
 the offender in addition. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE {T9y 
 
 inherent in the nature of the social organization upon which the 
 bloM teoa'rests. ~ For the blood feud is retribution exercised by 
 a family upon a family; it rests upon the support which each 
 individual can count upon from his own immediate relations, 
 possibly from his whole clan; it rests, in a word, upon the 
 solidarity of the kindred. But the effect of this solidarity upon 
 the working of retributive justice is by no means whoUy favour- 
 able. Injhe_first_place^ it has the effect that the lives of mem- 
 bers of other ^lansjj-e held indifferent^ A pe|||ect illustration is 
 afforded by the Angami Nagas, a tribe of the north-east frontier 
 of India who live in villages composed of two or more " khels," 
 as their clans are called, which, though living side by side and 
 intermarrying, are for purposes of defence independent com- 
 mimities. A hostile tribe may descend upon the village and 
 massacre all the members of one " khel " while the other " khels " 
 sleep peacefully in their beds and do not raise hand or foot to 
 protect their neighbours. This is cold-blooded, but it is not 
 without a certain reason. The exterminated " khel " has in- 
 curred a feud from which the Others are free. If they rise in 
 its defence they not only incur the danger of the present fight, 
 but they also involve themselves in the permanent feud.^ ( Next, ) 
 in so far as justice rests on the blood feud, and the blood feud is ' 
 of the nature of a private war between distinct families or clans, 
 it follows that offences wi'thin the clan are a matter for the clan 
 only and not for society as a whole. J As a rule we hear little 
 about them, partly because, no doubt, th&y are rarer,^ but mainly 
 because they do qpt excite a feud and do not, therefore, affect the 
 social order as a whole. But that they stand in quite a different 
 category from offences by an outsider u'pon a feUow clansman is 
 clear from many instances. In some thj^ offender may escape 
 very lightly. Thus, among the Iroquois and Delaware, the kin 
 would exact a fine, and failing a fine, blood-vengeance from a 
 murderer, but if a man murdered one of his own relations, he 
 escaped without much difficulty, for the family, who alone have 
 the right to take revenge, do not choose to deprive their race of 
 two members at once.i They rather endeavour to bring about a 
 reconciliation and evesn justify the deed.* On the other hand, 
 among the ThUnkeets, while murder by a non-clansman is a 
 
 ^ Godden, J. A. I., xxvi. 167. Similarly in contemporary Africa, so 
 far as blood revenge holds, the slasring of any one outside the clan is no 
 more regarded as wrong than the killing of an enemy in battle among us 
 (Post, Afrikanische Juriaprudenz, i. 60). 
 
 •No Omaha ever slew his " affinity," says Dorsey {Omaha Sociology, 
 p. 369). 
 
 ' Loskiel, p. 21. 
 
80 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 matter for vengeance or composition, a disgraoefgL-act^would be 
 felt so keenly by the ma n's own fa mily, that he might be degraded 1 
 or killed for it. HeFeTthen, isTomething like impartial justice J 
 -within the kindred, but not beyond it> In some cases the I 
 kindred may intervene to protect themselves. Thus, among the 
 Topanaz, if a man has killed a tribesman, accidentally or not, his , 
 kinsmen take him to those of the slain man, who strangle him. 
 The two parties then eat together and the affair is settled. The 
 motive is explained by the fact that if the murderer flies, one of 
 his near kindred must atone for him.^ The patria potestas is, 
 of course, the most widely spread case of unrestrained power 
 within a circle of kindred.* 
 
 Apart from more direct punishment, the kindred or their head 
 have the effective weapon of expulsion. This is the more serious, 
 because when there is no other protection than that of his relatives, 
 it leaves a ma.n^efenceless. An illustration may be drawn from 
 the eajIy~fiistory oFHohammed's teaching, when the Korais, who 
 found that Mohammed's gospel was very inimical to their gains, 
 wanted above all things to put him out of the way and made the 
 most strenuous efforts to induce Mohammed's uncle, who was 
 head of the clan, to disown him. Had the uncle consented, 
 Mohammed would have been left without protection and might 
 have been dispatched by any one without fear of consequences, 
 but till the death of the uncle the clan stood by him ; and the 
 leading men of Mecca, powerful as they were, were not bold 
 
 * Swanton, p. 427. 
 
 ' Esohwege, vol. i. p. 221. Compare the action of the family among the 
 Creeks (Bartram, Trs. American Ethnol. Socy., 1853, pp. 66-67). An 
 interesting case is recorded by Mr. Teit (Jesiup Expedition, p. 560) among 
 the Shushwap. A man is killed by two of his relations on the ground that 
 " he is conducting himself in such a way that very soon some one will 
 kill him. Then we shall have to avenge his death." They apply the 
 homoeopathic remedy publicly and without interference — people remarking 
 that he is a bad man. " His relations wish to kill him, he belongs to them 
 and has nothing to do with us." However, the conscience of the murderers 
 was clearly not easy, for they proceed to challenge every one, and an old 
 woman gets up and says, " You are not content with killing your relation 
 but also boast and challenge us," whereupon the murderers fled. 
 
 ' But it must be noted, conversely, that the murder of a parent might 
 excite general horror and even punishment at the hands of unconnected 
 people. Thus, among the Campas, who had no regular government or 
 law, Urquhart says : "It must not be supposed that crime is on this 
 account allowed to go unpunished," and he mentions the case of a man 
 who had murdered his mother and fled— "At every hamlet the same 
 indignation was expressed. Not an Indian but would kill him on sight " 
 (Scottish Geogr. Magazine, 1893, p. 349). A similar sentiment is hinted 
 at with regard to a man who gambled away wife and children among the 
 Carriers, but the authenticity is doubtful (Morioe, Trs. Canadicm Institute, 
 1893, p. 79). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 81 
 
 enough, to take upon themselves a blood feud with Mohammed's 
 family.^ The fear of the blood feud is the great restraint upon 
 disorder in primitive society, and, conversely, he^hose death wiU 
 excite no blood feud has no legal^ protection . 
 
 So^faf the negative side^Fclan justice. The positive side has 
 peculiarities not less startling to the modem miud, for since it 
 is a member of one body who has done a wrong to a member 
 of another body, the whole body to which the offending member 
 belongs may be held responsible by the whole body to\ which 
 the injured member belongs; and it is not merely the original 
 criminal who may be punished, but logically any member of his 
 family may serve as a substitute. Respo nsibility is collective, 
 and therefore also vicarious. r. Sometimes the whole family 6t the^ 
 offender is destroyed with him.^ Sometimes any relation of the 
 offender may suffer for him vicariously. John, who has done 
 the deed, being out of reach, primitive vengeance is quite satisfied 
 with the life of Thomas, his son, or brother, or cousin. Just as 
 in the blindness of warfare the treacherous act of an enemy is 
 generalized and perhaps avenged in the next battle by a retalia- 
 tion which does not stay to ask whether it is falling on the 
 innocent or the guilty, so in the primitive blood feud. The wrong 
 done is the act of the family or clan to which the aggressor 
 belongs, and may be avenged on any member of that family or 
 
 ^ Palmer, Introduction to the Koran, pp. 24, 25. Among African peoples 
 there is, generally speaking, no blood feud for homicide within the clan. 
 But among the South- Western Arabs the parricide is put to death, and 
 for fratricide the father may put the offender to death or demand the 
 blood price (Post, A. J., i. 63). Among the Bogos the slayer of brother or 
 father would be killed on the spot if taken. But if he escapes, his fate 
 will depend on the question whether his victim has or has not left children. 
 If so, they will take up the feud. If not, he can make his peace without 
 
 gayment, and then inherit his brother's property and widow (ib., ii. 60). 
 1 the Malay region the murder of a relative is dishonouring, but has rio 
 money penalty (Waitz, v. 1, 149). For illustrations of the variety of 
 customs under this head, see Steinmetz, ii. 153-176. Ostracism, culminat- 
 ing in outlawry, is perhaps the only punishment known to the Seri Indians. 
 The victim might be left to perish unless reinstated by a display of prowess 
 or generosity (McGee, R. B. E., xvii. 273). Expulsion from the clan was 
 the only punishment among the Santals, but other clans would not take 
 the outcast in, so that his position was hopeless. Minor offences might be 
 compounded by giving a feast (Hunter, Indicm Empire, p. 73, and Rural 
 Bengal, p. 205). 
 
 ' e. g. among the KaflSrs, at Loango, and among the Barolong, the 
 relatives are held responsible for payment by the accusers, and on the 
 Gold Coast the relatives of the sorcerer are slain or enslaved along with 
 him (Post, A. J., i. 46). Among some North American Indians the family 
 and the whole tribe were held responsible for a murder committed by one 
 of them (Waitz, iii. 132). In Anglo-Saxon law it was possible for a family 
 to be enslaved for a theft by the father (Pollock and Maitland, i. 56). 
 6 
 
82 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 clan.^ Sometimes the retaliation is made-more speeific-bjta^resh 
 application oiWJSi;^TaMdms^ &nd to the rule " eye for eyeT* 
 there is the pendant "son for son, daughter for daughter, slavetffr 
 ,.sIave,.QX for ox" You have slain my son ? Then thetrtte-aod- 
 just retribution is that I should slay yours.^ It is my daughter 
 who is slain ? Then it is with your daughter that you must pay 
 for her. Sometimes vengeance is specially directed against the 
 chief as representing the clan.* Sometimes it may be visited on 
 any male, or even on any adult member of the clan, children 
 alone being excluded. Sometimes this last shred of humanity is 
 torn away. The principle is pushed to its furthest and most 
 
 1 For instances, see Post, Cfrwndriss, i. 230 ft. Prof. Tylor instances 
 the Bedouin, Australians, South Sea Islanders, and Kaffirs, as peoples 
 among whom the blood feud involved the whole clan (Gontem/p. Review, 
 1873, p. 59). In some cases the wergild involved the slaying of several 
 persons for one. Thus, by Anglo-Saxon law, six ceorls must die for 
 one thegn (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 450). Edmund set himself to 
 suppress feuds, forbidding attacks on the kindred unless they harbour the 
 homicide. Mohammedan law, while admitting retaliation, restricts it to the 
 offender (Post, loc. cit.). But the kin are liable for money composition 
 (Dareste, p. 64). In m:any African tribes a creditor will seize and sell 
 as a slave any relation of the debtor's whom he can find, or even any 
 member of the same town. It is not surprising to learn that this method 
 of distraint is a fruitful source of war (Post, A. J., ii. 140). A still 
 wilder development of vicarious revenge is found in the Gazelle Peninsula 
 among the Papuas, where the husband whose wife has been stolen goes into 
 the bush and kills the first man he meets. This man's kindred do the same 
 thing, and the process is repeated till the stroke lights upon the original 
 offender, whose goods have to pay all the damage (Kohler, Z. d. vgl. 
 Rechtsw., 1900, p. 381). Cf. a similar practice in S. Guinea (Post, A. J., 
 ii. 22). 
 
 ' The most astonishing case is in the treatment of the builder in the 
 codes of Hammurabi, 229 : " If a builder has built a house for a man and 
 has not made strong his work, and the house he built has fallen, and he 
 has caused the death of the owner of the house, that builder shall be put 
 to death. 
 
 I 230. If he has caused the son of the owner of the house to die, one shall 
 put to death the son of that builder. 
 
 231. If he has caused the slave of the owner of the house to die, he 
 shall give slave for slave to the owner of the house." Though barbaric, 
 these sections might have a use if suitably posted in modem suburbs. 
 
 ' Or the father or elder brother may be the appropriate victim. Among 
 the Dieri, if a man killed another imintentionally in a fight, his elder brother 
 or father will be slain some night by a Pinya or secretly formed party of 
 avengers. He himself will only suffer if he have no such relative (Gason, 
 in Brough Smyth, vol. i. p. 129). In West Victoria a man's brother or 
 nearest male relative was responsible for the appearance of a man sum- 
 moned to stand the spear-throwing ordeal, and if he fails to appear, may be 
 attacked with boomerangs (Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 76). Collins 
 {History of N. S. Wales, p. 321) relates a compUcated vendetta, a minor 
 incident in which is that a widow revenges herself on her husband's 
 murderer by killing a little girl related to him and is not molested, but 
 afterwards lives with the murderer until he is killed by one of her deceased 
 husband's friends. 
 
LAW AND JUSTldE 83 
 
 revolting development among the head-hunting tribes common in 
 South-East Asia, in which magical ideas combine with those of 
 revenge, and the skull of the enemy has a potency*of its own which 
 makes its possession desirable in itself. The head of a child or 
 woman of the hostile body is no less coveted an object than that 
 of the fighting warrior, and is probably easier to obtain. When 
 the principle of composition arises collective responsibility is re- 
 duced, by a less barbarous logic, to a common pecuniary liabilit y. 
 The clan are collectively responsible for the blood money due 
 from a member, and by the same logic they are the collective 
 recipients of blood money due to any member.'- And as with 
 blood money^o with other debts.^ There is a collective liability — 
 a conception which in this softened form has its uses in the social 
 order, and is in fact enforced and applied to the commune — 
 though in right it belongs rather to the clan — by many Oriental 
 Governments.* 
 /' 
 
 6. Ihirther, with the theory of collective responsibility goes 
 almost necessarily t he failure to distiag uish betweenagfiic 
 and desig i. In the ethics ot organized Vengeance the real 
 gravamen of a charge against an aggressor is that he has done an 
 injury. How he did the injury, whether of set purpose or by 
 accident, is a matter of less moment. My son, or brother, or 
 cousin, or clansman, is killed; that is enough for me; I must 
 have some satisfaction out of the man who did it, and, what is 
 
 * e. g. among the Bogos and Bedouin (Post, i. 253), and compare Post, 
 A. J., i. 45 and ii. 35. For collective claims on the blood money, of. 
 Tacitus, Germania (op. G. Waitz, Deutsche Verfaaaungageschichte, i. 32), 
 " recipitque satisfactidnem universa domus." 
 
 ' e. g. at Great Bassam (Post, A. J., i. 45). Among the Yoruba, Tshi, 
 and Ewe speaking peoples, collective responsibility which formerly applied 
 generally is now restricted to debts (Ellis, Toruba-apeaking Peoples, 299). 
 Cf. Waitz, iv. 306. In Yucatan the whole family is responsible for 
 debt. 
 
 ' And elsewhere ; e. g. at Sierra Leone and in several other parts of 
 Africa, responsibility for debt extends to the Commime (Post, A. J., i. 
 75). In the Malay constitution the family is responsible for its members, 
 the auku (clan) for its famiUes, the village for its aukits, the district for its 
 villages (Waitz, v. i. 141). The principles of collective responsibility is 
 found in all economic grades of uncivilized society, but only, so far as our 
 tables go, in a minority of instances {Simpler Peoples, p. 80). On the 
 other hand, it is but rarely that we hear specifically that vengeance is 
 limited to the offender. Our table therefore gives a minimum. The 
 principle tends to be extended with the development of composition, for 
 which, very naturally, the whole family is made liable. Thus we find 
 vicarious vengeance mentioned in -27 of our cases among the Lower 
 Hunters, and in '17 among the Higher, but in '38 of the highest Agricul- 
 tural peoples. In this form, however, it is not so much vicarious vengeance 
 as liability of the family estate for the tort of a member. 
 
84 , MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 more, my family must have some satisfaction out of his family * 
 Furthermore, the whole distinction between design and accident 
 is by no means so clear to primitive man as it is to us, for though 
 it needs little reflection and a very moderate amount of self- 
 knowledge to distinguish between what one has done one's self 
 by accident or by design, and a very moderate degree of reasoning 
 power to apply the distinction to other men — still, th£ nascent 
 Reflection of the savage is strangledj at birth by the (prevailing 
 pheory of witchcraft and possession.^ / If a tree falls upon a man's 
 head the savage holds that a spirit guided it. If a man, cutting 
 a branch from a tree, dropped his axe on to another's head, it 
 may not have been the man's own soul which guided the axe, but 
 it was another soul which possessed him temporarily; he was 
 possessed by some spirit, and as possessed he should be put out 
 of the way.* The treatment of the subject in the Hebrew codes i 
 illustrates the difficulty which is experienced even at a higher 
 stage in strictly distinguishing between the two spheres of de- 
 sign and accident. Each code assigns a city of refuge for the 
 excusable homicide, but none make it perfectly clear whether 
 it is unintenti onal or unpre meditated man-slaying that is in 
 view. jTTEe Book of the Cov6fl.a,nt sinlply says, " If a man lie 
 not in wait, but God deliver him (the victim) into his hand, 
 
 1 Of the union of vicarious revenge and the punishment of unintentional 
 injury, the Hupa supply an instance which has at least the merit of com- 
 pactness. A woman kindled a fire out of doors to boil watp ^-, f\ olni^r^ fall 
 into it and was b urned, aiid the l ife^ of the woman's son was sought in 
 reveng eJGoddard7 Umv. of Lialif. Publicationa, vol. i. p. 60). 
 
 ^T&srs. Spencer and Gillen (ii. p. 556 fi.) describe an avenging 
 party among the CJentral Australians setting out to kill a man living a 
 hundred miles away, to whose magical practices they imputed the death 
 of one of their friends. Finally, they failed to find the man and killed his 
 father on the pretext that he knew of the practices and did not prevent 
 them. As the whole charge of magic would probably be founded on nothing 
 better than an antecedent enmity, together with some augury indicating 
 the direction which the avengers should take, the pretext is a sufficiently 
 thin screen for the real idea of vicarious vengeance. Still, it is interesting 
 that it should be put forward. Among the Narrinyeri, Taplin (in Woods, 
 Native Tribes of 8. Australia, p. 34, etc.) speaks of a distinction between 
 premeditated mvirder and manslaughter, and describes a combined " tendi," 
 or meeting of two totemic groups, the one accusing a member of the other 
 of murder, while the group of the accused declared that the death was 
 accidental. But he adds : " I cannot give the natives credit for much 
 order. There was a tremendous amount of talk. Sometimes one would 
 speak, then half a dozen would speak together — ^I could not make out the 
 drift of the discussion." This being so, we can hardly quote this evidence 
 as proof of nice discrimination of degrees of responsibility among the 
 Narrinyeri. 
 
 ' Post, A. J., ii. 29. In West Equatoria the man who injures another 
 in cutting down a tree is held the agent of an indwelling magical power 
 and must submit to the ordeal of Mbundu drinking (ib.). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 85 
 
 then I will appoint thee a place whither he shall flee. And if 
 a man come presumptuously upon his neighbour to slay him 
 with guile, thou shalt take him from mine alfar that he may 
 die." ^ In Deuteronomy there is ap attempt to define accident. 
 The city of. refuge is appointed for i" whoso killeth his neighbour 
 unawarogjjffld hated him not in t has&. past." j The first qualifi- 
 cation would be true of ungytentional. the second of unpremedi- 
 tated homicide.'' Then follows asomewhat elaborate illustration 
 of a case of pure accident.^ " As when a man goeth into the 
 forest with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth 
 a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth 
 from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die, 
 he shall flee unto one of these cities and live : " and then it is 
 once more stated that the slayer ought not to die, " inasmuch 
 as he hated him not in time past," which would be true of any 
 want of premeditation. Furthermore, even in this relatively 
 enlightened code the unintentional slayer is notJEully protected. 
 It is clearly anticipatedrthOTTEe "livenger ofblood will pursue 
 him " while his heart is hot, and overtake him because the way 
 is long," and smite him mortally, and there is no hint that the 
 avenger will be punished. Nor was the alternative, exile to the 
 city of refuge, a merely nominal penalty. Finally, in the Priestly 
 Code there is an elaborate jattempt to distinguish different cases. 
 The cities o f refuge are appointed for every one that " killeth 
 any person unwittingly," or, as the margin renders it, " through 
 error." (An attempt is made to render the meaning clearer by 
 •specifying the implements used, of iron, wood or stone.) _Qn-the / 
 qillfiii_haii4, he who has killed another, " lying in wait " or "in 
 enmity," is to be put to death by the avenger of blood " when 
 he meeteth him." In intermediate cases the congregation shall 
 judge. " But if he thrust him suddenly without enmity, or 
 hurled upon him anything without lying in wait, or with any 
 stone, whereby a man may die, seeing him not, and cast it upon 
 him, so that he died, and he was not his enemy, neither sought 
 his harm : then the congregation shall judge between the smiter 
 and the avenger of blood according to these judgments." * Even 
 here, then, the three cases of accident (" seeing him not "), assault 
 without intent to kUl (" thrust him suddenly ") and unpremedi- 
 tated homicide (" without lying in wait ") seem to be in a 
 measure confused. And even in this code the avenger may 
 slay the man-slayer anywhere outside the borders of the city of 
 refuge until the death of the high priest. 
 
 1 Exodus xxi. 13, 41. ' Deut. xix. 4-6. 
 
 » Numbers xxxv. 15, 20, 21, 22-24. 
 
86 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Not infrequently in early law we find the distinction that 
 unintentional homicide is atonable by paying the wergild, while 
 deliberate murder gives rise to the blood feud. Thus in thp 
 code of Hammurabi ^ the homicide might swear that the blow 
 was unintentionaL and escape with a_fine_. So, again, though 
 Germanic law begins by holding a man equally imputable 
 for all that he has done, it is an ancient mitigation that for 
 Unintentional homicide the wer is due, and the blood feud should 
 not be waged.2 (The disentanglement of innocent from culpable 
 homicide was a very gradual achievement in medissval Europe 
 though aided by the Civil and Canon Law, and the forfeiture of 
 goCids — ^the direct survival of, the wergild — remained in theory in 
 English law down to 1828.») 
 
 fit is a natural, though, to our minds, a bizarre consequence 
 that in early justice animals and even inanimate objects may 
 be regarded as appropriate subjects of punishment A The slaying 
 of offending animals is provided for in the Book of Exodus. 
 Many cruel punishments were inflicted upon animals in the 
 code of the Zendavesta,* and the same thing occurred in medi- 
 aeval Europe, where, perhaps under the influence of the Mosaic 
 legislation, it even survived in isolated cases to the sixteenth or 
 seventeenth century .^ The punishment of animals and inanimate 
 objects was no mere wreaking of ^blind fury on innocent creatures. 
 Probably, to the primitive mind, the ox that gored a man, the 
 sword that slew, and the murderer that wielded it, were much 
 more on one level than they can be to us. The animal or tool, if 
 not conscious themselves, might be endued with a magic power 
 
 1 Hammurabi, 206-208, cited above, p. 77. 
 
 ' Pollock and Maitland, ii. 470 and 471. In many cases, however, the 
 innocent homicide can only escape by a recommendation to mercy. In the 
 Anglo-Saxon law the distinction is not so much between intentional and 
 unintentional as between open and secret slaying/life., i. 52). This recalls 
 the difficulties in Deut. and Numbers. Generalfy speaking, according to 
 Post (A. J., ii. 28), the responsibility of the agent is not presumed as a 
 ground of his punishment in Africa. But in some cases, as in Aquapiu and 
 Ashanti, the penalty for an accidental offence is reduced, and later (in 
 contradistinction to earlier), Kaffir law imposes, as a rule, no penalty on 
 accidental homicide. 
 
 ' Blackstone, iv. 188. In practice " as far back as our records reach," 
 the defendant could obtain a pardon and writ of restitution. The clear 
 demarcation of individual responsibility is far from being universal in 
 civilized law. In the Mohammedan world, a man's family is collectively 
 responsible even for damage done by him involuntarily (Post, Orundriss, 
 ii. 216, of. Dareste, p. 64). In China, involuntary offences are punished, 
 though on a reduced scale. In the Japanese code of 1871 accidental injury 
 to parents is heavily punishecl (Post, ii. 218). 
 
 ' Entirely, no doubt, under the influence of magical ideas. 
 
 * For other instances, see Post, ii. 231. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 87 
 
 or possessed with an evil spirit. It was well to get rid of them 
 before they did more harm. If not destroyed they might be 
 purified. Thus in the English law of Doedand* which was not 
 abolished till the middle of the last century, there is a survival 
 of the view that anything that has kiUed a man must undergo 
 a kind of religious purification ; a cart, for instance, which ran 
 over a man, or a tree which fell on him, was confiscated and sold 
 for charity — at bottom merely a somewhat humanized version 
 of the ancient Athenian process whereby the axe that had slain 
 a man was brought to trial, and, if found guilty, solemnly thrown 
 over the boundary. It need hardly be added that where re- 
 sponsibility is extended to animals and inanimate objects, it is 
 apt to be inadequately defined in the case of idiots, lunatics, and 
 
 nunors.'- ■ 
 
 (The principle of collective responsibility does not necessarily 
 disappear with the rise of public justice under central authority. 
 It lingers on, partly through sheer conservatism, but also in 
 many cases for political reasons, to a late date. Thus it is 
 particularly common to find that in political offences the family 
 of the offender suffers with him. The principle of collective 
 responsibility has always been maintained in the Far East, in 
 China,^ in the Korea, and, under the influence of Chinese civiliza- 
 tion, in Japan, while it is noteworthy that for political offences 
 the parents and children might be punished under French law 
 right down to the time of the Revolution. Parallels could be 
 found in the laws of the ancient East, of ancient Persia,* and of 
 
 ' See Post, ii. 219, and, for the variation of custom under this head, 
 Westermarck, Moral Ideas, pp. 265-277. 
 
 ' Post, ii. 226. With this is associated punishment for unintentional 
 offences {ib., 217). In Chinese law, accidental parricide is still capital, 
 though the older law appears to have been mitigated. A man who 
 accidentally killed his mother in attempting to defend her, was sentenced 
 to the lingering death, commuted by special decree to decapitation, subject 
 to the Empress's pleasure. See, for various instances, Alabaster, p. 159 ft. 
 A wife killing her husband unintentionally is sentenced to decapitation 
 (ib., 192). A misdeed which, however indirectly, caused the death of a 
 senior relation is also punished, if the relative be a parent, by death {ib., 
 320 seq.). A senior relative is punishable for a junior's offence, even if he 
 knows nothing of it ; e. g. a father was sentenced to one hundred blows 
 because (unknown to him) his son had abducted a girl (Alabaster, p. 152). 
 A junior relative is still more heavily punishable for the offence of a senior. 
 If a man murders four members of one family he suffers the lingering 
 process, and his male children, irrespective of age, die with him in equal 
 number to those murdered. In the case of Wang Chih-pin a child of ten 
 was condemned to death for murders by his father. In another instance, 
 the children were condemned to be castrated, the father having killed three 
 persons {ib., 164). The motive is partly to punish the murderer's spirit 
 by cutting off his male descendants, on whose offerings he depends in the 
 new life {ib., 58). ' Post, ii. 227. 
 
88 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 many states of mediseval Europe. It is, in fact, only the decay 
 of the joint family system and the rise of the free individual as 
 the basis of the modern state which definitely does away with 
 this principle, so fundamentally irreconcilable with the strictly 
 ethical notion of justice. An interesting transitional phase is 
 to be found in the Old Testament, where the visiting of the sins 
 of the fathers upon the children is very definitely laid down as 
 a piece of divine justice in the earlier legislation (I mean in the 
 second Commandment), whereas in the time of Ezekiel it was 
 strongly maintained to be an injustice that when the fathers h9.d 
 eaten sour grapes the children's teeth should be set on edge, j It 
 was, in fact, part of the ethical revolution introduced by the later 
 prophets to establish morally for the Jewish code the principle 
 of individual responsibility.^ ) 
 
 ^ 7. With the evolution of social order, and in particular with 
 the growth of central authority, the redress of wrongs begins to 
 take the form of an independent and impartial administration of 
 justice. Let us trace this growth in outline from its beginnings. 
 In order to do so we have to follow several strands of develop- 
 ment, which are gradually woven together. 
 
 (a) Sacral and other PvMic Offences.— In the first place, from 
 a very low stage of social development we find the community 
 as a whole, or its organs the council of elders or the chief, dealing 
 regularly with certain actions which are resented as involving the 
 community as a whole in misfortune and danger, \ These include, 
 besides actual treason, conduct which brings upon the people the 
 wrath of God, or of certain spirits, or which violates some mighty 
 and mysterious taboo. The actions most frequently regarded in 
 this light are certain breaches of the marriage laws and witoh- 
 craft.2 The breaches of the marriage law which come in question i 
 
 1 Ezek. xviii. 2 ; Jer. xxxi. 29. The result is embodied in Deut. xxiv. 
 16 : " The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall 
 the children be put to death for the fathers : every man shall be put to 
 death for his own sin." The same transition is found in the law of the 
 Visigoths : " Let not father for son, nor son for father, nor brother for 
 brother fear any accusation, but he alone shall be indicted as culpable who 
 shall have committed the fault " (Sutherland, Origin and Growth of the 
 Moral Instinct, ii. 168). By Salic law a man might cut himself off from 
 his family, but then, of course, he also lost its protection {ib., 167). In 
 the Gilgamesh Epic we have an interesting appeal to the god to visit his 
 offence on the sinner and not destroy mankind. 
 
 * Cf. Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwickelung der Strafe, 
 ii. 328-341. Among the Hurons in the seventeenth century murder and 
 theft were punished by retaliation, but for a sorcerer death was authorized 
 by the people, and the first comer might slay him (Le Jeune, writing 
 in the Jesuit Relations, a.d. 1636, vol. x. p. 223). As to traitors, there is 
 some conflict of evidence, Lalemand (vol. xxviii. p. 49) speaking of no 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 89 
 
 here are confined to those transgressions of the prohibitions of 
 intermarriage upon which primitive races lay such extraordinary 
 stress. A mere violation of the marriage tie •is generally in 
 savage society a private matter, avenged by the husband alone, 
 or by those whose duty it is to help him ; but a breach of the 
 rules of exogamy, a marriage within the totem, for example, or a 
 marriage outside the permissible class, is regarded as an offence 
 endangering the community herself, and only to be wiped out 
 by the extinction of the offender. A Central Australian tribe, 
 for instance, which has no regular means of enforcing any law, 
 wiU make up a war party to spear the man and woman who 
 have married in defiance of these customs.^ Similarly, common 
 action will often be taken to protect the community from witch- 
 craft, obviously a terrible offence in a society which firmly : 
 believes in it. Among the North American Indians a public 
 sentence was often pronounced and carried out by the chiefs in 
 cases ~oi sorcery, and sometimes also in cases of cowardice or , 
 breaches of the marriage customs.^ The punishment of witch- '^ 
 craft is as widespread as the fear of it, and, prompted as it is by 
 the sense of a danger to the whole community, is often peculiarly 
 ferocious, and directed to the destruction of every one connected 
 with the offender.* 
 
 punishment but compensation, while elsewhere we hear of the traitor's 
 liability to be executed by the first comer. Magic murders and breaches 
 of the tribal marriage rules are more than once mentioned by Messrs. 
 Spencer and GOlen as illustrations of the offences which a council of the 
 elders would punish. It is not distinctly stated, but one would infer that 
 these are the regular occasions for such action, though they may at times 
 deal with other matters. Among the Dieri, on the other hand, real as 
 well as magic murder seems to have been punished by the council (Howitt, 
 p. 321), though whether the council really represents the tribe as a whole, 
 or a group or association of groups combining against an outsider, is not 
 quite clear to me. From the fact that its vengeance may be vicarious 
 (see above, p. 82) I should infer the second alternative. 
 
 ' Sometimes the old men of the tribe will invite a neighbouring group to 
 execute the criminal. Cutting and burning are sometimes substitutes for 
 death (Spencer and Gillen, Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 495). 
 
 ' Kohler, Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Bechtswissenschaft, 1897, pp. 412— 
 416. For the punishment of sorcery, see Waitz, iii. 128. Among the 
 Salish, Kwakiutl, Kootka, Tsimshian, Thlinkeet, and Haida peoples 
 Niblack (iJ. B. E., 1888, p. 253) says : " In cases such as witchcraft or 
 offences of medicine men, sentence of death or of fine is adjudged by the 
 leading men of the village after trial. In most instances, however, the law 
 of blood revenge, an eye for an eye, leaves little need for other than family 
 councils, as they are purely totemic offences and are arranged by the 
 injured gens." 
 
 ' " The punishments affecting sorcerers can scarcely be called punish- 
 ments. They are acts of annihilation." — Post, ii. p. 395, where numerous 
 instances are given from all parts of the world. In some oases, the whole 
 family of the offender perishes with him. 
 
9() MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In the same spirit any offences against religion or even breach 
 of ceremonial rules may be made matter for Eublic punishmer 
 Thus, among the Bellacoola Salish, the assembled chiefs wbu 
 decree death for any transgression of the Kusuit ceremony, i 
 by the unlicensed performance of a dance or making a mista] 
 in dancing.^ So, too, among the Tsimshian the Council punish 
 sorcery and breaches of the prescribed dancing rules.^ Sometim 
 insanity or some eccentric habit may have serious consequence 
 Thus, among the Chepara, " if a man became insane or was in tl 
 habit of idiotically muttering to himself, they killed him becau 
 they thought that it was Wulle (an evil being) that was influencii 
 him, and that disaster might happen to the camp. In the san 
 tribe to show the Bull-roarer to a woman was a capital offen 
 for both parties.' 
 
 The object, of the community in exterminating the offend 
 in these cases is not so much to punish the wicked man as 
 protect itself from a danger or purge itself from a curse. Achs 
 takes the accursed thing, the thing which had been devoted 
 Jahveh. The taboo on the thing devoted is at once commur 
 cated to Achan himself as though it were a poison or an infectio 
 or, to take another metaphor, a charge of electricity. It pass 
 from the spoil appropriated to the appropriator, and no resour 
 remains but to devote Achan with all his family and belonging 
 everything, in fact, which the accursed thing had infected. Tl 
 Rpman crimina-l, if his offence bore a religious character, w 
 " sacer " — separated from rnen, made over to the offend( 
 deities.* His goods were set apart (consecratio bonorum), for th( 
 were involved in his impurity. He was banished, so that noi 
 
 1 Boas, Brit. Ass. Reports, 1891, p. 417. 
 
 ' Boas, Brit. Ass. Reports, 1899, p. 832. By a curious turn of thougl 
 both the vicarious principle and that of atonement may figure even in su 
 cases as these. Thus, in the Bellacoola case, a relative may, if willing, 
 substituted for the offender (Boas, loc. cit.). Among the Tsimshian ao 
 crime may be atoned by sviffioient payment (loc. cit.). Similarly amo: 
 the Euahlayi, in Australia, taking a woman of the prohibited class w 
 a deadly sin. " But by a curious train of reasoning two wrongs make 
 right," for such a man might stand the spear-throwing ordeal from t 
 woman's kin, provide a woman of his family for a man of hers (exactly t 
 same breach of rules which he had himself committed), and then live wi 
 her in peace (Mrs. K. L. Parker, p. 79). 
 
 » Howitt, p. 354. 
 
 * Thus the undutiful son is " sacred " to the parental deities. " 
 parentem puer verberit, ast olle plorassit, puer divis parentum sacer estc 
 (Bruns, Pontes Juris Romani Antiqui, p. 14). Treason to a client, 
 ploughing up a neighbour's landmark would also render a man " sacei 
 (cf . the curses in Deut. xxvii.). At bottom, the idea of some North Americ 
 Indians is similar, among whom the murderer is taboo, because haunted 
 the ghost of the victim (Kohler, Z. f. vgl. Rechtswst., 1897, 408). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 91 
 
 might come into contact with his accursed person. He was cut 
 off from fire and water, not primarily because fire and water were 
 necessary to Ms life, so that he was sentenced to tieath by being 
 deprived of them, but rather for fear that his accursed touch 
 should pollute the sacred elements and convey the pollution to 
 others. That the criminal suffered in consequence was a satis- 
 factory collateral effect, but the main thing was to secure the fire 
 and water from pollution.^ 
 
 Thus far, then, public punishments, where they are any more 
 than an explosion of indignant feeling, may be regarded as public 
 action taken for the sake of pubHc safety. The community is 
 threatened with palpable treason, or with occult magic influence, 
 or by the wrath of the gods.^ It protects itself by destroying 
 - the traitor, or sacrificing, or, at any rate, getting rid of, the witch. 
 It is a kind of public hygiene rather than a dispensation of justice 
 "which is in question.^ \ 
 
 In other cases the tribal offence is of a more secular character. 
 Intercourse with an aHen was held the "dSSdliest offence among 
 the Serf,* and was among the misdeeds that led to outlawry, 
 and among the Makh-el-Chel of CaUfomia the chief might put a 
 woman to death either for marriage or adultery with a white 
 man.^ A chief himself was lynched among the Ni-shi-nan for 
 kidnapping women to sell to the Spaniards.^ These are offences 
 verging on treason.' To them may be added, as essentially 
 pubhc matters, breaches of camp disciphne and violations of the 
 rules of the hunt. Thus, among the Kiowa Indians, " Camp and 
 ceremonial regulations were enforced and their violation punished 
 
 ' Ihering, Oeist des BOmiachen Bechts, i. 275-277, etc. 
 
 ' Among the German tribes the worst offenders were sacrificed to the 
 gods, unless the latter showed signs of grace, in which case the offender 
 became a slave of the gods, or was sold into slavery, or became an exile. 
 The great offences were : breach of the peace of the temple, the army, or 
 the meeting, of a special festival, or, finally, of the house ; grave-robbing, 
 treason, raising an army in rebellion, arson, black magic ; anti-social 
 crimes of peculiar depravity, such as breach of a sworn peace, unnatural 
 desire, and acts of cowardice, such as desertion from the army ; concealed 
 murder and theft, in opposition to open murder and robbery (Schroder, 
 Lehrbuch der Deittschen Bechtsgeschichte, pp. 74 and 76). 
 
 ' Among the Central Sakai marriage within the family (including that 
 of first cousins) is looked on with abhorrence. " Incest of this sort (for it 
 does occur) is one of the few things that can stir an aboriginal community 
 to its depths. It seems to invite the divine wrath, and no Sakai feels safe 
 till the scoundrel is put an end to. And as the Sakai political system 
 has no means of compulsion or punishment for dealing with cases of this 
 sort, the tension becomes greater than ever " (R. J. Wilkinson, Papers on 
 Malay Svbjecta, " The Aboriginal Tribes," p. 60). 
 
 * McGee, op. cit., p. 284. ' Powers, p. 214. • Powers, p. 320. 
 
 ' Mere friendship with white men may be dangerous — a man was killed 
 for this by the Dieri (Howitt, p. 332). 
 
92 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 by the ya'pahe (warriors) acting under direction of the war chiefs. 
 Personal grievances were avenged by the injured party or by his 
 nearest relatives without interference by the tribe." ^ 
 
 (b) " Occasional " Justice. — In several of the above cases it 
 is clear that it is not for lack of an organ of punishment that 
 ^private matters are left to party vengeance. It is that they 
 are not regarded as matters directly concerning the community 
 as a whole, and the evolution of criminal justice mayTe 
 looked at from one point of view as an extension of the 
 conception of a " tribal " offence till it covers every serious 
 wrong done to a single member of the tribe. We find a 
 beginning in this direction when special offences that provoke 
 indignation are met by a special act of collective resentment.' 
 This may be due to the unpopularity of the aggressor or to 
 the status, influence, or popularity of his victim. Thus, of the 
 Shoshones, Bancroft writes : " Every man does as he likes. 
 Private revenge, of course, occasionally overtakes the murderer, 
 or, if the sympathies of the tribe be with the murdered man, he 
 may possibly be publicly executed, but there are no fixed laws 
 for such cases." * This is typical of what we may call "^ccar 
 sional " pubhc intervention in private matters. (It is neither law 
 nor justice, which go by rule, but ah explosion of popular sym- 
 pathy which may or may not be provoked by the personalities 
 involved in the caseJ The objections to the offender may, indeed, 
 be well founded. Thus, among the Central Eskimo, a man who 
 had committed repeated murders might be killed with the 
 consent of all his neighbours, and in Labrador we are told that 
 a murderer who turned on the avenger of blood and kiUed him, 
 might be put to death.^ So among the Dakota we hear of the 
 village council decreeing the death of some young men who had 
 attempted the murder of their brother and threatened that of 
 other people. The proceedings were held while they were asleep, 
 and three men, one a half-brother, were delegated to dispatch 
 them.* 
 
 (c) The Adjustment of Disputes. — It is easily intelligible 
 that occasional intervention should harden and define itself 
 
 1 Mooney, R. B. E., xvii. 233. Cf. Dorsey on the Hidatsa, R. B. E., 
 XV. 243. ' 
 
 * Bancroft, p. 435. For the Lex Talionis among the Utah Shoshones, 
 cf. Remy and Brenchley, Journey to Great Salt Lake City, ii. 292, where 
 the actual instances given refer to the whites, but the practice is taken as 
 general. 
 
 * Boas, R. B. E., 1884-1885, p. 582 and appendix. Turner, R. B. E., 
 
 Xla UOO. 
 
 * Schoolcraft, vol. ii. p. 183. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 93 
 
 into rules of custom. But there is another method of approach 
 To~^gular justice which has, perhaps, had greater influence. 
 It is the natural effort of frien ds, rela tives anct n eighbours to 
 prevent the development of a quarrel mto a tight, particularly 
 when the fight may involve ultimately all the consequences 
 of a party feud. It is equally natural that the older men, or 
 the chief, who is often no more than the most respected and 
 influential elder of a little group, should be particularly active 
 in this respect . Thus we often hear of a chief ^ittle that is definite 
 except that he takes the lead in the movements of the band, 
 having, perhaps, no authority but that which respect and his 
 personal prowess or powers of persuasion may lend him, and that 
 he settles disputes among his followers. WTiere his power is so 
 purely personal, the submission to his judgment must be volun- 
 tary, and we must think of him not as a judge, but as a friendly 
 arbitrator, or rather, at first, asji^oncinator. If the parties are j 
 not satisfied, self-redress remains. Thus, among the Montagnais, 
 Micmacs (or Souriquois) and Etechemins, the Jesuits found small 
 chiefs or " sagamores " who, with the help of the friends, easily 
 adjusted small quarrels. But these chiefs had no binding au- 
 thority, and all serious crimes were occasions for vengeance or 
 composition.'^ Resort to the chief may be wholly optional. 
 Among the Timorese the leorei is judge as well as king, but acts 
 only in the rare cases when complaint is made to him. Every 
 man or his family exacts justice on the wrongdoer, if possible 
 by extorting compensation.^ 
 
 In many cases where a settlement of disputes by a council of 
 elders, or a chief, is spoken of, we find on further examination 
 that this method is^erely^subsidiary^ to that of self-help and 
 private vengeance. Thus, among the Nagas, Stewart * certainly 
 tells us that petty disputes and disagreements about property 
 are settled by a council of elders, the litigants voluntarily sub- 
 mitting to their arbitration. But he goes on to say that, cor- 
 rectly speaking, there is not a shadow of constituted authority. 
 It is true there is general peace. But this is founded on revenge, 
 and the prosecution of it to the extremest lengths for the most 
 trifling offences — and this not only as between different villages, 
 but as between two members of the same village. In the rare 
 event of a quarrel breaking out between two men of the same 
 
 '■ Biard, in the Jesuit Belations, vol. ii. p. 73 ; vol. iii. p. 93. 
 
 " H. O. Forbes, J. A. I., xiii. p. 421. As the Portuguese forbid the 
 taking of life, we are told that now cases are brought before the Bajah 
 in order to seoure the fines. 
 
 ' Journal As. Soc. of Bengal, p. 609 
 
94 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 village, each has his party who " takes up his quarrel not by any 
 means from a sense of justice, but from relationship — and a civil 
 war ensues which is disgusting to contemplate." In such cases 
 as this it would be very misleading to speak of justice as adminis- 
 tered by a court as we conceive it. The function of the council 
 is clearly to maintain the peace if possible, bjjt the real basis^of 
 order is the blood ieudjand, thejearpf.it. 
 
 " The justice " of a chief is often of the same subsidiary kind ; 
 thus, among the Brazihans, von Martins ^ teUs us that the chief 
 hears the rare cases of dispute, associating with himself the 
 sorcerer and medicine-man ; that in grave cases whole families 
 with their supporters come before him, that he tracks a thief 
 and enforces restitution, and perhaps the punishment of wound- 
 ing in addition (p. 81). But looking further, we find that in 
 these tribes blood revenge is in full swing. There is no punish- 
 ment for killing a man in a quarrel. Revenge is purely an affair 
 of the family. It is only when death or injury is inflicted by a 
 member of another tribe that the community takes the matter 
 up. Vengeance is collective and spares neither children nor the 
 aged. Where, then, is the chief in all this ? He seldom meddled, 
 we are told, in cases of homicide within the community, but there 
 was no rule in the matter. He might seek to appease the feud by 
 getting the parties to accept composition, but probably this 
 would only be accepted in the case of somewhat distant relatives 
 (pp. 130, 131). Smaller quarrels were generally fought out, and 
 it was thought discreditable to bring them to the chief. In this 
 case, then, the pubhc authority as focussed in the chief is seen 
 acting intermittently for the appeasement of strife by the well- 
 known expedient of " composition." But in the background, as 
 before, lies the blood feud.^ 
 
 In particular, a chief or a council set themselves to secure the 
 acceptance of composition. Thus, among the Khonds, we read 
 that RetaKation is in general the sole remedy for wrongs of what- 
 ever order, but society intervenes to prevent revenge by com- 
 position, having in view " exclusively the private satisfaction of 
 the individual, not the vindication of any civil or moral rules 
 
 ^ Beitrdge zur Ethnographie Amerika's, i. 59, etc. 
 
 • McPherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 81. Among the Kayans 
 we gfl"^ transition to public justice. The authority of the chiefs and the 
 penalties imposed by them " are prescribed in a general way by custom," 
 but much depends on -the personal qualities of each chief, and, " on the 
 whole, the chief plays the part of arbitrator and mediator, awarding com- 
 pensation to the injured party, rather than that of a judge " (Hose and 
 McDougall, Pagan Tribes of Borneo, i. 65). Among the Sea Dyaks it 
 would seem that the chief ought to execute justice, but "ties of relationship 
 are impediments " (Ling Roth, Natives of Sarawak, ii. 228). 
 
LAW |f AND JUSTICE 95 
 
 of right." (Some very simple peoples have a complete system 
 of arbitration, resort to which is altogether optional.) Thus, an 
 aggrieved Hupa might take his case to his headman or some 
 other prominent person, who would suggest compensation. If 
 the facts were disputed, witnesses would be heard and the 
 " court " would duly receive a fee. Personal injuries and homi- 
 cide might be settled in this wa.y^ Kir^Jfjyg.a ftqnn.]]y opPTi tt" t^ft 
 
 nnTnp1a.inajTt^to re ject g .ny settlem ent and demand life for life. 
 
 vicarious ly or otherwise .j 
 
 IjSfRegulated Vengeance and Partial Control. — A common 
 modification of crude self -redress is the set figbt. This may 
 be a mild affair, like the boxing' matchesiby which the 
 Western Eskimo sometimes settle their disputes.^ Others are 
 more deadly, as among the Yuracare, where, though a wound in 
 the arm should end the fight, the duel, in fact, often proceeds to 
 the death.* The duel generally ta.kea place under nrescribe d 
 conditions and ma y be te rmi nated by a set test, as among the 
 Kubu, wh6r6 the abducuon ol a wiie resulted in a duel in 
 the water, the man who could submerge the other winning the 
 woman.* It may be a test of endurance, as among the Kabi 
 and Wakka, where the disputants grip one another and scarify 
 the back with a flint tiU one or other has enough.' The pubhc 
 or the chief may look on, and act as judges, as in West Victoria, 
 where the protector of an ill-used wife must challenge the 
 husband to a duel.^ Here is a germ of publ ic intervention, and 
 the matter becomes still more formal if the fight is between two 
 kindreds or two local groups. Among the Southern Kamilaroi 
 trespass disputes were settled in this fashion, and a single combat 
 of champions might be substituted for a general encounter.' The 
 expiatory encounters among the Austrahans, which have been 
 mentioned above, were not properlyXflghts, for the offender was 
 oql SJ'Mo^ed to. defend himseM and not to yeply. But his own rela- 
 tives or his local group were at hand, armed, to defend him, and 
 the precise conditions of the affair seem to have been a matter of 
 negotiation. Thus, at Port Lincoln, Schiirmann ^ tells us of two 
 murder cases, in one of which it was agreed that the murderer 
 should stand two spear-throws from the brother of the victim, 
 whQe the other was settled by a fight between eight men on each 
 side, which was stopped, though with much difficulty, without 
 bloodshed. The first is an expiato ry meetin g, the second a 
 
 * Goddard, Univ. of California Publications, vol. i. p. 59. 
 ' Bancroft, p. 65. 
 
 ' D'Orbigny, L'Homme Americain, i. 348. * Hagen, p. 136. 
 ' Curr, iii. 121. * Dawson, p. 35. 
 
 Hewitt, p. 332. ap. Woods, pp. 245, 246. 
 
96 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 rBf J iilated fight. Both involve a certain amount of supervision, 
 ' and we might say that, if the community definitely compel the 
 offender to make atonement and would punish him if he refused, 
 this would be a form of public intervention which we might 
 describe as assistance to private revenge, while, if the avenger is 
 similarly compelled to accept such satisfaction and demand no 
 more, it is similarly pubhc control of private revenge.'- How 
 far pubhc interyentjoa would go, we are not always informed. 
 Often we are told merely that this satisfaction is regiiired^by 
 custom, just as in other parts of the world compensation is good 
 custom. But among the Geawegal, Rusden^ says "obedience 
 to such laws was never refused, but would have been enforced 
 without doubt, if necessary, by the assembled tribe." Curr, on 
 the other hand, says of the Bangerang in a similar case, that if 
 the offender had refused he would probably have been murdered 
 by the injured party, and no one would avenge his death.' 
 There would, of course, be the constraint of custom and opin ion, 
 but if this account is correct, no physical force other than that 
 of the aggrieved party. A warrior who trusted suflBciently to his 
 own prowess might snap his fingers at the custom,* and, indeed, 
 all the accounts show that if he knew how to use his shield, the 
 exposure to the spear-throwing was, at worst, a very nominal risk.^ 
 
 1 A quite distinctive mitigation of the regulated fight in a peaceably- 
 disposed people is seen in the nith songs o£ the Greenlanders. A man 
 would challenge any one who had injured him to a contest of song at a 
 meeting of the tribe. " The litigants stood face to face with each other 
 in the midst of a circle of on-lookers, both men and women, and, beating 
 a tambourine or drum, each in turn sang satirical songs about the other. . . . 
 They related all the misdeeds of their opponent and tried in every possible 
 way to make him ridiculous. The one who got the audience to laugh 
 most at his gibes or inventions was the conqueror " (Nansen, Eskimo Life, 
 p. 186, etc.). This is not the description of a trial, but of a regulated duel, 
 only a duel of wits, a substitute for the serious blood vengeance which 
 persists, though in a mild form. For murder, we are told, is regarded as 
 a purely private aSair for the murdered man's nearest relatives to take 
 up. There are, however, cases of extreme atrocity in which a village has 
 been known to make common cause against a murderer and put him to 
 death, and, as usual, we learn that to kill old witches and wizards is not 
 considered criminal {ib., p. 162). The normal blood feud is varied by 
 occasional outbursts of public resentment. 
 
 " Cp. Fison and Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, App. F. 
 
 ' Squatting in Victoria, p. 245. 
 
 * See a dramatic story in G. S. Lang, Aborigines of Australia, p. 8 : 
 " a bold man, formidable with his weapons, could do anything with 
 impunity." 
 
 ' The accused, says Beveridge, of the Riverina natives, generally acknow- 
 ledged his guilt (which, if we may judge from other cases, would often be a 
 quite imaginary charge of magic), stood the exposure, which was rarely 
 fatal, and was then received again as an innocent man, having " tholed 
 his assize." Perhaps every fifth native, Beveridge thought, had killed his 
 man (Aborigines of Victoria, p. 108). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 97 
 
 f Further, both the regulated fight and the expiatory meeting 
 are in large measure affairs between members of distinct local 
 groups, devised to avoid real and sanguinary t)attles between 
 them, which would jcesult if either side chose definitely to stand 
 by its own member^ Thus, among the Yuin, blood revenge was 
 frequent and led to-reprisals, hence the old men preferred the 
 -expiatory ordeaL So, among the Wot jobaluk, a murder might be 
 adjusted by an expiatory meetin g between the two totems con- 
 cerned, but if the Headmen were not careful to intervene when 
 blood was drawn, the upshot might be a general fight between 
 the two parties.^ In such a case, doubtless, constraint would, if 
 necessary, be placed on the individual offender by his own group, 
 and on the injured member by his group, but as between the groups 
 the whole transaction would be a party affair. If the offender's 
 group so chose, they might refuse the meeting and risk the fight.* 
 At bottom, redress is a question of the strength of the parties. 
 
 Thus, whether in the regulated fight or in the e:^ piatory . 
 encoun t er^ t he basis is self -redress, and Dubho intervention is 
 present only in a germi Bs d'f P rm. A further step is taken when 
 the- injured iiaji can connnand the direct assistance of his 
 community, or his chief. Among the GaUinomero, according to 
 Powers, the avenger had his option between the murderer's 
 money or his life, but if he chose his Ufe, it was the chief who tied 
 the criminal to a tree, while a number of people shot arrows into 
 him.* What means he used to enlist his chief on his side we do 
 not know. Was there anything Uke an investigation, or did the 
 affair go by favour and influence ? * We do not know, but we are 
 clear (a) that the initiation and direction of the affair is in private 
 hand87T[6) that pubhc force is used in execution. This is definite 
 public assistance of private redress. Among the Ojibways we 
 are'carried a step further, for the chief in council pronounced 
 upon a charge of murder, but (a) it was apparently at the option 
 of the complainants to demand death or compensation, (6) it 
 was the next of kin who executed the sentence, and (c) many 
 cases never came into court, vengeance being taken directly by 
 the relatives.* 'Again, instead of being assisted, vengeance may 
 
 1 Howitt, pp.* 334 and 342. 
 
 ' As, e. g. among the Wirudjuri {Howitt, p. 332). 
 
 ' Powers, p. 177. 
 
 * Among the Kurumba, a South Indian tribe or caste, the husband flogs 
 an erring wife and her lover — if he can. If not, he appUes to the headman 
 to do it for him. What arguments does he use ? {Buchanan, in Thtirston, 
 voL iv. p. 164). Among the Karaya people the business of the chief is 
 to help in finding the offender. It is for the injured party to punish 
 (Kbienreich, Beitrdge, p. 29). 
 
 * P. Jones, Hittory of the Ojibway Indians, pp. 108-109. 
 
98 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 be controlled.) Thus, among the Pitta Pitta in Queensland, after 
 a fight, the old men of the camp would inquire into the cause. If 
 the conquered man had ravished the victor's "wife or given him 
 the " death bone " (a magical process of securing his death) no 
 further action was taken, but if the victor was in the wrong, he 
 must undergo similar injury with similar weapon, even death if 
 death he had dealt.^ In this case self-redress is controlled. 
 Lastly, we have cases where -chief _or council direct the affair and 
 inflict the punishment, but this consists in strict tahon.^ Here 
 we may legitiraately infer that the pubhc authority has taken 
 over the business of redress, the old method being stUl applied 
 for the full satisfaction of the avenger's traditional demand. 
 Lastly, the old view of crime may appear u i t he fact t hat t he mos t 
 ■sen ous offences are atonab le, either by co mpensation wluck -fhe 
 Court ^asaidsto the jsia tivesror16^ aj^e jghinh if, f.^l ^es tb itself 
 or puts to puBEc use. Atoneme nt, it should be observed, has a 
 wider applluditiun LGim composition. It rests on the notion that 
 an offence is something that can be made up for by some special 
 sacrifice, a good deed, a benefaction, or a penance, whereas 
 impositio n is definite payment of damages for injury done_ 
 tothe party injured. Li atonement the offender cortipounds 
 with the community, with God, or with conscience.* Unfortu- 
 nately, we are not always able in our authorities to distinguish 
 between Atonement and Composition proper, for while we 
 are often told that a fine is the penalty, we do not always 
 know to whom the fine goes. But it is sufficiently clear that 
 both atonement in general and composition in particular stiU 
 play a large part in the pubhc punishment of the simpler 
 societies.* 
 
 (e) The Transition. — In an ordered society the murder of any 
 simple citizen is regarded with the same feeling and provokes the 
 
 1 W. E. Koth, p. 140. 
 
 ' e. g. The Jakun, P. Favre, Indian AreMp., vol. ii. p. 268. Cf. the 
 Atkoor Chensu, among whom the death penalty was inflicted by the 
 chiefs of clans in the same manner and with the same weapon as the murder 
 (Captain Newbold, J. E. A. S., vol. viii. p. 376). 
 
 ^ Among the Padam Abors, crime was a public disgrace, to be expiated 
 by a sacrifice, for which purpose the people took the first animal they 
 found, leaving the owner to recover compensation as best he could from 
 the offender (Dalton, p. 22). 
 
 * Confimng the title of composition to cases in which it seemed clear 
 that the injured party is paid, and leaving all other cases of payment for 
 murder, rape, etc., imder the head Atonable, we enumerated 152 cases of 
 composition and twenty-four of Atonement (expiatory encounters not 
 reckoned). The majority of these would be associated with private 
 redress. We have foimd at various stages thirty-foui- cases of composition 
 or atonement associated with regular Public Justice. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 99 
 
 same collective intervention which would be excited in a simpk 
 tribe, where self -redress is the rule, by incest or black magic. We 
 called these tribal offences, and we may formulate the transition 
 from self -redress to regular justice by saying that ^ave offences 
 a gainst the individual have become " tribal " offence s-^TnfurieB 
 tothe community^ Nor is this a wholly imaginary description of 
 the actual method of transition, for in some cases we find evidence 
 that simple homicide has a sacral as pect, and concerns the tribe 
 on^this accoiSt! Thus, among the Omaha, the murderer might 
 be spared by the relatives, but he was still under a taboo and 
 must pitch his tent apart for two to four years. Even the 
 involuntary man-slayer must do similar penance, though for a 
 shorter time, and the reason was that his presence infected the 
 air.i Frequently the homicide has to undergo a ceremonial 
 purification, even though his act was innocent or laudable by the 
 standard of his society. He has the death-infection about him 
 or is haunted, behke, by the ghost of the slain.^ Among the 
 Dyaks not only incest — almost everywhere a " tribal " offence — 
 but bigamy might be a cause of bad weather and require a puri- 
 fication of the earth with the blood of pigs and a taboo on the 
 village for three days.* The shock to the customs and sentiment 
 that regulates private intercourse clothes itself in the famiUar 
 supernatural garb. Condemnation of the act takes the form of a 
 fear for the commonwealjjl^hich naturally reinforces the resolu-- 
 tion to put down such acfes by .the punishment and, if need be, 
 extermination of the offenders. ^ 
 
 But, apart from sacral conceptions, the developing sens e of 
 ju stice , the natural sympathy with the injured man, and the 
 dTsJike and fear of the aggressor, have an important ally in the 
 necessities of the common' safety. Self -redress is a dangerous 
 proceeding, as the result of which a little community may at any 
 time find itself divided^nto two bitterly hostile factions. In the 
 small Australian local groups, or in a Californian band, there will 
 hardly be any on6~whi>is not connected with one or other of two 
 disputants, and a quarrel will endanger the whole society. Hence 
 even in the lowestsocieties we are not to suppose that serious 
 aggressions are matter of entire indifference to the bystanders. 
 
 1 Dorsey, "Omaho Sociology," R. B. E., 1881, p. 369. Fletcher Bnd 
 La Flesohe, B. B. E., vol. xxvii. p. 215. 
 
 ' Some cases, at least, of the Australian expiatory meetingB are referable 
 to this cause, e. g. among the Ngurla, people who have been absent when a 
 relative dies, must not speak on return to camp till they have h£id spears 
 thrown at them (Curr, vol. i. p. 289). So, too, among the Wiimbaio 
 (Hewitt, p. 452). 
 
 ' Ling Both, Natives of Sarawak, vol. i. p. 401. 
 
100 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 On the contrary, the ^public opinion of the group is always a 
 force to be reckoned with. E very rrian's rights and obligati ons 
 are fixed ^ by custo m. The very vengeance taken on those who 
 infringe them is a custom and directed in all its details by tradi- 
 tion. The headman or the elders of the clan or village are pre- 
 pared to hsten to complaints, to decide whether a wrong has been 
 done, and, if so, what the reparation ought to be. The injured 
 party may appeal to them if he pleases, and it may be that the 
 aggressor will abide by their decision. If so, the affair is arranged 
 perhaps by composition, perhaps by a stated penalty. Other- 
 wise the parties will fight it out or it will come to a feud. Hfence 
 there is an effort on the part of the leading men to keep the 
 peace and adjust the quarrel. Sometimes they will intervene 
 of themselves if a feud becomes serious and threatens the 
 general peace. ^ 
 
 The " court," if so it may be called, appears at this stage rather- 
 as peacfimaker-than- judge.. The disputants may ignore it, pre- 
 ferring to trust to their own strength and that of their friends. 
 Yet it is from the first the avenger's interest to have pihlic 
 opinion with him. He relies on the countenance and practical 
 help of his kindred and fellow-tiibesmen. At least he must 
 avert their opposition. If the facts are peculiarly flagrant the 
 neighbours will be with him and he will have the less difficulty 
 in executing vengeance. Perhaps even the kindred of the wrong- 
 doer will refuse to stand by him. Thus it becomes the interest 
 of the avenger to make his case plain to the neighbours, and 
 they in turn wish to hear what the accused party has to say. 
 <A palaver is held. The avenger comes with his kinsmen and 
 V friends. They state their case and announce their intention of 
 seeking revenge. The accused is also present, backed by his 
 kin, and repels the demands made on him. It may be that the 
 matter is settled between the groups concerned. It may be 
 that the neighbours or the chief give sentence, but even so it does 
 not follow that they enforce it. They may give the appellaijt 
 their moral support, and leave it to him to obtain satisfaction 
 as best he can. But, of course, their decision helps him to get the 
 opinion of the tribe on his side, and their moral force will be 
 translatable into physical force. It wlU mean so many more 
 backers f or-him, and so many less for his opponents. - This support 
 may be disdained by the strong, but it wiU be valued by the weak, 
 and will be upheld by those who desire^ internal peace. Feuds^ 
 are_ayerted^byjthe adjustment^.f disput^, or, if a wrong has been 
 done, by getting tlie'complainant to accept coinpD.sition and the 
 aggressor to undergo some penalty which will be a mitigated form 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 161 
 
 of revenge, or by bringing the two parties to fight it out under 
 the regular forms of a duel. 
 
 Suoh methods of mitigating the blood feud afe stimulated by 
 the growth of the ^mglypower — that is to say, of an organized 
 force outside the contendingTamihes or clans, which can sum- 
 mon them before its bar, decide their cause, and require them 
 to keep the peace. The king, whose duty and interest it is to 
 maintain pubho order, treats crime — or certain kinds of crime — 
 no longer as an offence against the individual whom it primarily 
 affects, but as a menace to pubhc tranquillity, a breach of his 
 " peace." ^ This, if he isjfcrong enough, he will punish directly ; 
 if not sufficiently strong, he will deprive the offender of his 
 protection, put him outside the king's peace, and compel him by 
 fine to buy back what he has lost. Thus we find crime punish- 
 able by wite as well, as by bot — a fine to the king side by side 
 with compensation to the kinsfolk. 
 
 But from :^oral assistance the jtransition to physical assist- 
 ance is not very difficult in idea, however slow and cumbrous it 
 may have been in practice. There is more than one method of 
 transition. Sometimes we find the public authority, the elders 
 or the whole body of the neighbours, or later the regular magis- 
 trate, exerting themselves to arrest the offender and handing 
 him over to the avenger of blood for execution, or judging 
 between the avenger of blood and the man-slayer, whose act was 
 " unwitting." Thus in Deuteronomy, if the deUberate murderer 
 flies to a city of refuge, " then the elders of his^mTT-SKalTsend and 
 fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger 
 of blood that he may die." * But without taking an active 
 part in the pursuit and capture of the offender the court had an ' 
 
 ^ Common in Germanic law. See, for Kngland, Pollock and Maitland, 
 ii. 451. The Kaflirs distinguish (1) offences against the king, which consist 
 in infringements upon his property or the number of his subjects. In 
 these they include treason, sorcery, murder, cruelty, rape, and abortion. 
 (2) Ofiences against private people, which include adultery, immorality, 
 theft, injury to a garden, etc. A similar distinction is found among the 
 Kimbunda (Post, A. J., ii. 64). This is in effect a rudimentary distinction 
 between civil and criminal justice, and shows at least one avenue of 
 transition to the conception of public crime. The notion of injury to 
 an individual is applied to the king, but owing to the king's special 
 relation to the community, the notion, in being applied to him ,is 
 unavoidably extended and modified. In fact, potentially it covers all 
 anti-social action. 
 
 ' Deut. xix. 12. So still in the priestly code. Numbers xxxv. 12-25. 
 The law of the Germanic peoples, in the Frankish period, appears in a 
 transitional stage. The Eastern Goths, Burgundians, Bavarians, and 
 Anglo-Saxons left execution to the complainant. The law of the Western 
 Goths excluded private execution ; the Salio law gave the complainant the 
 choice (SchrSder, p. 371). 
 
102 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 effective weapon in the power of outlawry. Since in accordance 
 with early ideas all personal rights depend upon membership of a 
 society united for mutual protection, it follows that the man 
 excluded from the group is in the position of a stranger and an 
 enemy ; he is a wolf's head, a wild animal whom the first comer 
 may put to death at sight, with whom nobody may associate, to 
 whom nobody may give food or lodging. Outlawry can there- 
 fore be applied either as a punishment or as a process — as a 
 method of bringing the accused into court. What more reason- 
 able than that if he will not submit to law he shall losejhejffo- 
 teetion^ofjth&law ? With this weapon, potent in proportion as 
 the social order is developed, the court of early law consoUdates 
 its authority, and from a board of conciliation of uncertain powers 
 and irregular constitution, becomes an established authority 
 administering public justice, with compulsory powers before 
 which either party canjDe summoned to appear at the instance of 
 his opponent. u/ 
 
 (f) The Inner Group and the Wider Society. — When we speak 
 of public justice we have in mind, of course, a community/ 
 with recognizable limits. But aggressions may be perpetrated!' 
 by members of another community and there may then be no 
 common court of appeal. In a circle of civihzed communities 
 all private offences would come under the jurisdiction of one 
 community or the other. If an Enghshman should be robbed 
 in France, he would seek satisfaction in the French courts. 
 It is only the class of grave public differences for which civiUza- 
 tion has not yet succeeded in establishing a pubUc justice 
 which should include the (jommunity of the world. But in the 
 simpler societies aggression by aii outsider may' give rise to 
 retaliation on the part of the sufferer or his friends, and the result 
 may be a feud between neighbouring villages or tribes.^ If the 
 feud i s organized by the village as a whole, and led by the chief, 
 we should call it ^war, but when it is conducted by the injured 
 party on their own account, it is true self -redress and may be 
 called External RetaUation. Now we have seen that in the 
 lowest cultural levels the community is very small, consisting 
 for the most part of near relations, or at any rate of neighbours 
 and friends. Such a community will protect its own members 
 
 1 Sometimes it seems to be retaliation of this kind which our authorities 
 have in view when they speak of the prevalence of blood revenge. Thus, 
 among the Bagobos, blood revenge is said to be common, but it seems to 
 be practised as between different villages, oHences within the village being 
 oompoundable (Schadenberg, Z. E., xvii. 28). Among the Igorottes, 
 vengeance was exercised upon members of other villages, but not, we 
 conjecture, within it (see Blumentritt, in Peterman, Ergbd, 1882, p. 287). 
 
tAW AND JUSTICE 103 
 
 and will present a certain solidarity as against the rest of tLe 
 world. Yet it may also be on social terms with other similar 
 communities, visiting them, bartering with them, intermarrying 
 with them, perhaps owning certain lands in common, having a 
 common cult and ceremonies, recognizing a common tribal 
 name, and even prepared on occasion to make common cause 
 against outsiders. Something" like this is the normal relation of 
 the Australian local group to the tribe, and even, perhaps, to 
 distinct but contiguous tribes.^ Now pubhc justice may very 
 well be developed within the smaller group, but not beyond it, 
 and this appears, in fact, to have been the case in Australia. 
 Thus, among the Yuin, if a man kiUed one of his own local group, 
 he was put to death by order of the headmen, but a murder by one 
 of another group gave rise .either to vengeance or an expiatory 
 meeting.^ And among the BouHa people, while vengeance' wrfchin 
 the group" was controlled as we have seen, murder by one of an 
 allied group was revenged by spear-throwing and not always 
 by the exaction of one life alone.* These are more hke acts of 
 retaliatory Justice — ^mitigated and regulated, no doubt — within 
 a loosely united society than of warfare between two distinct 
 societies. The relations are comparable to those of two or more 
 clans which combine to form one tribe but still retain each the 
 right of protecting and avenging its own members. We have 
 seen above that relations within the clan may be quite different 
 from those between clan and clan. Among the Wyandots, quite 
 an elaborate juridical system was based on this distinction. 
 An offence within the gens was tried and settled by the gentile 
 council. An offence against a member of another gens was a 
 matter for negotiation, and, that failing, retahation on the gens 
 at fault.* Now the clans of a tribe which has a common council 
 or a chief, clearly form one society, and retaliation between them 
 is a case of self-redress within a society. The Australian local 
 groups do not so clearly form a society, and retahation as between 
 them is not so clearly a case of private justice but might instead 
 be called private war. But this is not because the Austrahans 
 are more advanced than the Wyandots in general provision for 
 the maintenance of individuals in their rights, but because they 
 are less so, because society, beyond a very small group, is more 
 amorphous and less orderly. To get a fair comparative view of 
 
 ^ All the above eouditions, for instance, would hold of the groups or, as 
 he calls them, tribes, of the Boulia district, as described by Roth (op. cit., 
 p. 41). 
 
 ' Howitt, pp. 342, 343. ^ Roth, 140. 
 
 * Powell, B. B. E., i. p. 66. In the case of murder there seems to have 
 been an appeal to the tribal council, but with what effect is not clear. 
 
104 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the stages by which justice is estabUshed, then, we shall do best 
 by ranging the justice within the Australian local group (though 
 that is not necessarily confined to a kindred) with that of the 
 Wyandot clan, and that of the Austrahan tribe with that of the 
 Wyandot tribe. 
 
 It is natural that something of the nature of impartial justice 
 should be found in the small groups that constitute the primitive 
 constituents of society before it extends to larger communities. 
 In the hunting peoples of the Indo-Malay region, where the 
 enlarged family is the society, we hear comparatively little of 
 retaliation and self-help, and sometimes order seems to be en- 
 forced and justice done by the elders of the group.^ So far there 
 is something of an analogy to public justice, but the analogy is 
 only obtained by dropping out the essential differences between 
 a society consisting of a couple of score of near relatives and a 
 people like the Five Nations of the Iroquois, to say nothing of a 
 civihzed state. At the level where vengeance is organized, the 
 unit is precisely a family group comparable to and often much 
 greater than the entire community of the forest or jungle peoples, 
 and^the evolution of pubhc justice and order is essentially a 
 problem of establishing equitable relations and peacefulrcir- 
 j)peration between such bodies, and so constituting a poHtica.! 
 society. To follow the evolution of justice inteUigently, then, we 
 must distinguish the cases where it is established within a con- 
 stituent group from those in which it holds for a wider society. 
 ^^TPubhc justice, in theifuU sense, should only be asserted when it 
 I prevails in a society which is larger than a family group, and 
 J when it holds, not only within but between the constituent groups 
 \ of such a society. 
 
 8. The Development of Public Justice. — We have, then, 
 numerous gradations of " pubhc justice," from slight and 
 partial beginnings to a complete system of control over the 
 more important relations of men, and any of these gradations 
 may be found either within an inner group or in an extended 
 society. How far can we trace any actual social development 
 along the hne of these gradations ? The materials at hand for 
 an answer are (1) recorded historv . (2) the indirect evidence of 
 ethnology . To begin with the second, we can apply more than 
 one test. First, we divide forms of justice into three grade s. In 
 the lowest we place cases where we have evidence of self-redressT Tt 
 with or without composition or the regulated fight! Weadd ' 
 cases where we are told definitely that there is no regular method 
 1 e. g. among the Negritos of Angat. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 105 
 
 of redress, though evidence of this kind must be received with a 
 certain amount of caution. We do not eliminate any case from 
 this class on account of " occasional " intervention as explained 
 above, because that stands in strong contrast with regular justice ; 
 nor on account of " tribal " offences, because we are considering 
 justice as between man and man, nor, lastly, on account of 
 methods of the peaceful settlement of disputes which do not carry 
 authority. In this grade, then, seK-redress predominates, fii 
 the next grade we have (1) cases in which the avenger is either^ 
 assi^ed or controlled by pubUc force, or can get the judgment of 
 a pubHc court to sanction his act. We add (2) cases in which/ 
 there is pubhc punishment for some offences, e. g. murder, bu<>\ 
 not for others, e. g. rape and theft ; and (3) cases, not uncommon, 
 in which there is a fully established system of public justice, but/ 
 self-redress is still a recognized custom and unpunished. Our 
 third grade consists of cases where a reg ular .sy-steTin of publin 
 justice deals normally witE. ail seri o us dispu t es and grave offence s . 
 When we compare these tnree grades with our economic classP ^ 
 fication, we find (1) a continuous increase in public justic e from 
 the Lower Hunters to the Higher Pastoral and Agricultural, 
 (2) in seM-redre ss a. co rresponding descent^ irom the Higher 
 Hunters to the Highest Agriculture. But" the Lower Hunters 
 do not show so high a percentage as the Higher Hunters if we 
 take into account the cases where there is a partial development 
 of public justice within the AustraHan local group or the Indo- 
 Malayan enlarged family. If, on the other hand, we take 
 account only of justice in the wider society, we have a con- 
 tinuous decline in this grade, corresponding to the continuous 
 rise in public justice.^ 
 
 There is, however, a sense in which the AustraHans are more 
 advanced than the Higher Hunters, and this is brought out by a 
 slight modification of our grades. This modification is prompted 
 by the difficulty of defining the beginnings of pubhc assistance 
 or control. We felt that in some way or other perhaps every 
 Austrahan group, and, indeed, every small and compact society, 
 would, if all the facts were known, exhibit some beginnings of 
 such supervision, and we therefore broke up our two first grades 
 into three, the second being intended to exhibit public assistance 
 in germ. We then had four classes altogether : (1) where there 
 was self -redress, or "no law," and public punishments only 
 " occasional " or for tribal offences ; (2) where there were regu- 
 
 ' Sim/pier Peoples, p. 68 ff. The Higher Pastoral show a rather larger 
 fraction than the Higher Agricultural. The Lower Pastoral, on the other 
 hand, are below the Lowest Agricultural. 
 
106 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 lated or expiatory encounters, or arbitration, or some public 
 punishments,- assistance, or control combined with the independent 
 existence of self-redress; (3) (a) where public assistance or 
 control or public punishments in certain cases are recorded 
 without any evidence of mere self-redress, and (6) where self- 
 redress remains as an alternative to regular public justice ;i 
 (4) regular public justice, as before. The result of this classi- 
 fication is to show that the Lower Hunters have a larger pro- 
 portion in the second grade than in the first,* whereas with the 
 Higher Hunters and even the lowest Agriculturist it is the other 
 way. This is the only important irregularity. If we combine 
 the two lower grades as cases in which self-redress predomin- 
 ates, and the two higher as cases in which public justice 
 predominates, we find a close correspondence with the economic 
 grading. The following gives the figures* in each economic 
 class, and also reduces them to a fraction of the total number 
 of recorded instances. 
 
 Self-redres8 
 
 Pvhlic justice 
 
 PvbUc justice 
 
 predominating. 
 
 predominating. 
 
 regular. 
 
 Lower Hunter . . 50J (-98) 
 
 1 (-02) 
 
 0(0) 
 
 Higher Hunter*. . 59 (-84) 
 
 Hi (-16) 
 
 4 ( -05) 
 
 Lower Agriculture . 24 (•72) 
 
 H (-28) 
 
 6 ( -18) 
 
 Lower Pastoral . . 9J (-70) 
 
 4 (.30) 
 
 1 ( -07) 
 
 Agriculture ... 57 (-57) 
 
 43 (-43) 
 
 21J ( -21) 
 
 Higher Pastoral . 6 (39) 
 
 94 (-61) 
 
 7i ( -48) 
 
 Higher Agriculture . 26 (-29) 
 
 64i (-71) 
 
 37i ( -41) 
 
 Further, when the classification is apphed to each continent 
 severally, the correlation holds in the main, though in certain 
 
 ^ i. e. if self -redress is combined with a partial or incipient public 
 justice it drags the case down to the second grade. If it is combined 
 (as an alternative) with a regular system of public justice, it does not. 
 
 ' In apportioning the Australians to one or other of the first two grades 
 we are in agreement with the final judgment of Hewitt, who paid special 
 attention to this branch of Australian sociology. " It will be evident that 
 a distinction is drawn between offences which merely afiect the individual 
 and are therefore left for him to redress, and those which may be called 
 tribal offences, such as murder by evil magic, breaches of the exogamous 
 law, or revealing the secrets of the initiation ceremonies. Such offences 
 were dealt with by the elders and their leader, the headman of the tribe " 
 (p. 354). 
 
 ' For the wider society, not for the inner or primary group. The 
 fractions arise from the counting of "probable" cases and partial 
 instances (portions of a group) as one-half. 
 
 * Including a group of Dependent Hunters, i. e. Indian and other jungle 
 tribes living in close association with more civilized people, and probably 
 much affected by them. Omitting them, the fractions for the Higher 
 Hunters would be -92, -08, -05. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 107 
 
 cases the numbers are too small to be of value for purposes of 
 computation.^ 
 
 It must be added that when we find a partfal pub lic j"g<^^i>>p 
 in the lowest economic grades, the circumstances make it suffi- 
 ciently clear that the motive is to prevent self -redress. In 
 the case of the Queensland tribes, where the evidence for pubUc 
 justice is the most definite that we have, this is not only clear 
 from the nature of the offences dealt with,^ but is specifically 
 indicated by Mr. Roth, who says that the determined efiEorts 
 to stop quarrels are due to their tendency to spread through the 
 whole camp, all the tribal brothers on each side taking them up. 
 
 TtiPi rfipiila.ted fipihts a.nrl i.Vio np,jTr[f-|^p,t-,ir)Tig ajiH discussions in SUch 
 
 tribes as the Narrinyeri and the West Victoria group, all point 
 the same way. They are means of avo iding serious battle s 
 and persist ent vendettas . Possibly the structure of Australian 
 SSciety, with its marriage classes cutting across the local groups 
 and building up complex relations between group and group, 
 possibly also the nomadic habits breeding casual intercourse with 
 outsiders, together with the strong development of the belief 
 in witchcraft as the cause of natural death, may have given 
 to these attempts to mitigate vendettas the special prominence 
 which they occupy in Austrahan social hfe.* Be that as it may, 
 we can say with some definiteness that among the considerable 
 number of peoples known of the lowest hunting levels, there is 
 no case of regular pubhc justice beyond the limits of the enlarged 
 family, and that whatever public intervention in private rela- 
 tions is found, is clearly an attempt to mitigate retaliation. 
 The "intensive" development of justice is matched by the 
 extension, which is also roughly correlated with general cultural 
 advance, of the society which forms the unit within which it 
 holds good. At the lowest stage we have self-redress in some 
 
 1 The only class that causes any doubt is that of the "Dependent 
 Hunters " in Asia. These occupy in some oases an ambiguous position 
 between tribes and castes, while in any case they have been greatly in- 
 fluenced, especially as respects governmental arrangements, by the 
 more civiUzed societies to which they belong. If, however, we include 
 the more independent among them with the other Higher Hunters_ve 
 get in the result a ratio which is just the same as that for the Lowest 
 Agriculture. 
 
 * e. g. homicide, as such, is no crime. If a man kills his wife he must 
 give up a sister to his wife's friends ^for death. Homicide is punishable 
 with death when it would 16ad to revenge (Roth, p. 141). 
 
 ^ Further, the ex piatory taieetin f ; is a form of atonement, which is 
 replaced among tJie Migher ilunters, and still more by more advanced 
 societies, by composition. But composition is not so provocative of formal 
 interference by outsiders, and does not, therefore, for our purpose, remove 
 a case from the lowest class. 
 
108 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 instances even within the enlarged family; then it appears 
 mainly as between kinsfolk or local groups in a tribe or a sub- 
 stantial village. Then there is peace within the village, and 
 feuds of villages, till these are welded into a petty state. Retalia- 
 tion now becomes distinctly differentiated from war, but war^ 
 itself is, at bottom, tijie^sdf-redress of a community withinjthe 
 entire circle_ftf.n^tiQns,'aii<i tESSSal ellmSaaaoB .ot EKe principle 
 it embodies is yet to come. 
 
 /"There is further direct historical evidence among most civiUzed 
 peoples of a development from the private to the pubhc system. 
 ^Ancient Egypt is the principal exception. Here we have no 
 evidence from the slight indications in the records of private 
 justice 1 or even of a transitional stage. Regular courts with 
 witnesses existed from the old Kingdom,^ and we observe that 
 even political criminals were brought to trial.* Torture was 
 used, and under certain circumstances we read of something 
 like an oath of purgation.* The death penalty was not infre- 
 quent, though in the 1 8th Dynasty reserved for Pharaoh.^ 
 Mutilation, especially the cutting off of the nose or ears, was in 
 use, and the rod is the regular mark of justice.* The too insistent 
 complainant might himself get beaten.' Punishment, at least 
 in political cases, might be collective, involving a man's whole 
 family.* The kingly power was arbitrary and might be tyran- 
 
 ^ Apart from the right to kill a faithless wife and her lovet (Gardiner, 
 Enc. Religion, art. " Ethics and Morality — Egyptian," p. 480). 
 
 * Erman, Avs dem. Pap., p. 82. (Witnesses required in a will suit.) 
 
 ' e. g. in the Harem conspiracy (20th Dynasty), where the judges are 
 even warned against over-zeal (Breasted, Ancient Records, iv. esp. p. 213). 
 Even in the summary treatment of treason the accused are to be con- 
 fronted with witnesses and then drowned secretly (Erman, Fall Abgehur. 
 Justiz., p. 9 et aeq.). 
 
 * In the story of Peteesi (Griffith, iii. 105), two priests are made to swear 
 that they are not guilty and to pay damages. Perhaps they are paying 
 for their fellows who had done the mischief (cf. Breasted, Records, iy. 
 259). The oath here is a kind of conditional curse, and is apparently 
 taken as sufficient purgation after a severe examination. For the torture 
 of 'a woman, of. p. 271. The instrmnent was the bastinado. 
 
 = Gardiner, 480. 
 
 ' A private citizen of the 5th Dynasty is pleased with himself because 
 " Never was I beaten in the presence of any official since my birth " 
 (Breasted, i. 125). 
 
 ' See incidents in the story of the Eloquent Peasant (Gardiner, Die 
 Klage des Bauem, p. 12), which is a stinging satire on official indifference. 
 
 ' " Slay him (an unruly vassal), wipe out his name, [destroy ?] his kins- 
 folk; suppress his memory [and?] his dependants who [?] love him." 
 Instructions of King Mery-ke-re (Middle Kingdom, Gardiner, Jounud Eg. 
 Arch., Jan. 1914, p. 24). Cf. the extradition treaty of Rameses II., where 
 t]ie punishment of wife and children is barred by agreement (Breasted, 
 ill. 173), and the curse calling on Isis to pursue the wife and Horus the 
 children of the offender (*., p. 86). 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 109 
 
 nical,! but we hear of enactments against official extortion 
 corruption.^ On the other hand, the true norm of punishment 
 is ideally fixed by the gods, priests formed the tribunals, 
 and in the New Kingdom petty cases were decided at the local 
 shrines.' On the whole, justice in its earlier phase, regulated 
 in principle, more or less arbitrary in effect, using in the 
 main rational procedure but employing torture, the rod, and 
 severity in punishment, tending to laxity and corruptness in 
 administration, is fairly exemplified in ancient Egypt. 
 
 In all other civihzed codes we find historical evidences of an 
 originally private system and a gradual transition to rational 
 public justice. In_th^_cod«_jjLJIaBim«raMr-coairts_exist_aj^ 
 witnesses are mentioned, but that punishments were always 
 public, except in the case of the erring wife, does not seem sol 
 clear as Kohler and Peiser think {Hammurabi's Gesetz, § 126). 
 Certainly the provisions for punishment are saturated with the! 
 ideas of the blood feud (cf. above, pp. 85-88). In India the law 1 
 books present us with developed codes of public justice, but self- ! 
 help is allowed in certain cases, and in others it is open to every 
 man to execute the offender (Oldenburg, in Mommsen, p. 72). 
 Thus, in Manu, a list is given of eighteen cases with which the 
 courts deal (viii. 4-7), but self-help is countenanced, and homi- 
 cide is justifiable, " in a strife for the fees of officiating priests, 
 and in order to protect women and Brahmanas." " By killing 
 an assassin the slayer incurs no guilt, whether he does it pubhcly 
 or secretly." * Further, crimes in general were atonable, including 
 murder, except that of a Brahman. The fine went originally to 
 the family, and so was true composition, depending on the caste 
 of slayer and slain. In the law books, however, it faUs to the 
 king. Chinese tradition places the first pubKc execution in the 
 reign of Huang-ti, 2601 b.c, before which time chiefs had fought 
 with one another and taken no prisoners (Alabaster, 52). The 
 ten "abominations " include offences against the State, religion 
 and the family, but no ordinary " private " offence. Apart 
 from these ten all offences were commutable, though, at least in 
 modern law, at the discretion only of the sovereign (Oppenheimer, 
 p. 111). The fact, however, is rightly taken by Dr. Oppenheimer 
 
 /* 
 ^ See the curious recommendatioDB in the Instructions of Mery-ke-re, 
 loe. cit., p. 26. 
 
 • Breasted, iii. 26, 31, etc. Contrast, however, Griffith, Papyri, iii. 98 : 
 " There is no profit in going into the house of judgment. Thine adversary 
 is richer than thou." 
 
 ' Cf. Gardiner, Enc. Rel., loc. cit., p. 480. 
 
 * Manu, viii. 348-51 ; cf. Vasishtha, iii. 15-18, 24, who among six kinds 
 of assassins reckons an incendiary and the abductor of another's wife. 
 
110 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 as evidence of their original character as private wrongs. In 
 the present law vengeance and composition are in general for- 
 bidden (Alabaster, pp. 5, 6), but a son is justified in killing hie 
 father's murderer on the spot (ib., 165), and if he kills him after- 
 wards wiU only be bambooed. Similarly, the husband may kill 
 his wife's lover on the spot, and the wife herself with a relatively 
 light penalty (ib., 251). Pri mitive Arabic justice is founded on 
 revenge, and both the.Israelite and Mohammedan codes a re 
 develo ped on these lines. In Mohammedan law retahation still 
 plays a consid6tabl6 palt. In Mohammed's time the blood feud 
 was in full vigour. Mohammed imposed the death penalty by 
 law for wilful murder and enforced composition for involuntary 
 homicide, the wer being one-half for a woman and one-fifteenth 
 for a pagan, all the kin being responsible for it (Dareste, p. 64). 
 Wounds are also punishable by retaliation or composition 
 {ib., and Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, p. 481). The retahation 
 is executed by the next of kin (Hughes, 481), but, if legitimate, 
 only with the judgment of a court. Private revenge without 
 sanction is, however, not entirely excluded (Post, i. 260). 
 t The diati nr^^^""" "f priyfitr niTiii public o ffences li^ s ati-Ahe 
 f- QundatJ QTi "^ Tt r^T*?" ^^ ^ PerduelEo, a dSect act of hostility 
 to the state, is the oldest pubHc crime (Hitzig, in Mommsen, p. 
 37). Parricide as a crime is older than the XII; Tables and by 
 tradition as old as Numa. But the original meaning of the word 
 is not certain (ib., 38 ; Oppenheimer, pp. 121, 122). If it included 
 the killing of any free Roman this is a case of public punishment 
 of a private offence from a very early epoch. On the other hand, 
 the "law of Numa," " si quis hominem hberum dolo sciens morti 
 duit parricidas esto," seems to preserve the tradition of some 
 narrower scope for the original meaning of paracidium, and of 
 some definite institution by which murder of a free man was 
 identified with it and for the first time pubHcly punished. That 
 private vengeance held for homicide Hitzig, (I.e.) takes as probable 
 but unproven. Bodily injuries, however, are still punishable in 
 the code of the XII Tables by talion, or compensation, and the 
 law made no distinction between intentional injury and neglect 
 (Hitzig, p. 42). Later developments of the law enforced the 
 acceptance of composition, and distinguished intentional from 
 unintentional injury. The killing of the fur manifestus is recog- 
 nized in the XII Tables, while the fur nee manifestus pays double 
 the value. Only theft of crops is a public offence (ib., p. 39). 
 The unchaste daughter or wife were judged originally by the 
 domestic tribunal, and the adulterer might be killed if taken in 
 flagranti. The punishment of rape as a public offence is not 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 111 
 
 primitive {ib., p. 41). Altogether the history of private offence s 
 a howa the gradual suppression of self-help . The first step is fo^ 
 regularize and restrict it, the next to protect* agreements for J 
 composition, the next to enforce it on both parties (ib., p. 36)^ 
 In general, the development of Roman criminal law moves 
 clearly from the stage when only " public " offences are publicly 
 pxmished, through the regularization of private vengeance, 
 to the principle that a serious offence against a free man, 
 and finally even the "unfree," is an offence against the state. 
 The only obscure point is the early history of murder. 
 
 Early Greek custom was under the protection of the oath or 
 curse (cf . Iliad, IX. 453-6, the curse on Phoenix — 
 
 Oeoi 8 cTeA.etoi' iirapas 
 Zeus re KaTa)(66vio^ koX i-Traivrj Uepcrfffioveia) 
 
 and of the gods, in particular of Zeus who sent storms if men " by 
 violence gave crooked judgments in the market place " (Iliad, 
 XVI. 387). Such judgments were given by councils of the elders 
 on the free submission of the parties or by the king (Wilamowitz 
 MoUendorf, ap. Mommsen, p. 21), but we hear of no criminal jus- 
 tice (Freudenthal, ib., p. 9). The homicide, voluntary or in- 
 voluntary, flies the country. The relatives exercise vengeance 
 (Freudenthal, ib.) but may accept composition, and the slayer — 
 
 ev S-q/iio fiivu avTOv ttoXA.' airoTtVas. 
 
 Historic Greece has everywhere a ,fully developed system of 
 public justice with rational procedure, with no criminal process^ 
 for unintentional offences (Freudenthal, ib., 11). But the Dra- 
 conian murder-trial is simply a state-regulated vengeance (Wila- 
 mowitz, p. 28). In Attic law the " public " character of " private " 
 offences is, perhaps, first fully recognized by the law of Solon 
 enabUng any citizen to prosecute (Freudenthal, p. 10, Wilamowitz, 
 p. 25). But residual traces of self -redress remain in the limitation 
 of the right to prosecute for homicide to the nearest relatives, 
 and the right of forgiveness (atSeo-is) by the relatives or the 
 dying man. Apparently the involuntary homicide could be kept 
 in exile at the will of the relatives to a late period (Aristotle on the 
 Constitution of Athens, chap. Ivii. and editor's note). Homicide 
 on the highway was not punishable in Attica before the end of 
 the fifth century (Wilamowitz, Stoat und Gesellschaft, p. 38). 
 The ayiiv Ti/iTjTos, in which each party named a penalty and 
 the court decided between them, may also be a reUc of the older 
 view of punishment as a satisfaction, the amount of which it is 
 the duty of the court to fix. 
 
112 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 For ^Germany, the list of offenders publicly executed in Tacitus 
 (chap, xv) consists of proditores, transfugae ignavi, imbelks, and 
 corpore infames. This, whatever the exact meaning of the last 
 term, accords well with an ordinary list of " tribal " ofEences. 
 Tradition, language, and comparison of the codes shows that 
 certain ofEences were held in contempt (Nithingswerk in North 
 Germany) and punished with outlawry involving death unless 
 divine pardon was obtained (Schroder, 77). These include 
 breaches of the special peace of the temple, the meeting, or the 
 house, acts dangerous to the pubMc, black magic, etc. Of private 
 
 /offences the list includes only unnatural offences, murder and 
 
 'theft. In these last two cases the point was their secrecy . 
 Murder in particular is a concealed and denied manslaying, and 
 the cowardice which renders it a Nithingswerk is the attempt 
 to escape the feud. Secrecy is also the contemptible element 
 
 in theft, open robbery is not Nithingswerk. Thus, in principle, 
 ofEences against individuals are not pubhcly punished, but only 
 
 va certain cowardly and contemptible way of performing them. 
 As such the private wrong gave rise to a feud or to composition. 
 This might be effected purely between the parties or in court. 
 In the latter case the court took a portion of the fine (Schroder, 
 p. 80). Roethe (Mommsen, p. 63) thinks the legists inclined to 
 overstate the interference of the community, and holds that 
 pure seK-redress is the original institution. He points out also 
 that the Sagas illustrate vengeance for unintentional homicide. 
 The gradual and partial distinction is indicated by Brunner 
 (i6., p. 55). Partly based on military conceptions of honour, the 
 Teutonic code has more than once had to make concessions to 
 the military class tending to the readmission of self-redress (cf. 
 Brunner, p. 56; Oppenheimer, p. 129), and even to the present 
 day the same influence may be traced. 
 
 Nothing marks the re-barbarization of Europe in the Early 
 Middle Ages so strongly as the fact that the system of public jus- 
 tice built up in the Grseco-Roman civihzation gave way to the bar- 
 
 Sbaric systein. On the other hand, the services of the Mediaeval 
 Church in\ deprecating vengeance and upholding social peace 
 
 *M)ught not to be forgotten. So great a change as the suppression 
 of vengeance by Justice is not accompHshed but by slow degrees, 
 and in Europe the old system left its legacy to the modem world 
 in the form of the duel. The peculiar notions of honour en- 
 gendered by mihtarism maintained in the classes whose trade was 
 fighting the beUef that the stain of a disgraceful deed could be 
 wiped out by superior skill in sword-play, while it was the 
 bounden duty of a man who had suffered a mortal injury to ^ve 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 113 
 
 his traduoer or assailant the opportunity of also kiUing him. 
 Such beliefs,, so deeply rooted in the habits of a military caste, 
 long survived the prohibitions of the Church artid the edicts of 
 kings (see Decret. Gfrat. G. J., 464, referring to the judicial duel). 
 In the Decret. Greg., 805, a clerk is to be deposed for duelling, and 
 tournaments are forbidden (p. 804). The latter, however, were 
 legalized by John XXII. (p. 1215). The Council of Trent 
 threatened not only dueUists, but kings or feudal lords who 
 allowed duelling in their territories with excommunication 
 (G. J., pp. 98, 99). In England the duel succumbed to the cool 
 common sense of middle-class juries. On the Continent, though 
 undergoing a continual process of attrition, it is maintained in a 
 dishonoured old age among such other perquisites of the military 
 class as the right to run unarmed citizens through the body for 
 an alleged insulting word.'- 
 
 To the evidence of the historic civilizations must be added 
 certain instances in the uncivihzed world where tradition pre- 
 serves the memory of an extinct system of self-redress."'' EalEIy, 
 the case of justice and the gen^fal iiiJlluleuaii6e of ~ order is 
 perhaps the only department of ethics in which we may adduce a 
 theoretical argument in confirmation of the historical evidence. 
 For the community with the better order has palpably a better 
 chance of survival than the more anarchical, and, culture for 
 culture, it is very urdikely that the Hunters or Agriculturists 
 of earlier epochs would be better governed or more peaceably 
 ordered than those of our own time. The probabihties are all 
 the other way, and if any tribes have survived in spite of very 
 slight acquaintance with the arts, it is more likely to be those 
 who knew how to cultivate internal peace and good fellowship 
 than their opposites. We may infer that if we could see the"* 
 ascending scale of society set out in time as we see it through 
 anthropology at what is (relatively to the duratiop of human 
 society) a singte, moment, the correlation of the methods of 
 
 ' It might be said that a society where duelling obtains ought to be 
 classed in the third of our four grades (above, p. 106), and that modem 
 continental coimtries would therefore fall below many barbaric peoples. 
 But this would be to overlook the exceptional character of the duel as 
 (1) the privilege of the upper class, (2) contrary to the letter of the law, 
 
 (3) only justified in special cases in accordance with the code of honour, 
 
 (4) neither applicable to the punishment of crimes nor the maintenance of 
 civil rights. If, in fact, we found any barbaric society with vengeance 
 so circumscribed, we should include it in our highest class, as, in fact, we 
 have always done where only vengeance on the adulterer or the faithless 
 wife is allowed. 
 
 ' e. g. the Arauoanians (Latoham, J. A. I., xxxix. 355), the Sonthals 
 (Man, Sonthalia, p. 91), and the Kols {ib.). These are important as appear- 
 ing among the Indian peoples where self -redress has generally disappeared. 
 I 
 
114 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 justice with the general advance of civilization would be not less 
 close but closer than that which we have seen. 
 
 Our argument does not go to prove the development of im- 
 partial justice from vengeance. On the contrary, in some very 
 simple societies the evidence for vengeance is slight. They are 
 peaceable people, who seldom quarrel among themselves, and 
 that is probably why they have been able to maintain themselves 
 with so slender a material equipment through the ages. It goes 
 to show rather that the root of public in tervp"^^""" ^° ^-^"^ ""naf 
 
 '' of the common safe ty. Hence the early punishments of sacral 
 offences. Hence the solidarity of clan or group against others. 
 Hence the mitigation of vengeance and the assumption of 
 communal protection in its place. H gnce the _Jis"^^-^*-^'^^ "^^ 
 i aipartial justi cfiJiQ- Hdiat,evpir c rrn up really feels itsplf t.r) |ifi n^^a 
 Hence, finally, the protection of all members of society when all 
 are reaUy felt to be morally members of one body. Sympathy 
 is an impulse leading to this consummation, but occasional 
 sympathetic action is precisely not justice because it is based on 
 a personal feeling. Nor is the sense of soHdarity justice, because 
 it ignores the individual. It is the f usion of the Wo^ of the 
 
 -^eehng for another and the enlarging conception of the welfare 
 of the whole, which constitutes the basic material of true justice, 
 
 wherein, as in all ethics, a_rationaj__impulse d efines an (L 
 
 ha rmon izes the prompting of innumerable- elements of feeling 
 and emotiraj„_ ^ 
 
 9. Procedure. — The mere estabHshment of impartial justice 
 is by no means the same thing as the formation of a Court 
 of Law in 'the modern sense. The primary function of a^ 
 primitive tribunal is not so much to discover the merits of the 
 case and make an equitable award, as to keep the pe ace and 
 prejffint the extension of wild and irr e p;u1a,r blnofO SiIda! What/ 
 the court has to deal with is itxe fact that a feud exists. A 
 comes before it with a complaint against B of having kiUed 
 his kinsman, or stolen his cattle, or carried off his daughter. 
 Here is a feud which, in the absence of a court, A will 
 prosecute with his own right-arm and that of his kinsmen if 
 he can get them to help him. B, again, will resist with the 
 help of Ms kinsmen, and so there will be a vendetta. The 
 court, whose primary object is to secure a settlement, does 
 not go into nice questions as to the precise merits and de- 
 merits of A and B, but it can prescribe certain tests whereby 
 the appellant or the defendant may establish his case. It set s 
 the litigant "a task that he must attempt. If he performs 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 115 
 
 it, he iias won his cause. " ^ T ^^e perfortnance of this taa k-ia 
 SptTto our minds ^ proof of the justice of his ca use. It is rather 
 the compliance with a legaraM Ol'dei'ly ill<ith6a 61 estabhshing 
 a case, but at the stage we are considering it was probably 
 regarded as satiafjon g justice, at least as far as justice claimed 
 taJjfi-Batisfied. 
 
 What task, then, would the court award ? It might be that 
 the Utigant should maintain his cause with his body. The 
 parties would then have to fight it out in person or by their 
 champions. Here we have the regulated fight i n the form o f 
 a Ju dicial duel carrying a sentence as its result. Again, the 
 court migbt put cne or both parties t o the oatE T But this is 
 not the oath of the modern law court — that is to say, it is not a 
 solemn asseveration of the "truth of certain evidence of fact ,|^ but 
 an assertion of the general justice of the claim alleged, or of its 
 injustice, as the case may be. ) And as the feud will not be waged 
 by the individua,! claimant alone, but with the aid of all his 
 kindred, so the court wiU expect the kindred to come and take 
 the oath along with him. Hence the institution of oath -helpers, i 
 the compurgators , who are in point of fact the fellow-clansmen, \ 
 aU bound to the duty at this stage of swearing their friend out 
 of the. difficulty, just as before they were bound to help him out 
 of it by arms. The compurgators are simply the clansmen 
 fighting with spiritual weapons instead of carnal ones. Success 
 in the cause will depend not on the opinion formed by the court 
 as to the veracity of one side or the perjury of the other, but on 
 the abihty of the parties to get the full number of compurgators^ 
 required, on formal correctness in taking the oath, and if both 
 parties fulfil all conditions and no further means are available 
 for deciding between them, on certain rules as to the burden of 
 proof.^ 
 
 The provision of such further means of deciding between the 
 parties is logically the next step. So far, the judicial process 
 has appeared merely as a substitute for the blood feud, but 
 both the oath and the judicial combat point the way to a higher 
 
 ' Pollock and Maitland, ii. 602. 
 
 ^ Wliioh oath prevailed in case of a conflict would be decided according 
 to the custom rviling the case. One party would be " nearer to the oath " 
 than the other. For instance, where the criminal is caught in the act, the 
 oath of the prosecutor with his oath-helpers is conclusive proof, and the 
 offender has no opportunity of self-defence (Schroder, p. 363 ; cf . Pollock 
 and Maitland, ii. 579). In the Frankish period the complainant might also, 
 if the circumstances allowed, demand the ordeal; in other cases, with a 
 few exceptions, the burden of proof was on the opposite side (Schroder, 
 op. cit., pp. 363-366). Where the oath is not decisive, the parties go to the 
 duel or to the ordeal. 
 
116 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ideal. The court itself is not in a position to try the merits of the 
 case unless it be some very simple matter of the criminal caught 
 red -handed, but it may refer the decision to the Unseen Powers, 
 to the gods, or to the magical qualities inherent in certain things. 
 Thus the judicial duel, instead of being a mere carnal fight 
 regularized and limited by certain rules, may be conceived rather 
 as an appeal to the judgment of God, and the victory as His 
 sentence which the court hesitates to pronounce on the basis 
 of its merely human wisdom. Similarly the oath— though less 
 than evidence as we conceive evidence — is also more, for it is 
 an appeal to powers in which primitive man implicitly believes^ 
 to take vengeance on him who swears, if his cause be not just. 
 Hence the form of the oath is everything, for the Unknown 
 Powers are great sticklers for form. The oath-taker calls down 
 their punishment on himself and his family by a set formula 
 which they will rigidly obey. If in the formula he can leave 
 himself any loophole of escape, the oath is void : it is no true 
 summoning of the vengeful powers, and the court wiU disregard 
 it, but if it is complete and sound in point of form, then there 
 is no escape. One of two things must happen : either the oath 
 was true or the curse will fall, and thus perjury brings its own 
 punishment.^ 
 
 Hence it is that for any given charge the law may call upon 
 a man to purge himself by oath, or perhaps to purge himself 
 along with a specified number of oath-helpers who will suff 
 with him if the oath is false, and the oath-helpers required mi 
 be increased according to the seriousness of the crime, 
 the oath fails the prescribed punishment follows. If it is du 
 taken, then either the accused was innocent, or he had inflicti 
 the punishment entailed by the broken oath on himself and 1 
 oath -helpers. 
 
 But the consequences of a false oath were not immediate 
 apparent. If the court wished to have the judgment of t 
 Unseen Powers before it some more summary process was nec« 
 sary. This was found in the Ordeal, a test to which both parti 
 could be submitted if necessary, and of which the results we_- 
 immediate and manifest. Probably no institution is more 
 frequent at a certain stage of civilization than that of testing 
 the truth or falsity of a case by a certain magico -religious 
 
 1 Thtis the subsequent misfortune is taken as proof of perjury, and 
 sometimes with a certain inconaistenoy the secular arm is then called in to 
 increase the penalty. Thus, among the Kondhs of Orissa, and also among 
 the Congo people, if the' curse falls, the oath-taker is banished along with 
 his family (Post, ii. 493). 
 
/ 
 
 LAW AND JUSTICE 117 
 
 process — the eating of_a_pfiCfi_Qf_^ead, the handling of honing 
 iron or Boiling oil.'^umping intowaterp-waHmig-tRrough fire, 
 exposure to wild beasts, and so forth. The details vary, though 
 even in detail resemblances crop up at the most remote periods 
 and in the most remote places, but the general principle is still 
 more clearly constant through the ages and the climes. ^ Truth 
 cannot at this stage be tested by human evidence. At most the 
 criminal caught red-handed may be summarily dispatched upon 
 the evidence of eye-witnesses given there and then, but the 
 complicated civil or criminal processes of the civiHzed world 
 imply an intellectual as well as a moral development which 
 ni^kes them impossible at an early stage. It is the gods who 
 judge ; the man who can handle hot iron is proved by heaven to 
 be innocent ; the woman whom the holy river rejects is a witch ; 
 he whom the bread chokes is a perjurer. Nor are these tests 
 wholly devoid of rational basis ; it is not so difficult to under- 
 stand that the guilty man would be more liable to choke than 
 the innocent, not because bread is holy, but because his nerves 
 are shaken. It is quite intelligible that in a credulous age the 
 false oath would bring its curse in the form of a wiU paralyzed 
 by terror, just as we know that amongst many savages witch- 
 craft really kills through the sufferer's intense fear of it. Lastly, 
 if the criminal may be ready to take his chances of the curse 
 in preference to the certainties of the scaffold, he may find 
 it difficult to get compurgators to stand by him, and in the 
 face of their plain knowledge involve themselves in the same 
 risk. 
 
 1 Among the Australians we have the ordeal in the form of the expiatory 
 encounter. This seems to be trial and punishment in one, or, perhaps, as 
 we have seen, it is rather atonement than either. Magical processes were, 
 indeed, employed to discover the direction in which the man whose witch- 
 craft caused a death might be found. But this, again, belongs to detection 
 rather than trial. If we, then, omit the Australian cases we do not find 
 the ordeal among the Lower Hunters, and it is very rare till we reach the 
 Second stage of Agriculture. Thereafter it becomes very common {Simpler 
 Peoples, p. 80). 
 
 Two or three Australian authorities speak of some sort of trial, e. g. 
 Beveridge of the Riverina people ; Mrs. Parker of the Euahlayi (but with 
 reference, I think, only to the spear-throwing) ; Dawson of West Victoria, 
 and Taplin of the Narrinyeri. In these and other cases we are certainly 
 to suppose excited arguments between accusing and accused local groups, 
 but we have no clear evidence of anything more. It is only in the North 
 and North- West Central Queensland districts that Roth speaks clearly of 
 a sort of inquiry by the old men into the merits of the case. With these 
 exceptions we found no indications of a trial among the Lower Hunters, 
 only two among the Higher, and three in the lower divisions of Pastoral 
 and Agricultural peoples. In the Higher Pastoral and Agricultural stages 
 they become cqiimjioji ^lop, cit.). 
 
118 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 10. Thus by degrees there develops the conception that it is 
 the duty of the court to try the case, to obtain proof of facts, to 
 give its own verdict based on its own judgment, and execute its 
 own sentence by its own officers, and which may take the initia- 
 tive through its own officers. The steps by which this change is 
 achieved belong in detail rather to the history of jurisprudence 
 than to that of comparative ethics. Only certain broad features 
 of the new phase concern us. Its primary condition is the fuller 
 development and clearer expression of sentiments that are 
 present from the first, but it is naturally stimulated and furthered 
 by the formation of an effective organ of government. The 
 elders or the petty chief of the village community hesitate to 
 carry out a death sentence or inflict corporal punishment for fear 
 of involving themselves in the blood feud.^ Where there is an \ 
 executive power with sufficient force behind it to raise its officer 1 
 above the fear of revenge, public justice can have full play^ 
 Hence the decay of blood revenge and the rise of pubhc justice 
 are frequently associated with the growth of langly power. 
 For example, in Europe in the early Middle Ages we have seen 
 that certain offences were treated as breaches of the king's peace. 
 This peace was a protection afforded in the first instance to 
 certain places and times, but it was gradually extended, largely 
 it would seem, through the king's protection of the roads — 
 " the king's highway " — ^to all places and aU times. Thus the 
 act which had been a breach of the king's peace, punished by the 
 withdrawal of his protection only when committed at certain 
 times and places, now became an offence against him at all times 
 and places. Its punishment was still outlawry. But as out- 
 lawry deprived a man of all rights, it enabled the king to inffict 
 what penalty he chose. The criminal, in fact, was at his mercy : 
 any penalty short of death with forfeiture of all goods would 
 be an indulgence, and hence the Royal Courts could fix a scale 
 of punishments at their pleasure.^ 
 
 With the growth of public justice the function of the courts 
 is changed : they have no longer to supervise the feuds of hostile 
 families, but to maintain public order, to detect and punish 
 crime, and to uphold innocent people in their rights. This 
 
 1 So Prof. Robertson Smith remarks on the appearance of corporal 
 punishment in Deuteronomy, that it is evidence of the comparatively 
 settled state of the country and the growth of the social order since the 
 time of the Book of the Covenant. No Arab Sheikh would inflict corporal 
 punishment on a tribesman for fear of revenge (Deut. xxv. 3 : Robertson 
 Smith, Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p.<i368). 
 
 ' Jenks, Law and Politics, pp. 109-117; Pollock and Maitlond, ii. 
 463-463, etc. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 119 
 
 involves numerous changes. In the first place, seK-help, the 
 obtaining of satisfaction by the strong hand, is no longer neces- 
 sary. The injured man can get a remedy from the court, and 
 vengeance is forbidden. The victory is not immediate, and often 
 the state has to come to some compromise with the old system. 
 For example, vengeance may be allowed in flagrante delicto, or 
 within a certain period after the offence. Where state justice 
 is very weak, an asylum may be granted within which revenge 
 must not be executed ; in other cases where the process is further 
 advanced and justice is getting the upper hand, revenge is allowed 
 only with the consent of a court ._^ Or, lastly, excluded from aU 
 ordinary cases, revenge is tolerated as a concession to human 
 weakness in cases where strong passions are excited — for example, 
 in breaches of the marriage law to this day in many civiUzed 
 countries.^ The transition was the harder because it involved a 
 fundamental ethical change. Prom its beginning, as we have 
 seen, social order rested on the readiness of every man to stand 
 by his kinsmen in their quarrels. Hence the duty of avenging 
 the injured kinsman, and therefore of loving one's neighbour 
 in this sense and hating one's enemy, was the most sacred of 
 primitive principles, bound up with everything that made a 
 common Hfe possible. Pubhc justice bade men lay aside this 
 principle, and its triumph constitutes one of the greatest of' 
 social revolutions. 
 
 But if the kindred be no longer allowed to avenge themselves, 
 the corresponding right of the offender to make peace with the 
 kin is also withdrawn.* A crime is now a public affair, and in 
 varying degrees according to time and country the public aii- 
 thority takes upon itself the function of maintaining order and 
 of discovering as weU as punishing offenders.* The trial ceases 
 
 ^ This, in strictness, is Mohammedan law (Kohler, quoted in Post, i. 
 260). 
 
 ' For instances see Post, i..260, 261. Post quotes the Japanese Law 
 Book of 1873, which treats premeditated blood revenge as murder, but 
 excuses the son who strikes down the murderer of his father on the spot. 
 
 * See Pollock and Maitland, ii. 485. 
 
 * The rise of impartial public justice in Europe connects itself with 
 " Trial by Inquest." Early in the Middle Ages the bishops made diocesan 
 tours and held inquests into public morals, and in the ninth century they 
 employed a " jurie d'accusation," which indicated delinquents. These 
 were at first allowed to purge themselves by oath, but this right was with- 
 drawn under Innocent III., and the court was allowed to pro'ceed per 
 inquiaiiionem, holding an inquiry, and requiring not purgation but defence. 
 The accuser at this stage is a public authority, not merely a private enemy 
 prosecuting a feud. A corresponding development occurs in England when 
 the Grand Jury, as representing the common knowledge of a neighbour- 
 hood, presents a list of criminals for trial. The accusation could not any 
 longer be submitted to trial by battle, as the accused could not fight the 
 
120 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 to be a milder form of the blood feud. The complainant no 
 longer exposes himself to equal punishment by way of retaliation 
 in case he loses his suit. What was previously accusation now 
 becomes denunciation.^ Again, though the injured party may 
 set the whole process in motion, the result will differ vitally 
 according to the nature of the act of which he complains. Jus- 
 tice, having public interests in view, will count not only the 
 magnitude of the injury suffered, but the degree of culpability 
 in the man who inflicted it. Vengeance, the object of the 
 older process, breaks up into the two distinct ideas of punish- 
 ment inflicted by the judge, and restitution assigned to the 
 complainant. rSvi) q.nj^(>riini!:^gjj]fj;21-^.^JS diptinft,^ 
 
 11. But once become serious in its determination to investigate 
 the case before giving sentence, public justice could not long be 
 satisfied with the older supernatural machinery. In mediaeval 
 Europe it was early a matter of remark that the battle was not 
 always to the just. " We are," says the Lombard king, Luit- 
 prand, " uncertain about the judgment of. God, and have heard 
 that many through the battle lose their cause without justice, 
 but the Law itself, on accckmt of the custom of our race of 
 Lombards, we cannot forbid." The question was matter of 
 controversy during the ninth century, Agobard, Archbishop of 
 Lyons {d. 840), arguing against trial by combat ajtid the ordeal, 
 while Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims {circ. 806-^82), supported 
 them.* / 
 
 It was therefore a great step in advance when ordeals, which 
 had been adopted by the Church after the barbarian invasions, 
 were condemned by the Lateran Council of 1215. As a conse- 
 
 whole Grand Jury (Stephen, i. 254), and as ordeals were falling into dis- 
 credit the only resource was the Inquest. This was a method, already 
 in use in Norman law, of establishing facts by the sworn judgment of a 
 number of men (petty jury) representing " the verdict of the country." 
 Thus our system, though it has retained much of the accusatory character, 
 has been deeply influenced by the Inquisition, or, as we call it, 
 " Inquest." 
 
 1 Esmein, p. 84. The " accusatory " method fell into disuse in France 
 in the fourteenth century. But the penalty of retaliation was retained, 
 though softened in application (ib., 108). Denunciation was readily 
 conceded in the case of commoners, while nobles still retained the right 
 of combat (ib., 85). 
 
 * The distinction is not affected by the fact that both results may be 
 sought by a single process ; e. g. in French law a criminal may be con- 
 demned to pay damages to the injured party by the same sentence which 
 consigns him to prison. 
 
 ^ Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind, i. 231, 232. Charlemagne ordered all 
 men to believe the judgment of God without any doubt (Schroder, 367). 
 
J^^M-M^D JUSTICE^ 121 
 
 quence they disappear in England after the reign of John,^ while 
 the oath of compurgators is gradually converted into evidence to 
 character. The ordeal by battle ^ remained, bufr an alternative! 
 was offered in the form of a judicial inquiry with witnesses anm 
 evidence. The accused might, in EngUsh phrase, " put himseln 
 upon his country," i. e. let his case go before a jury, men of hia 
 neighbourhood knowing the facts and prepared to testify ta 
 them, or, in French phrase, the accused could be offered the! 
 "enqueste du pais." And this alternative, if at first optional^ 
 soon manifested its vast superiority, and the settlement of all 
 disputes and all accusations by an impartial tribunal, which has 
 heard what both sides have to say, becomes an integral part of 
 the civihzed order.' But even-handed justice is not reached at 
 one stride. T he public a u thority, having once tak en up the 
 fivnc ivinTi of rep re ssing crim e, are more bent on efficiency in the 
 maintenance of order than on nice considerations of justice to 
 individuals. Their tendency is to treat the accused man as 
 guilty, and means of proving his irmocence are somewhat grudg- 
 ingly meted out to him as privileges rather than as rights, while 
 deficiencies of evidence are boldly supplemented by the use of 
 torture. In EngUsh law, indeed, torture (except in the case 
 of the peine forte et dure) never seems to have been fuUy recog- 
 nized : if used by the absolute monarchy it was as a political 
 instrument rather than as part of the ordinary machinery of law. 
 On the Continent, on the other hand, owing partly, perhaps, to 
 a stricter theory of the amount of evidence necessary for proof, 
 partly to the fact that the authorities were more determined to 
 
 * Pollock and Maitland, ii. 599. In France, compurgation and unilateral 
 ordeals almost completely disappeared in the thirteenth century. The 
 oath with oath-helpers was still not uncommon in England, but the view 
 " that you cannot wage your law about facts are manifest " was beginning 
 to prevail (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 634). 
 
 * It was forbidden in France by St. Louis in 1260. " Nous defendons a 
 tous batailles par nostre domengne et au lieu de batailles, nous mettons 
 preuves de t^smoins," but this ordinance could not be imposed in a day 
 upon the Signorial courts. Before the accession of Edward I., judicial 
 combats were limited to felony, but one of the parties might prefer a jury. 
 Champions for hire still existed (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 632, 633). 
 
 ' For a long while the alternative was treated as optional in English 
 law. The oath and the ordeal had been the old legal methods of proof, and 
 " no one," say the Leges Henrici, with the air of resisting a monstrous and 
 novel injustice, " is to be convicted of a capital crime by testimony " 
 (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 650). But, urged by manifest necessity, the 
 lawyers found indirect methods of compulsion ; a man cannot be hanged 
 for murder merely because he is proved by witnesses to have committed 
 it, iinlesB he first agrees to stand or fall by what they say, and forego his 
 right to the ordeal. But though he cannot be compelled, he can be rigidly 
 imprisoned until he gives his consent,' and, finally, he can be pressed to 
 death by the " peine forte et dure." 
 
122 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 suppress crime than to protect individuals from the possibility 
 of undeserved suffering, torture became a recognized method of 
 supplementing defective evidence. The judicial conscience was 
 easier if it extorted a confession from a man before condemning 
 him, than if it acted solely on evidence undistorted by physical 
 suffering.^ Even where torture was not allowed the accused was 
 not always put on a level with the prosecution as to the right of 
 giving evidence, calHng witnesses and employing counsel. It is 
 not until all these conditions are fulfilled that a Court of Justice 
 can be said to come up to the ideal of a place in which the fuU 
 merits of the case are investigated before a verdict is given. 
 Even now it must be remarked than an English trial preserves 
 much of the form of the old judicial combat. Its method of 
 obtaining a verdict is still that of pitting attack and defence 
 against one another. It may be that this is the best method of 
 obtaining truth where human interests and passions are at stake, 
 and that the advocate must always retain a place beside the 
 judge : but what seems clear is that the power of the purse in 
 retaining the best legal skill is a make-weight, especially in civil 
 cases, of no slight practical importance ; and it is possible that 
 our descendants will look back upon a system which allowed 
 wealth to count for so much before what should be an absolutely 
 impartial tribunal, as not differing so much as we should hke to 
 think from the old ordeal by battle. The fight with the purse 
 is not the ideal substitute for the fight with the person. 
 
 12. We have seen that public justice often led to severity in 
 the process of obtaining truth; still more_was this-the case in 
 the punishment of crime. Accompanying the growth of order 
 in a barbarian society there is, as has been remarked above, a 
 
 '■ Torture was originally applied only to slaves in Roman law, but was 
 extended to freemen in cases of treason and afterwards in other cases as 
 well. It was originally unknown to the barbarians, but under Roman 
 influence it was introduced into the Salic, Biu-gundian and other laws in 
 application to slaves (Esmein, p. 93 ; SchrSder, p. 369). Fostered by the 
 need for evidence in the procedure by inquest, and by the determination 
 to repress crimes, it gradually became, especially in Germany and Italy 
 (Ksmein, p. 284), a flagrant abuse. All the guarantees which the accused 
 had were taken from him by degrees. The procedure became secret, he 
 was not allowed to employ counsel or to cite witnesses. In this direction 
 the inquisitorial process was pushed further in France than elsewhere; 
 Bngland was apparently saved from it by the gradual change which 
 converted the jury from witnesses into judges of the case. It is noteworthy 
 that the severity of the French procediu'e was accepted by the public and 
 was even popular (op. cil., p. 158). The public feeling of the period 
 went with the authorities in concerning itself more for the suppression of 
 crime than for supporting the rights of accused individuals. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 123 
 
 tendency to substitute a system of composition for blood venge- 
 ance by a money payment. This system made for social peace, 
 but, particularly with the increase of wealth afld difference of 
 rank, it lent itself to frightful abuses. Crimes, punished perhaps 
 too fiercely in early society, became for the well-to-do too lightly 
 and easily atonable, and it is not surprising that at the next 
 stage of social development, in which the central power has 
 consolidated itself and the executive has become strong enough 
 to dismiss any fear of the blood feud, a period of severer 
 punishment should set in. Crime now becomes a revolt against 
 authority, a challenge to the powers that be, civil and perhaps 
 ecclesiastical as weU, to put forth all their strength to subdue 
 it. Moreover, the central authority at its best acts in the 
 interests of pubhc order, and on the whole represents the principle 
 of impartial judgment as between disputants, and of progress 
 towards internal peace and the reign of law. On the other hand, 
 order is stiU difficult to maintain and powerful famiUes are 
 recalcitrant. From such causes as these acting in combination 
 the criminal law now reaches the acme of its rigour. Deata 
 penalties or savage mutilations are inflicted for offences of the 
 second and third order, torture is freely used to extort con- 
 fession, and the brutaUty of the mob is called in to supplement 
 that of the executioner. 
 
 As to the severity, or rather barbarity, of the criminal law in 
 Europe down to the nineteenth century little need be said, as 
 the broad facts are well known. In England death was theoreti- 
 cally the penalty for all felonies except petty larceny and may- 
 hem, from the Middle Ages down to 1^6. This rule was subject 
 to the exceptions based on " benefit of clergy," which origjpially 
 meant the right of a clerk to be tried in the ecclesiasticstl' courts ; 
 then, being extended to all who could read, became something of 
 the nature of a class privilege, and finally, in 1705, the necessity 
 for reading 1 being abohshed, was converted into a means of 
 gracR JVi e punishment for a " clergyable " offence was to be 
 \te|gJP^in the hand and imprisoned for not more than one year, 
 l^^^^pt in the case of larceny, which by the law of 1717 was 
 punishable by transportation for sevep years.^ From the fifteenth 
 century onwards a succession of statutes excluded more and more 
 offences from benefit of clergy, and thus at the end of the seven- 
 teenth century such offences as arson, burglary, horse -steaHng, 
 stealing from the person above the value of a shiUing, rape and 
 abduction with intent to marry, were all capital " whether the 
 
 ' Peers, and clerks in holy orders, however, retained special privileges. 
 * Stephen, i. 463, etc. 
 
124 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 offender could read or not." ^ In the eighteenth century 1 
 list was lengthened, but transportation was often substitui 
 for the death penalty. Women were stiU burnt aUve for ( 
 murder of a husband or master, or for coining.^ Both men a 
 women were whipped, the men publicly through the streets, 1 
 women as a rule privately, for petty thefts.* The pillory \i 
 still in use for perjury and other offences.* Meanwhile the sti 
 of the prisons, where innocent and guilty, debtors (often w 
 their families) and convicted criminals were all huddled toget] 
 without discrimination, was, when Howard began his work 
 scandal of the first magnitude. Gaol-fever raged, prisons w- 
 still private property, and the prisoner, innocent or guilty, li 
 to fee his gaoler and pay for every comfort and even for nee 
 saries. In the Bishop of Ely's prison the gaoler prevent 
 escapes by chaining his prisoners on their backs on the flo 
 and fastening a spiked iron collar about their necks. " E^ 
 when re -constructed it had no free ward, no infirmary and 
 straw ; and debtors and felons were confined together." * 
 
 13. But even before Howard's time a new order of ideas v 
 slowly emerging. As society becomes more confident in 
 power to maintain order, the cruelty and callousness that i 
 bom of fear are seen in a new light. More humane influen 
 make themselves felt, and from that moment excessive sever 
 begins to militate against the proper execution of the h 
 especially under a jury system like ours. With the advai 
 of civil and religious liberty, pohtical or ecclesiastical offen 
 grow rare, and a breach of the law becomes more and mi 
 synonymous with a grave moral offence against society. 1 
 whole problem of criminal justice is thus transferred to 1 
 ethical plane, but the change raises problems which a centi 
 has been too short a time to solve. The general right to pun 
 may be derived from the right of so ciety' lu pi'UlticL il!jblf.'~'T 
 principle taken by liseli * might behind to"justify the Barbarit 
 
 » Op. cit., 467. 
 
 * In practice they were generally strangled first, but this depended 
 the executioner. Even the torture of the flames did not prevent 
 eighteenth-century mob from pelting and jeering at the victim^ See 
 account of the burning of Barbara Spencer for coining in 1721 (Pike 
 287, 288). 
 
 ^ ib., 380. * Till 1816. For perjury till 1837 lib.. 377). 
 
 ' lb., 355. 
 
 ' So taken it is a one-sided account. Punishment, hke other actions, 
 only be justified as doing the maximum of good and the minimum of i 
 admitted by the circumstances to all concerned. If any evil (suffering 
 loss of character) is inflicted on the criminal which is not abaolut 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 125 
 
 of the old law, had not experience shown that e ytreme severity 
 wa g Tint, in reality an efFentive instrument o f Hisp.i plinp while 
 it u ndoubtedly tended to harden manners and fBlienstnm peo ple 
 to witness suffering with indifferenc e. Its deahngs with the 
 criminal mark, one may say, the zero point in the scale of treat- 
 ment which society conceives to be the due of its various members. 
 If we raise this point we raise the standard all along the scale. 
 The pauper may justly expect something better than the criminal, 
 the self-supporting poor man or woman than the pauper. Thus, 
 if it is the aim of good civilization to raise the general standard 
 of life, this is a tendency which a savage criminal law will hinder 
 and a humane one assist. Moreover, the old rigour, so far as it 
 rested on reason at all, was based on a very crude psychology. 
 Peo ^e are not-deterred frnm murder by the sight of the mur derer 
 ganghng from a ^ibbej i. On the contrary, what there is in them. 
 o f Just for blond is tickled and excited, their sensualitv or ferncit y 
 is_aroused, and the counteracting im pulsf^s, tba fl.vPir«inn in 
 
 hloo dsheiy the n(> T ppi7Tiftj/->Ti fnr arifFaTing^ ira •arrcatorl fear, 
 
 on which the principle of severity wholly rehes, is a master 
 motive nnlywifj^ the weak, and only while it is very present. 
 As soon as there is a chance of escaping detection it evaporates, 
 and, it would seem, the more completely in proportion as the 
 very magnitude of the penalty makes it difficult for a man really 
 to imagine himself as the central figure in so terrible a drama. 
 Finally, the infliction of heavy penalties for secondary crimes 
 may induce a reckless despair, and the saying about the sheep 
 and the lamb was but too apt a comment on the working of 
 the criminal law at the time. ThusJihfi-fiESt-ste;^.of_reform was 
 in q,V.nligVi tiiQ foT-r.nirf^^p p enalties of the old law. In this direc^ 
 tion a long list of well-known and honoured names^^UeccaHa, 
 Howard, Bentham, Romilly, Powell Buxton, Ehzabeth Pry — 
 indicate roughly the intellectual and moral influences at work. 
 The Society of Friends,^ French Rationalists, English Utili- 
 tarians and the JEyaagelicals played their part in this, as in so 
 many of the changes that have made the modern v/orld. The 
 movement was under weigh by the second third of the eighteenth 
 century. Beccaria's book was pubhshed in 1764 and had an 
 immediate success, bearing early fruit in the abolition of torture 
 
 necessitated by social security, or the ultimate welfare of the criminal 
 himself, it is evil inflicted for its own sake, which is the essence of 
 immorality. 
 
 * Already, in founding Pennsylvania, Peim had allowed capital punish- 
 ment for murder alone. The Philadelphia society for relieving distressed 
 prisoners was formed in 1776 (Wines, 142). 
 
126 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 on the Continent. Branding was abolished in England in 1779. 
 Capital punishment had been aboUshed for a time in Russia in 
 1753, and the purchase of prisoners as galley-slaves was forbidden 
 by Maria Theresa in 1762. In England the peine forte et dure 
 was abohshed in 1772, and in 1770 a House of Commons Com- 
 mittee even reported that there were some offences for which 
 the death penalty might with advantage be exchanged for some 
 other punishment. These few indications show that the tide 
 was beginning to turn. In France the movement was hastened 
 by the Revolution. The Declaration of Rights in 1789 laid 
 down the controlling principle of the modern theory that " the 
 right to punish is limited by the law of necessity," and this 
 was supplemented in 1791 by the declaration of the Assembly 
 that " p enalties should be proportioned to the crimes for w hich 
 the y are inflicted, and that, tli ev are intpinflf;,rl nnt Tinfir£j jL-f.n 
 punish, but to reform the nnlprit " i In accordance with this 
 principle the Assembly made i mprisonment the chief metho d 
 ofpiurnhment, and founded the penitentiary system of Prance. 
 Ci England the great re-action produced by the Revolution 
 retarded the reform of the criminal law, but throughout the 
 time of the Revolutionary Wars men like Romilly fought an 
 uphill fight. He succeeded in suppressing the death penalty 
 for pocket -pic king in 1808, but his subsequent efforts to abolish 
 capital punishment for stealing goods of the value of five shillings 
 from shops were frustrated by the House of Lords.^ Little 
 progress, in fact, was made till 1832, when horse and sheep 
 steahng ceased to be capital, and from this time onwards the 
 list of capital offences was steadily reduced, till in 1861 murder 
 was, for all practical purposes, the only one that remained.* 
 
 Meanwhile, as substitutes for the old savagery, there grew 
 up first the transportation and then the penitentiary system. 
 Regarded as a means of giving the offender a |res h start in -lif e 
 in new surroundings remote from his old bad associates and the 
 memory of his crimes, transportation has much to recommend it, 
 but it was clearly incompatible with colonial development. It 
 was necessary to fall back on the prison system, and the efforts 
 of reformers have been devoted to the task of making confine- 
 ment — a thing soul-destructive in itself — as nearly compatible 
 as may be with the regeneration of the prisoner. These efforts 
 have hardly passed the experimental stage, yet certain results 
 
 1 Wines, p. 86. " Pike, 450. 
 
 ' Pike, ib. ; Stephen, i. 474. Together with murder, treason, piracy 
 with violence, and setting fire to dockyards and arsenals remain nominally 
 capital oftences. It will be remembered that a case of treason was recently 
 tried and the death sentence formally passed, but very shortly commuted. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 127 
 
 have emerged. The necessity for a classification which prevents 
 the first offender from being contaminated by the hardened 
 gaol-bird, the benefits of action and practical enjployment, the 
 superiority of hope to fear as a stimulus to good conduct and 
 the consequent advantages to be found in allowing the convict 
 means of improving his position and even shortening his sentence 
 by good behaviour, are matters of general agreement. But it is 
 clearly necessary to go further than this. The plan of imprison- 
 ing a man for a longer or shorter term, and then, without asking 
 what effect his experience is Ukely to have had on him, turning 
 him loose again upon society, a broken human being less capable 
 than ever of earning an honest living, cannot stand. The old 
 way of h anging at least rid society of t he .eiiminal. It stood 
 co ndemned" for its j otteiCbarbairity. -which- was -indirectly as 
 harmful to society^^as it was cruel to thg sufferer ^ The modern 
 method is still a terrible penally, at least to the better sort of 
 criminals, and, far from relieving society of their presence, tends 
 to harden and degrade them further. Hence judicious thinkers 
 like Frederick HiU, in his report of 1839, soon recognized that 
 a more thorough system was required. The offender must be 
 reform ed, and at need he must even be detained until he has 
 given gDedr^prOinise of reformation, and society must help him 
 back into honest ways.^ The. most thoroughgoing attempt in 
 this direction is that of the Elmira system, followed now in 
 several American states, in which, the sentence being wholly or 
 within limits indeterminate, the fate of the convict depends on 
 his own exertions. He can raise himself from a lower to a higher 
 grade by continued good behaviour, and, finally, can obtain 
 liberation on parole .^ 
 
 14. Whatever the outcome of these experiments, the modern 
 state stands committed to the humane method of criminal 
 treatment, and could not revert to the old plan save at the risk 
 of a general re-barbarization.* That being so, it is necessary to 
 
 * For the views of Frederick and Matthew Davenport Hill, see Wines, 
 217, etc. 
 
 * Wines, p. 220, etc. 
 
 ' The modem reform of the criminal law is not the first attempt known 
 to history at a mitigation of punishment. The Classical Chinese books 
 condemn excessive corporal punishment as an innovation (Shoo King, xxvii. 
 3), and represent the practice of composition as a measure of mercy. It 
 has, unfortunately, a darker side (see Legge, note, pp. 608-9). Confucius 
 continually protests against governing the people by pvmishment, and 
 declares that within 100 years a series of good rulers would be able to dis- 
 pense with capital punishment. Under Buddhist influences King Asoka 
 of Magadha abolished capital punishment, at first for certain crimes, 
 
128 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 push the new method through and to treat the criminal through- 
 out as a "case " to be understood and cured. We touch here 
 the scientific conception underlying the modern theory of punish- 
 ment. Crime, like everjrthing else that men do or suffer, is the 
 outcome of definite conditions. These conditions may be psycho- 
 logical or physical, personal or social. They arise in the character 
 of the agent as it has grown up in him from birth in interaction 
 mth the circumstances of his life. We may recognize them in 
 social surroundings, in overcrowding or underfeeding, in the 
 sense of despair produced by the denial of justice, or in the 
 /overweening insolence of social superiority. But whatever they 
 I may be, if we wish to prevent crime, we must discover the 
 s conditions operating to produce crime and act upon them. 
 I This does not destroy, but<^fines personal responsibihty. The 
 ■tlast link in the chain of cauSationr-which: "pfodQces^TEny act is 
 'always the disposition of the agent at the time of action, and 
 unless dominated by ungovernable impulse,^ this dispolitiqn is 
 always modifiable by the introduction of a fresh motive as a 
 weight in the scale. But though not destroyed, responsibihty 
 is transformed by science, and with it the whole conception of 
 punishment.^ When a wi cked act was ^eld-te~J3g _ somet hing 
 
 and by the thirty-first year of his reign, altogether (Dunoker, iv. 635). 
 In the tenth and eleventh centuries a wave of feeling against capital 
 punishment passed over Europe, but the feeling was reli^ous rather 
 than humanitarian, and allowed the substitution of savage mutilations. 
 Hence the Conqueror's edict, " Interdico etiam ne quis occidatur aut 
 suspendatur pro aliqua culpa, sed eruantur oouli et testiculi abscidantur " 
 (Pollock and Maitland, i. 88, ii. 461). The exchange was doubtful gain, and 
 without legislation death resumed its place as the penalty for felony by 
 the thirteenth century. Clerks continued to have difficulties of conscience 
 as to drawing up capital sentences and avoided writing the decisive words, 
 and the tradition, as every one knows, persisted through the great days of 
 the religious Inquisition. AVhat distinguishes the modem movement is 
 that it rests neither on the mere sentiment of mercy, nor on any theory of ■ 
 the intrinsic wickedness of the taking of life, but on an attempt, however 
 imperfect as yet, to render a scientific account of the causes of crime and 
 the effects of punishment, both on the criminal and on society at large. 
 
 ' This makes no exception to the general statement that character is the 
 cause of action, since that paralysis of the will which leaves a man the sport 
 of impulse is itself a matter of character. As to control of man's conduct 
 by heredity much nonsense is talked. Heredity is not a force controlling a 
 man from without, but a short expression for the supposed antecedent 
 causes of the qualities which make him what he is, and by what he is, he is 
 to be judged, so far as he is judged at all. 
 
 ' Responsibility, properly understood, is definable as the capacity to be 
 determined by an adequate motive. A man is responsible who knows what 
 is expected of him, understands the consequences of his action, and is 
 determined therein by that knowledge. Reward and punishment, praise 
 and blame, are therefore justly awarded in so far as they affect action. 
 Beyond this, retribution is inapplicable, and praise and blame pass into 
 admiration and pity. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 129 
 
 arising in, & spontaneous arbitra ry manner from the u nmotived 
 evil choice of a man, the vindicti ve retribution whmh is fnii nded 
 oh instinct and foijtered by the n eeds of early^ciety seo mPid 
 
 •^ply jnati^fiiH Whpn gnnri g.nrl bviI a. I i If pi are Seen tO grOW 
 
 out of assignable antecedents by processes which calmly judging 
 men can pretty closely foretell, to rest on laws of growth and, 
 disease which apply to character as other laws apply to the" 
 physical organism, to express the lack of imagination or low* 
 power of reasoning which makes men hard, cruel and unjust, 
 or to flow from the over-excitement or insufficient satisfaction 
 of physical impulses that makes them a prey to lust or alcohol, 
 then every thinking man is made to feel in a new sense that 
 but for the grace of conditions which he has only very partially 
 and imperfectly controlled, there where the criminal passes to 
 disgrace and misery goes he himself, the juryman, the judge, 
 the newspaper reader who explodes in satisfaction over the 
 swinging sentence. No one can fully face the problem of respon- i 
 sibihty and become, however dimly, aware of the multitudinous ! 
 roots from which character and conduct spring, without feehng ' 
 the utter in a dequacy of the retributive theory of punishment , i 
 Vindictiveness has its natural sphere in the stage at which 
 crime is only known as an injury to be revenged. As soon as 
 it becomes a wrong act to be punished, the nature of wrong 
 and the meaning of punishment have to be reconsidered. If 
 the first principle of rational ethics is that action can only be '^ 
 justified by doing good to those whom it affects, this principle 
 receives a striking confirmation from the one quarter in which 
 its appUcation might seem doubtful. For a natural impulse 
 makes us desire to harm the wicked, but the history of criminal 
 law and the philosophical analysis of responsibility combine to 
 prove to us that this is the impulse of the old Adam and not 
 warranted by reason or justice. Justice, in punishment as in ! 
 other things, seeks the good of alLs^Sm-it aiiect%-ofTiESxHrmnal V 
 as of the~injufed party. Yet all true punishment inflicts pain, ( 
 for precisely the truest punishment consists in the fuU reahza-i 
 tion of the character of what one has done. This reahzation,/ 
 with all the mental misery that it involves, we may justly wish 
 to be the lot of every criminal, whether convicted or unconvicted,' 
 whether despised or, hke the greatest offenders, honoured by 
 the world. So far pain is rightly attached to wrong-doing as, 
 ethically speaking, its inevitable consequence. But any other 
 sort of pain, any physical suffering that has no such heaKng 
 moral effect, may gratify an animal thirst for vengeance, but 
 has no solace for our moral thirst for the triumph, even in the 
 K 
 
130 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 mind of the wrong-doer, of the righteousness which he has set 
 at naught. 
 
 The modern state upholds its members in the enjoyment of 
 their rights and gives them redress for injuries to themselves in 
 the civil courts. It also intervenes on its own motion to maia- 
 tain public order by the punishment of law-breakers. Rehgious 
 and poUtical offences falUng into the background, legal offences 
 tend to be restricted to criminal acts, and punishment to be 
 proportioned to the imputed degree of moral guilt .^ But this 
 ethical view of punishment, when pushed home, compels the 
 admission that the individual theory of responsibihty is no 
 more final than the old collective theory, and punishment is 
 compelled to justify itself by its actual effect on society in 
 maintaining order without legahzing brutahty, on the criminal 
 in deterring him or in aiding his reform, in both relations as 
 doing good, not as doing harm. The crimi nal, toO j_iiaiSjiis 
 rights — ^the_right to ■lie_p unished ,-b«t-aQ_;Eu^gjj 5^ that h g_may 
 JaeJt elpod in t hg.4ia^i_oLieJQ£pi- 
 
 Briefly to resume the main phases in t^he evolution of public 
 justice, we find that at the outset pure anarchy or self-redress 
 is qualified first by the sense of solidarity within the primary 
 social unit. This expresses itself first in the repression of offences, 
 especially of a' sacral character, held dangerous to the group as a 
 whole, and then in the control of self-redress. As between the 
 primary units a system of collective self -redress arises which in 
 turn yields to the authority of chief or council representing the 
 larger community as a whole. As long as the vindication of 
 rights rests mainly in the hands of the kindred or other group, 
 responsibility is collective, intention is apt to be ignored and 
 punishment is not assessed according to the merit of the indi- 
 vidual. When retahation is mitigated by the introduction of 
 money payments no change in ethical principle occurs. It is 
 only as social order evolves an independent organ for the adjust.- 
 ment of disputes and the prevention of crime,{that the ethical 
 idea becomes separated out from the conflicting passions which 
 are its earlier husk, and step by step the individual is separated 
 from his family, his intentions are taken into account, his formal 
 
 ^ The converse proposition that wicked acts are all treated as legal 
 offences does not follow, nor is it true of the modem state. The questions 
 as to the sphere of the state which arise here cannot be dealt with on this 
 occasion. 
 
 Offences against the public order do not constitute an exception to the 
 statement in the text. In themselves they are slight offences, and the 
 penalty is always light, but the deliberate defiance of the public order is, 
 of course, an immoral act unless justified by some bad end which that 
 order may be made to serve. 
 
LAW AND JUSTICE 131 
 
 rectitude or want of rectitude is thrown into ^B background by 
 the essential justice of the case, appeals to magical processes are 
 abandoned, and the law sets before itself the aiiiS of discovering 
 the facts and maintaining right or punishing wrong accordingly. 
 The rise of public justice proper necessitates the gradual 
 abandonment of the whole conception of the trial as a struggle 
 between two parties, and substitutes the idea of ascertaining 
 the actual truth in order that justice may be done. That is 
 at first carried out by supernatural means, viz. by the Ordeal 
 and the Oath. Thfese in turn give way to a true judicial inquiry 
 by evidence and rational proof. The transition occurred in 
 England mainly during the thirteenth century, the turning point 
 being marked by the prohibition of the Ordeal by Innocent III. 
 in 1215. The early stages of public justice administered by the 
 recently developed central power led to excessive barbarity in 
 the discovery and punishment of crime. It took some more 
 centuries to prove to the world that efficacy in these relations 
 could be reconciled with humanity and a rational consideration 
 of the best means of getting at truth. By so long and round-" 
 about a process is a result, so simple and obvious to our minds, 
 attained. 
 
 We have thus dealt briefly with the development of the state 
 organization for the maintenance of rights and the suppression 
 of wrong-doing. We have now to consider the development of 
 the principal rights to be maintained. In a large measure these 
 group themselves in accordance with the main divisions into 
 which human beings fall — divisions of sex, of community, of 
 class, and so forth — and these divisions will guide us in the 
 chapters now to come. Nothing so intimately affects the 
 standard of obhgation or throws so much light on the manner 
 in which rights and duties are conceived as the degree in which 
 they are affected by such distinctions. These wiU accordingly 
 form the subjects of the three foUowing chapters. There will 
 remain certain general obligations, principally those arising out 
 of rights of property, which wiU require separate treatment. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MAEEIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 
 
 1. The division of the sexes afiects the standard of conduct in 
 two ways. First, it gives rise to special relations, carrying with 
 them special rights and duties. Secondly, it cuts every people 
 into two portions, and the legal and ethical position of these two 
 portions is never wholly the same. In greater or less degree the 
 rights and the duties of men and women differ, and the diver- 
 gence is not confined to matters arising directly from the sex 
 relation itself. Important as these differences are for an under- 
 standing of ethical conceptions, they are themselves extremely 
 difficult to ascertain and interpret. In no other department of 
 ethics are the types of custom strewn in such disarray over 
 the various stages of culture. Nowhere else is it so difficult 
 to classify without bewildering ourselves by cross divisions. 
 Nowhere else is a bald statement of the law so likely to mislead 
 as to actual practice or living sentiment. For no other human 
 relation is at once so personal, and so bound up by multitudin- 
 ous threads with the forces and ideas, economic, rehgious and 
 even pohtical, which go to determine the structure of any society. 
 
 The position of woman is not wholly to be judged by her 
 condition as wife and mother. Often the unmarried woman has 
 important rights which marriage takes away; often also the 
 married woman acquires a degree of freedom and dignity which 
 her unmarried sister lacks. Nor, conversely, is the position of 
 the wife the sole question of importance in the law of marriage. 
 Nevertheless the two questions are too nearly alUed for separate 
 treatment, and in order to understand the position of women 
 we must pass at once to a general consideration of the law and 
 customs relating to marriage. 
 
 It will help us to begin by distinguishing the principal ques- 
 tions to be asked about the marriage customs of any society. 
 Thus we may classify marriage — 
 
 (1) According to the number of parties to the union (mono- 
 gamy, polygamy, etc.). 
 
 (2) According to the restrictions on marriage (exogamy and 
 endogamy). 
 
 132 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 133 
 
 (3) According to its stability (law of divorce). 
 
 (4) By the methods of obtaining a husband or wife (e. g. 
 capture, purchase, contract). * 
 
 (5) By the relations between husband and wife (in the family). 
 The two last questions are closely related, and both have an 
 
 important bearing on the general position of women. Under 
 each head we shaU see what are the principal forms of mar- 
 riage customs that exist, and which are the prevalent types in 
 the savage and barbaric world. We shall then briefly trace the 
 history of marriage and of the position of women among civihzed 
 peoples. 
 
 2. I. We have to ask, first, in any community, who, or rather 
 how many, are the possible parties to a marriage. Is it (a) a 
 union of one man with one woman, or (b) of one man with two or 
 more women, or (c) of two or more men with one woman, or {d) of 
 a group of men with a group of women, or (e) is it wholly irregular, 
 the negation of union, promiscuity ? All these are types of mar- 
 riage which exist or have existed, or at least have been alleged 
 to exist. Further, they split up into sub-types. Polygyny, for 
 example, the union of one man with two or more women, is 
 found in the two fairly distinguishable types of polygamy proper, 
 in which several women are ahke wives, and concubinage, in 
 which there is one chief and fuUy legitimate wife, and one 
 or more in a subordinate and perhaps servile position.^ The 
 one type, moreover, shades off into the other by gradations 
 according as the chief wife's position is more or less fuUy de- 
 fined,2 and as that of the secondary wives is more or less servile. 
 
 ^. ^ China there is only one chief wife. The others are secondary, but 
 legitimate wives. The old Babylonian law recognizes one wife (allowing 
 a second in case of her being invalided), with concubines who were to 
 recognize the wife as mistress. The case of Leah and Rachel illustrates a 
 family in which there were two legitimate wives as well as concubines. 
 Mussulman law allows four legitimate wives and an indefinite number of 
 concubines. The old Japanese law recognized polygamy with a head- 
 wife (Post, i. 62; Kohler, Z. f. V. E., vi. 369). For instances among 
 unciviUzed peoples, see Howard, i. 143-144, and Westermarck, p. 442, 
 etc., and Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Straits, p. 230. 
 There are borderland cases in which marriage proper seems to be mono- 
 gamous, though concubinage is tolerated, e. g. among the Bali monogamy 
 IS the only legal marriage, but concubinage with unmarried slave girls is 
 practised (Hake, p. 379). In other cases polygamy is in disfavour. Among 
 the Kayans of Borneo it is limited to chiefs, and even for them " public 
 opinion does not easily condone a second wife " (Hose and McDougall, i. 73). 
 
 ^ In some cases a second wife may only be taken if the first is childless, 
 e. g. among peoples of the Punjab and the Dekkan, the Santals in Bengal, 
 some Bombay tribes (Post, I. c). Post also refers to Bulgarian and 
 Montenegrin customs. 
 
 Among the Malays, under the Semando form of marriage, the taking of a 
 
134 iViUllAljO ilN Jli VUlJUi J- <Ji.> 
 
 Polyandry, again, though far less common than polygamy, 
 has many varieties. The several husbands may, and in the 
 commonest case do, form a definite group. Generally, as in 
 the well-known case of Thibetan marriage, they are all brothers.^ 
 But this is not always so. Polyandry may merely take the form 
 of permitting a woman to have many husbands without specify- 
 ing any particular relationship between them except such as 
 may follow indirectly from the other marriage regulations of 
 the community. This is the case among the Nairs of the Malabar 
 coast. The same people illustrate a still further variety, the 
 combination of polyandry and polygamy. For as the Nair 
 woman may have many husbands, so the Nair husband may ' 
 have many wives.^ Again, in the relations between the husbands 
 there are differences quite parallel to those which distinguish 
 polygamy from concubinage. All the husbands, that is, may 
 have equal rights, or there may be one chief husband and others 
 inferior and secondary to him. Of such a character is the 
 secondary husband who assumes both the rights and the duties 
 of the proper husband in his absence among the Aleuts.* Some 
 peoples have the punishment — ^to our eyes the very paradoxical 
 
 second wife is a groimd of divorce, and at Mokomoko the husband must 
 pay her a fine, 40 gulden (Waitz, v. 145, 146). Among the Khonds the 
 wife's consent is required (Reolus, Primitive Folk, p. 281). Post gives 
 similar instances among the Khyengs, the Tamils of Ceylon, and Punjab 
 peoples (Post, i. 63, from Kohler, Z. f. V. R., vi. 192), and Howard 
 (i. 144) quotes a case among the North American Indians. Among the 
 Touaregs the taking of a second wife is a ground of divorce (Letoumeau, 
 La Femme, p. 308). 
 
 1 Among the Todas the wife belongs to the elder brother, but the 
 younger brothers also have rights over her as they grow up, and an extra 
 lover is permitted as well (Reclus, p. 196). Polyandry is, however, dis- 
 appearing except among the indigent. Among the Santals the husband's 
 brother is admitted, but not too openly (Risley, ii. 229). According to 
 Westermarck (p. 453) there are only three cases in Asia in which polyandry 
 is not limited to brothers — ^viz. the Nairs, Khasias, and certain Cossacks, 
 but Letoumeau {La Femme, p. 216) denies that it is strictly limited to 
 brothers in Thibet. 
 
 ^ Compare Csesar's account of the ancient Britons : " Uxores habent 
 deni duodenique inter so communes, et maxime fratres cum fratribus 
 parentesque cum liberis ; sed, si qui sunt ek his nati, eorum habentur 
 liberi, a quibus primum virgines quseque deductae sunt " {B. 0., v. 14). 
 That is, there was a chief husband and the rest were secondary. Among 
 the polyandrous tribes of primitive Arabia the wife, according to Strabo, 
 passed the night with the elder brother, but the others had access to her 
 (Starcke, p. 137). For the Nairs, see Reolus, 162. 
 
 ' Reclus, pp. 66-67. Among the Thlinkeets and Koloshes a younger 
 brother is preferred for this purpose. Secondary husbands occur among 
 the Papuas (Kohler, Z. f. V. B., 1900, p. 334). Among the Roucoyennes, 
 the wife's lover enters the husband's household as a peito, something 
 between a cUent and a serf (Coudreau, Revue d'Eihnog., vii. 479). 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OP WOMEN 135 
 
 punishment — for adultery that the paramour, on detection, is 
 compelled to become a secondary husband and contribute to the 
 maintenance of the family .^ • 
 
 3. Of group marriage, again, more than one variety is ab- 
 stractly possible, though as here the evidence becomes scantier 
 it is not so easy to say which types, if any, have been actually 
 represented in history. Indeed, it cannot be regarded as certain 
 that any such institution as the actual marriage of two groups, as 
 distinct from a combination of polygamy and polyandry with 
 certain marriage taboos, has ever existed. As the whole subject 
 is involved in controversy, it will be well to summarize what is 
 actually found in a leading case. Among the Central AustraUan 
 tribes two types of marriage custom have been distinguished by 
 Messrs. Spencer and GUIen. The first, which specially concerns 
 us, is that practised among the Urabunna. The tribe is divided 
 into two classes, and these classes are exogamous— that is to 
 say, a man must not marry within his class, but must choose his 
 wife from the other. Secondly, there are distinct totems within 
 the tribe, and these are similarly exogamous. Thirdly, each of 
 
 1 Among the Konyagas, if the paramoiir is a member of the husband's 
 family the latter may compel him to obey his orders and those of the wife, 
 with whom henceforth the association is legitimate (Reclus, p. 67). 
 Altogether Westermarck enumerates some thirty-six instances of tribes 
 practising polyandry (p. 450). Among over 500 peoples studied we found 
 only twenty-two cases, occurring, however, in all the grades of the simpler 
 culture. To these must be added the people of Langerote and Porta- 
 ventura in the Canary Islands in the sixteenth centvu:y (Letoumeau, p. 303), 
 and in antiquity the Arabs and British (Westermarck, p. 454). The case 
 of the primitive Aryans in India is doubtful. The two Aswins in the Rig 
 Veda win one damsel as the prize of a chariot race, and she acknowledges 
 their " husbandship." In the Mahabharata Draupadi is won by the eldest 
 of five Fandava princes and becomes the wife of them all, but her father 
 describes this as " an tmlawful act, contrary to usage and the Vedaa." 
 The princes plead as precedent the case of a " most excellent moral 
 woman," who dwelt with seven saints, and of Varski, who cohabited with 
 ten brothers " whose souls had been purified with penance." Mayne 
 {Hindu Law and Usage, p. 64) points out that these were bad precedents, 
 being cases of saints who were above ordinary laws. He adds that in the 
 Ramayana polyandry is mentioned with abhorrence, and sums up in 
 favour of the view that sexual looseness rather than recognized polyandry 
 is indicated (Mayne, p. 65, 4th ed.). 
 
 In Sparta a secondary husband was sometimes tolerated for the sake of 
 increasing the family — ol &vSpes {$oi\ovTat) aSe\(potj5 tois ttuktI irpoaAa/iPdveiv 
 ot Tov fjL€v yevovs zeal ttjs SvydfieiDS Koiviavovat, tuv 5e XPV^'^'^^^^ <*^'^ avriiroiovvral 
 (Xenophon, Rep. Lac., i. 9, quoted in Grote, Part II. chap. vi. p. 520). 
 Similarly, among the Punans, a Borneo jungle people of very primitive 
 type, wives of elderly men take a second husband to obtain children 
 (Hose and McDougall, ii. 185), and among the Bayaka in Africa, a childless 
 husband may introduce his brother in secret (Torday and Joyce, J. A. I., 
 xxxvi. 45). 
 
136 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the two classes is divided into four groups, and in choosing a 
 wife a man is restricted to one of these groups. How the group 
 division is arrived at need not concern us for the present. The 
 point is merely that there exists for any given group of men a 
 definite group of women with whom they may marry, and who 
 are called their Nupas. So far, then, our result is that there are 
 in the tribe a group of men and of women who are Nupa to 
 each other^ — that is, potential husbands and wives. To come now 
 to the actual marriage, a man will have one or more of his Nupas 
 assigned to him as his wives. He will also have others to whom 
 he is Piriaungaru — ^that is, he has access to them under certain 
 conditions. Similarly, a woman may be Piriaungaru to several 
 men, and lastly, a man may Jend^Jiis wife to any of her Nupas, 
 and on the occasion of a visit, for examp lej.s expected as a matter 
 of cOttrtesy ^^1*1 J^OUTflTTeeling^^^soT Thus tBs-^w&baiui-lias 
 ortlyr^D"?© say7^"^preiOTenHarright in his wife, and the wife 
 in the husband. The husband vsdll have a secondary right to 
 other women as his Piriaungaru, while his wives are in turn 
 Piriaungaru to other men.'^ 
 
 1 In the Dieri tribe there is both individual and group marriage. In 
 the latter case the headman allots certain men and women (subject to the 
 elan or totem restriction) to onel^ another as Pirauru, but their rights, as 
 the different husbands and wiv6s are often members of different local 
 groups, are exercised mainly when the groups meet. When they separate 
 the right of the Noa or principal Knsband predominates (A. W. Howitt, 
 The Organization of Australian Tribes, Transactions of Royal Society of 
 Victoria, vol. i. Part II. pp. 124^147). 
 
 The custom of the Arunta and other Central Australian tribes is still 
 further removed from a true group marriage, as here there are no 
 Piriaungaru. A woman is restricted to one man unless he lends her. 
 What suggests group marriage, apart from the nomenclature of relation- 
 ships, is (1) that the name for wife is the group name Unawa, the term 
 (corresponding to Nupa) applied to all women of the class with whom the 
 man may lawfully marry; (2) that wives are freely lent within the group 
 and enjoyed promiscuously at festivals. How much stress is to be laid on 
 this is not easy to determine. It is certain that the class restrictions on 
 marriage are held much more vital by most savages (whatever their marriage 
 customs) than the marriage tie itself. Among the Australians, Messrs. 
 Spencer and Gillen remark that jealousy is little developed, adultery is at 
 most an infringement of rights of property (so also among North American 
 Indians, see Waitz, iii. 131), wife-lending is habitual, and divorce is easy. 
 Under these circumstances the very use of the term marriage can only be 
 justified by the difficulty of finding any other. It is not marriage as we 
 understand the relation, and the tie, whatever we call it, is exceedingly 
 loose. On the other hand, the taboos which mark out special classes for 
 each other are among the most sacred laws of the tribe. Generally speak- 
 ing, these restrictions are of a negative character — a man must not marry 
 within his totem, or his class, but sometimes, owing to the multiplication 
 of restrictions, particularly in the form of classifioatory relationships (of 
 which the Australian class divisions are really a case), the result is to confine 
 the intending spouse to a specific group. This group will then consist of 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 137 
 
 Now, as it stands, this scheme of marriage may be classified as 
 a form of polyandry combined -with polygamy, such as we have 
 
 his Nupa or Unawa, and so it is easy for him to change his wife within the 
 group and impossible for him to take one outside it ; and as this apphes to 
 all the men and all the women we may say that the two groups are more 
 strictly bound together than any individuals within it, and this we may, if 
 we please, term group marriage. But the expression is undesirable unless 
 deliberately intended to suggest the theory of an earlier form in which men 
 and women were actually united by groups. 
 
 The importance of this question lies in its association with the classifi- 
 catory system of counting kinship. In name, an Australian has not one 
 father, but a group of fathers, i. e. all the potential husbands of his mother ; 
 not one brother, but a group of brothers, i. e. all the sons of his potential 
 fathers, and so on. This system of names is widely spread, and points to 
 some form of social organization which must have been very prevalent, if 
 not universal, at a low stage of human development. (That the system, 
 or rather systems, for they are of many kinds, cannot be explained 
 linguistically but must rest on definite social relations between definite 
 individuals and groups, has been conclusively shown by Dr. Rivers in 
 his Kinship and Social Organization.) Those who uphold group marriage 
 argue (1) that this method of reckoning kinship is the only possible method 
 where group marriage exists, (2) that no other satisfactory explanation of 
 its origin and meaning has ever been put forward, (3) that we can under- 
 stand its existence where individual marriage now prevails if we suppose 
 group marriage to have existed previously. As to this argument it may 
 be said (a) that the expression group marriage is misleading. At most we 
 may contemplate marital relations as restricted to the members of two 
 classes, and within the right class, rights of access verging upon com- 
 munism. (6) There is no evidence, nor is it probable, that such limita- 
 tions arise by restriction of a still more primitive communism. The more 
 probable suggestion is that they are a modified form of exogamy (cp. 
 Rivers, op. cit., pp. 70, 71). Given the avoidance of the nearest kin in 
 marriage, the very simplest society involves at least two intermarrying 
 families, A and B. By our methods of reckoning kinship and permitting 
 the intermarriage of any cousins, these two families would become inter- 
 twined, and would, in fact, form one kindred. But suppose descent 
 reckoned through one parent, e. g. through the mother only, and marriage 
 forbidden to all the maternal kin. Then the daughters of family A remain 
 of the kindred A, and must marry the sons of B, and so it will be to the 
 end of time. If other families, C and D, join the group, the young men 
 and maidens will find favour in one another's eyes, and the old men will 
 have to find a way of regularizing relations. If some forcible young man 
 of moiety A has carried off a damsel of family C, it would legitimize the 
 proceeding to rank the females of family C with moiety B for marriage 
 purposes. Thus it might come about that moieties extend beyond 
 recognizable kinship. Further, in the family group we often find that a 
 particular cousin is the appropriate mate, e. g. the mother's brother's 
 daughter. All mothers' brothers' daughters, in fact, form a class within 
 which the bride should be sought by every one of the group of their fathers' 
 sisters' sons. This is already a rudimentary class arrangement of marriage. 
 Once again, suppose the group to be enlarged by the accession of a fresh 
 family, and the young men to take wives among them. To regularize 
 these marriages it will be necessary to rank these wives as of the same 
 class as the cousins who were the appropriate partners for these young 
 men. Then the same prohibitions and the same obligations will apply 
 to parents of these brides as to parents of the bride originally designated. 
 
138 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 already met with among the Nairs, only compUcated by the 
 taboos which limit the intercourse of the sexes to the two groups 
 which are Nupa to each other. It is possible to explain the 
 system as the rehc of earlier customs where the two Nupa 
 groups were actually married to each other, so that intercourse 
 between them would be promiscuous. This, however, is an 
 inference as to the probability of which others must determine. 
 What we actually find is not this marriage of two groups, but 
 exceedingly loose relations, polygamous and polyandrous, within 
 the groups, combined with strict taboo outside them. 
 
 Where the marital relation becomes very loose we approach 
 promiscuity, or the sheer negation of marriage, as between all 
 who are not separated from each other by any taboo. If such 
 tkboos also fail, we get complete promiscuity. Does this exist ? 
 Dr. Westermarck^ enumerates some thirty -one cases in which 
 it has been alleged. But in the majority of these it is also 
 denied by other authorities, and in several the allegation is 
 known to be false. There remain a number of cases in which 
 the marital relation is so loose that the husband sinks into the 
 / position of a lover, temporarily visiting the woman's house and 
 V readily dismissed at will. Sheer promiscuity is probably to be 
 regarded rather as the extreme of looseness in the sexual relation 
 than as a positive institution supported by social sanctions. ^ 
 
 We thus get a class of potential wives and husbands, who are not necessarily 
 blood-cousins, but who would number blood-cousins among them. The 
 parents of the potential wives would be potential parents-in-law and would 
 enjoy the respect or exercise the rights of such. The restriction of marriage 
 to the single class would be a consequence of the original rule of cousin 
 marriage. It would be not a new restriction but an enlargement of the 
 rule that a man should marry one of his mother's brother's daughters, by 
 constituting a class standing in the relation of mothers' brothers' daughters 
 to the class of the man himself. 
 
 Cases in which a man marries his wife's sisters, or possibly certain other 
 relatives, along with her are partial developments of polygamy rather 
 than group marriages, and the institution of the Omaha, quoted by Kohler 
 [Z. f. V. B., 1897, p. 320) as a case of group marriage, where a man marries 
 the aunt or sister or niece of his wife, while on his death the widows pass 
 to his brothers, is a combination of this form of polygamy with the levirate. 
 
 ^ Westermarck, pp. 52-65. 
 
 ' The statement of Herodotus about the Massagetse (Book I. chap, 
 ccxvi.) and of Cosmas of Prague (eleventh century a.d.) about the ancient 
 Bohemians are reducible to this. Cosmas writes, " Connubia erant com- 
 munia. Nam more pecudum singulas ad noctes novos probant hymenseos, 
 et surgente ain-ora . . . ferrea amoris rumpunt vincula " (Kovalevsky, 
 Modem Customs and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 10). Post gives as instances 
 of peoples among whom "marriage relations are almost unrecognizable," 
 tribes of California and the coast of Venezuela, aborigines of Brazil and some 
 Peruvian tribes, six instances in Oceania, three in India, and four in Africa 
 (Ethn. Jurisprudenz, i. 52). He adds fxirther instances, making seven in 
 all for Africa {Afrik. Juris., p. 301). Among the Wintuns of California, 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 139 
 
 4. The looser types of marriage are almost, if not entirely, 
 )nfined to savage and barbarous races. It is liere,jf anywhere, 
 lat we find promiscuity and group marriage. It is here, 
 srtainly, that we find the marital relationship so loose as to 
 pproach promiscuity and group marriage. It is here also that 
 e find polyandry — a custom practised by no people with any 
 :etension to civihzation except the Thibetans and the ancient 
 partans. Polygamy, on the other hand, while also very common 
 nong uncivihzed peoples, may be said to dominate the middle 
 vUizations, and monogamy the higher. But here we must 
 stinguish. Polygamy may occur as a regular rule, limited 
 ily by the number of women available or by a man's means of 
 .aintaining them. Or it may be rare though quite permissible, 
 ften it is limited to chiefs, nobles, or rich men, and in general, 
 aless the numbers of the sexes are very unequal, the majority of 
 len wiU be found at any time living with one wife. In asking, 
 len, whether polygamy prevails among a people, we must decide 
 hether we are inquiring into the permission of polygamy or 
 ito the actual extent to which it is practised. From the ethical 
 jiat of view the former is the more important question, and it 
 
 clear that monogamy can only be said to be strict customary 
 ,w when polygamy is not only rare, but definitely forbidden, 
 ^ith these distinctions in view we made three divisions — of 
 3oples where monogamy is regular, those where polygamy is 
 icasional (beiag either restricted to a class or allowed, only on 
 mditions,^ or being in actual fact rare ^), and those where it is 
 meral, i. e. unrestricted in principle and in practice frequent. 
 7e then find that the permission of polygamy — that is, the two 
 ises of general and occasional polygamy combined, preponderate 
 savUy in aU the lower economic grades, but there are from 10 to 
 
 icording to Powers, a man generally pays nothing for his wife, but merely 
 takes up with her." If (not being a headman) he takes a second wife, 
 le two wives fight till one is driven out, while the husband looks on 
 id abides in the lodge of the conqueror or follows the vanquished as 
 > chooses (Tribes of Galijomia, p. 238). Can this relation be called 
 arriage ? 
 
 * e. g. among the Santals a second wife is only taken in case of sterility 
 id with the first wife's consent (Risley, 616). Kohler states that poly- 
 imy is only allowed with the consent of the fiist wife among some Papuan 
 ibes (Z. f. V. B., 1900, p. 349). 
 
 ' We make this entry, e. g. where we have statements such as the 
 Uowing: Polygamy permitted but not usual (Barea and Kunama — 
 unzinger, Oatajrileansche Studien, p. 524). The chief is referred to as 
 iving several wives, but no other information is given ( Waf ipa, Thompson, 
 220). The men mostly have one wife (The Sereres at Fadiouth, cf. 
 . d'Ethn., ii. 15). Polygamy exceptional (Takue, Munzinger, p. 209). 
 lie wife is usual (Korwa, Crooke, iii. 324). 
 
140 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 20 per cent, of cases in each grade where monogamy is the rule, 
 with the exception of the Pastoral peoples, among whom we only 
 found one case,i and of the Higher Hunters, where the proportion 
 fell to 6 per cent. On the other hand, the practice of polygamy as 
 measured by the number of instances which we class as " general " 
 extends almost continuously from the lowest Hunters upwards.* 
 This bears out the view that, as a 'practice, polygamy is mainly a 
 matter of wealth. As an admitted custom, however, it may be 
 said to be prevalent, though not universal, throughout the un- 
 civilized world. The only definite group of cases in which mono- 
 gamy as strict custom preponderates is that of the jungle peoples 
 of Asia and some of the corresponding tribes of Africa. Thus the 
 wild Semang are monogamous,* the Sakai perhaps so,* the Veddas^ 
 and Andamanese ^ strictly. The Punans are not monogamous 
 since they admit polyandry, but hold to monogyny except in 
 marriage with other tribes.'' In Africa we hear the same of some 
 of the Pigmy people.^ The rule, however, is not universal. 
 The majority of the African Pigmies would seem to have been 
 polygamous or to have made little of marriage. The Kubus, 
 even in the wild condition, are stated to have allowed polygamy, 
 though, perhaps, rarely practising it,^ and some of the Negritos 
 practised concubinage. As far as we get any account rendered 
 of the reason, it is economic. . Thus, the Orang Bukitof Sungei 
 Ujong have but one wife, but, according to Mr. F. W. Knocker, 
 see no objection, except the difficulty of providing for them, to 
 having two or three.^" Similarly of the "tame " Semang, Messrs. 
 Annandale and Robinson write that they usually practice mono- 
 gamy for economic reasons .i'- Indeed, those of these peoples who 
 have come under Malay influence and taken to a rude agriculture, 
 have in many cases also accepted polygamy. In any case it 
 would be a mistake to base any large conclusions on this partial 
 tendency to monogamy. The forest tribes, though economically 
 
 1 The Tobas, a South American hunting people, who have acquired cattle 
 from the Spaniards. 
 
 " There is a drop in the lowest stage of agriculture, and the two pastoral 
 stages are above the corresponding agricultural grades. 
 
 ^ Martin, p. 864. Martin, it should be said, denies that their monogamy 
 is due to lack of passion and attributes it to self-restraint. Wilkinson, on 
 the other hand, allows the Semang much less moral feeling. 
 
 * But cf. Skeat and Blagden, ii. p. 56. ^ Seligmann, p. 87. 
 
 8 E. G. Man, J. A. I., xii. p. 135. ' Hose and McDougall, ii. 183. 
 
 * " Th^ Batuas of Lake Tanganyika " (Hutereau, Annales III, i. 3), 
 the " Wambuti of Ituri " (David, Globus, 1904, p. 196). On the other hand, 
 Johnston finds conditioned polygamy, and a very frail tie verging upon 
 promiscuity (Grenfell and the Congo, p. 674 ; Uganda Protectorate, p. 539). 
 
 ' Hagen, p. 133. i» J. A. I., xxxvii. 293. 
 
 " J. A. I., xxxii. 417, etc. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OP WOMEN 141 
 
 ry primitive, are formed, as may be seen, by a special and 
 iiher severe selection. They are the residue of those who have 
 en driven further and further into the wilds by the pressure 
 
 stronger races or better organized communities, and their 
 nperament and mode of life must be specially adapted to suit 
 sir particular circumstances, and as such is marked by gentle- 
 ss, shyness, and timidity rather than by strength of passion, 
 ssibly these causes have co-operated with the economic factor 
 secure among many of them a relatively favourable position 
 : women, and, amongst other things, monogamous marriage. 
 Qongst other Lower Hunters polygamy is permitted and the 
 aeral position of women is unfavourable. This is true in 
 aeral of the Austrahans, the Fuegians, the Bushmen, the 
 itocudos, and the Lower and Central Cahfornian tribes, as well 
 
 of many other North and South American Indians, who are 
 t little above the Lower Hunters in economic standing. We 
 nnot associate any tendency to monogamy with the lowest 
 Iture, but only a partial tendency to monogyny (combined in 
 
 important group with the recognition of polyandry) in one 
 rticular development of that culture. In general terms, then, 
 1 may say that the permission of polygamy is the rule in all 
 ides of the uncivihzed world, but in so doing we must dis- 
 iguish between polygamy as a permitted custom and as a 
 aeral practice ; and between an ethical monogamy based on the 
 Uef that it is wrong to have more than one wife, and an habitual 
 jnogamy based on the practical difficulty of obtaining and 
 lintaining more than one wife.^ Polyandry, on the other hand, 
 by comparison an exceptional practice, the principal causes of 
 
 ^ Travellers and ethnologists sometimes describe people as monogamous 
 10, in fact, are so only by prevailing habit. The Iroquois, for instance, 
 rays figure among monogamous peoples, and no doubt that form of 
 iriage prevailed among them and became the strict rule. Thus, Morgan 
 iogtie of the Iroquois, p. 324) states that polygamy was forbidden and 
 fei became a practice, but from Coldan's account given in Schoolcraft's 
 rk (i. 221), it appears that it existed, though rarely practised in his time, 
 peatedly we hear that the mass of the people are monogamous, but that 
 > chiefs or the wealthier tribesmen have several wives or concubines, 
 is was the case with the ancient Germans. Polygamy was rare in practice 
 t was legal. When, owing to general poverty and the equality of con- 
 ions — which would bar the making of exceptions in favour of rich men 
 chiefs — ^the practice of monogamy has become universal and as such is 
 long standing, it would harden into custom, and acquire the sanctity 
 it custom possesses among simple peoples. As such we find it in all 
 • grades except the pastoral, which, perhaps on acooiint of the lowered 
 ustrial value, seems particularly conducive to a proprietary view of 
 man. Meanwhile, with the development of wealth, the practice of 
 ygamy extends and prepares us for its importance in the lower and middle 
 ilizations. 
 
142 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 which are most probably poverty and a deficiency in the number 
 of women. On the evidence before us it is hardly to be described 
 as an institution belonging to one of the great types of soeiaJ 
 organization. 
 
 5. II. Impediments to Marriage. 
 
 A quite distinct classification of marriage systems could be 
 made on the basis of the prohibitions which almost everywhere 
 restrict, in greater or less degree, the choice of a husband or 
 wife. These prohibitions exhibit a rich variety of differences, 
 and their meaning and origin are extremely obscure. We have 
 already noted that they fall into two great divisions. On the 
 one hand, there are restrictions forbidding marriage within a 
 certain group — laws of exogamy ; on the other, and quite possibly 
 among the same people, there are rules forbidding it outside a 
 certain group — ^laws of endogamy. Both kinds of restriction 
 appear in a great variety of forms. Thus, endogamy may take 
 the form of prohibition to marry outside the clan, as in old days 
 among the gypsies,^ or the caste as in India, or even the family. 
 In the ancient world foreigners could rarely intermarry unless 
 their respective states had the jus connubii, and there were gener- 
 ally barriers on the intermarriage of slave or serf with free men 
 or women, and a social, if not a legal, bar on the marriage of 
 noble and commoner. In the modern world legal barriers have 
 for the most part disappeared, and, socially speaking, equahtyin 
 education alone is exacted.^ Far more various and difficult to 
 understand are the rules of exogamy. Marriage may be forbidden 
 within the totem, as among many North American Indians and 
 some AustraHan tribes ; within the clan, as among the Bahima ' 
 and Somah,* etc.; within the village, as among the Battas'; 
 or the tribe, as in Rotuma.® It may also be prohibited within 
 the kindred, and here again great differences appear. All the 
 
 1 Post, Orundrias, i. 33. See ib. for several instances in which it is the 
 duty of relations to marry. I am not clear that it is distinctly forbidden 
 to marry another than a relation. 
 
 ^ There are exceptions, such as the prohibition of marriage with negroes 
 in twenty-two of the United States, with Indians in four states, with 
 Mongohans in four states {Parly. Papers, Miscell., No. 2, 1894, p. 155). 
 Otherwise the intermarrying of royal families is the principal exception. 
 In the German code the marriage of a high noble with a commoner involves 
 certain disabilities (Westermarok, 373). 
 
 ' Torday and Joyce, J. A. I., xxxvii. p. 105. 
 
 * Post, A. J., i. 383. 
 
 = Waitz, V. i. 186. 
 
 ' Gardiner, J. A. I., xxvii. 478. There appear to be sporadic cases of 
 prohibition within the same caste, or the same religious division (see Post, 
 Onmdriaa, i. 41). 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 143 
 
 ndred, so far as relationship is traceable, may be prohibited, 
 J among the Andamanese and the Yoruba.^ Or the prohibition 
 ay be apphed to all the kin on that side to which the greater 
 iportance is attached, as in the Brahmanic and Chinese pro- 
 bitions.^ Where relationships are of the " classificatory " type, 
 g. where the mother and all her sisters are addressed by the 
 ,me name, whUe the daughters of aU that group of women, again, 
 ive one form of address in common, the prohibition of marriage 
 ay extend to aU members of the group, and society wiU divide 
 self into classes within which a man may marry, and classes 
 ithin which the women are strictly taboo to him. This class 
 vision of society runs through the Australian peoples.^ Again, 
 nship may be reckoned by degrees, as among ourselves, and 
 rogamy may be enjoined for certain degrees only, while beyond 
 lem marriage is permitted. In point of fact, under one rule or 
 lother, prohibition of marriage within the first and second 
 sgrees (parent and child, or brother and sister) is almost uni- 
 srsal, if we take account only of the basis of relationship recog- 
 zed by any given people. Thus, if the totem is exogamous, 
 id passes by mother -right, all kindred through the mother will 
 i excluded from marriage, but brother and sister by the same 
 ther will be no relations, and may intermarry. Indeed, if the 
 inciple is carried to its logical conclusion, the same will be 
 ue of father and daughter. On the other hand, the totemic 
 •ohibition may be eked out by a custom forbidding or dis- 
 luraging the marriage of near relations as such. Thus, in 
 ew Britain we are told that though legally a man may marry 
 s brother's daughter, since she is not of his totem, yet in point 
 fact such unions excite great repugnance.* Apart from cases 
 which kinship is only reckoned on one side, so that inter- 
 arriage is allowed within the haK-blood, the permission of 
 Best within the nearest degree appears very rare. Indeed, 
 :th this reservation we may say that the nearer the relation- 
 ip (counting that of the son to his mother as closer than that 
 
 ' Man, J. A. I., xii. 126. Ellis, Yoruba-speaking Peoples, p. 176. The 
 idamanese recognize adoption and affinity as bars, but, through want of 
 Jords, fail to trace kinship beyond the third generation (Man, J. A. I., 
 . 127). 
 
 ' See chap. ii. p. 52. If the clan ia based on father-right, it will be 
 sn that the prohibition to marry an agnate is, at least in theory, equivalent 
 prohibition of marriage within the clan. Identity of name, again, is 
 sen as equivalent to common membership of a putative clan. 
 ' Among fifty-three peoples examined by Tylor, who count relationship 
 
 the classificatory system, thirty-three are at present exogamous 
 
 A. I., xviii. 264). 
 ' Danks, J. A. I., xviii. 283. 
 
144 MORALS IN EVOLXJTION 
 
 of daughter to father), the rarer is the failure to prohibit.^ Such 
 failure probably occurs most often in consequence of a strongly 
 endogamous tendency, in the form of a desire to maintain purity 
 of blood. Hence we find cases of in-and-in breeding among 
 royal famihes, e. g. in ancient Persia and Egypt, and among 
 high castes, as the Ulitaos of Micronesia .2 But the prohibitions 
 may be carried far beyond the first and second degrees. The 
 Roman Church still forbids marriage to third cousins, and the 
 attempt was made to carry it much further. Again, affinity 
 may or may not rank with relationship. In many cases a 
 son inherits his father's wives, with the exception of his own 
 mother, along with the rest of the family property. We find 
 the Jewish legislators and, later, Mohammed, setting themselves 
 against this practice. On the other side, rules of affinity may 
 be construed as severely as those of blood relationship. On this 
 method an immense extension of the forbidden degrees was 
 effected by the mediaeval church,^ which was still further widened 
 by the creation of a spiritual affinity between god-parents of the 
 same child. The effect of this complex mass of prohibitions was 
 such that hardly any marriage was clearly valid, while dispensa- 
 tions were and still are attainable allowing unions even between 
 uncle and niece. Protestantism swept away this mass of pro- 
 hibitions, and for the most part allowed marriage of first cousins, 
 and confined the restrictions of affinity to the direct fine.* 
 
 Of these very various rules it seems possible to say three 
 things generally. The first is that they tend to bar marriage 
 between people who are bound together by some other important 
 relation. Thus the totem or the clan, which is exogamous, is also 
 as a rule bound in a kind of brotherhood to mutual assistance. 
 Secondly, the particular relation which is the commonest bar 
 
 1 The marriage of father and daughter, as well as that of brother and 
 sister, is said to be allowed among the Aleuts (Reclus, 65). According to 
 Post (a. J., i. 382), there is no case in which incest with a mother is allowed 
 in Africa, but among the Wanyoro, sister and even daughter marriage 
 occvu^. Incest between parents and children is also found in some South 
 American tribes (Starcke, The Primitive Family, 224. Cf. Schmidt, 
 Z. f. V. B., 1898, p. 304). 
 
 ' Sister marriage was common in ancient Egypt (W. Max Milller, 
 Liebespoesie der alien Mgypten, pp. 7—8, and Waitz, v. ii. 111). For other 
 instances, see Westermarck, 290. 
 
 " See Huth, Marriage of Near Kin, 117. Huth (op. cit., 120) instances 
 the repudiation of Ingeburga of Denmark by Philip Augustus, on the ground 
 that she belonged to a family which had previously intermarried with the 
 family of Philip's first wife. It is fair to say that in this instance the Pope 
 procured Ingeburga's restoration. 
 
 * The English prohibition of marriage with the wife's sister was the most 
 conspicuous exception. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 145 
 
 that based on blood kinship. Thirdly, the violation of the 
 lies of exogamy, whatever they are, is generally regarded with 
 3CuUar horror. It is often an object of pubhc veflgeance when 
 D other crimes, except, perhaps, that of witchcraft, have been 
 lised to that dignity, and in the civihzed world the intensity of 
 leUng which it excites in no way diminishes. 
 
 6. Notwithstanding the great variation in the forms which it 
 ikes, the exogamic impulse seems to perform certain functions 
 hich are fairly constant. Thus (1) it checks in-and-in breed- 
 ig, barring intermarriage with near kin and often, in the 
 iwer races, within the narrow limits of the clan or village, 
 hich in their isolation would otherwise become entirely filled 
 ith people related to one another by a network of cousinship. 
 That, precisely, are the physical disadvantages of in-and-in 
 reeding or the advantages of crossing is, however, harder to 
 ly than is popularly supposed, and it is probable that this bio- 
 igical side of the matter is the least important of the functions 
 irved by exogamy.^ But (2), as indicated above (chap, ii.), 
 
 has the important sociological function of binding distinct 
 roups together. (3) A third function of more importance in 
 le civilized world is of a distinctively ethical character. For 
 3 the prohibition of incest is the only form of exogamy which 
 srsists, and incest is a crime which affects us with a horror, of 
 le kind we call instinctive, and which is certainly not weaker 
 L civihzed than in barbarous humanity. What is the meaning 
 : this horror ? It is too real and deeply rooted to be explained 
 i a survival. It is not based on tradition and convention, for 
 is not felt in relation to many crimes which the laws forbid, 
 bus, among peoples who accept the law of the Roman Church, 
 16 marriage of cousins is forbidden, but frequently occurs. In 
 ir own country men may approve or condemn marriage with a 
 sceased wife's sister, but any one who should put it on a par 
 ith incest with a blood-sister would be a very abnormally con- 
 ituted person. Is the horror, then, of incest instinctive ? The 
 iual objections to this view are based on a misunderstanding of 
 stinct. It is said that the horror is not universal, and that 
 le objects to which it is directed differ widely in different 
 soples. But many instincts in the animal kingdom fail in 
 liversaUty and are modifiable in their apphcation. And, as 
 e have seen, what is instinctive or hereditary in human nature 
 icomes more and more a feature of character, a tendency or 
 sposition to feel or act which obtains its actual direction from 
 
 1 See the evidence, especially that of Mr. G. H. Darwin, collected in 
 ath's Marriage of Near Kin, chap. viii. 
 
146 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 experience, and especially from education and social tradition. 
 So far as such tendencies are to be explained it must be by showing 
 the function which they serve, and the physical or psychical 
 mechanism on which they rest. The function which the horror 
 of incest performs has been, in early stages, to bring and keep 
 famihes together in society, and at all stages to maintain distinct, 
 and therefore in healthy development, the deepest affections of 
 mankind. As to its basis, it is quite possible that there is an 
 element of physical repulsion at the core, but, apart from this, 
 there are psychological factors on which contemporary investiga- 
 tions of character throw some light. A sentiment is regarded as 
 a system of emotions and ideas clustering about some object, 
 and organized on Mnes of its own. If two distinct sentiments, 
 as the parental and the sexual, come to bear upon the same object 
 there is a coUision between them, and the repulsion is felt as an 
 emotional stress. In society the normal sentiment would have 
 the upper haiid, and its repugnance for the abnormal would 
 reinforce the emotion in the individual, and would add (in this 
 case) the shame of bringing social disgrace on one of his own kin. 
 But religious ideas or social arrangements, working on the re- 
 pugnances between the parental and the sexual as a nucleus, 
 might extend it to all cases which it classed with the parental, 
 and the current association would be reflected under ordinary 
 conditions in the individual consciousness. Thus, rules of exo- 
 gamy will naturally vary in accordance with the basis of kinship 
 and of such Active kinship as that of the totem. But they wiU 
 vary around the parental, and more particularly the maternal, 
 relation as a centre. The relation of the child to its mother is 
 the first strongly reahzed, and remains throughout history the 
 most sacred of human relations. Hence it is that cases where 
 breaches of that relation are tolerated are the rarest of all. We 
 may take this relation as the starting point of the prohibitions, 
 and then bear in mind that it is all in accordance with the ways 
 of primitive thought to extend them to everything indirectly 
 or remotely associated with the tabooed relation — e. g. to the 
 mother's children, her relatives, all of her totem or her name. 
 The father may come into the account independently through 
 the recognition of paternity or through contact with the mother, 
 and starting from the paternal relation the taboo may be extended 
 in the same way. The eccentricities of exogamy, then, are ex- 
 plained as arising (1) from an unduly extended taboo, (2) from 
 an insufficiently felt recognition of natural relations. These are 
 the ordinary faults of excess and defect which characterize rude 
 moraUty, and are, on the whole, removed as civilization advances. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 14' 
 
 Thus, in earlier customs we find rules of endogamy restriotin| 
 marriage by clan or caste exclusiveness, and of exogamy restrict 
 ing it by rules bearing an indirect or irregular refation to the 
 natural feeling which we are led to conceive as their starting 
 point. In more civilized ethics we find the first set of restric 
 tions nearly annihilated, and the latter reduced to a simple 
 expression of the permanent feelings from which we suppose 
 them to emanate. In both directions the more civihzed ethics 
 tends to discard rules which hamper the free exercise of choice 
 in accordance with normal human feehng. 
 
 7. III. The Stability of the Marriage Relation. 
 
 Not less important than the number of parties to the unior 
 is the permanence of the marriage tie, and on this basis it would 
 be easy to make a classification cutting right across all others 
 In many of the lower races, as we have already seen, the dis 
 solution of marriage is so easy and frequent that it becomes s 
 question whether the term marriage is at all appUcable. Ir 
 other cases the marriage bond is as strictly regarded as in the 
 Roman Church. Here, again, we cannot find a continuous and 
 unbroken development in any single direction, but once more 
 we can with tolerable accuracy lay down that certain tendencies 
 predominate at given stages of culture. This wiU be clear il 
 once again we begin by distinguishing the different possibiHties, 
 and then briefly indicate the stage of culture at which each is 
 or has been most frequently reaUzed. 
 
 Divorce may (1) be perfectly free to either party; (2) it may 
 be free to both by mutual consent ; (3) it may be absolutely at 
 the wiU of the husband or (4) of the wife. Next, (5) it may be 
 free to one party or both on obtaining the consent of the family, 
 the clan, or a court ; (6) it may be open to either party on certain 
 conditions. These conditions are infinitely various, but we ought 
 to distinguish, as cases differing in principle, (a) those in which 
 the only coneiition is of the nature of a fine, usually taking 
 the form of forfeiture of dowry or the restoration of the bride 
 price, and (6) those in which the essential coneiition is some 
 fault or defect in the other party to the marriage.^ Further, (c) 
 it may be open on the same conditions to man and wife, or (d) 
 on different conditions. Very often, in fact, it is free to the 
 husband and allowed under conditions to the wife. (7) It may 
 
 ' Not infrequently divorce is free only when the marriage is childless. 
 Thus, among the Natchez, it was at the will of the husband till a child was 
 bom, after which there was no divorce (Le Petit, in the Jesuit Eelationa, 
 vol. Ixviii. p. 143). 
 
148 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 be wholly forbidden, marriage being indissoluble. In this latter 
 case a separation a mensa et toro is usually allowed, but sometimes 
 this, too, is forbidden. 
 
 Marriage is indissoluble among the Andamans, some Papuans 
 of New Guinea, at Watubela, at Lampong in Sumatra, among 
 the Igorrotes and Italones of the Phihppines, the Veddahs of 
 Ceylon,'^ the Ges of Brazil,^ and in the Romish Church. 
 
 Ordinarily, however, both in the civihzed and uncivilized 
 world marriage may be dissolved either at pleasure or under 
 certain conditions. Among uncivilized peoples divorce is not 
 infrequently free to either party. The man dismisses his wife 
 without ceremony, or the discontented or injured woman leaves 
 her husband's house without more ado and runs back to her own 
 relations,^ or they part by mutual agreement.* In the higher 
 stages of barbarism and in primitive civilization the consohdation 
 of the family under the growing power of the husband tends 
 to make divorce rarer and more difficult. Sometimes it drops 
 almost entirely out of use. Thus it was a Roman boast that, 
 though divorce was not legally impossible, before the case of 
 Sp. Carvilius Ruga in 231 B.C. no instance had been known since 
 the foundation of the city. Sometimes, with less justice, the 
 power of divorce is left to the husband and withheld from the 
 wife. It may even remain entirely at the husband's pleasure to 
 send back the chattel which he has bought. Thus the Hebrew 
 who found anything unseemly in his wife merely gave her a 
 writing of divorcement and had done with her. In other cases 
 there was at least a pecuniary deterrent. The divorcing husband 
 forfeited the dowry, or, if the fault was his, could not regain the 
 bride price. He had to leave his wife all the gifts he had made to 
 her, or, finally, if she had no such property of her own, he had 
 to pay a defitnite sum. Again, if there were children, provision 
 might be made for their maintenance, or the right of divorce 
 itself might in this case be withdrawn.^ Similarly, where the 
 wife has the right of divorce, she may incur pecuniary forfeits, 
 losing her dowry, or having to repay the bride price and return 
 the presents made at or during marriage. 
 
 1 I take the foregoing from Dr. Westermarck's list, p. 517. He quotes 
 Wilken's opinion that the same held good of the Niasians and Bataks. 
 
 " von Martius, i. 290. 
 
 ' Sometimes it is a condition that she returns the price paid for her, e. g. 
 in Soulimana and frequently in Africa (Howard, i. 226). In other oases 
 she leaves at will, e. g. among the Bakairi (von der Steinen, p. 332). 
 
 * This Post considers to be the rule under the elan organization of society 
 (Post, Orundriss, ii. 117). 
 
 ' e. g. according to Post {A. J., i. 434), among the Moorish tribes of the 
 Sahara and the Hottentots. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 149 
 
 Such pecuniary penalties render marriage relatively stable ; but 
 > further step is taken when it is dissoluble only under assigned 
 onditions. These, again, show extraordinary variations. The 
 usband is generally able to divorce the wife for unfaithful- 
 less, very often for sterility, and sometimes ^ because she bears 
 LO sons ; often, too, for disobedience, bodily defects, or what are 
 onsidered moral faihngs. The wife, again, often has the right 
 if leaving the husband in case of neglect, desertion, impotence, 
 ir cruelty — more rarely in case of unfaithfulness. As a rule, 
 he divorced husband may marry again, but it is not always that 
 he divorced wife has this right, especially under the system 
 if marriage by purchase. Sometimes she is whoUy prohibited 
 rom marrjrLag ; sometimes she must refrain till she has the leave 
 )f her former lord and master. 
 
 The customs of savage and uncivilized peoples as to divorce 
 rary in such wild profusion that it is very difficult to make any 
 general statement with regard to them. It may, however, be 
 laid that, with the few exceptions mentioned, divorce is allowed ; 
 ;hat it is generally free to the husband on easy terms, and very 
 )ften also to the wife, or to the two parties by mutual agree- 
 nent,^ but is sometimes restricted to special cases, and that the 
 levelopment of the patriarchate, and particularly of marriage 
 3y purchase,* tended to increase the privileges of the husband 
 is'compared with those of the wife in this relation.* 
 
 ' e. g. in Burmah (Post, Orundriss, ii. 114). 
 
 ' In comparing the position of husband and wife, it must be borne in mind 
 ;hat divorce ahnost universally sets the husband free to marry again, while 
 ihe wife, in a large number of cases, especially under marriage by purchase, 
 s more or less narrowly restricted in this respect, so that, for her, divorce 
 :ather corresponds to what we call separation (Howard, A History of 
 Matrimonial Institutions, i. 244, 245). 
 
 ' Howard (i. 231) notes the influence of wife-purchase in this direction. 
 
 • Divorce among Savages. — ^Divorce is apparently either quite free or 
 jpen on very easy terms to either party among many North American 
 [ndians (Columbians, Howard, i. 238; Iroquois, Schoolcraft-Drake, 
 i. 221; Upper Califomians and Innuit, Kohler, Z. f. V. S., 1897, p. 368). 
 imong the Yuroks divorce is very easily accomplished at the will of the 
 lusband (Powers, p. 56). In this last case the husband regains the bride 
 price. It is free to both parties among the Eskimo of Point Barrow and 
 3f Behring Straits and Pawnees (Howard, i. 227, 228). Among other 
 iribes it is at the pleasure of the husband ; [so stated of the North American 
 [ndian generally (Schoolcraft, i. 171); of the Oregons {ib., v. 654); of the 
 Hupa (Powers, p. 85) — ^here the displeased husband gets back the bride 
 price; of the Dakota (Howard, i. 232); and the Abipones {ib.). In the 
 ast case, however, it may lead to a feud]. Among other peoples the man 
 must lose the bride price if he divorces without good cause (Thlinkeets, 
 Kohler, toe. cit.). In some the wife can leave at pleasure. The Navajo 
 ivomen are said by Colonel Eaton (Schoolcraft, iv. 217) to leave their 
 lusbands on the slightest pretext. Among the Digger Indians the wife 
 eaves the husband at pleasure (ib., 223). Among the Cegiha the wife's 
 
150 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In order to classify the different customs as far as such great 
 diversities allow, we bring under the head 6i Divorce at will cases 
 
 relations take her away if ill-treated (Howard, 228), and the Sioux and 
 Dakota women leave their husbands for unfaithfulness or other causes. 
 Among the Upper Califomians the deserted husband demands the return 
 of the bride price. In the later form of marriage among the Creeks the 
 bond holds for a year only. 
 
 Among some tribes of tropical South America the power of the husband is 
 more developed, and he can lend, give, prostitute, sell, or exchange his wife 
 at pleasure (Schmidt, loc. cit., 1898, p. 297). In Brazil, according to 
 , Anchieta (quoted in Howard, p. 228), the wife may leave at pleasure. So 
 among the Moxos {ib., 239). The Bonak, Guanan, and Guatamalan women 
 have similar freedom (authorities cited by Howard, p. 239). 
 
 In Oceania divorce is generally easy, the ''gh there are one or two oases in 
 which it appears to be unknown. In Polynesia divorce by mutual consent 
 is lawful (Howard, p. 230). A Tongan husband divorces his wife by 
 simply telling her to go (ib., p. 231). In Micronesia divorce is at the 
 man's pleasure, and the same is true of the Papuan peoples, among whom the 
 woman, if she flies, must retm^ the bride price, while the husband, if in 
 earnest about it, can generally reclaim her from her relatives by the terrors 
 of witchcraft (Kohler, Z. f. V. R., 1900, p. 347). In the Torres Straits 
 divorce appears to have been rare. Infidelity and sterility were the chief 
 causes, but incompatibility of temper appears -to have been recognized as 
 sufficient (Cambridge Expedition, p. 246). Among some Australians, as 
 the Euahlayi, the husband might send the wife back to her relations, and 
 reclaim her child when old enough, while, if ill-treated, her relations might 
 take her away (Mrs. Parker, p. 58). In the Boulia District a wife given 
 to a man by the camp council could only be divorced with her consent 
 (Roth, p. 181). In Western Victoria couples may separate by mutual con- 
 sent, bvit the husband wishing to divorce his wife must obtain the consent 
 of the chief men of his own and his wife's tribe. She may also complain 
 of his Tm.faithfulness and get him sent away for two or three moons 
 (Dawson, Australian Aborigines, quoted by Howard, pp. 229, 230). 
 
 In Africa divorce at the will of the husband is general (Post, A. J., i. 433). 
 The corresponding right of the wife is rarer, but not infrequent. Some sixteen 
 cases are enumerated by Post (Afrik. Jurisp., p. 436), but some of them are 
 doubtful, or depend on special conditions. Among the Fantis, Foulahs, and 
 Kaffirs (Post, A. J., p. 438), and in Kordofan and Baka (Post, A. J., p. 439), 
 the neglect or ill-treatment of the wife are good grounds of divorce. Among 
 the Bogos her third flight is taken as final (Post, A. J., p. 437). In many 
 tribes the wife can be divorced for sterility (]?ost, A. J., p. 439), and among 
 the Kimbundas the husband can be divorced for impotence (Post, A. J., 
 p. 441). Among the Mimdombe divorce is rare, only occurring when, after 
 two years, there is no child (Magyar, p. 23). Among the Mayombe it re- 
 quires the consent of the wife's father (Overburgh, p. 264). In many cases 
 compensation must be given by the party which dissolves the marriage, e. g. 
 among the Foulahs and the Kaffirs for groundless repudiation. In Bomu 
 the wife retains her dowry (Post, A. J., pp. 442^43). Amiong the Banyara 
 she receives a small sum and retains all the presents she has received 
 (Post, A. J., p. 442). Among the Basutos, unless guilty of an offence, she 
 is entitled to support (Post, A. J., p.' 442). In Egypt she can also claim 
 a certain provision, and in Abyssinia she can claim her dowry as well 
 (Post, A. J., p. 442). Among the Bogos she takes the household utensils 
 with her, among the Barea and Kunamashe has half the joint property, 
 and in Morocco a sum awarded by the judge (Post, A. J., pp. 442, 443). 
 If the woman leaves the man, her family must return the bride price, and 
 perhaps more. But the question of compensation is very naturally affected 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 151 
 
 in which (1) either party is free to dissolve the union, or (2) are 
 subject to no check except the necessity of repaying the bride 
 
 by the circumstances of the divorce. If the divorcing party has good 
 grounds he or she pays less, or perhaps pays nothing, llius, among the 
 Kaffirs, Foulahs, Fantis, and in Kordofai> the wife does not restore the 
 bride price if she has good grounds for leaving her husband (Post, A. J., 
 p. 445). Among the Beni Amer, if it is the man who divorces, the woman's 
 property is divided, the husband taking his weapons, and the wife the 
 house and contents. If the woman divorces the man for ill-treatment or 
 infidelity, she gets only one-third of the common stock ; if impotence is the 
 cause she gets half (Post, A. J., p. 446). 
 
 Among the Yoruba (where father-right holds) the husband can divorce 
 the wife and reclaim the bride price if she is imfaithful; otherwise he 
 loses the price. If he neglecta^the wife, she summons a palaver of her 
 relatives, and if he persists, sHwmay leave him. If he is of inferior rank 
 he is liable to be flogged by her relations (Ellis, Yoruba Peoples, p. 187). 
 Under mother-right, where the woman is not bought out of her family, 
 the children often follow the mother in case of divorce. But this is not 
 always the case, and sometimes the circumstances of the divorce determine 
 the children's future (Post, A. J., p. 447). 
 
 No obstacle is offered to the re-marriage of the man, but under marriage 
 by purchase the husband generally retains some control over the divorced 
 wife. Among the Hottentots and Ashantis she cannot re-marry ; among the 
 Banguns, not in the same village ; among the KafBrs, only if she had good 
 grounds for leaving her husband ; among the Marea and the Habub, not 
 till her husband declares her free. But in many cases (Post, A. J., p. 460, 
 enumerates eight) apparently after a certain interval she is free to re-marry. 
 
 On the whole, throughout Africa, marriage by pvu-chase prevails, and the 
 position of the wife is accordingly less favourable. 
 
 Among the Indian Hill tribes the variations are great. The Nair wife 
 may not only dismiss any of her twelve husbands at pleasure, but may even 
 let him be. sold into slavery for debt (Eeclus, Primitive Folk, p. 168). 
 Often divorce is free to either party. Instances are the Todas, Bodo 
 and Dhimals (but here an adulteress must refund the bride price), and the 
 Karens. Among the Badagas the wife may leave if she pleases, but the 
 husband retains the children. He is also free to divorce her (Reclus, 
 op. cit., p. 195). Among the Nagas there is a fine according to the cause 
 of the divorce (Godden, J. A. I., xxvi. 177). Among the Santals divorce 
 is rare, but is permitted to either party on obtaining the consent of 
 the husband's clan. Among the Khonds the wife may leave the husband 
 on repaying the bride price. (In some tribes this privilege is restricted to 
 the childless.) On the other hand, she can be divorced only for advdtery 
 or prolonged misconduct, and her consent is required if the husband wishes 
 to take a concubine (Reclus, p. 280) ; and, a rare note in the savage world, 
 infidelity on the part of the man is held dishonourable. 
 
 Among the peoples of Central Asia divorce appears to be open to the 
 man at pleasure and to the woman for persistent ill-treatment (Ratzel, 
 vol. iii. p. 342; Letoumeau, La Femme, p. 210). 
 
 Among the Malays, divorce is greatly influenced by the form of marriage. 
 In the Ambil Anak marriage the wife may divorce the husband. In the 
 Djudjur marriage all the advantage is on his side, but she can generally 
 escape from him if ill-treated. In the Semando form of marriage (see 
 Waitz, V. 145) the taking of a second wife or concubine is a ground of 
 divorce, and in one place (Mokomoko) this is the only form recognized 
 (Waitz, V. 145, etc.). Among the Battaks of East Sumatra there is no one- 
 sided divorce, except for attempt to murder, and mutual agreement is 
 required (Howard, p. 229). 
 
152 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 price, or (3) marriage may be dissolved by mutual consent. 
 Next we put together those in which divorce is free to the husband 
 though either denied to the wife or open to her only on conditions. 
 Next are those in which it is open to the wife but not to the 
 husband.^ Then there are those in which it is conditioned in 
 various ways, and, finally, those in which it is indissoluble. In 
 upwards of 270 cases we found ^ the following percentage for each 
 class — 
 
 Divorce by consent or at will of either party. . "48 
 
 At will of husband '23 
 
 At will of wife '007 
 
 Conditioned '24 
 
 Marriage indissoluble '04 
 
 These proportions were pretty evenly distributed among the 
 different grades, except the Higher Hunters, where the two first 
 classes account for 86 per cent, of the whole. If we add these 
 classes together in the above table as representing the unstable 
 form of marriage, we see that they account for 71 per cent, of 
 the whole, and as the lowest figure we get for any grade is "625 
 in the Higher Pastoral, where the number of instances is very 
 small, we seem justified in saying (1) that, roughly, in seven 
 peoples out of ten, marriage in the uncivUized world can be 
 dissolved at the will either of one partner or of both ; (2) that 
 this relation is roughly constant from the lowest to the highest 
 economic grades within these limits. Thus, in the uncivilized 
 world, the marital relation is more often than not a loose tie, 
 undone with relative ease. 
 
 8. IV. Further light is thrown on the structure of the family 
 by the methods of arranging a marriage. These may be grouped 
 under the following heads — 
 
 a. Capture. 
 
 h. Consideration rendered for the bride. 
 
 c. Consent of the parties. 
 
 1 We only found two oases under this head. Sometimes we are only 
 told explicitly that the wife may leave, but we presume from the general 
 account of the husband's position that his countervailing right is so clear 
 as not to have needed statement (see, e. g. Latcham on the Arauoanians, 
 J. A. I., xxxix. 359). Among the Irulas, however, Harkness states that 
 divorce was mainly at the option of the wife (Thurston, s. v. Irulas, vol. ii. 
 p. 379). 
 
 ler Peoples, Tp. IGi. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OP WOMEN 153 
 
 i few words may be said here of the general character of these 
 aethods, while their bearing upon the marriage relation will be 
 urther discussed in the following section. 
 
 a. Marriage by capture is a somewhat ambiguous term. The 
 ffactice of taking women captives in war or in petty raids is 
 (ddely diffused over the savage world. In the genuine and 
 inadulterated form of carrying off a bride from a strange tribe 
 .gainst her wiU and that of her relations, it occurs, according to 
 i^ofessor Tyler, in some forty cases.^ From this genuine capture 
 Professor Tyler distinguishes connubial and formal capture. 
 !!onnubial capture is not a mere form, but is a recognized 
 nethod of obtaining a bride between families Hving at peace 
 yith one another, and is not regarded as a sufficient ground of 
 [uarrel. Of this Professor Tylor finds forty-six cases.^ Finally, 
 le enumerates forty-four cases in which the form of capture is 
 etained without the reahty as part of the wedding ceremony. 
 )ne illustration wiU suffice : " Among the Bedouin of Sinai 
 he bridegroom seizes the woman whom he has legally pur- 
 hased, drags her into his father's tent, hfts her, violently 
 truggling, upon his camel, holds her fast while he bears her 
 ,way, and finally puUs her forcibly into his house, though her 
 )owerful resistance may be the occasion of serious wounds." ^ 
 h other cases the resistance is less determined, and the form 
 if capture is reduced to a mere symboUcal act. The wide 
 )revalence of these forms led McLennan and others to the 
 lelief that capture was originaUy universal ; but this opinion 
 5 now abandoned. Capture, as we shall see further, is incom- 
 )atible in principle with the widely-diffused primitive system 
 if mother -right, and its existence as a form may be explained 
 Q many instances by the necessity of a symbohc act to express 
 .ppropriation. The symbol, in fact, is not necessarily a survival 
 if something more real, but may be rather a legal expression of 
 he character of the act performed. 
 
 b. Consideration rendered. — The more ordinary method of 
 
 ' As an incident of savage warfare it is probably more frequent. A long 
 st of instances of the practice is given in Howard, vol. i. p. 158. Prom 
 !ape Horn to Hudson's Bay women are regarded as legitimate booty. The 
 raotice of capture prevails throughout Melanesia, has existed throughout 
 'asmania. New Zealand, Samoa, New Guinea, among the Fiji Islanders, 
 lie Indian Archipelago, and to a limited extent in Aiostralia ; it is found 
 oeasionally in Africa, and in various ancient nations. 
 
 ' In 435 peoples of whose forms of marriage we obtained information, 
 'e found only forty-one cases in all of capture as a reality, and many of 
 liese were only " occasional " or partial cases {Simpler Societies, p. 154). 
 lut see previous note. 
 
 ' Howard, i. 165, 166. 
 
154 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 obtaining a bride is in one way or another to pay for her. (1) In 
 many cases the payment is a true purchase. Where this method 
 is fully developed the unmarried girl is not her own mistress. 
 She is one of the family ; more, she is the property of the family 
 or of the family's representative — ^the governing male, her father, 
 brother, guardian, whoever he may be. She is an asset of a 
 certain value to the family, the amount depending partly on 
 her attractiveness, partly on her labour, partly on the scarcity 
 of the article. This article can be sold for so much, and the 
 purchaser naturally becomes wholly possessed of what he 
 buys.i 
 
 (2) But in many instances the transaction is of a less com- 
 mercial character and more fitting to the dignity of the bride. 
 Gifts are made to the bride's parents, but they are regarded 
 rather as compensation ^ for the loss of a member of their house- 
 hold than as a price by which the husband acquires the rights of 
 an owner.* 
 
 (3) The gifts of the husband or his family may be balanced by 
 return gifts, which may equal or even exceed the original gifts 
 in value.* It is sometimes assumed that this exchange is a 
 modification of purchase, and that it is through the increase of 
 the return gift that the opposite practice of the dowry arises. It 
 is equally possible that the exchange of presents arises inde- 
 pendently in connection with marriage by free consent of the 
 parties as a method of cementing the union of the two families. 
 We may call this system one of the exchange of presents,^ but 
 in the concrete it is often hard to draw the line between it and 
 the previous class, where such compUmentary presents are often 
 made in return. Wherever gifts of serious value are exchanged, 
 it must be admitted that the whole proceeding bears something 
 of the character of a commercial transaction, in which the girl, 
 
 ' It should be noted, however, that the system may be greatly modified 
 by the usage of assigning the price to the woman as her own property, as 
 in Mohammedan countries (R. Smith, Kinship, etc., 2nd edition, p. 121. 
 Of. Cook, Moses and Hammurabi, p. 83). 
 
 ^ 6. g. among the Bushongo we are told that a bride is not bought, but 
 it is conceived just that compensation should be given for her. Her consent 
 is necessary (Torday and Joyce, Annates, Serie III. p. 11). 
 
 ' These gifts to the parents may coincide with the actual arrangement of 
 the marriage by free courtship, as among the Omaha (Dorsey, B. B. B., 
 iii. 260). 
 
 * Among the Wambugwe the suitor sends the bride's father an ox, but 
 he, if he agrees to the marriage, endows her with oxen, so that the dowry 
 exceeds the bride price if it is to be so called (Baumann, Massailand, p. 18V). 
 
 ' Again, the present may be very trivial, e. g. among the Watatuia it 
 consists of a pot of honey (Baumann, Massailand, p. 172). We should 
 regard this as merely a compliment. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 155 
 
 to say, is an item on one side of the account } This is especially 
 he case if it is clear that the bride's family get th#more valuable 
 Dresents.^ 
 
 (4) Service. — Where the husband is not able to pay for the 
 rife he sometimes receives her on credit, and in default of the 
 x)ssibility of payment may work out Ms debt in the form of 
 lervice. This practice is famiUar to us from the case of Jacob, 
 tnd is found to this day in many parts of the world.* In this 
 iase the husband enters the wife's family for the period of his 
 lervice, which, being concluded, he returns to his own people and 
 lets up house on his own account-. But while residing with his 
 vife's relations the husband is rather a tolerated visitor than the 
 ord and master of his own family. Indeed, he is but partially 
 iolerated, for this residence in the wife's home is frequently 
 issociated with the taboo separating the husband from the 
 vife's relations. They are bound to mutual avoidance because, 
 IS being generally members of separate totems or clans, they are 
 n theory enemies. On the other hand, when the service is com- 
 Dleted and Jacob has led Leah and Rachel to his own home, 
 lis authority is vindicated and he has whatever rights the 
 iustom of the tribe allows. The sustaining cause of this form of 
 narriage appears to be principally economic. The man serves 
 Decause he has not the property to buy a wife, and so we find 
 narriage by service existing side by side with marriage by 
 purchase.* 
 
 (5) Exchange. — By the side of the exchange of gifts, which we 
 )ught, on the whole, to rule out of the cases of " consideration," 
 
 ^ In the Torres Straits, apparently the gifts are ultimately balanced by 
 •etum presents, yet the transaction seems to retain a commercial character, 
 rhe chief Marno told Dr. Haddon that he paid for his wife a camphor-wood 
 ihest with seven bolts of calico, one dozen shirts, one dozen singlets, one 
 iozen trousers, one dozen handkerchiefs, two dozen tomahawks, one dozen 
 looks, two fish-lines, one long fish spear, one pound of tobacco, two pearl 
 hells, and " by golly, he too dear ! " {Cambridge Expedition, p. 231). 
 
 * e. g. among the Wambugwe (Baumann, Maasailand, p. 187). 
 
 ' In Africa among the Quoja, Fantis, Banyai, Edeyahs, and in Futatoro, 
 ilso among the Zulus and Basuto. It is found in North America among the 
 Ueuts and other Indian tribes ; in South America among the Brazilians ; 
 md in the backward tribes of Asia among the Nagas of Assam, the Kookis, 
 md among other hill tribes, also among the Tunguses, the Ainu, the 
 lamchadeles, and the aborigines of China ; among the Dyaks and some of 
 he Philippines, and here and there in Oceania (Westermarck, Human 
 Marriage, 390 j and Post, A. J., i. 378). 
 
 ' Among the Yurok in California the purchase money might be only 
 laU paid, and the husband then would enter the wife's tent in a 
 emi-servile position. This would only be accepted by " soft " fellows 
 Powers, p. 56). We find a similar half-marriage among the Hupa 
 Goddard, i. p. 56). 
 
156 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 we have frequently a much less dignified transaction in which 
 one girl is exchanged for another. Thus A, marrying B's sister, 
 must give B his own sister in exchange. This is particularly 
 common among the Austrahans, where it often provided a satis- 
 factory conclusion to an elopement .^ 
 
 c. Consent. — In all grades of culture the human factor has its 
 say in the arrangement of marriage, and in some cases the agree- 
 ment of the parties is sufficient to determine a union. Even 
 where capture or purchase is developed, this factor cannot be 
 whoUy eUminated. A pair who are determined on having each 
 other will settle all questions of right, in the savage as in the 
 civiUzed world, by elopement. The actual influence of the 
 woman's wishes is, of course, often a question of fact rather than 
 of right. For example, all over Australia we find elopement a 
 common method of arranging a marriage. The girl has perhaps 
 been betrothed as an infant to a boy or even to a man who, when 
 she is ready to marry, wiU be middle-aged. She dishkes him and 
 goes off with a lover. Her relations and her lawful husband give 
 chase. A fight ensues and she is more or less severely beaten. 
 She is brought back and runs away again, and then is allowed her 
 own way,^ or there is a fight between her lover and her betrothed,' 
 or perhaps the lover lets her relations throw spears at him or beat 
 him on the head, and then is allowed to keep her, giving, it may 
 be, a sister in exchange.* Possibly, if the couple stayed away 
 for a year or two till a child was born, nothing at all would be 
 done to them.^ In all these cases abduction is iUicit, yet it is 
 extremely common, and the punishment tends to resolve itself 
 into formal expiation. In other parts of the world we hear of 
 elopements as being the less honourable form of marriage, pro- 
 priety requiring that the matter should be settled by the parents.* 
 Such a view is not unknown to ci-vihzed mankind. Not infre- 
 quently there is child betrothal, yet a grown-up girl may exercise 
 
 ^ Thus, at Encounter Bay, marriage by barter of female relatives was 
 the regular custom (W. Meyer, in Woods, p. 190). In Oippsland, sisters 
 were exchanged (Bulmer, op. Brough Smyth, i. 84). A girl who eloped 
 might be severely handled by her brothers, because they lost thereby the 
 means of gaining a wife for one of themselves (e. g. among the Wakelbura, 
 Howitt, p. 222). This partly explains the compensation allowed even in 
 case of unlawful marriage among the Euahlayi (Mrs. Parker, p. 79; see 
 above, chap. iii. p. 90). 
 
 ^ e. g. in N. S. Wales (Fraser, p. 90). 
 
 ' As among the Yerkla-mining (Howitt, p. 258). 
 
 * As among the Wotjobaluk (Howitt, p. 246). Among the Waimbiio 
 the matter was settled by the lover letting all her male relations knock him 
 on the head (Bulmer, K. and K., App. I.). 
 
 = So among the Yuin (Howitt, 263). 
 
 ' 6. g. among the Omaha (Dorsey, op. cit., p. 242). 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 157 
 
 uhoice.^ Marriage may be by purchase, and yet the girl's inclina- 
 bion is not forced.^ Thus the question of consent is no simple 
 3ne.^ Grouping as far as possible the cases in which consent 
 seemed in principle to be required and those in which it might 
 Dften be a factor but in principle was not required,* we found 
 103 cases of the former and 81J of the latter, and we found 
 bhat the proportion in which consent was ignored was highest 
 among the Hunting and Pastoral people, and materially lower 
 in Agricultural societies. In this respect the position of 
 women improves, so far as our evidence goes, in passing from 
 
 1 e. g. among the Garo (Dalton, p. 64), the Basonge Meno (Annates, 
 Series III. Tome 2. pp. 271, 272), and the Tshi (EUis, pp. 282, 285). 
 
 * As it woxild seem among the Santals (Dalton, p. 215), and the Munda 
 Kols — if the gifts in this case amounted to purchase (Selinghaus, Z. f. Ethn., 
 iii. 326), etc. 
 
 ' Often the most opposite customs occur in the same tribe, e. g. capture, 
 purchase and choice by the woman among the Digger Indians (Schoolcraft, 
 iv. 223), and this is merely what the facts of human nature would lead 
 us to anticipate. Slopement and a peculiar form of chOd betrothal co-exist 
 among the Central Australians, and by way of exception they also have 
 marriage by capture (Spencer and Gillen, p. 104). In the Marquesas 
 Islands, Letoumeau remarks that the parents' objections are often overcome 
 by the pair decamping together (La Femme, p. 106). This is a remedy 
 known to the civiUzed world as well, but it proves nothing as to law or 
 custom.' Matters are more strictly defined among the Oregon Indians, 
 where marriage is by pijrchase, and if, as will happen, a runaway match 
 occurs, the woman is looked down on as a prostitute (Schoolcraft, v. 
 655). 
 
 In many cases child betrothal co-exists with the right of choice by the 
 grown-up woman. Thus, among the Yoruba, according to Captain A. B. 
 Ellis (The Yoruba-speaking Peoples, pp. 183-185), there is child betrothal, 
 but a woman cannot be forced into marriage though she may be prevented 
 from it. Among the Ainu, Batchelor (p. 141) notes child betrothal as an 
 occasional practice now extinct, marriage going now in the main by the 
 consent of the parties. 
 
 Post (Afrik. Jurisp., i. 364 and 371), who notes eight cases in Africa 
 where the bride's consent is required, remarks that practically the consent 
 of the guardians is also necessary, but information is scanty. The Yoruba, 
 quoted above, would be a case in point. 
 
 The means of securing consent are often sufficiently savage ; e. gr. accord- 
 ing to Post (loc. cit., p. 363), the reluctant Hottentot maiden must pass a 
 night with the lover and become his wife if he succeeds in ravishing her. 
 Among the Mandingos the girl has the option of remaining unmarried, and 
 if ever given to another, her first lover may make her his slave. 
 
 A variant to the ordinary case of the disposal of a girl by her parents 
 occurs when a man acquires a right to a woman by his position. This 
 appears under the Levirate and also in cases like that of the Oregon 
 Indians, where marrying an eldest daughter entitles a man to all her 
 sisters, even if one of them be already the wife of another (Schoolcraft, 
 V. 654). 
 
 ' A difficult case to classify is that of the Gonds, where elopement 
 is a recognized right, but a deserted lover may carry a girl ofi by force 
 (Crooke, vol. ii. p. 434). On the balance we enter this on the negative 
 side. 
 
158 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the hunting to the agricultural state, but undergoes a reaction in 
 the pastoral. 
 
 In a list of 435 tribes of whose form of marriage we have some 
 information, we find 301 J cases clear or probable in which a 
 consideration is given for the bride. We have 41 cases of capture, 
 18^ of the exchange of presents, 30 in which consent of the 
 parties is the only factor mentioned, 51^ in which all we have 
 learnt is that the relations arrange the marriage, and 11 in which 
 we hear only of sor^e intervention on the part of the chief or the 
 old men of the community.^ In the last two cases we may assume 
 that our information is incomplete, and probably the same 
 would be true of many of the 30 instances in which consent is 
 the only point specified. Most of the cases in which relatives 
 arrange the marriage would probably involve some consideration. 
 We shall be within the mark if we say that in three cases out of 
 four marriage is arranged by that method. But the proportion 
 increases as we ascend the scale, rising from '46 of all cases among 
 the Lower Hunters to "81 among the Higher Agriculturists and 
 • 88 among the Higher Pastoral. Still more marked is the increase 
 of Purchase, of which we have 219 cases in all, or just about half 
 of the total, but a proportion of "1 only among the Lower Hunters, 
 and of '69 in the Higher Agriculture. The development in the 
 Pastoral peoples is again more marked, there being 16 clear and 
 one probable case out of 20 in the higher grade. Thus "con- 
 sideration " in general, and purchase in particular, are modes of 
 obtaining a wife which begin in the lowest grade and increase, 
 as might be expected, with the economic development, being 
 especially common in pastoral society. 
 
 9. V. Relations of husband and ivife. 
 
 In the structure of the family three main types may be desig- 
 nated. In the first the natural family, by which I mean husband, 
 wife and children, is not complete ; husband and wife are not 
 united in the sense in which they become legally and morally 
 one flesh in the higher forms of marriage. This form of marriage, 
 of course, corresponds to the maternal clan system. In the 
 second form of marriage the natural family is complete, and 
 the husband is the head ; but it is completed at the cost of the 
 greater subjection of the wife, who, in passing into the husband's 
 family, merges her personality in his, often almost like a slave. 
 
 1 The figures exceed the total of 435 beoaiise most of the cases of capture 
 overlap others. The fractions express partial instances, and those where 
 there is some element of doubt. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OP WOMEN 159 
 
 [n the third form of marriage the union of the family is main- 
 lained by the closest moral bond, but the full legal and moral 
 jersonahty of the wife, as well as of the husband, is preserved, 
 this third form of marriage must be regarded as a type or as an 
 deal rather than as an actuahty.^ To achieve it is a problem 
 sfhich civilization has yet to solve, since the solution involves a 
 sertain reconcihation of contradictories ; and if we wish to recog- 
 lize any types of marriage as belonging to this class we must 
 sxercise a little hberaUty and admit aU such as make a bona fide 
 sfEort towards the solution. These efforts belong, in the main, 
 io the story of civilized marriage. We have first to consider the 
 iwo lower forms, which together dominate the uncivihzed world, 
 [n the early stages of historical investigation into the begirmings 
 )f eiviUzation it was thought that society arose out of the patri- 
 archal family, and that in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, or again 
 n the Roman paterfamilias, as we reconstruct him from the laws 
 jf the XII Tables and what we know of earher Roman law, we 
 lave a type of primitive human government. The researches of 
 Bachofen, McLennan, Morgan, and others opened up an entirely 
 lew field of speculation. It was shown that the lower we go 
 n the scale of civilization the more prevalent we find a type of 
 organization which is in many ways the opposite of patriarchal, 
 putting the mother for many purposes into the father's position. 
 Amongst civilized nations which have passed out of this stage 
 we find indubitable traces of their having gone through it at 
 m earher period. These observations led to the setting up of a 
 DQatriarchal, as opposed to the patriarchal theory, and to the 
 behef that in the dim red dawn of man there was a golden age 
 jf woman, which later on passed into the iron age of male despot - 
 sm. The facts were sound, but the inference drawn from them 
 ivas precarious, for it was not sufficiently recognized that there 
 was a distinction between matriarchy, the rule of the mother, 
 md what I have spoken of already as mother-right, rights going 
 ;hrough the mother and dependent on the mother. What is really 
 jommon among the simpler peoples, is not matriarchy, but 
 nother-right, and along with mother -right, and where it most 
 iourishes, it is perfectly possible for the position of women to be 
 
 ^ I do not add the religious conception of marriage (as a sacrament) 
 IS a fourth type, because the religious (or magical) conception is 
 ffesent at each stage as a basis or framework for law or custom rather 
 ban as an independent form of the marriage relation. At the same 
 iime, these religious conceptions, particularly under Christianity, have 
 leeply afieoted the actual contents of the law, and in relation to the 
 lermanence of the union may be said to have constituted a special 
 ype. 
 
160 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 as low as the greatest misogynist could desire . The actual number 
 of cases in which the woman has a controlling or even an equal 
 position are very few. I wiU mention one or two of them later 
 on. As a general rule, where the father is not head of the 
 household that place is taken by the wife's brother, and the 
 maternally organized clan consists of units composed each of a 
 woman, her brothers, and her children. The woman is not 
 necessarily any better off because she is ruled by a brother in 
 place of a husband. 
 
 Let us set the two types of family in contrast. Under mother- 
 right the wife, under father-right the husband, is the pivot on 
 which the family relationships turn. Under mother -right the 
 wife remains a member of her own family. Under father -right 
 she passes out of her family altogether, she is even separated 
 from the family cult and family gods, her husband's people are 
 her people and his gods her gods. Under mother-right the 
 husband goes to live with the wife's people, the children take the 
 mother's name and belong to her kindred. In cases of divorce 
 they f oUow the mother. It is the mother's family which protects 
 them. Her brother is their natural guardian, and exercises 
 all the rights and duties which may belong to that position. 
 The maternal kinsfolk stand together in the blood feud, they 
 and not the husband protect or avenge the wife and her children. 
 They may even protect her and them from the husband himself. 
 In extreme cases the children are not held to be related to their 
 father or to their father's family at all, whence in some peoples, 
 half-brother and half-sister may intermarry, as in the well-known 
 case of Abraham and Sarah .^ Under father -right, on the con- 
 trary, it is relationship through the male which counts. The 
 father is the natural guardian and protector of the children and 
 in case of divorce retains them. It is to him and his kin that 
 wife and children look for protection. In extreme cases it is 
 only such relationship that is regarded. The wife and her 
 children cease to have claims on her family, while relationship 
 to the male ancestors and descendants is traced to the remotest 
 degrees. These consequences of the strict principle of father- 
 right, however, are seldom pushed to the full length. Relation- 
 ship through the mother is generally a bar to marriage, though 
 
 ^ Similarly, among the Spartans, children of the same mother might 
 marry, but not those of the same father. The Samoyedes Mad a similar 
 rule (Post, ii. 60). But these logical consequences are by no means 
 always pressed. The actual facts of kinship have their weight. Thus, to 
 take a single instance, in New Britain a man may legally marry his brother s 
 daughter, but in practice is restrained by the general feeling of repugnance 
 to such unions (Danks, J. A. I., xviii. 283). 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN I6i 
 
 he degrees are not carried so far as upon the masculine side ; ^ 
 lOr is the wife often so cut off from her relations as the strict 
 onsequences of the paternal theory might lead us to expect, 
 ler family, as a rule, retains a right of protecting her if she is 
 ll-treated ; she will fly to them for succour, and their right to 
 ;uard her is recognized.^ Lastly, under mother -right the pro- 
 )erty passes through the woman, if not to the woman. Under 
 ather-right it goes from father to son. 
 
 10. Social institutions are rarely developed with logical pre- 
 iision, and if we ask how far mother-right has actually prevailed 
 n the world we find at once that we have to deal with fragments 
 yhich, if conjoined, would make up the coherent type thus 
 lummarily depicted, but which, in fact, often exist apart, bereft 
 )f the consequences that seem in logic to belong to them. To 
 iake only one point, the system of kinship may be matrihneal, 
 Dut marriage may be patrilocal. Then, though the children 
 Delong by blood to the mother and the mother's kin, they live 
 n the father's household and among his kindred.* Sometimes 
 ;he association with the wife's people is temporary, the newly 
 Harried couple living with his people for a year or two and 
 ihen setting up for themselves.* Sometimes, on the contrary, 
 t is the association of the children with their father that is the 
 provisional arrangement, and when they grow up they go to 
 ;heir mother's village.^ Differences in this matter must affect 
 ;he actual life of the family quite as closely as the theoretic 
 
 ^ Thus, a Hindu must not marry within the seventh degree on the 
 lather's, or the fifth on the mother's side (Mayne, Hindu Law, p. 87, 4th 
 ;d.). Manu makes a deeper distinction : " a damsel who is neither a 
 Sapinda on the mother's side nor belongs to the same family on the father's 
 iide is recommended to twice-bom men" (Manu, iii. 5). Sapindas are 
 relations whose common ancestor if a male, is not more than six, if a female 
 lot more than four degrees, removed from either of them. Manu thus 
 nsists on complete exogamy to the male line, while forbidding the female 
 dn only to certain degrees. 
 
 In Roman law the prastors early began to recognize the full right of 
 blood (oognatio) as against the strict agnatio of the patriarchate (Maine, 
 ArMieni Law, p. 151). 
 
 ' Cf. Vinogradoff, Qrowth of the Manor, pp. 11, 12 (the Celts); 136 (the 
 3termans). 
 
 ' Thus, in Australia, though the marriage class of the child is often 
 letermined by that of the mother, both mother and child seem in general 
 to belong to the father's local group. Exceptions are the Maryborough 
 ind some North Western tribes. 
 
 * e. g. among the Hottentots, Z. f. V. B., xv. p. 343. 
 
 ' e. g. among the Tsimshian, Thlinkeet, Haida, and Heiltsuk (Boaz, 
 B. A., 1888, p. 237). 
 M 
 
162 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 basis of kinship. Thus, in the cases instanced it is impossiblfe 
 to say either that "mother-right" or father-right prevailsv 
 Both principles are at work. Not only so, but in a number of 
 cases we find both methods of reckoning kinship in use, whether 
 because a transition is in progress or because different methods 
 of marriage subsist side by side. 
 
 Thus, if we would seek to ascertain the extent, to which 
 mother-right prevails, we must break up the conception, and 
 take certain definite elements singly or in combination. 
 Among the simpler societies we find both methods of 
 reckoning descent in almost equal numbers, eighty-seven and 
 a half matrihneal and eighty-four patrilineal, the matrilineal 
 being in the majority among the Hunters and the patri- 
 lineal among the Pastoral people. A better indication is 
 given by ranking together as " maternal " cases in which only 
 matrilineal descent is reckoned, and cases in which marriage is 
 regularly matrilocal; as " paternal " the opposite pair of cases; 
 and as "intermixed " cases in which both forms of descent or 
 of marriage obtained, and cases in which matrilineal descent 
 is combined with patrilocal marriage or conversely. 
 
 Omitting these last and grouping Hunting, Pastoral and 
 Agricultural together, we get the following results — ^ 
 
 
 Matemcd. 
 
 Paternal. 
 
 Hunters 
 
 . . 371 
 
 18 
 
 Pastoral 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 Agriculture 
 
 , . . 44 
 
 47 
 
 In all Indo-Grermanic peoples, among Semites and Mongohans, 
 in a word, among aU the races who have developed the historic 
 civihzations, father-right predominates. Thus, broadly, when 
 we contrast the civihzed. with the uncivilized world, we find 
 mother-right confined to the latter, and within it we find it 
 relatively most frequent in the lower cultures. We find instances 
 of it in all parts of the world, and we frequently find among 
 " paternal " peoples traces which point to an earlier system of 
 mother -right. It would be too much to infer from these that 
 the maternal family system is a phase through which aU societies 
 have passed, but it is a probable conclusion that matrilineal 
 kinship, with a greater or less development of the rights and 
 customs associated with it, is a form of organization suited 
 to the lower phases of culture, while the paternal family 
 predominates in the succeeding grade of civilization, 
 
 '■ For further details, of. Sinvpler Peoples, p. 152. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 163 
 
 There are two conditions to which the rise of the paternal 
 imily may be referred. The first of these is th^ recognition of 
 latemity, the second is the rise of certain forms of marriage 
 avolving the appropriation of a woman by her husband. As 
 the first point, paradoxical and almost incredible as it may 
 ppear to us, there are cases in which primitive men find a difi&- 
 ulty in understanding that a man is responsible for the birth 
 if a child, and attribute it to the action of a spirit or an inanimate 
 ibject.^ We should not build too much on exceptional cases, 
 lut it is worth remarking that the transition to father-right is 
 a some instances associated with the curious custom of the 
 ouvade, which, however it is to be understood, is clearly a 
 ecognition of the relation of the father to the new-bom son. 
 Hie essence of the couvade is that the father has to take certain 
 ffecautions at the time of birth. Whatever the precise meaning 
 if these precautions — whether they are to protect the father, a 
 )ortion of whose soul is passing into the child, or the chUd in 
 trhom the soul is finding a new lodgment — ^they represent a 
 ecognition of paternity, and apparently recognition in a crude 
 ,nd early form in which it is conceived as a passage of the father's 
 oul into the child's body. Now, among the Melanesians, there 
 ire islands where mother-right prevails, but the husband has 
 )egun to assert himself, taking the wife to his father's house 
 ir to his own, if he has one ready, where he remains undoubted 
 Qaster. Here there is a mUd couvade, the father refraining 
 rem exertion, and from certain foods. But in the South-Eastem 
 iolomon group, where father-right is more developed, the 
 ouvade is also more conspicuous.^ So, again, in quite another 
 )art of the world, among the South Americans, we find it just 
 ,t the turning point where mother-right passes into father-right. 
 Vhere the position of the father has long been recognized and 
 s thoroughly established, the custom disappears. Its flourish- 
 ag time is at the period when the one system is beginning to 
 [ive way to the other.* 
 
 The recognition of paternity, however, is not a necessary 
 ondition of patrilineal kinship. It is sufficient that a man 
 
 ^ This is the theory of the Central Australians (Spencer and Gillen, 
 
 265 and ii. 330). Some Melanesians hold that paternity is due to a 
 
 ocoanut, bread-fruit, or something similar (Codrington, J. A. I., xviii. 
 
 « Codrington, J. A. I., xviii. 309-311. Cf. Kohler, Z. f. V. B., 1900, 
 I. 355, on the couvade in Papuan custom. 
 
 2 Schmidt, Z. f. V. R., 1898, 297. " Sie (i. e. the customs connected with 
 he couvade) werden sich also am ausgepragtesten gerade wahrend jene 
 Tebergangszeit zeigen wo das erne Princip (i. e. Vater-reoht) das Andere 
 bzulSsen beginnt." 
 
164 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 should appropriate his wife and her children with her.^ This 
 he clearly does not do so long as she remains in her own family, 
 retaining her property as a member of that family and having 
 her children in turn reckoned as members of it. But there are 
 two processes known to primitive man by which a man can make 
 a woman his own property and transfer her to his own family, 
 viz. the methods of marriage described as capture or "con- 
 sideration." Professor Tylor justly points out that the practice 
 of capture must tend to break up the whole system of mother- 
 right. When the woman is carried ofE from her own clan to her 
 husband's house the physical facts conflict with any custom or 
 law regarding her and her children as still belonging to her 
 family rather thkn to his. Hence, out of forty cases of genuine 
 or " hostile " capture, Professor Tylor finds that six only occur 
 in the maternal stage. Of " connubial " capture he places 
 twenty -one instances in the stage of transition from the maternal 
 to the paternal system, and twenty-five in the paternal system 
 proper. There are no instances under pure mother-right. 
 Finally, he enumerates forty-four cases in which the form of 
 capture is retained without the reahty as part of the wedding 
 ceremony. Of these he finds no instances under mother -right, 
 but twenty-one in the transitional stage and twenty -three under 
 the paternal system. ^ 
 
 Now though, as we have seen, there is no reason to think 
 that capture was ever universal or that it was the original form 
 of marriage, it is beyond doubt one very primitive way of com- 
 passing that type of marriage which involves ownership of the 
 woman, and it is quite inteUigible that in a tribe where mother- 
 right prevailed those men who by their own bow and spear 
 could obtain women from a neighbouring clan should treat 
 those women as their own property, and so estabMsh a working 
 model of the patriarchate. It is also readily credible that 
 the new type should be more popular than the old — at any rate 
 among the men — and that they should seek to extend it to cases 
 in which the wife belonged to their own clan, and so establish 
 universal father-right. But to lay down that this was the 
 actual process by which father -right came to prevail would be 
 to go far beyond our evidence. There is no proof that all patri- 
 archal societies have gone through the stage of marriage by 
 capture, and its frequent appearance as a form is not conclusive. 
 
 ^ e. g. in some Central Australian tribes, though paternity is not under- 
 stood, the son follows the father's totem. It is sufficient that the husband 
 is owner of the mother (Spencer and Gillen, II. 145, 175). 
 
 » Tylor, J. A. I., xviii. 259. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OP WOMEN 165 
 
 The explanation may be that some form was necessary to assert 
 definite ownership, and that the natural form of asserting definite 
 ownership was the form of capture. 
 
 The alternative and in reality commoner method of appropriat- 
 ing a wife is that of purchase, or quasi-purchase, and the fact of 
 purchase is closely associated with the whole position of women 
 in cases where the patriarchate is strongly developed. We are 
 moving here in a region permeated with ideas of slavery, the 
 ownership of one human being by another, permeated also by 
 the idea of a family as a unit to which each member belongs 
 as a limb. The bride purchased from her own family passes 
 out of it and into that of her husband.'- Where the consequences 
 are pressed to their furthest extent her family lose the power of 
 protecting her, and the wife is at the mercy of her husband as 
 to hfe and Hmb. He may dispose of her at pleasure, he may 
 sell her, give her away, or lend her ; and she has no right of 
 redress against him.^ At best she may escape from him if her 
 family return her price and buy her back. Also, there is nothing 
 in this order of ideas to prevent the husband buying as many 
 women as he wishes. This extreme form must not be taken as 
 the normal case. Natural feeling, after all, has its way every- 
 where in the world, affection and the sense of kinship survive the 
 technical exclusion from the family, and so we more often find 
 that by a kind of compromise the wife's relations retain certain 
 powers of protecting her. Her murder would in many cases excite 
 the blood feud, and if she runs away from her husband, and can 
 satisfy her relations that she had good cause in his ill-treatment, 
 they wUl in many instances stand by her and give her protec- 
 tion.^ Still, her position, even in such cases, is rather that of a 
 protected dependent than of a free woman. Slavery is still 
 slavery though the position of the slave may be mitigated by 
 
 ' It must not be assumed that marriage by purchase always implies 
 father-right. Under mother-right a man may pay a bride price for the 
 usufruct of a woman (e. g. among the Papuas, Kohler, Z. f. V. R., 1900, 
 pp. 347, 348). But it is easy to see that out-and-out purchase goes natur- 
 ally with, and may be said logically to necessitate a thoroughgoing paternal 
 system (see above, p. 154, and below, p. 168). 
 
 * Post (i. 171) instances former customs among Parthians and Arme- 
 nians, the Gjrpsies, Tscherkessen, Maravis of South Africa, and ancient 
 Germans, and quotes Cassar on the Gauls : " Viri in uxores sicuti in liberos 
 vitae uecisque habent potestatem." Among some South American Indians 
 the father can lend, sell, or exchange the wife (Schmidt, loc. cit., p. 298). 
 The right of the husband to kill the wife taken in adultery is general — ^Post, 
 (i. 172) says " ganzlich universell," but this is an overstatement. 
 
 ' See above, p. 162. Among the Somali and in the Gaboon the husband 
 who kills his wife must pay a fine to her family (Post, Afrik. Juriap., 
 p. 62). This, I suppose, is a composition for blood vengeance. So, too, 
 
166 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 law, and such mitigation is in reality no rare occurrence even 
 for the actual slave at the level of civilization which we are 
 considering.'^ 
 
 The appropriation of the wife consolidates the family and 
 tends to the integration of the clan, but at the cost of a more 
 or less complete subordination of *he wife. Hence the position 
 of the woman seems, if anjrthing, to change for the worse as 
 social organization advances. This deterioration, however, is 
 perhaps less severe than appears at first sight. 
 
 among the Kaffirs {ib., p. 401). The husband has to pay the blood price 
 to the wife's family if she dies in giving birth to a child ; o fortiori we may 
 suppose that if he deliberately killed her, the same penalty would be im- 
 posed. Among the Ainu, Batchelor {The Ainu of Japan, p. 138) notes 
 a change. Formerly the head of a family had absolute powers to divorce, 
 disinherit or punish. Now little can be done without consulting neigh- 
 bours. Among the Australians the wife was sometimes protected by her 
 relations. Thus in N.-W. Central Queensland, if her husband killed her, 
 he had to give up a sister to her relations, which may or may not have 
 acted as a deterrent. But in addition the woman had always her " tribal " 
 brothers to protect her (Roth, op. cit. 141). Among the Kumai there 
 were cases in which the relatives would seek to avenge a wife whom her 
 husband had killed (Fison and Howitt, K. and K., p. 206). In New 
 South Wales, on the other hand, Fraser found that the wife was the 
 property of the husband, who might kill her without challenge from 
 social or tribal laws (op. cit., p. 27). Among the Mandingos the wife ia 
 protected by the judge (Post, Afrik. Juriap., p. 402). Among the Yoruba 
 by her family (Ellis, op. cit., 187). Among the Malays, in the "djudjur" 
 marriage the wife passes by purchase into the husband's family, yet the 
 wife's parents can interfere to protect her in case of cruel treatment 
 (Waitz, V. 144.) According to Dr. Westermarck (" Position of Women 
 in Early Civilization," Sociological Papers, p. 155), " there are peoples 
 among whom the husband's authority is almost nil, although he has 
 had to pay for his wife." But no instances are given, and I imagine 
 them to be rare. In Sim/pier Societies we have noted eighty-two cases in 
 which the husband has the right of chastisement and twenty-nine in which 
 the wife is protected either by her kindred or the law, but in eight of these 
 the protection only qualifies an admitted right of chastisement, and it is 
 very possible that with further information we should find the same thing 
 to be true in several of the remaining instances. The figures, however, 
 are too small to admit of confident generalization. An interesting trace 
 of the feeling that it is the duty of a wife's relations to avenge her is found 
 in the Alcestis, vv. 731-733, where Admetus' father threatens him with 
 the vengeance of Alcestis' brother, though Alcestis has chosen voluntarily 
 to die on Admetus' behalf — 
 
 Sittas re Sti(rets ffo7ffi Kri^ecrTOis ^ri. 
 
 ^ r'&p "AKaiTTOs ovkW iirr* iv kv^p6.aiv, 
 
 et /A^ a^h^eKtprts aTfia rtjidipiiasrai. 
 
 Naturally, however, the right of protection by her relations is more effective 
 when the wife is still regarded as a member of their family (Post, i. 173). 
 ^ For instances, see Post, i. 171-177, 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 167 
 
 11. The Position of Wormn in Early Society. 
 
 Favourable as the position of woman under mother-right 
 appears on the' surface, the truth is that it is no bar whatever 
 to complete legal subjection. Among the Caribs, where descent 
 goes through the female only, the women were nevertheless 
 in an inferior position. The husband alone had the right of 
 divorce, and he could exercise it at will, the only effect of mother- 
 right being that in case of divorce the wife would retain the 
 children. Among the North American Indians generally, not- 
 withstanding the tendency to mother-right, the position of 
 women is, on the whole, admitted to be low.^ In Melanesia, 
 where there is strict mother-right, the mother is in no way head 
 of the family. The family house is the father's, the garden is 
 his, the rule and government are his.^ In Oceania generally, 
 where mother -right is common, the two sexes are in large measure 
 separated in their hves through the complex mass of taboos 
 which prohibit their intercourse.* The head of the maternal 
 family may have the same despotic power as the patriarch — 
 thus, among the Barea and Kunama, he has the power of Hfe 
 and death; among the Bangala, the Kimbunda, and on the 
 Loango coast the right of selHng any member of the family; 
 and in general, under the maternal as under the paternal system, 
 the head is a male.* 
 
 Apart from the general tendency to overlook the masculine 
 headship of the maternal family, and so confuse mother-right 
 and matriarchy, mistaken views have arisen from the identifica- 
 tion of marriage by service with the subordination of the husband 
 to the wife. The man who cannot buy a wife becomes a servant 
 to her family, but not to her. Jacob did not serve Rachel, but 
 Laban, and when the term of service was complete both Leali 
 
 ' See Waitz, iii. 101, 382 ; Catlin, N. A. Indians, i. 23 and 226. Ratzel 
 puts it that the position of the women is not in all cases one of oppression 
 [ii. 128). 
 
 * Codrington, J. A. I., xviii. 309. Dr. Westermarok, who, on the whole, 
 Mikes a favourable view of the position of women among savages, declines 
 :o attribute any influence in this direction to mother-right {Sociological 
 Papers, p. 167 ; Moral Ideas, 655-657). Herein he is opposed to Steinmetz, 
 md to Ratzel (see, e. g. Ratzel, The History of Mankind, ii. 334). The 
 irgument that (e. g. among the Australians) the position of women is not 
 ensibly affected by the system of descent is not very forcible, since the 
 mportance of the family is so small, as compared with that of the local 
 [roup and its divisions, that the mode of reckoning descent naturally 
 ounts for little. 
 
 ' In some instances, however, the position of women is, or has been, 
 avourable in Oceania, e. g. in Micronesia, and in New Zealand (Ratzel, i. 
 S73-274, and Waitz, iii. 101). 
 
 * Post, Qrundriss, i. 134-136. Post notes that there are exceptions. 
 
168 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and Rachel remark that they have now passed out of their 
 father's family. They identify themselves with Jacob, and 
 Rachel steals Laban's household gods on his behalf. At the 
 same time, marriage by service does fairly illustrate some of 
 the conditions which modify the relation of husband and wife, 
 and may even affect the question whether mother- or father- 
 right is to prevail. The man serves because he has not the 
 property wherewith to buy him a wife, and so we not infre- 
 quently find that the two kinds of marriage subsist side by side. 
 Thus, among some Californian tribes, purchase is the rule, but if 
 a man can only pay half the bride price he enters the wife's house 
 in a servile position.^ Similarly, among the Micronesians of 
 Mariana the husband must serve if he has not wealth enough to 
 support the wife. The best instance may be drawn from the 
 Malay Archipelago, where the two opposed types of marriage 
 are found fully developed with special names. In one, Ambil 
 anak, the husband is purchased by the wife's family ; he enters 
 it, as a rule, in a dependent position, the children all belong to 
 the mother's family, and the wife has the right of divorce. In 
 the other form, Djudjur, the husband or the husband's family 
 has to purchase the wife ; she becomes his property, the children 
 are his, and he has the right of divorce. Her parents only retain 
 a certain right of intervention in case of cruel treatment.^ In 
 such cases, at least, it is clear that the relations of husband and 
 wife are determined not by any prevalent custom or opinion 
 prescribing what such relations ought to be, but by the actual 
 success or failure of the man in finding means whereby to appro- 
 priate a woman to himself.^ Thus the difference between the 
 
 1 Kohler, Z. f. V. B., 1897, p. 383. 
 
 ' Waitz, V. i. 144 ff. Cf. Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 220, etc., 
 cited in Spencer's Descriptive Sociology. 
 
 ^ We may note in this connection that among civilized peoples which 
 have completely developed the patriarchal system, and perhaps even 
 passed beyond its extreme phases, there is a tendency to the subjugation 
 of the husband, in cases where women are allowed control of their own 
 property, if the wife is the wealthy one. I am not speaking from the point 
 of view of the humorist or the novelist, but of the lawyer. Thus, few 
 peoples have pushed the right of the father to a more extreme point than 
 the Japanese in the Far East, or the ancient Romans in the west. Yet 
 among the Romans, when women acquired by the Lex Julia complete 
 control over their dowry, the result was that the husband frequently 
 passed into practical subjugation to a rich wife. In Japan it is astonishing 
 to find the recrudescence of the primitive custom of the husband coming to 
 live with the wife, and taking her name in the case where the eldest 
 daughter inherits an estate, or where the bride's father supphes the house. 
 From, instances like these, drawn from cases where the patriarchate had 
 its most extreme development, we cian understand the full strength of the 
 Bconomic factor in determining marital relations, and we may draw i^^ 
 
MAERIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 169 
 
 naternal and paternal systems does not turn on divergencies of 
 principle as to the rights of women, nor does the superior position 
 jf the wife's family necessarily imply any similar superiority 
 n the wife herself. No doubt under mother-right the woman 
 ierives some advantages from her position, such as the retention 
 )f her children in case of divorce, but the cases in which it has 
 yiven her real equality or superiority prove, on examination, 
 ;o be very rare. Among the Nairs, who are sometimes quoted 
 n this coimection, and who, as has been mentioned, combine 
 polygamy and polyandry, the woman chooses her husband and 
 brings him to her house. Possessions pass from mother to 
 laughter. The woman may divorce her husband, or rather any 
 jf her husbands, at pleasure. Often a brother and sister set up 
 louse together, the tie between them being held closer than 
 ;hat between husband and wife, and if in such a case the wife 
 Toes to hve with a husband she wiU be subject to the sister, 
 [t follows also that the child is attached to the uncle rather 
 ;han the father. In such an organization the family, as we 
 inderstand it, is, of course, completely broken up, and there is 
 10 doubt that the position of the woman makes her in a way 
 ;he centre of the whole organization. There is equally no doubt 
 }hat in this case she acquires from this position a considerable 
 luthority. But we are also told that, although she inherits the 
 property, her brother or maternal uncle administers it, and, 
 igain, it is administered rather on behalf of the whole group of 
 dnsfolk — ^that is to say, as collective property — than as belonging 
 :o any individual owner, so that, after all, we are not very far 
 :emoved from the normal state of things under mother-right, 
 inhere the woman is subject to her brothers instead of to her 
 lusband. 
 
 Somewhat similar cases may be cited from among the North 
 American Indians. Here the women had occasionally a certain 
 neasure of poKtical importance ; for example, they might be 
 •epresented by a spokesman, either male or female, at the men's 
 iouncil, and they sometimes originated warhke expeditions 
 vith the object of replficing, by a raid and the capture of a 
 jrisoner, the loss of a warrior of the clan. To them, also, as we 
 haU see later on, was referred in many cases the fate of the 
 msoners taken. They decided whether prisoners should be 
 ortured or adopted, and, moreover, took a special part, with a 
 
 aferenee that where in the uncivilized world we find the husband passing 
 ato the wife's family, even in an inferior position, it does not follow that 
 ny favourable inference is to be drawn as to the prevalence of an ethical 
 onception of women's rights. 
 
170 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 peculiar zest, in the execution of the tortures when a decision 
 was taken in that direction. 
 
 Among the Iroquois, where we have some of the most detailed 
 accounts, we are told that the women occupied a dominant 
 position in the Long House where the joint family lived. 
 " Usually the female portion ruled the house, and were doubt- 
 less clannish enough about it. Stores were in common, and 
 woe to the luckless husband or lover who was too shiftless to 
 do his share of the providing. No matter how many children 
 or whatever goods he might have in the house, he might at any- 
 time be ordered to take up his blanket and budge. . . . The 
 house would be too hot for him, and unless saved by the inter- 
 cession of some aunt or grandmother, he must retreat to his 
 own clan, or, as was often done, go and start a matrimonial 
 alliance in some other." ^ The women, says Morgan, were the 
 great power in the clans. They could " knock off the horns " of 
 a chief, and of certain chiefs they had the nomination.^ Yet 
 even among the Iroquois we do not find that the position of 
 women was altogether good. On the contrary, they did all the 
 drudgery of house and field. They were socially separate from 
 the man, and the conquered Delaware were named women as a 
 term of reproach, and compelled to forego arms as a mark of 
 contempt.' Of the North American Indians generally, Waitz* 
 makes a remark which goes to the root of the matter, that 
 though property passed by the women they seem to have had 
 little or none of their own. There remain a few scattered cases 
 in which the wife — not merely the Avife's family — ^is said to 
 enjoy superiority or even authority. Among the Kocchs of 
 Bengal it is stated by Dalton that the husband goes to hve in 
 the wife's clan, and that his property passes to her daughters 
 only; and not only this, but he has to obey his wife, and what is, 
 perhaps, more extreme, her mother as well.* Among some of 
 the forest nomads in Asia the position of women is good, e.g. 
 among the Veddas, women seem to be equal with men in all 
 
 ^ From a letter by the Rev. A. Wright, a missionary among the Senecas, 
 written in 1873, and given in Morgan's Houses and Houadife of the American 
 Aborigines, p. 65. It is worth noting that Mr. Wright appears to be 
 describing a past state rather than that which he actually saw. 
 
 " In all the economic grades we find a few instances in which women 
 could take a part in government, either being admitted to councils or being 
 able to act as chiefs. In one case, the Wyandot, the women elected and 
 formed the gentile council, which chose a man as chief (Powell, Wyandot 
 Oovemment, R. B. E., vol. i. p. 61). 
 
 ' Schoolcraft-Drake, i. 277, 388. Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 323. 
 
 * Waitz, iii. 129. 
 
 ' Dalton, p. 91. Letoumeau, La Fenvme, p. 175, 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 171 
 
 Bspeots (Seligmann, p. 8), and we find a few scattered cases in 
 11 the economic grades of the lower cultures in which the woman 
 ) said to be on an equal footing with the man.* Other cases 
 a which a higher position is attributed to the wife either 
 epend on her superior social or economic position or on the 
 lilure of the husband to pay her price. ^ They do not indicate 
 bat the position of the woman is, as such, equal or superior to 
 hat of the man. 
 
 A handful of exceptions such as these, however interesting as 
 isproving sweeping generalizations, do not alter the fact that 
 ft the great majority of uncivihzed peoples the position of 
 ?oman is in greater or less degree ijiferior to that of man in 
 oint of personal rights.^ Apart from a sufi&ciently frequent 
 
 * Among upwards of 500 peoples of whom we have obtained some 
 iformation as to marriage and the position of women, we have entered 
 sventeen (probable cases reckoned as a half) in which the wife's position 
 1 clearly made out to be equal to that of the husband. In one or two 
 ire cases the law of divorce favours the wife. For instance, among the 
 [honds of Orissa she may leave her husband on repaying her price, but 
 lay only be divorced for adultery or misconduct. (Dr. Westermarck 
 tates that constancy is not required from the wife, and that the hus- 
 and may be punished for adultery. Social. Papers, p. 152.) The 
 usband may not strike the wife taken in adultery — a very exceptional rule 
 Reclua, p. 281). These liberties appear to be connected with a scarcity 
 f wives, and with the relics of polyandry (Reclus, ib.). Post, A. J., 
 00, considers that the position of the wife among the Sarae is equal to 
 lat of the husband, and even superior among the Beni Amer and the 
 ralla. But among the last-named he adds that if the husband has once 
 rought home the trophies of a departed enemy, he becomes absolute 
 laater. According to Hahn (quoted by Westermarck, op. cit., p. 154), 
 lie Khoikhoi (Hottentot) wife is mistress within the house, but according 
 3 Kohler {Z. f. V. E., 1902, pt. iii. 344, 355 — speaking of the Hottentots 
 enerally), though the wife has a fairly independent position, the husband 
 as the right to chastise her in moderation. 
 
 ' Dr. Westermarck, who objects to the term " subjection " as a general 
 escription of the position of women in the lower races, writes : " Among 
 lany of them the married woman, although in the power of the husband, 
 1 known to enjoy a remarkable degree of independence, to be treated by 
 im with great consideration, and to exercise no small influence upon him. 
 n several cases she is even stated to be his equal, and in a few his superior " 
 Sac. Papers, p. 151). Admitting this to be the case, we shall clearly be 
 ght in persisting that in the great.majority of cases women's legal position 
 
 inferior. It may be added that considerate treatment is a totally 
 ifferent thing from equality of rights. In his new work on The Origin and 
 development of the Moral Ideas, Dr. Westermarck gives a long list of cases in 
 hich the wife's position is more or less favoijred. But in comparatively 
 iw of them is equality of rights asserted, and in still fewer superiority, 
 ven where equal rights are mentioned, the statements, with two or three 
 cceptions, lack precision. Dr. Westermarck himself says : " All these 
 atements certaiiiily do not imply that the husband has no recognized 
 3wer over his wife, but they prove that his power is by no means unlimited, 
 i is true that many of our authorities speak rather of liberties that the 
 ynan takes herself than of privileges granted her by <yustom ; but, as we have 
 
172 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 inferiority in her right to property or to the mere protection of 
 life and Umb, apart from the fact that the drudgery of lite so 
 often falls on her while the men hunt or fight/ the prevalence 
 of the capture, purchase and exchange of wives testifies strongly 
 in this direction. The common facihty of divorce, even where 
 the conditions are equal to the two parties, teUs against the 
 woman, who is the more interested of the two in the perma- 
 nence of the tie. And very often the conditions are not equal, 
 but favourable to the man. The general permission of poly- 
 gamy points in the same direction. Lastly, the woman's person 
 is not, strictly speaking, her own property, but that of her 
 husband or guardian, and it is in this sense in many cases that 
 chastity and respect for women are understood in the savage 
 and barbaric world. This peculiarity makes itself felt in many 
 directions. In the first place, wife lending is a not uncommon 
 
 seen before, customary rights are always more or less influenced by habitual 
 practice " (p. 646, the italics are mine). The distinction here admitted 
 cuts deeper than Dr. Westermarck seems to admit. In a relationship so 
 personal and subtle as that between men and women, de facto influence 
 and power may develop to the highest pitch, without in the least affecting 
 the recognized rights or status of the sex. A favourite of the harem may 
 sway an empire and yet remain a slave. The frequent statement of 
 travellers that the wife rules the household, or that the husband does 
 nothing without consulting her, might have been made of this country in 
 the days when the legal position of the wife was most abject. The power 
 to influence and recognized ethical equality are not only different, but have 
 no necessary tendency to pass into one another. 
 
 ^ The extent to which women fill the place of slaves in the rudest societies 
 has perhaps been exaggerated by some writers. Dr. Westermarck (Social. 
 Papers, p. 150) points out that for the men to fight while the women 
 toil is a natural division of labour in a world where fighting is a frequent 
 necessity. But this, though it explains, hardly alters the fact that an 
 occupation recognized as inferior falls to the women (cf. Westermarck, 
 Moral Ideas, pp. 633-637). There are many variations, and it would be 
 easy to multiply quotations on either side, but on the whole it seems clear 
 that the more toilsome and least esteemed work tends to fall on the women. 
 See the general statements in Ratzel, as to Oceania, vol. i. p. 273; the 
 Malay Ilegion, ib., p. 441 ; North America, ii. 129 ; the Arctic races, p. 
 225; the Negroes, p. 334; Kaffirs, pp. 432, 433; and the Mongols, iii. 341. 
 The position in the two first-named regions is the most favovu-able, particu- 
 larly among the more developed peoples. In the Simpler Peoples (p. 170) 
 we have tabled eighty-six cases in which the harder work falls t6 the 
 women, and twenty-seven in which it may be regarded as fairly appor- 
 tioned. They were pretty evenly distributed among the various economic 
 grades. The evidence, naturally, is often difficult to weigh, and many 
 peoples have been left unentered for this reason ; e. g. among the Karaya 
 peoples, Ehrenreich {op. cit., p. 27) says that certain forms of labour fall 
 on the woman, but that she is no beast of burden and the man also has 
 his duties. Here we can make no entry. Similarly when im Thuin 
 {op. cit., p. 215) says that in British Guiana work is pretty equal, but women 
 really do the more continuous drudgery, we do not think the statement 
 decisive endugh for entry under either head. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 173 
 
 istom among savages. The husband who would kill or mutilate 
 le wife whom he discovered in clandestine intercourse with a 
 iver will also lend her as a matter of courtesy to a guest .^ In 
 16 one case she infringes his right of property, in the other 
 ise it is as his property that she is acting.^ She is not, in our 
 lodern phrase, a person with the fuU rights of seK -respect and 
 jspect from others attaching to personaUty. Secondly, where 
 le obligations of marriage are binding the rules for the un- 
 lanied are often very lax. One exception to this laxity is 
 3nstituted by the system of child betrothal, whereby the 
 nwedded girl is already the husband's property,^ and another 
 y the demand for virginity in the bride which, under marriage 
 y purchase, it is accordingly the interest of her guardian to 
 3cure.* Thirdly, the claim to fidehty is usually one-sided. 
 
 * Numerous instances are given by Staroke (p. 122) and Westermarck 
 jp. 73, 74). The custom is pretty general among the North American 
 adians (Waitz, iii. 111. He excepts only the Sioux and the Chippeway). 
 i. Schoolcraft, v. 684. Post {Afrik. Jurisp., i. 471, 472) gives Humer- 
 us instances in Africa. Waitz (v. ii. 105) attributes the practice to the 
 [icronesians generally. We found forty-one instances in our authorities, 
 wenty-seven from hunting peoples. 
 
 * In the Torres Straits any irregular intercourse was called " stealing a 
 'Oman," and there seems to have been no word for fprnication or adultery 
 part from {puru) theft (Cambridge Expedition, 275). 
 
 ' Where the young girls are guarded, precautions are sometimes pushed 
 disagreeable lengths, as in New Britain, where, between eight and ten, 
 bey are put into cages and kept there till they are married. 
 
 * Post, i. 21-23. When the husband expects virginity at the time of 
 larriage, unchastity may become a breach of the proprietary rights of 
 he guardian. Hence it is often punishable, especially if it results in 
 regnancy. Thus, among the Takue, the Marea and the Beni Amer, the 
 sducer who makes an unmarried girl pregnant excites the blood feud, 
 nd among the Bogos the full blood price is demanded in such a case 
 Post, Afrik. Jurisp., i. 61 and 70). Among the Wanyamwesi the lover 
 lust marry the pregnant girl under penalty of- a fine (Post, A. J., i. 458), 
 nd in Unyoro she is taken to his house, and, by a characteristic piece 
 f primitive reasoning, he must pay for her if she dies, while if she lives 
 he returns to her father unless the lover pays the bride price. (For 
 ther instances in Africa, see Post, ib., 459, ii. 70, and cf. Letoumeau, 
 M Femme, p. 48.) 
 
 In the previous editions I took the view that prenuptial unchastity is 
 ormally disregarded in the simpler cultures, and that its enforcement 
 epended almost exclusively on child betrothal or on marriage by pvir- 
 hase. But a more extended study of the evidence has convinced me that 
 his is an error. It need hardly be said that the evidence in this matter 
 i often very difficult to assess. Relations may be winked at while an open 
 candal is subject for censure or punishment. We should not treat these 
 s cases of condonation, e. g. where, as among the Bhuiyars (Crooke, ii. 
 17), we are told that unmarried girls are free, but that a lover, if detected, 
 ! fined and forced to marry, we regard this as a prohibition ; on the other 
 and, where relations are generally tolerated, and, in case of pregnancy, 
 (larriage or compensation to the relatives is at the option of the man, 
 ?e think the case falls on the other side of the line (see Risley on the 
 
174 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 While any offence on the wife's part exposes her to punishment, 
 and while an outraged husband may lawfully avenge himself on 
 the man who has trespassed on his property, the unfaithfulness 
 
 Lepohas, vol. ii. p. 8 and Wehrli, I. A. E., xvi. 28, on some of the Singpho 
 peoples). Bearing these difficulties in mind, the following results must be 
 taken for what they are worth. 
 
 (1) We have found fifty-six and a half cases (probable ones reckoned at 
 a half) of the condemnation and sixty -seven and a half of the condonation 
 of prenuptial unohastity. This, considering the uncertainty of the evidence, 
 is a balance on the unfavourable side on which no stress can be laid. But 
 among the hunting peoples, particularly in Australia, there are several 
 cases in which, though there is no mention of prenuptial relations as a 
 general rule, the marriage procedure involves the submission of the girl 
 to a number of men — e. g. among the Wotjobaluk, all the yoimg men 
 of the totem would have the right (Howitt, p. 246). In this connection, 
 i. e. as bearing on the regard or disregard for the woman's person, these 
 cases should be reckoned with those in which prenuptial relations are 
 condoned, and this weights the scale more heavily among the Lower 
 Hunters. Bringing these cases into relation with instances of wife-lending 
 as of cognate character, it appears that in this respect the Hunting tribes 
 stand materially below the Agricultural, while these, again, are clearly 
 below the Pastoral. But there is no more detailed correlation with the 
 economic advance, for, in fact, the lowest Agricultural stage comes out 
 materially better than the two higher stages. 
 
 (2) To test the effect of marriage by " consideration," and in particular 
 by purchase, on prenuptial chastity, we compared the proportion of cases 
 in which it was condemned or condoned (a) in cases where consideration 
 is known to be given with all cases, (6) in cases of purchase with all 
 cases. The results show no advantage to marriage by consideration, 
 and but a small one to marriage by purchase (cf. Simpler Peoples, 
 p. 168). Our figures cannot yield certainty, because we are not fuUy 
 informed of the basis of marriage in all cases, but, so far as they go, 
 they favour the independent origin of prenuptial chastity. The attitude 
 of the family is probably tightened up by the custom of pmrchase, but 
 no more. 
 
 In some instances, the unchastity of an unmarried woman is regarded 
 as bringing a curse or some misfortune on the family or the tribe. Thus 
 the Aleuts fear that the whale would punish them if their wives were 
 unfaithful in their absence, or if their sisters were unchaste before marriage 
 (Beclus, p. 52). Similarly in Loango, the unchastity of a girl is held to 
 bring a curse on the country (Westermarck, p. 61), and a similar idea 
 seems to underlie the punishment of a pregnant maiden on the Gold 
 Coast, where she is chased by the women to the sea, covered with dirt 
 and ducked, after which she receives charms from the fetishman (Post, 
 A. J., i. 460). Apparently this is not so much by way of punishment 
 as to avert evil. As to the man, he, of course, may be punished, often 
 with death, for the infringement of the rights of the family. We may 
 find the germ of a different conception in the belief that the unchastity 
 of a man xmder certain conditions will cause misfortune. Thus the Aleuts 
 above quoted believe that the whale will ptmish them, not only if 
 their wives are unfaithful, but if they are vmfaithful, while on a fishing 
 expedition, to their wives. It is a widely-diffused belief among the 
 North American Indians that unchastity on the war path would bring 
 defeat, and hence captive women are generally spared. For the rare cases 
 in which a husband incurs penalties to his wife for unfaithfulness see next 
 note. 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 175 
 
 the husband to the wife is but seldom regarded as an offence.^ 
 nally, it is often open to fathers to devote thgir daughters 
 prostitution. This is not infrequently a religious duty, and 
 many cases there are recurring rehgious festivals of which 
 omiscuous intercourse is a feature.^ 
 
 12. All the world over certain forces, ethical, political, economic 
 d perhaps rehgious, act from either side upon the relations of 
 sn and women. On the whole, apart from a sufficiently strong 
 velopment of the ethical factors, those which fight for the 
 %n, as physically the stronger, have the upper hand. But 
 len there are always forces tending the other way, favourable 
 :cumstances wiU occur here and there to give them pecuHar 
 
 ' Authorities give one instance to the contrary among African peoples, 
 5. in Great Bassam. Here the husband pays a fine to the wife if un- 
 thful to her while she is with the prince (Post, Afrik. Jurisp., ii. 72). 
 Among the Hottentots the husband as well as the wife may be flogged 
 : adultery, and except for ill-treatment there is no divorce without the 
 Dsent of the council. But these observations refer to Christianized 
 bes (Kohler, Das Recht der Hottentotten, Z. f. V. R., 1902, pp. 344 and 
 
 *)• 
 
 Among the Mariana the husband could kill an adulteress, but if he on 
 
 s side were unfaithful, he would be set upon and would be glad to escape 
 
 th a whole skin (Waitz, v., ii. 106). 
 
 The Sioux and Santal (Dakota) women are said to beat their husbands 
 
 r unfaithfulness (Howard, i. 239). 
 
 According to Dr. Westemaarck, among the Shans of Burmah the wife 
 
 ly divorce the husband for drinking or other misconduct, retaining 
 
 e common property (Westermarck, Social. Papers, p. 154). But Col. 
 
 oodthorpe (J. A. I., xxvi. 21) states that the Shans of the Upper 
 
 akong follow the law of Manu as to divorce, i. e. the wife has no powers 
 
 divorce at all. In W. Victoria, as mentioned above (Howard, i. 229), 
 wife may get a slight punishment inflicted on an unfaithful husband, 
 id in some Queensland tribes the women take advantage of the initiation 
 remonies to punish men who have ill-treated them (Westermarck, 
 iciol. Papers, p. 148). The case of the Khonds has been mentioned above, 
 
 171, note 1. 
 
 As mentioned above, Powers states (p. 22) that among the Karoks of 
 kUfomia cohabitation even with a female slave is considered disgraceful, 
 vo or three more similar instances are found among the North American 
 dians. 
 
 We could prolong the above Ust if we were to add cases in which bringing 
 lecond wife or a concubine into the house is a ground of divorce. Broadly 
 Baking, however, in the savage world, under mother-right or father- 
 [ht, the husband is master of the wife's person. Apart from the injury 
 
 the wife, adultery has a' more public aspect as a frequent source of 
 ngeance. Hence it is not infrequently a subject of public punishment. 
 6 have noted forty-eight such cases, the proportion increasing in the 
 ^her Agricultural stages with the general development of pubUc justice 
 impler Peoples, p. 166). 
 
 * For instance in Africa, see Post {Afrih. Juris., p. 465). In several 
 istralian tribes the women are common at the corroboree, except to their 
 iheis, brothers or sons by blood (Spencer and GiUen, p. 97). 
 
176 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 strength. For example, the circumstances attending marriage 
 by service, especially when we compare it with marriage by pur- 
 chase or capture, have shown us how much the relations of hus- 
 band and wife are determined by what, in the modern world, we 
 should call the economic factor. The savage woman's price — 
 if by price we mean the difi&culty of appropriating her — may 
 be high or low. Where it is always possible to organize a raid 
 and carry her off it is decidedly low, and she becomes the captor's 
 property. Where this is not countenanced, it is possible to 
 buy her from her guardian, and then presumably her price, 
 like that of other things, is a matter of supply and demand. 
 The actual number of girls born and the practice as to infanticide 
 must affect their value, and we can understand that better 
 treatment of a wife becomes necessary to the husband who 
 wishes to retain her.^ In other cases the economic value of 
 the woman may be high — ^for example, where agriculture is 
 becoming important and is still regarded as women's work. 
 In yet other cases women are the repositories of magical lore, 
 and men fear them.^ These and doubtless other disturbing 
 causes considerably modify the status, nominal or real, of 
 women in the unciviHzed world, but the fluctuations which 
 they cause are fluctuations about a centre of gravity which is 
 sufficiently low. '*- 
 
 In the Simpler Peoples we sought to assess the position of 
 women as objectively as possible by the method of reckoning a 
 point for each custom that would teU in their favour, and, on 
 the other side, a point for each unfavourable feature. For this 
 purpose we take what we suppose to correspond to the judgment 
 of an average civiUzed community. This judgment is by no 
 means final, and in that sense the whole method is subjective. 
 But as an answer to the question how far does the treatment 
 of women in the lower economic grades correspond or contrast 
 with that of modern civilization, it yields an objective relation 
 and is the only method which we could devise yielding any 
 definite answer. From this point of view monogamy is regarded 
 as favourable to the woman and polygamy as unfavourable. 
 That is not always the view of women themselves in polygamous 
 communities, but it is the view of civiUzed woman, which is the 
 
 ' Hence, probably, the favourable position often enjoyed by women in 
 polyandrous communities. To us polyandry seems necessarily degrading 
 to a woman. To the women of the polyandrous tribe it means that they 
 are sought after, and therefore prized- 
 
 * This important suggestion is due to Dr. Westermarck (Soc. Papers, p. 
 159), who is also inclined to lay stress on the economic factor. (On this 
 point of. Batzel, ii. 130.) 
 
MARRIAGE AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN 177 
 
 oint here in question. Divorce we only reckoned when at the 
 ill of the husband, other cases being of ambiguoue value. The 
 usband's right of chastisement counted as a negative point, 
 Qd the protection of the Avife as positive, but we gave it only 
 alf value, as it may co-exist with considerable power of marital 
 dastisement. Other points were the division of work and 
 sneral allegation of equahty or inequahty, and the admission 
 E women to government .^ Cases were counted good which 
 ielded a net positive mark, indifferent if they gave a zero, and 
 ad if a negative. The results showed no striking or progressive 
 ifferences between the grades, but indicated that in the Agri- 
 iltural societies as a whole the position of women was slightly 
 Btter, and in the Pastoral a httle worse, than among the Hunters, 
 at throughout the negative marks heavily preponderate, as 
 le appended table shows — 
 
 Position of Women. 
 
 Cases. 
 
 Good. Indifferent. Bad. 
 
 Hunters 22 6 131 
 
 Pastoral i 1 35 
 
 Agricultural .... 65 26 244 
 
 Totals .... 91 33 410 
 
 as percentages — 
 
 
 
 
 Hunters . 
 
 . . 14 
 
 4 
 
 82 
 
 Pastoral . 
 
 . . 10 
 
 2-5 
 
 87-5 
 
 Agricultural . 
 
 . . 19 
 
 8 
 
 73 
 
 le only type of culture forming an exception to the rule is 
 at of the forest tribes of Asia and Africa. Their case shows 
 at the very lowest culture is compatible with a favourable posi- 
 m for women, but in view of the relations subsisting in very 
 w cultural grades in North and South America, as well as in 
 istralia, this exception cannot be taken as evidence for any 
 Qeral equaUty of women in the begimungs of human society, 
 r, therefore, for any general decKne as an accompaniment of 
 3 first advances of society. It is only in the pastoral stage, 
 th the fuller development of the patriarchate, that we find 
 ?i8 of a more complete subjection of the wife. 
 
 For the full statement of the method, see Simpler Peoples, p. 148 seq. 
 N 
 
178 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 To sum up. An institution of the nature of marriage is appar- 
 ently universal. It is improbable that custom has anywhere left 
 the relations of the sexes wholly unregulated, and its regulations 
 include the appropriation of individual men and women to each 
 other. But in early society the prohibitions or restrictions of 
 choice to certain categories are of more moment and more strictly 
 enforced than the claims of the individual husband or wife, hi 
 the majority of cases the union is easily broken, polygamy is in 
 most instances allowed, polyandry in a few, hoence on occasion 
 is not infrequent, and prenuptial relations are often disregarded. 
 All these are marks of an incomplete development of family 
 life; and in, the "maternal" family the method of counting 
 kinship tends to separate the interests of the father from those 
 of his household. The patriarchal family is more firmly knit, 
 but provides no adequate status for the wife and mother. The 
 position of woman varies, but in the majority of cases is one of 
 dependence. She is generally given in marriage by her relations, 
 in three cases out of four for some sort of consideration, which in 
 numerous instances amounts to a true purchase, and is on the 
 whole subject to male rule. On this point the " maternal " 
 system does not materially alter her position. In all these 
 respects, however, there are at each grade ' of development 
 interesting exceptions. Monogamy occurs in all the grades 
 except the higher Pastoral, and in some of the lowest the tie is 
 virtually indissoluble, but there is no reason to regard this as 
 the primitive form of the institution. At the same time the 
 practice of polygamy as distinct from its admissibility increases 
 with the economic advance. So too does the custom of pur- 
 chase. Mother-right also is commoner at the lower than at the 
 higher levels, but there is no clear evidence of any stage at which 
 it is universal. In other respects the conditions affecting marriage, 
 the family life, and the status of woman are roughly constant 
 throughout the economic gradations. In each there are instances 
 in which as judged by modern standards the position of woman 
 is relatively satisfactory, but in each these are a minority. 
 Unkindness and ill-treatment are by no means the rule. On 
 the other hand, neither romantic sentiment nor the ethical 
 claims of personality play any important part. Early society 
 achieves with difficulty the consolidation of the family Ufe ; and 
 the patriarchal basis on which this is finally effected, confirms, 
 if it does not seriously accentuate, the dependent position of 
 woman. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 
 
 1. It is with the Patriarchal type of Family organization, it 
 TOuld seem, that most of the civihzed races have started their 
 iareer in history. The stage of Mother -right is clearly left be- 
 lind when their history begins. Traces of it remain, hke the 
 ight of the Mother's Brother in the German law, but they are 
 nere traces which would be uninteUigible if we had not a mass 
 >f customs among other peoples by which to interpret them. 
 iVhether we look at the ancient laws and customs of India, 
 Persia, Greece or Rome, of the early Celtic and Gterman tribes or 
 he ancient Slavs, or turn to the Semitic and Mongohan civlhza- 
 ions and trace back the Family through Islam to the Arabia 
 if Mohammed's time, through the Old Testament to the days 
 (f the Patriarchs, through Babylonian civihzation to the 
 ^de of Hammurabi, through Chinese literature to the ancient 
 lassical books, we find that where civilization is beginning the 
 family is in some form or other already organized under the rule 
 if the Father.^ The tjrpe of marriage law, of family structure, 
 ■nd for the most part the attitude to woman appropriate to the 
 'atriarchal stage underhe the social history of civihzation and 
 re deeply imbedded in its structure. The strongly knit family 
 Jfe, the close personal relations of father, mother and child have 
 ormed the nucleus of the stronger and greater social growths. 
 )ver a large part of the civihzed world the extension of these 
 elations by the family cult and the worship of ancestors has 
 roved to be a social bond of marvellous strength and endurance. 
 Tet this unity may be purchased dearly by the loss of independ- 
 Qce on the part of the individual members of the family, and 
 "■e have seen how far this is often carried in the barbaric world. 
 Ve have now to see how civilization, starting, in the great 
 lajority of cases, with this type of family, has dealt with the 
 3cial and ethical problems involved. 
 
 In the early civihzation of Asia, the position of women, and 
 articularly of married women, was not worse, but, on the whole, 
 Btter than one would expect on the analogy of later times and 
 
 '■ The Egyptian famity is perhaps an exception (see below, p. 187). 
 
 179 
 
180 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of contemporary civilizations. In ancient Babylon, in the time 
 of Hammurabi, i. e. probably between 2150 and 1950 B.C., 
 marriage was arranged with the parents, without reference to the 
 wishes of the bride,^ by a form of purchase. It was, however, a 
 modified form approaching more nearly to the exchange of gifts 
 which we find in many primitive races. A sum was given, it 
 appears from the code, to the wife's father as well as to the bride 
 herself, but this payment ^ was not universal, and on the other 
 side of the account the father made over to his daughter on her 
 marriage a dowry which remained her own property in the sense 
 that it was returned to her in the case of divorce or on the death 
 of her husband, that it passed to her children, and, faiUng 
 them, to her father.^ Thus the method of marriage appears as a 
 quasi-commercial transaction, and the decision thereon belongs 
 to the parents of the parties.* Similar commercial considerations 
 dominate the law of divorce, the leading points of which may be 
 given in the words of Hammurabi's code. 
 
 " 137. If a man has set his face to put away his concubine who 
 has borne him children, or his wife who has granted him children, 
 to that woman he shall return her her marriage portion and shall 
 give her the usufruct of field, garden, and goods, and she shall 
 bring up her children. From the time that her children are 
 grown up, from whatever is given to her children they shall give 
 her a share like that of one son, and the husband of her choice 
 shall marry her. 
 
 " 138. If a man has put away his bride who has not borne him 
 children, he shall give her money as much as the bride price, and 
 shall pay her the marriage portion which she brought from her 
 father's house, and shall put her away. 
 
 " 139. If there was no bride price, he shall give her one mina of 
 silver for a divorce. 
 
 " 140. If he is a poor man, he shall give her one-third of a mina 
 of silver." ^ 
 
 * Meissner, B^itrdge zum althahylonischen Privatrecht, 13. 
 
 ' The case of marriage without a bride price is contemplated in Ham- 
 murabi, section 139 (Kohler, 118) — that is to say, if bride price is the right 
 translation, and if it is not rather the sum which, in the regular contract 
 forms, the husband agrees to give the wife in case of divorce. 
 
 » The dowry might exceed the bride price (section 164). On the other 
 hand, it remained in a sense in the wife's famUy, as, if children failed, her 
 father regained it on repasring the bride price (section 163). 
 
 • See sections 163-6, 159-161. 
 
 ' I quote Dr. Johns' translation, but, following Kohler, have twice 
 substituted bride price for " dowry." It is clearly intended that the 
 unofiEending wife shall have not only her dowry, which is really her own 
 property or that of her family (section 162), but either the bride price, 
 which represents, so to say, the worth of her own person, or, what I cannot 
 help suspecting to be the meaning, the amoimt which at the time of the 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 181 
 
 On the other hand, the woman -who " has set her face to go 
 3ut and has acted the fool, has wasted her house, has belittled 
 lier husband," may either be divorced without compensation or 
 retained in the house as slave of a new wife. The wife may also 
 3laim a divorce (or separation) ^ " if she has been economical and 
 das no vice, and her husband has gone out and greatly behttled 
 der," but she acts at some risk, for if on investigation it turns 
 out that she had been uneconomical or a goer about, "that 
 woman one shall throw her into the waters." ^ Thus the wife 
 das certain pecuniary guarantees against arbitrary divorce, while 
 if ill-treated she may leave her husband, but her position as his 
 subject is marked by the manner in which infidelity is treated. 
 The law provides that both parties should be put to death unless 
 bhe king pardons his servant or the "owner " his wife.' The 
 [ordsbip of the husband is seen also in his power to dispose of 
 his wife as well as her children for debt.* 
 
 Polygamy appears, not in the rich luxuriance of later Asiatic 
 civilization, but in a restricted form. A man might marry a 
 second wife if a " sickness has seized " his first wife, but the first 
 is not to be put away.* Apparently this is the only case in 
 which two fuUy equal wives are contemplated by the code, 
 but it was also possible for a man to take a secondary wife or 
 Boncubine, who was to be subordinate to the chief wife. This 
 was a common practice when the wife was childless, but was 
 apparently legal even when she had children.* 
 
 marriage the husband contracted to give her in the event of a divorce, 
 [n the contracts of the period the sum is specified. In one case it is a 
 noina, in another ten shekels. The wife also states explicitly that if she 
 fepudiates her husband she shall be drowned, strangled or sold, as the case 
 may be. 
 
 "■ Nothing is said of her being allowed to marry again. She is to go 
 to her father's house. Observe above that when a divorced woman has 
 jhildren it seems to be impUed that she will, at any rate, remain unmarried 
 lill they are grown up. 
 
 ^ The translations differ here. I follow Dr. Johns (Hammurabi, 
 sections 141, 142, 143). 
 
 ' Hammurabi, section 129. On the other hand, she is allowed to purge 
 lerself by oath from an unproved accusation ; if it is made by her hus- 
 band, " she shall swear by God and return to her house " ; if it is made 
 ly some one else, she shall plunge into the holy river (131, 132). 
 
 * The period of debt slavery was, however, limited to three years 
 Hammurabi, 117). 
 
 ' Hammurabi, 148. 
 
 * The provisions of the code are not perfectly clear. The relevant 
 ections run as follows : 144. " If a man has espoused a woman, and that 
 voman has given a maid to her husband and has brought up children, that 
 nan has set his face to take a concubine, one shall not countenance that 
 nan, he shall not take a concubine. 145. If a man has espoused a woman 
 ind she has not granted him children and he has set his face to take a 
 
182 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 To sum up, the early Babylonian marriage law contemplates 
 marriage by purchase or exchange of gifts -with a restricted 
 polygamy and considerable authority and privileges for the 
 husband, moderated by certain provisions for the protection and 
 maintenance of the wife. But in relation to other persons the 
 wife is a much more free agent than in many civilized countries 
 at the present, or at any rate in recent times. She could already 
 conduct business and in certain cases dispose of property, and, 
 at any rate in later Babylonian times, she appears as possessed 
 of full legal personahty, carrying on processes of law and appear- 
 ing as a quahfied witness.^ In this later period, moreover — ^that 
 
 concubine, that man shall take a concubine, he shall cause her to enter 
 into his house. That concubine he shall not put on an equality with his 
 wife." (I have followed Dr. Johns' translation, but substituted ' woman" 
 for " votary " in accordance with the views of other translators.) It is 
 not clear from this, as it stands, whether a man could compel his wife to 
 give him a concubine, in case the wife had children, but elsewhere the case 
 of a man having children by both wife and concubine is clearly contem- 
 plated, and in the contracts there are cases of a man marrying two wives, 
 of whom one is to be subject to the other. Thus Arad-Samas takes Utani, 
 the sister of Taramka, as his wife. He promises to care for her well-being, 
 and to carry her chair to the temple of Marduk ; he is already married to 
 Taramka, but Taramka is placed by the contract in an inferior position 
 to Utani. " All children," the contract reads, " as many as there are, 
 and as many as shall be born, are Utani 's." If Taramka says to Utani, 
 " You are not my sister," something terrible happens, as to the nature 
 of which a hiatus in the inscription leaves us in ignorance. If either wife 
 says to Arad-Samas, " You are not my husband," she is to be branded 
 and sold for money; if they both do it (presumably if they conspire to 
 do so), they are to be thrown into the river. If Arad-Samas repudiates 
 either of them, he is to pay a mina of silver (Meissner, ib., p. 71). In 
 this contract, essentially the same law as that of Hammurabi is seen in 
 active operation, and it is clear that a certain form of polygamy or con- 
 cubinage is contemplated, although there are children in existence by the 
 first wife. Apparently the object of the code is to maintain the supremacy 
 of the chief wife, while imposing on her, if childless, the duty of granting 
 children to her husband. The concubine should be provided by her. If 
 she failed to give him one, the man might take one, but must stiU treat 
 his wife as mistress of the home. There is no prohibition of concubinage 
 merely on the ground that the legitimate wife has children of her own. 
 Further, it is only the regular concubinage with a fixed status, determined 
 by contract, which is thus limited. There is nothing said to limit inter- 
 course with a female slave, whose children might be adopted at will by the 
 father, and thus share in the inheritance with the legitimate children 
 (Hammurabi, 170, 171). On the whole, we gather (1) that, in case of 
 sickness, there might be two regular wives ; (2) there might be, in case 
 of childlessness, and perhaps in other cases also, a regular concubine, 
 subordinate to the wife; (3) a slave concubine unprotected by contract, 
 whose children might or might not be recognized and inherit. 
 
 1 Kohler and Peiser, Aua dem Babylonisohen Rechtsleben, iii. 8, etc. 
 The marriage law had also improved in the wife's favour. Contracts of 
 marriage by purchase are very rare, though one exists of the thirteenth 
 year of Nebuchadrezzar, in which the wife is bought for a slave for 
 1| gold minas {ib., vol. i. p. 8). 
 
WOMAN AND MAREIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 183 
 
 of the last centuries of the independent Babylonian civilization — 
 it appears from the contracts that a woman could protect herself 
 against the advent of a second wife by pecunial^ penalties in 
 the marriage contract .^ On the other hand, her marriage still 
 appears to be at the disposal of her male relations, her brothers, 
 for instance, when the father was dead. Indeed, even the son 
 required the father's consent to his marriage. To this extent 
 the patriarchal power had endured.^ 
 
 2. In ancient Egypt a good deal of obscurity surrounds the 
 position of women. We have to reconstruct it partly from 
 marriage contracts which perhaps do not show us all the con- 
 ditions of the bargain, partly from incidents in stories, partly 
 from passages in the moralists, partly from the descriptions of 
 Greek travellers. We have no precise and certain information as 
 to the structure of the family, on which everything turns ; and we 
 are deaUng with a period of four thousand years or more, in the 
 course of which there is time, even in the slow-moving East, for 
 many things to change. In fact, our fullest information relates to 
 the very latest period of independent Egyptian history, and to 
 the time of the subjection to Persians, Greeks and Romans. 
 In this period Greek observers, as we know from Herodotus and 
 from a well-known passage in Sophocles, were struck by the 
 independence of Egyptian women, and were possibly led by 
 contrast to exaggerate it.* But it is clear that from the Old 
 Kingdom onwards women, married or not, had full right of pro- 
 perty with testamentary powers, and could go to law.* With 
 regard to their position in marriage our most definite informa- 
 tion comes from the contracts. These are all late, being mostly 
 
 ' The husband promises if he takes another wife to give her a mina 
 and send her home. This seems to have been a common protection against 
 polygamy. The wife still engages to be put to death, if unfaithful (Kohler 
 and Peiser, i. 7, 8. Cf. Victor Marx, Die Stdlung der Frauen in Baby- 
 lomen : Beitrdge zur Asayriologie, bd. 4. hft. i. p. 6 seq.). 
 
 ' Kohler and Peiser, i. 9, and ii. 7. The right of the father is limited 
 in Hammurabi. He might only disinherit a son for a serious crime, and 
 bhen only for a second ofience, and with the approval of a judge (168, 169). 
 In other words, the property was the family's and the father had only 
 limited rights over it. 
 
 ' This is clearly true of the statement of Diodorus that the marriage 
 3ontraot specifically enforced obedience on the part of the husband to the 
 wife (Died. i. 27) : irapk rots IStd^rais Kvpieieiv Ti}v yvvaiKa T&vSpoSj iv rp ttjs 
 frpotKhs iruyypa(py npQffofiO\oyo6vTuv tuv ya/ioivruv &irayTa wetflapx^ffet y rp 
 ■/aftovfieyri. This does not accord with the preserved examples. See below. 
 
 * Griffith, Catcdogv^ of the John Bylanda Pa/pyri, iii. 28. Gardiner, 
 " Egyptian Ethics " (Enc. Brit., p. 481). The lady Neb-sent conveys land to 
 ler omldren by will under the 3rd Dynasty (Breasted, Ancient Records of 
 ^gypt, i. 79) and the king's confidante Hetephites receives a legacy of land 
 u the 4th Dynasty {ib., 90). 
 
184 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of the Persian and Ptolemaic period, while the earhest dates from 
 the reign of Psammetichus II. (26th Dynasty), near the close of 
 Egyptian independence. This contract speaks of "compensa- 
 tion " to the woman which seems to comprise two sums. One 
 of these may be given by her father in lieu of her share of the 
 inheritance, and the other by the bridegroom as " morgengabe." 
 Whether this is so or not, the bridegroom proceeds to undertake 
 that if he leaves the woman " who is mine own . . . whether 
 desiring to leave her from dislike (?) or desiring another woman 
 than her, apart from the great crime that is found in woman, 
 I wiU give to her " the two sums mentioned above, a share of 
 the joint earnings during marriage, and to her children their 
 share of the paternal and maternal property.^ Clearly a sum is 
 appropriated for the wife's security. Part of this may be her 
 dowry ^ and part a nuptial gift. In any case this sum remains 
 in the husband's hands, but is to go to the wife if he divorces her. 
 She has her own inherited property and her children's right of 
 inheritance both to her and their father is secured. She may, 
 however, be divorced without penalty for adultery. Polygamy 
 seems to be excluded by the terms of the contract. Records of 
 divorce exist from the Persian period : "I have abandoned thee 
 as wife. . . Make for thyself a husband in any place to which 
 thou shalt go," * and in one contract of that reign we find the 
 woman stipulating for the right of divorce under money penalty- 
 nothing said of the "great crime that is found " in man.* It 
 seems clear that in this period the position of the wife depended 
 on the bargain. This might, in fact, be varied by a post-nuptial 
 contract.^ In point of fact these contracts secured the wife by 
 a money penalty against arbitrary divorce, and her children 
 in their inheritance.* We must infer that apart from such a 
 settlement the position of the woman would be very weak, 
 and this accords with the view taken by good authorities that 
 among the poorer people loose connexions probably took the place 
 of marriage in great degree.® 
 
 1 Griffith, Papyri, iii. 115. 
 
 ' This would seem to be the case in a contract of the time of Darius, 
 where the man says, " Thou hast given me three pieces of silver." In case 
 of divorce he is to return these plus a third of their earnings. 
 
 » Griffith, p. 117. 
 
 * The Ptolemaic contracts allow divorce at will of either party, and 
 enumerate the bridal property which the wife is to take with her in that 
 event. The woman's position would seem to be advanced materially. 
 
 ' Thus a contract of the twenty-second year of Amasis replaces " that 
 writing of wife which I made for thee " in the fifteenth year (Griffith, 
 p. 115). 
 
 ' Gardiner, Enc. Ethics, p. 482. 
 
iVOMAN AND MARRIAGE UKDER CIVILIZATION 185 
 
 The contracts clearly bar polygamy, and we must assume that 
 t was not the custom in the propertied middle class of their 
 jeriod. Apart from contract it is probable that*t was, or had 
 )een allowed, though rare.^ Pharaoh certainly has a large harem 
 n which there is one chief wife, the " great spouse," who accom- 
 janies the king in his public acts and particularly in his reUgious 
 vorship, who is always a princess of the royal blood, and prob- 
 ibly a sister of the king, who has her own household and her 
 )wn servants, and might on the king's death obtain practically 
 'oyal authority as regent. Under her there are secondary 
 wves taking rank according to their birth, and being probably 
 nore or less secluded, and beneath them again are a troop of 
 ioncubines and foreign slaves. The court of Pharaoh was 
 mitated by the feudal chief of every nome, who also had his 
 larem, "where the legitimate wife — often a princess of solar 
 •ank — played the r&le of Queen surrounded by concubines, 
 lancers and slaves." How far polygamy may have extended 
 seyond the great nobles we do not know, but if it existed earher 
 ;he evidence of the contracts enables us to infer that it was 
 lying out in later times. The attitude to women must have 
 mproved since the days of the Old Kingdom when Pharaoh 
 3oasts of having carried off the wives of other men, and alleges 
 ihese exploits as proof of his truly royal nature.^ On the other 
 land, the position of the slave girl is indicated in the self -eulogy 
 )f a Theban high priest : "I knew not the handmaid of his 
 [my father's) house. I did not curse his brother, etc." It is 
 ihal piety which is the merit here. Prenuptial relations were, 
 n fact, hghtly regarded,^ and this fact, combined with slavery, 
 mplies concubinage regularized or other. Brother and sister 
 marriage was not rare.* 
 
 On the relations of husband and wife the moralists of the 
 Middle and New Kingdom throw some light. They very pro- 
 perly enjoin kind treatment of the wife upon the husband. To 
 ;his effect run the precepts of Ptah-Hotep : " If thou art suc- 
 jessful and hast furnished thy house and lovest the wife of thy 
 bosom, then fill her stomach, and clothe her back. The medicine 
 
 ' Gardiner, Ene. Ethics, p. 481. 
 
 ' Maspero, Recueil de Travaux, vol. iv ; Pyramide de roi Ounaa, p. 76. 
 
 ^ Gardiiier, loc. cit. 481, 482. In the "Negative Confession " (see below. 
 Part II. chap, ii.) adultery is repudiated, and impurity while serving 
 ;he god or in a sacred place. It does not on balance seem probable that 
 brnication, as such, figures in the list of sins (Griffith, World's Literature, 
 ?. 5337 ; Gardiner, loc. cit. ; Max Mviller, Liebespoesie der alten /Egypter, 
 ). 7. On the other side, Budge, Book of the Dead, ii. p. 361). 
 
 ' Gardiner, loc. cit. 
 
186 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 for her body is oil. Make glad her heart during the time that 
 thou hast. She is a field profitable to its owner." ^ These are 
 most proper sentiments, blended, as they are, with that simple 
 worldly wisdom and gentle appeal to self-interest which charac- 
 terize the utterances of the excellent Ptah-Hotep, first of all the 
 race of platitudinarians ; but excellent as the sentiment is, it does 
 not imply the subjection of the husband to the wife, but rather 
 the contrary.^ The maxims of Ani are a little more detailed : 
 " Do not treat rudely a woman in her house when you know her 
 perfectly ; do not say to her, ' Where is that ? bring it to us,' 
 when she has set it perfectly in its place which your eye sees, and 
 when you are silent you know her qualities. It is a joy that 
 your hand should be with her. The man who is firm of heart 
 is quickly master in his house." ^ All this is in the approved 
 Oriental style, and so also is Ani's recommendation to the wife : 
 " What does one speak of day by day ? Let the professions 
 speak of their duties, the wife of her husband, and every man 
 about his business." * 
 Honour to the mother, however, is strongly insisted on, 
 
 " Thou shalt never forget thy mother, and what she has done 
 for thee, that she bore thee, and nurtured thee in all ways. Wert 
 thou to forget her then she might blame thee, lifting up her arms 
 unto God, and He would hearken unto her complaint. For she 
 carried thee long beneath her heart as a heavy burden, and after 
 
 1 Flinders Petrie, p. 132. F. L. Griffith, The World's LUeraiure, p. 5335. 
 
 * There is a little more point in a further maxim of Ptah-Hotep: "If 
 thou makest a woman ashamed, wanton of heart, whom her fellow- 
 townspeople know to be under two laws (explained by Mr. Griffith as 
 meaning in an ambiguous position), be kind to her a season ; send her not 
 away, let her have food to eat. The wantonness of her heart appreoiateth 
 guidance " (Griffith, World's Literature, p. 5337). Apparently this is a 
 recommendation, couched, it must be admitted, in mild terms, to a 
 man who has seduced a woman to treat her with consideration. There 
 is clearly no question of any obligation. 
 
 ' The Boulak Papyrus, in Am^lineau, La Morale Egyptienne, p. 188. 
 Brugsch translates the first words : " Do not strike your wife." With 
 the above compare the Ptolemaic precept, " May it not happen to thee to 
 maltreat thy wife whose strength is less than thine, but may she find in 
 thee a protector " (Flinders Petrie, p. 133). 
 
 * Maxims of Ani, § 30. Am^lineau, La Morale Egyptienne, 113. As 
 early as the 6th Dynasty an obedient priest's widow gets a legacy " because 
 she was so greatly honoured in my heart ; she said nothing to oppose my 
 heart " (Breasted, i. 155). It should be added that the husband could 
 apparently put the unfaithful wife to death. In the story of the " Two 
 Brothers " it is narrated without comment, and rather as a matter of 
 course, that the husband slew his wife and cast her to the dogs (Griffith, 
 World's Literature, 5257). According to Diodorus, in cases of adultery 
 the paramour was punished with 1000 blows, the wife by having her nose 
 cut oS (I. 78. 4). 
 
5V0MAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 187 
 
 ihy months were accomplished she bore thee. Three long years 
 ihe carried thee upon her shoulder and gave thee her breast to thy 
 mouth. She nurtured thee nor knew offence for thy uncleanness. 
 And when thou didst enter school and wast instructed in the 
 [writings, daily she stood by the master with bread and beer from 
 the house." ^ 
 
 We do not know the Egyptian system of kinship, but it is 
 recognized that the maternal link was the closer ^ and it may be 
 that a maternal system lay at the basis of the Egyptian family 
 md strengthened the position of women. In later times this 
 influence would be reinforced by the important part taken by 
 women in industrial and commercial life. In these relations 
 and in social intercourse generally it is allowed on all hands that 
 bheir position was remarkably free. Little restraint was placed 
 on their intercourse with men, they appear on the monuments 
 eating and drinking freely — sometimes too freely — in masculine 
 company, and they surprised the Greek travellers by going out 
 without restraint to work at their trade or manual labour while 
 the men often worked at home.^ Of this position women in 
 the commercial and propertied classes availed themselves to 
 improve their condition as wives. But the evidence of the 
 contracts cuts both ways. If they secured the women who 
 
 * From the Boulak Papyrus, translated by Griffith, ojj. 'cit., p. 5340, 
 from the German of Professor Erman. 
 
 * Gardiner (Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage, p. 43) says that the system 
 was transitional. According to Max Miiller {Liebespoeaie, p. 6) descent 
 was reckoned through the mother, and her brother acted as guardian down 
 to a late period. 
 
 ' W. Max Miiller, loc. cit., points out that this freedom would not apply 
 to the bondwomen of the peasantry, who were under the arbitrary power of 
 royal and priestly officials, and wove for them shut up in a work-house. 
 Here, however, we touch the general question of slavery rather than the 
 special position of women. It is more to the point that to have refrained 
 from pressing a widow remained a matter for boasting, and that education 
 in reading and writing was not often extended to girls. It is going too far 
 to say with this writer that no ancient or foreign people, except those of 
 New Zealand, have given women so high a legal position. The attitude 
 to women in Egyptian literature is not particularly respectful. Often she 
 is represented as the temptress, for instance in the Boulak Papyrus — 
 
 " Keep thyself from the strange woman who is not known in her city. 
 Look not upon her when she cometh and know her not. She is like a 
 whirlpool in deep waters, the whirling vortex of which is not known. The 
 woman whose husband is afar writeth unto thee daily. When none is 
 there to see she standeth up and spreadeth her snare. Sin unto death is 
 it to hearken thereto " (Griffith's tr. following Erman, World^s Literature, 
 p. 5340). 
 
 The general tendency of the passage, which recalls the weU-known 
 3hapter in Proverbs, is plain enough, but whether the warning is principally 
 iirected against the harlot or the adulteress is not whoUy clear. 
 
188 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 were in a position to obtain them, they illustrate the precarious 
 situation of the wife under the ordinary law. Our information 
 is broken and incomplete, but taken as it stands and viewed as 
 a whole it by no means suggests a real equality of the sexes. 
 
 3. Both in Egypt and Babylonia the position of women was 
 in some respects better than our traditional conception of the 
 Oriental woman would lead us to expect. In other cases that 
 conception accords only too closely with the facts. Each civiliza- 
 tion has had its own peculiarities, but they have been variations 
 upon one type. In India tradition starts with the heroic age of 
 the Vedas, in which the paternal power is already fully developed. 
 The father is master and, indeed, owner of the family ; wife, sons, 
 daughters and slaves have no property of their own, but are 
 rather his property. On his death, his place is taken by the 
 eldest son, into whose tutelage the widow passes. The daughter 
 might be sold to an intending husband,^ and it is not probable 
 that her consent was a material condition.^ The widow passed 
 to her husband's brother until a son was bom : she did not in this 
 age follow her husband to the grave, though the funeral cere- 
 mony strongly suggests the previous existence of such a custom.' 
 Finally, the Vedas contain distinct traces of polygamy, though 
 it was doubtless an exception.* Thus Indian family life begins 
 with a typical Patriarchate. To this system a religious turn was 
 given by the Brahman law. In some respects the Brahmans 
 endeavoured to purify the marriage relationship and to provide 
 for the protection of the wife. This appears especially in the 
 attempt to prohibit marriage by purchase . This form of marriage 
 is recognized, but figures along with marriage by capture as one 
 of the four blamable kinds, and " no father who knows the law 
 must take even the smallest gratuity for his daughter." He that 
 
 ■■ The purchase of brides is mentioned in the Epic Poems. ThusBhishma 
 purchased the daughter of the Prince of Madras for Pandu, with gold and 
 precious stones (Duncker, History of Antiquity, vol. iv. pp. 255-266). 
 Capture was probably an alternative to purchase (loe. cit.). 
 
 * Muir {Sanscrit Texts, v. 459) quotes a passage from the Vedas which 
 suggests that some freedom of choice was exercised by women under 
 favourable conditions. " Happy is the female that is handsome. She her- 
 self loves (or chooses) her friend among the people." In the Mahabharata 
 the King's daughters appear to choose their husbands, but this is a pre- 
 rogative of Boyalty. 
 
 ' When the widow has led her husband to the place of burial, she is 
 exhorted to " elevate herself to the world of life," for her marriage is at an 
 end (Duncker, op. cit., iv. 611). 
 
 • In one hymn the poet prays that Pushan will protect him and provide 
 him with a supply of damsels (Muir, v. 457, 461). 
 
^OMAN AND MABRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 189 
 
 3es so is " a seller of his offspring." ^ Purchase is reduced to 
 le form of a fee given to the Brahman for' the ful^lment of the 
 icred law, and this fee is not to be appropriated by the relatives 
 lemselves. Yet notwithstanding Manu's discouragement of the 
 ractice, marriage by purchase persisted in a modified form, the 
 aal compromise being that the present given by the suitor was 
 isigned to the benefit of the bride and became her dowry, pass- 
 ig back to her own family on her death. The barbaric form of 
 larriage by capture or abduction, which is morally condemned 
 7 Manu but legally sanctioned for the Kshatriya caste, became 
 bsolete, being forbidden in Narada's code, and the two forms of 
 Larriage which persist in India to this day are the Brahma, the 
 ift of a daughter decked and honoured with jewels to a man 
 larned in the Veda whom the father himself invites, and the 
 .sura, or purchase in the modified form described.* 
 Only in one case, moreover, does Manu recognize the free-will 
 
 ^ Manu's eight forms of marriage and his comments on them are full of 
 istruction for the transition from barbaric to civilized marriage laws, 
 he gift of a daughter, after decking her, to a man learned in the Veda and 
 I good conduct ... is called the BrShma rite. The gift of a daughter 
 ho has been decked with ornaments to a priest . . . they call the Daiva 
 te. When (the father) gives away his daughter according to the rule, 
 Eter receiving from the bridegroom, for (the fulfilment of) the sacred law, 
 
 cow and a bull or two pairs, that is named the Arsha rite. The gift of a 
 aughter (by her father) after he has addressed (the couple) with the text. 
 
 May both of you perform together your duties," ... is called . . . the 
 'relglpatya rite. When (the bridegroom) receives a maiden, after having 
 iven as much wealth as he can afford to the kinsmen, and to the bride 
 eraelf, according to his own will, that is called the Asura rite. The 
 oluntary union of a maiden and her lover one must know (to be) the G&n- 
 harva rite, which springs from desire, and has sexual intercourse for its 
 urpose. The forcible abduction of a maiden from her home, whUe she 
 ries out and weeps, after (her kinsmen) have been slain or wounded and 
 iheir houses) broken open, is called the Eakshasa rite. When (a man) 
 y stealth seduces a girl who is sleeping, intoxicated, or disordered in 
 itellect, that is the eighth, the most base and sinful rite of the Pisftkas 
 ilanu, iii. 27-34). Of these, the first four are allowed to Brahmans. 
 'hey are all, in effect, religious martiages, the gift in the third, or Arsha, form 
 eing of a ceremonial character, as it is to be " for the fulfilment of the 
 icred law," not a price for the daughter. A variant appears in the code 
 t Apastamba (II. vi. 12, 13; Mayne, p. 82), wherein a gift of value was 
 lade to the bride's parents, but returned by them. The four blamable 
 tes are purchase, captiure, voluntary union, and treacherous seduction. 
 If these, the two first, as we have seen, are allowed to the warrior caste, 
 he fiftii and eighth, the law book of Bauddhayana allows to Vaisyas and 
 udras, since they " are not particular about their wives " (Baud., I. ii. 
 3, 14). These are, in the main, relics of barbarism, yet a higher oon- 
 Bption appears when Bauddhayana remarks that " some reconunend the 
 r&ndharva rite (t. e. voluntary union) for all castes, because it is based on 
 mtual affection " (ib.). But this germ of a true marriage by mutual 
 ansent was not allowed to fructify. 
 
 ' J. D. Mayne, Hindu Law and Usage, pp. 79-85. 
 
190 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of the maiden in the matter of her own marriage. If her father 
 fails to provide her with a husband within three years of her 
 attaining maturity she may marry whom she wiU.'- In all other 
 cases her guardian disposes of her hand. The woman who is 
 thus passed from the absolute control of her father into the 
 absolute control of her husband must honour, obey and merge 
 herself in him. " Though destitute of virtue, or seeking pleasure 
 (elsewhere), or devoid of good qualities, (yet) a husband must be 
 constantly worshipped as a god by a faithful wife." ^ " She 
 must always be cheerful, clever in (the management of her) 
 household affairs, careful in cleaning her utensils, and economical 
 in expenditure." * On his side the husband is commanded to 
 show her respect. " Women must be honoured and adorned by 
 their fathers, brothers, husbands, and brothers-in-law, who desire 
 (their own) welfare."* He is to be faithful to her, "being 
 constantly satisfied with her alone." Her son is even to respect 
 her more than his father. " The teacher is ten times more 
 venerable than a sub-teacher, the father a hundred times more 
 than the teacher, but the mother a thousand times more than 
 the father." ^ And so Vasishtha says, " A father who has com- 
 mitted a crime causing loss of caste must be cut off. But a 
 mother does not become an outcast for her son." * But though 
 respected if virtuous, she is to be chastised if the husband thinks 
 her otherwise. The chastisement, however, is strictly limited. 
 " A wife, a son, a slave, a pupU, and a younger brother of the full 
 blood, who have committed faults, may be beaten with a rope or 
 split bamboo, but on the back part of the body (only), never on a 
 noble part ; he who strikes them otherwise will incur the same 
 guilt as a thief." ^ Here, as elsewhere, fluctuations of opinion 
 show through Manu's text. In one place we read, " Day and 
 night women must be kept in dependence by the males of their 
 families," ^ yet a few sections on the appeal is to women them- 
 selves : " Women confined in the house under trustworthy and 
 obedient servants are not (well) guarded ; but those who of their 
 own accord keep guard over themselves are well guarded." ' 
 But this higher note is seldom struck. The Brahmans are far 
 too much impressed with the evil disposition of women,^" and the 
 husband is recommended to keep his wife well employed about 
 
 1 Manu, ix. 90 ff. ' Manu, v. 154. » Manu, v. 150. 
 
 * Manu, iii. 55. ^ Manu, ii. 146. 
 
 • Vasishtha, xiii. 47, 48. ' Manu, viii. 299, 300. 
 8 Manu, ix. 2. " Manu, ix. 12. 
 
 ^^ When creating them, Manu allotted to women (a love of their) bed, 
 (of their) seat and (of) ornament, impure desires, wrath, dishonesty, malice, 
 and bad conduct (Manu, ix. 17, and see the whole passage, 13-18). 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 191 
 
 the house keeping things clean and preparing his food, as an 
 expedient for guarding her. ^ 
 
 On the strict theory of Manu a wife could have no property. 
 In this respect she is placed on one footing with a son and a 
 slave.^ The wife could not leave her husband under any circum- 
 stances, but he might take other wives and might " supersede " 
 rather than divorce her if she " drink spirituous liquor, is of bad 
 Bonduct, rebellious, diseased, mischievous or wasteful." Further : 
 '' A barren wife may be superseded in the eighth year, she whose 
 jhiidren all die in the tenth, she who bears only daughters 
 in the eleventh, but she who is quarrelsome without delay." 
 " But a sick wife who is kind to her husband and virtuous in 
 ber conduct may be superseded only with her own consent and 
 must never be disgraced." ^ There are, indeed, traces in the text 
 af Manu, on the one hand, of a custom allowing deserted wives 
 IS well as widows to marry again, and, on the other, of an 
 ideaUstic attempt to establish indissoluble monogamous marriage. 
 But these remain as traces only. What the Brahmans actually 
 succeeded in doing was to prevent the re-marriage of women 
 3ven after the death of their husbands, while men obtained the 
 right to take as many wives as they pleased, though they might 
 act dismiss any existing wives save for one of the faults 
 snumerated.* Such having been the position of the wife during 
 ihe husband's lifetime, after his death she must remain faithfiil 
 to him, " she must not even mention the name of another man 
 
 ' This, however, is not carried out consistently (Manu, ix. 194). 
 
 ' Manu, ix. 80-82. 
 
 ' Manu, always liberal in inconsistencies, is more than usually so on this 
 Joint. The cause, as shown by J. D. Mayne, is clearly mutilation of the 
 »xt in the interest of conflicting views. Thus in ix. 46, 47, we read : 
 ' Neither by sale nor by repudiation is a wife released from her husband. 
 
 . . Once is the partition (of the inheritance) made, (once is) a maiden 
 jiven in marriage, etc." From this it is clear that the repudiated wife 
 iould not re-marry. Further, it seems that the attempt was being made 
 impose monogamy and conjugal fidelity on the husband as well. " Let 
 nutual fidelity continue unto death, this may be considered as the smnmary 
 if the highest law for husband and wife " (ix. 101). Connect this with 
 '. 168, " Having thus, at the funeral, given the sacred fires to his wife who 
 lies before him, he may marry again, and again kindle the (fires)." This 
 eems to imply monogamy with mutual fidelity as the ideal, but in other 
 larts a plurality of wives is freely contemplated, and in ix. 77-82, the dis- 
 aisaal of a wife is permitted on several conditions as shown in the text, 
 ^irther, Mayne {Hindu Law and Usage, p. 93) shows conclusively that a 
 lassage has been omitted before ix. 76, justifying a wife in marrying again 
 fter desertion for a period of years. Thus we trace (1) a period when 
 ridows and deserted wives may marry again, (2) an attempt to establish 
 lonogamy. But the net result of this sacramental conception of marriage, 
 npmging on actual law and usage, was, in the Brahmanio codes, the 
 reatest liberty for the man, and the most complete bondage for the wife. 
 
192 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 after her husband has died." ^ She is now under the tutelage of 
 her son, for a woman is never a free agent. " By a girl, by 
 a young woman, or even by an aged one, nothing must be 
 done independently, even in her own house. In childhood, a 
 female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, 
 when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be 
 independent." ^ 
 
 The chastity of women was to be preserved by their seclusion, 
 and their unfaithfulness punished by their husbands. We have 
 seen that in the barbaric world the infringement of chastity is 
 regarded mainly as an offence against the woman's owner. The 
 influence of this conception is still apparent in the Brahmanical 
 codes, which, in assigning punishments for seduction and adul- 
 tery, observe a marked distinction between the cases where the 
 woman is properly guarded and those in which she is free from 
 proper surveillance.^ The same conception had another con- 
 
 1 Manu, V. 157. On the other hand, not only is suttee not mentioned 
 by Manu, but the original text appears, as we have seen, to contemplate 
 re-marriage (see especially ix. 175, 176). Among the Jats of the Punjab, 
 re-marriage is allowed to the deserted wife and to the widow ; in Western 
 India it is allowed to the lower castes if the husband is impotent, if the 
 parties are continually quarrelling, or if, by mutual consent, the husband 
 breaks the wife's neck ornament, or if he deserts her for twelve years 
 (J. D. Mayne, op. cit., 94, 95). Polygamy, on the other hand, as to which 
 the earlier text of Manu seems to have wavered, remains to this day an 
 undoubted right. On the whole, we may say that nowhere has the sub- 
 jection of women been more complete than in India, and Mohammedan 
 influence, far from improving matters, has only furthered the practice of 
 seclusion. 
 
 2 Manu, V. 147, 148. 
 
 ' For a scale of penalties modifiable according as the woman is guarded 
 or not, see Manu, viii. 374 ff. 
 
 On the subject of legal punishments and reUgious penances for difierent 
 forms of immorality, Manu is quite bewildering in his divergencies of 
 statement, and the case is made worse if the other Brahmanist law books 
 are consulted. Two instances may suffice to illustrate the difficulty of ex- 
 tracting a consistent view. In viii. 371, the king is to cause the adulteress 
 to be devoured by dogs. But in xi. 177, " an exceedingly corrupt wife " 
 is merely to be confined to one apartment and to perform the penance pre- 
 scribed for males in the case of adultery. Probably the explanation is that 
 the first passage, which speaks of a wife " proud of the greatness of her 
 relatives," lays down the penalty for high caste women who love men of 
 lower caste. This is explicitly stated in the corresponding passage of 
 Gautama's code (xxiii. 14, 15). But there is nothing in Manu himself to 
 clear up the point. Again, in xi. 59, intercourse with unmarried maidens 
 is somewhat strangely classed with the deadliest of all sins — violation of 
 the Guru's (teacher's) bed — but in § 62 it is classed among minor offences 
 causing loss of caste. 
 
 I shall not attempt to thread my way through the maze, but will note a 
 few salient points — 
 
 (1) Considering the low position of women, the punishments of immoral- 
 ity, where no caste complication is involved, seem moderate. It would 
 
OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 193 
 
 juence, paradoxical enough in our eyes. As the husband 
 ,B the proprietor of the wife, he was also the gwner of her 
 ildren, whether they were his children after the flesh or not. 
 id as children were a desirable acquisition for the purposes 
 th of this world and the next, it was not unusual for a child- 
 is husband to compel his wife to bear him a child by another 
 m. In the Mahabharata we read that wives who refuse such 
 iuty are guilty of sin. It was through a similiar order of ideas 
 at if the husband died childless his brother ^ was appointed 
 
 raise up seed to him. This, of course, was for religious 
 irposes only. The son of the appointed lover, on the other 
 ,nd, was the son for this world as well as the next. But with 
 e progress of civilization the Niyoga, as this custom was 
 lied, gradually fell into discredit and made way for a purer 
 nception of the relations of husband and wife. It deserves 
 entioning here as one of the most remarkable paradoxes in the 
 Id of Comparative Ethics that the same teaching which insists 
 
 strongly on the guarding of women as though the preservation 
 
 their persons for the benefit of their owners were the sole 
 iject of their existence, should also say of adultery that " men 
 10 have no marital property in women, but sow their seed in 
 e soil of others, benefit the owner of the woman." ^ But the 
 iradox resolves itseK into this, that proprietary right rather 
 an personal seK-respect and love is deemed the basis of con- 
 gal obligation. Property is more than personality, and it is 
 ecisely this that is characteristic of Oriental as, on the whole, 
 
 primitive marriage. 
 
 4. Turning from India to China, we do not find much change 
 the position of the woman. The arrangement of marriage 
 
 an as though but little responsibility were attached to the woman. Thus 
 B maiden who makes advances to a man of high caste is not to be fined, 
 ly if he is of lower caste is she to be confined to her house (viii. 365). 
 
 (2) A low-caste seducer sufiered corporal pvmishment. One of equal 
 5te had to pay the nuptial fee if demanded by the woman's father. 
 
 (3) Adultery and fornication appear as religious offences (xi. 59 seq.). 
 
 (4) The husband's right to kill an unfaithful wife is substantially recog- 
 !ed — the penance required being only to give a leathern bag, a bow, a 
 at, or a sheep, according to her caste (Manu, xi. 139). 
 
 ' The Levirate is usually connected with the principle that the widow 
 longs to her husband's family, and probably this was its historical origin 
 India. But in Manu it rests on religious considerations and is reduced 
 the dimensions necessary for religious purposes. The brother must only 
 liabit with the widow so far as it is necessary for the purpose of raising up 
 id to his brother (Manu, ix. 60), and the whole practice is forbidden in 
 3 passage 64r-68, which contradicts the clauses permitting the Niyoga. 
 ' Manu, ix. 51. 
 o 
 
194 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 is in the hands of the parents, and the son is as much at their 
 disposal as the daughter.^ 
 
 "Young people," says the Editor of the She-King,''' "and 
 especially young ladies, have nothing to do with the business of 
 getting married. Their parents will see to it. They have to 
 merely wait for their orders. If they do not do so, but rush to 
 marriage on the impulse of their own desires and preferences, 
 they transgress the rules of heaven and violate the law of their 
 lot." The marriage is, in fact, arranged by go-betweens who 
 form a kind of profession, and as it is now, so was it perhaps 
 three thousand years ago in the days of the She-King? 
 
 The full ceremony of marriage is, as a rule, gone through with 
 only one woman ; bigamy or the raising of a concubine to the 
 rank of wife is punished by ninety blows* (unless in certain 
 exceptional oases), but there are secondary wives or concubines 
 who owe obedience to the first wife, and it is a point much 
 insisted on in the classical books that the head wife should 
 show no jealousy of her inferiors.® 
 
 ^ Chinese travellers note relics of marriage by capture in the ceremonial 
 a nd point out that the ideograph for slave is compounded of ' ' woman ' ' and 
 " hand," implying that the woman is the type of that which, in the phrase 
 of the Koran, " your right hand possesses." Further, to marry a wife is 
 written " to take a woman," while to marry a man has a difierent symbol 
 (Douglas, Society in China, 202). In this connection note that the imperial 
 editors, writing on the She-King, Part I. Book I. Ode 2, speak of a strict 
 taboo on the relation of husband and wife in antiquity. " Anciently 
 the rules to be observed between husband and wife required the greatest 
 circumspection. They did not speak directly to each other, but employed 
 internuncios, thus showing how strictly reserved should be intercourse 
 between men and women, and preventing all disrespectful familiarity " 
 (Legge, The She-King, Part I. Book I. Ode 2, p. 7 note). 
 * Book IV. Ode 7, Stanza 3, note. 
 
 ' " How do we proceed in taking a wife ? 
 
 . Announcement must first be m:ade to our parents. 
 Since such announcement was made, 
 Why do you still indulge her desires ? . . . 
 How do we proceed in taking a wife ? 
 Without a go-between it cannot be done. 
 
 She-King, Book VIII. Ode 6, Sts. 3, i. 
 ' Fornication is punished with eighty blows, and the pander is liable 
 to seventy (Alabaster, Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law, 
 p. 367). 
 
 ' Writing of the She-King, Dr. Legge says : " The institution of the 
 harem is very prominent, and there the wife appears lovely on her entering 
 into it, reigning in it with entire devotion to her husband's happiness, free 
 from all jealousy of the inferior inmates, in the most friendly spirit 
 promoting their comfort and setting them an example of frugality and 
 industry. It is apparently to these inferior inmates that the concluding 
 verse of an Ode expressing the affectionate devotion of a wife, alludes — 
 " When your arrows and line have found them, 
 I will dress them fitly for you . . . 
 
3MAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 195 
 
 Che Chinese husband is master in his own household, the 
 ria potestas is strongly developed, and the stq,fce interferes 
 ide the family only in extreme cases.'- The husband may 
 [ his wife if taken in adultery ; ^ he may strike her without 
 unding her,^ whereas she receives a hundred blows for 
 iking him ; * while if, for abuse of his parents, he so punishes 
 : as to cause her death, he receives a hundred blows. He 
 ,y sell his wife,^ and sometimes does so in times of famine, 
 may divorce her for barrenness, lasciviousness, disregard of 
 parents, talkativeness, thievish propensities, envious and 
 ipicious temper, and inveterate infirmity. She, on the other 
 ad, has no power of divorcing him,^ but at best may arrange 
 part by mutual consent.' 
 
 The power of the husband does not end with the dissolution 
 marriage; if he makes formal complaint of the commission 
 bigamy by his wife, she is strangled. After the husband's 
 ith the widow stiU owes him a duty. There is no definite 
 ititution of suttee, but contemporary authorities teU us that 
 3 suicide of widows is frequent, and in the south often public, 
 d turning back to the classical books, we find the widow 
 jfessing life-long chastity and devotion to the memory of 
 3 departed.* Hence it is intelligible that women frequently 
 
 When I know those whose acquaintance you wish, 
 
 I will give them of the ornaments of my girdle. 
 
 When I know those with whom you are cordial, 
 
 I will send to them of the ornaments of my girdle. 
 
 When I know those whom you love, 
 
 I will repay their friendship from the ornaments of my girdle." 
 
 She-King, Part I. Book VII. Ode 8. 
 ' Douglas, 78. A father who kills his son without cause is subject to a 
 it penalty. If he kills him for striking or abusing his parents, he goes 
 B (Alabaster, 156). The father may require the courts to order the 
 nsportation of an imxuly son (i6., 154), and a child may be sold for good 
 ise (*., 157). 
 
 ' But it must be done on the spot. Otherwise he is liable to a mitigated 
 lalty (Alabaster, 187, 188). 
 
 But he must exercise judgment in correcting her. " If he knocks her 
 lins out when told by his mother-in-law to give her a whipping, he will 
 responsible for the miu-der " {ib., 189). 
 
 ' Douglas, 81. If the husband kills her for striking him or his parents, 
 enuating circumstances are allowed. For killing the wife without 
 lae, the penalty is strangulation subject to revision (Alabaster, 186). 
 r killing the husband it is decapitation, a severer punishment because 
 ifiects the after-life (ib., 192). 
 
 ' By practice, not, unless in exceptional circumstances, by strict law. 
 she commits suicide in consequence, he is liable to three years' trans- 
 •tation (Alabaster, 189). 
 
 ' Unless it is for impotence {ib., 182). ' Douglas, 71. 
 
 ' " It floats about, that boat of cypress wood. 
 There in the middle of the Ho, 
 
196 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 prefer a nunnery or suicide to marriage. And yet the love of 
 home and yearning for absent wife and child is, we are told, 
 no infrequent theme of Chinese poetry. Such is the power of 
 human feeUng to survive all laws and institutions. 
 
 The position of Chintese women has not undergone any funda- 
 mental change within the historical period. Perhaps in some 
 respects it has deteriorated.^ In particular, the binding of 
 
 With his two tufts of hair falling over his forehead, 
 
 He was my mate, 
 
 And I swear that till death I have will no other. 
 
 O mother, O Heaven, 
 
 Why will you not understand me ? 
 
 It floats about, that boat of cypress wood, 
 
 There by the side of the Ho, 
 
 With his two tufts of hair falling over his forehead. 
 
 He was my only one. 
 
 And I swear that till death I will not do the evil thing. 
 
 O mother, O Heaven, 
 
 Why will you not understand me ? " 
 
 She-King, Part I. Book IV. Ode 1. 
 Cf. Douglas, 216, etc. The sacrifice of wives at the death of the em- 
 peror was abolished by Kanghksi 1661-1721 (Douglas, 227). Human 
 sacrifice at funerals (chiefly of women) appears intermittently from the 
 first recorded case (that of Wu, ruler of Tsin, 677 B.C., when sixty-sis 
 people were sacrificed) to the present time. It was opposed by the Con- 
 fucians. In the eighteenth century suttee was on the increase, and to 
 check it the honours conferred on the suttee women revoked, a.d. 1729 
 (De Groot, Beligious Systems of China, ii. 721-807). De Groot considers it 
 incredible that the case of Wu should really have been the first. Possibly 
 he was the first of his house to be so " honoured." 
 
 * The She-King describes the difference of attitude to the infant son and 
 daughter in terms which are exactly reproduced to-day — 
 
 " Sons shall be bom to him; 
 They will be put to sleep on couches ; 
 They will be clothed in robes ; 
 They will have sceptres to play with ; 
 Their cry will be loud. 
 
 They will be (hereafter) resplendent with red knee-ooversy 
 The (future) king, the princes of the land. 
 
 Daughters shall be bom to him ; 
 
 They will be put to sleep on the ground ; 
 
 They will be clothed with wrappers ; 
 
 They will have tiles to play with. 
 
 It will be theirs neither to do wrong nor to do good. 
 
 Only about the spirits and the food will they have to think, 
 
 And to cause no sorrow to their parents." 
 
 She-King, Part II. Book IV. Ode 5, Sts. 8, 9. 
 In point of fact the lot of the infant daughter was often much worse. 
 The extent of infanticide in China has undoubtedly been exaggerated. 
 The killing even of illegitimate children after, though not at birth, is an 
 offence, though but lightly punished (Alabaster, 170). The practice, 
 however, is frequent in many districts, and it is the daughter who is 
 ordinarily the sufferer. 
 
^OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 197 
 
 et has grown up within the last thousand years, a mush- 
 om growth in the antiquity of China> The g^at teachers, 
 tough personally married to one wife, and having no concu- 
 nes, did nothing for the amelioration of the position of women, 
 encius, indeed, proposed to divorce his wife because he found 
 )r in a squatting position on the floor of her room, and was 
 ily restrained by his mother's advice from doing so. This 
 me mother expressed the whole duty of Chinese women when 
 le refused to be consulted as to where they should live. She 
 id, " It does not belong to a woman to determine anything of 
 srself, but she is subject to the rule of the three obediences : 
 hen young she has to obey her parents, when married her 
 isband, and when a widow her son." 
 
 It only remains to add that where men keep women in so 
 uch subjection they generally impute to them a double dose 
 : original sin, and the She-King, chiming in with the literature 
 : the Hebrews and Hindoos, says, " Disorder does not come 
 >wn from heaven, it is produced by the woman. Those from 
 horn come no lessons, no instruction, are women and eunuchs." ^ 
 
 5. The Hebrew marriage law begins when we first come across 
 in the fully-developed patriarchal stage. The analogy of primi- 
 ve Arabian tribes suggests an earlier state of mother-right, but 
 : this there are in the Old Testament only the merest traces.^ 
 man acquires a wife by purchase or by service, from her 
 ther or her nearest male relative.* In either case she passes 
 )mpletely out of her father's family, and belongs to him who 
 IS paid for her. " Is there yet any portion or inheritance for 
 3 in our father's house ? " say Leah and Rachel. " Are we not 
 )unted of him strangers ? for he hath sold us and hath also 
 jite devoured the price paid for us." * 
 
 This very neat summary of the theory of marriage by service 
 is already been referred to. But the marriage affairs of Jacob 
 
 ' Yet there is an objection to the bamboo as a penalty for women, and 
 subjected to it, they are not stripped as they were in England to the 
 iginning of the nineteenth century (Alabaster, op. cit., 107). 
 
 * She-King, Part III. Book III. Ode 10, St. 3. 
 
 ' It is clear that Sarah was really Abraham's half-sister, and his marriage 
 his father's daughter would be in accordance with primitive cxistom 
 ider mother-right. 
 
 * Laban apparently gives away Rebecca, his sister, and both he and her 
 other receive precious things for her. At the same time Kebecea's own 
 shes clearly are considered. 
 
 ' Gen. xxxi. 14. Mr. Cook, however, suggests that their complaint is 
 at Laban has kept that which should have come to them (cf . supra, p. 154, 
 ite 1). 
 
198 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 illustrate some further points which we can understand well 
 from the Babylonian code. Part of the agreement between him 
 and Laban is that he shall not " afElict " Laban's daughters, and 
 that he shall not "take wives beside my daughters." ^ This 
 is quite in the spirit of a Babylonish marriage contract. But 
 there is a further point of similarity. Though Jacob took no 
 more wives, each of his two wives gave him a handmaid precisely 
 as is contemplated in the Code of Hammurabi, and the hand- 
 maid's children were in each case reckoned to the wife. In 
 Hammurabi's language, " the wife had granted him the children." 
 
 Polygamy is contemplated in the Law, the only limitation 
 being that in the Priestly Code two sisters are not to be married 
 at the same time. Concubinage is also contemplated, and so is 
 the sale of a daughter for that purpose. The daughter that is 
 sold is especially protected in the Book of the Covenant. She 
 is not to be set free in the Sabbatical year, but if she " please 
 not her master who hath espoused her to himself, then shall he 
 let her be redeemed ; to sell her unto a strange people he shall 
 have no power." If a girl were espoused to his son she should 
 be dealt with " after the manner of daughters," or if married 
 to her master she was protected in case he took another wife. 
 " Her food, her raiment and her duty in marriage shall he not 
 diminish." In the humane code of Deuteronomy protection 
 is even extended to the captive bondwoman. She is to be 
 allowed a full month for mourning before being married, and 
 once married, " if thou have no delight in her then thou shalt 
 let her go whither she will, but thou shalt not sell her at all for 
 money, thou shalt not deal with her as a chattel because thou 
 hast humbled her." 
 
 While there is no prohibition of polygamy in the Law- 
 Deuteronomy merely states that the children of the better-loved 
 wife are not to be preferred to the first-born — in practice, as 
 among the Egyptians, the custom seems to have died out httle 
 by little,^ and in the Proverbs monogamy seems to be assumed 
 throughout. The right of divorce rested entirely with the 
 man, and the grounds of it in Deuteronomy are very vaguely 
 expressed. " If she find no favour in his eyes because he hath 
 found some unseemely thing in her, he shall write her a bill of 
 divorcement." But none of the codes are at pains to define the 
 grounds of divorce clearly. They assume it as a right of the 
 husband, and their careless expressions have given groimds for 
 
 ^ Gen. xxxi. 50. 
 
 ' Apparently it was not formally forbidden till the tenth century A.D. 
 (Bryce, Studies, ii. 384). 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 199 
 
 much difference of interpretation which has affected Christian 
 as well as Jewish Law.^ 
 
 There is no mention in the Law of divorce by the wife, but 
 imong the later Jews she could claim a divorce if her husband 
 were a leper, or afflicted by a polypus, or engaged in a repulsive 
 trade.'' 
 
 The position of the woman in the family gives her guardian 
 3ertain definite rights and duties as to the disposal of her person. 
 Thus Judah, as the head of the family, proposes to burn Tamar, 
 lis daughter-in-law, for unchastity, but acknowledges in time that 
 ie was bound to give her as a widow of his son Onan to his 
 jther son Shelah. The husband's brother, in fact, had the duty 
 )f marrying the widow, and, failing the brother, the obligation 
 "ell on the kindred. Boaz, as Ruth's kinsman, first offers her 
 }0 a nearer relative, and on his refusal weds her himself. The 
 laughter does not inherit landed property if there are sons, 
 but failing sons, she becomes the heir, and in that case she 
 nust marry within the tribe, a recognition of the eminent 
 )wnership of the tribe over the whole land. 
 
 Such beiag the position of women, it is not to be expected 
 )hat the attitude expressed to them in literature should be one 
 )f great respect or admiration: At best their virtues as house- 
 
 * Of the Jewish Legalists the school of Shammai (first century B.C.), 
 iressing the word " nakedness," which is the most literal rendering of the 
 erm translated " vinseemly," understood it of unchastity; the school of 
 lillel, pressing (in Rabbinical fashion) the word " thing," and the clause, 
 ' if she find no favour in his eyes " (though this, as a matter of fact, is 
 (ualified by the following words, " because he hath found some unseemly 
 hing in her "), supposed the most trivial causes to be included, declaring, 
 or instance, that a wife might be divorced, even if she burnt her husband's 
 ood, or if he saw a woman who pleased him better. It may be doubted, 
 loweyer, how far the latter opinion was literally acted upon. The grounds 
 tientioned in the Mishnah as justifying divorce are, violation of the law of 
 loses, or of the Jewish customs, the former being said to consist in a 
 ?oman|8 causing her husband to eat food on which tithe has not been paid ; 
 1 causing him to oSend against the law of Lev. xviii. 19; in not setting 
 part the first of the dough, Num. xv. 20 fi., and in failing to perform any 
 ow which she has made; and the latter in appearing in public with 
 isheveUed hair, spinning (and exposing her arms) in the streets, and 
 onversing indiscriminately with men, to which others added, speaking 
 isrespectfully of her husband's parents in his presence, or brawling in his 
 ouee. The Karaite Jews limited the grounds of divorce more exclusively 
 3 offences against modesty or good taste, a change of rehgion, serious 
 odily defects, and repulsive complaints. That the Hebrew word denotes 
 Jmething short of actual unchastity may be inferred from the fact that 
 )r this a different penalty is enacted, viz. death, also the same expres- 
 lon is used, not of what is immoral, but only of what is unbecoming. 
 t is most natural to understand it of immodest or indecent behaviour 
 lummarized from Driver, Deuteronomy, p. 270 note). 
 ' Driver, p. 271. 
 
200 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 wives were admitted, but in the famous description of the 
 virtuous housewife in the Proverbs there is not a word of a 
 union of mind or soul, and there is little indeed to differentiate 
 the wife from the cheerful, active, intelligent and, let us add, 
 charitable housekeeper. We read that " she spreadeth out her 
 hands to the poor," and again, " she openeth her mouth with 
 wisdom and the law of kindness is on her tongue," but there 
 is no word of the romance of love or of the higher side of the 
 conjugal relation.'- 
 
 On the other side of the account woman is regarded as the 
 source of evU. " Give me any wickedness save the wickedness of 
 a woman " is the burden of Ecclesiasticus. A bad woman is the 
 temptress and the destroyer throughout the Wisdom hterature, 
 and it was through woman that sin came into the world, and for 
 this reason, that she was to be subject to her husband.* 
 
 6. We have seen that among the primitive Arabs mother-right 
 and polyandrous unions prevailed, but in Mohammed's time the 
 women were mere chattels, forming a part of the estate of their 
 husband or father and descending to the son. They were held 
 in low account, and female infants were frequently put to death. 
 " Women are the whips of Satan " is an amiable saying of the 
 masculine Arab of this period, having said which it is not sur- 
 prising that he should add : "A man can bear anything but 
 the mention of his wives." Mohammed set himself to amehorate 
 the position of women. " Ye men," he said, " ye have rights 
 over your wives, and your wives have rights over you." But he 
 was not able to carry his reforms very far according to our ideas. 
 He, limited the number of legitimate wives to four, but allowed 
 an unlimited number of slave concubines ; he insisted that the 
 woman's consent to her marriage should be obtained, but the 
 consent of her guardian also remained essential. Whether 
 the temporary marriage in practice in Mohammed's time is still 
 allowed is debated between the sects.* 
 
 But free divorce Mohammed was compelled to tolerate : " The 
 thing which is lawful but is dishked by God is divorce." There 
 are, indeed, certain cases in which divorce is compulsory,* but 
 even apart from them the husband m.ay divorce his wife without 
 
 1 It is probably another writer in the Book of Proverbs who says that 
 " a virtuous woman is a crown to her husband " (Prov. xii. 4). 
 
 ' Mr. Montefiore points out that the appreciation of a good woman is 
 higher in the " Wisdom of the Son of Sirach " than in the Proverbs, in 
 correspondence with the general advance in her position {Hibbert Lectures, 
 1892, p. 491). 
 
 Hughes, Dictionary of Islam,, p. 314. * Hughes, pp. 87, 88. 
 
l^OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 201 
 
 3signmg any cause. The wife, however, is protected by the 
 ower, or more strictly, the bride price, of whicL a portion is 
 eferred, and which may be claimed by the wife if she is divorced 
 ithout canse.^ Her position is therefore somewhat similar 
 ) that which the provident Babylonian or Egjrptian woman 
 icured for herself by the marriage contract. On her side, the 
 ife is bound to live with her husband, but if she can prove 
 l-treatment, can obtain a separation from the Kadi. Bad con- 
 uct or gross neglect is a good defence to a suit brought by the 
 usband for the restitution of conjugal rights.* The husband 
 as, however, the right of chastisement, and the admonition of 
 16 prophet, " Not one of you must whip his wife like whipping 
 
 slave," does not, to Eu.ropean ears, appear to err on the side 
 E chivalry.* 
 
 Yet Mohammed made the kind and equitable treatment of 
 ives a moral if not a legal duty : " The best of you is he who 
 ehaves best to his wives." The lord of many women must be 
 npartial. " When a man has two wives and does not treat 
 lem equally he wiU come on the day of resurrection with half 
 E his body fallen o£E." But if there is to be kindness, it is to 
 e such as is due to the weaker vessel : " Admonish your wives 
 ith kindness, because women were created from the crooked 
 one of the side." * 
 
 The position of the wife under the Sunni law is thus summed 
 p by Mr. Hughes — 
 
 " Her consent to marriage is necessary. She cannot legally 
 bject to be one of four wives. Nor can she object to an unlimited 
 umber of handmaids. She is entitled to a marriage settlement or 
 ower, which must be paid to her in case of divorce or separation, 
 lie may, however, remit either whole or part of the dower. She 
 lay refuse to join her husband until the dower is paid. She 
 lay be at any time, with or without cause, divorced by her 
 
 ' ib., 91. » ib., 673. 
 
 'The traditions record that the prophet forbade the Moslems to beat 
 leir wives. Brute force being thus ruled out, natural superiority asserts 
 ielf, and the faithful come to complain that the women have got the 
 'per hand. The prophet consequently revokes the order, and then the 
 omen complain in their turn. Mohammed is then reduced to moral 
 asion : " Those men who beat their wives do not behave well. He is not 
 my way, who teaches a woman to go astray and entices a slave from his 
 aster " (Hughes, 671). 
 
 ' A wife taken in adultery might be stoned, but four witnesses with a 
 refold repetition of the oath were required to prove the offence (Koran, 
 irt I. chap. iv. 15). Nor is the death-penalty recommended, but rather 
 olusion in the house {loc. cit., and Hughes, p. 11). Fornication is 
 riotly forbidden to men. 
 
202 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 husband. She may seek or claim divorce (khul') from her 
 husband with her husband's consent. She may be chastised 
 by her husband. She cannot give evidence in a court of law 
 against her husband. According to the Sunnis, her evidence in 
 favour of her husband is not admissible, but the Shi'ahs maintain 
 the opposite view. Her husband can demand her seclusion 
 from public. If she becomes a widow she must observe hidad 
 or mourning for the space of four months and ten days. In the 
 event of her husband's death she is entitled to a portion of her 
 husband's estate in addition to her claim of dower, the claim of 
 dower taking precedence of all other claims on the estate." ^ 
 
 Nor has a woman fuU legal privileges outside marriage. Her 
 evidence is not accepted in cases involving retaliation. Her 
 fine is one-half that of a man, and the value of her testimony 
 one-half that of a male witness. Yet she may hold public 
 positions, she may act as a judge except where retaliation is 
 involved, and in some Mohammedan states princesses have ruled. 
 She can hold property, retains the usufruct of her property 
 during marriage, and takes the property with her in case of 
 divorce. She has also a claim to inherit along with her male 
 relations, confirmed by the express words of the prophet.* She 
 is not to be slain in war, and for apostasy she is not put to death, 
 but imprisoned until she recants. The general attitude of 
 the Mohammedan world towards her is too well known to need 
 illustration, but two traditional sayings of Mohammed may 
 be quoted as illuminating the intellectual chaos to which a 
 well-meaning man is reduced when he contemplates that help- 
 mate over whom he so complacently assumes superiority and 
 dominion. The first is this, " I have not left any calamity more 
 detrimental to mankind than women," and the second is the 
 complementary expression of the master in his other mood, 
 " The world and all things in it are valuable, but more valuable 
 than all is a virtuous woman." 
 
 With this final contradiction mirrored in the double motive 
 for secluding women, (a) as a compliment, implying that they 
 are elevated above the ordinary affairs of life; (b) as a pre- 
 caution, implying that they are not to be trusted with liberty— 
 with this contradiction in theory and in practice, rooted as it is 
 in a radically false view of womanhood, we may leave the Oriental 
 world and its efforts to deal with the relations of the sexes. 
 
 7. But the first nation of the West to which we turn was in 
 this respect largely orientalized. The Greeks founded Western 
 
 » Hughes, p. 671. » Koran, i. 72; cf. Dareste, pp. 61-63. 
 
A^OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 203 
 
 livilization, but their rapid advance in general culture was by 
 10 means accompanied by a corresponding imprc(,vement in the 
 )osition of women. On the contrary, it is in the earliest period 
 tnd among some of the most backward states that the woman 
 las most freedom. 
 
 The Homeric woman moves freely among men. Nausicaa 
 welcomes Odysseus and brings him to her father's house. She 
 )ids him kneel to her mother if he would gain a welcome and 
 lUccour from her father.'^ The relation of husband and wife is 
 Jose and tender; Andromache relates how her father's house 
 las been destroyed with all that were in it, " but now, Hector, 
 hou art my father and gracious mother, thou art my brother — 
 lay, thou art my valiant husband." ^ 
 
 We never hear of more than one legitimate wife. On the 
 )ther hand, the carrying off of women as bond-slaves was habi- 
 ual. Briseis was a recognized portion of the spoil, and such 
 lapture imphes concubinage along with legitimate marriage.* 
 i the bridegroom could not take the bride in a raid, he bought 
 ler for a goodly number of cattle, and over his concubines, at 
 my rate, he exercised powers of life and death. Odysseus 
 lompels the faithless handmaidens to carry forth the bodies of 
 he suitors and bids Telemachus put them to the sword; but 
 Telemachus thinks this too good a death, and strings them up 
 .0 a ship's cable in the hall, where they hang struggling like 
 ihrushes in a net.* 
 
 The patria potestas persisted in a mild form in the historical 
 jeriod.^ The father was the religious and legal head of the 
 amily; he performed the family sacra, and represented wife, 
 
 * At the same time Arete's position seems to have been somewhat 
 ixeeptional, for Aloinous honoured her as no other woman in the world 
 3 honoured of all that nowadays keep house under the hand of their 
 ords {Odyssey, VII, Butcher and Lang Tr., p. 105). Was this an explana- 
 ion needed by the audience of a later age ? 
 
 ' lUad, VI. 429, 430. 
 
 ' Yet the wife might resent this. Laertes bought Eurycleia in her 
 'outh for twenty oxen and honoured her equally with his wife, " but he 
 lever lay with her, for he shunned the wrath of his lady " (Odyssey, I. 
 Pr. Butcher and Lang, p. 15). Deianeira lets Herakles have as many 
 oncubines as he chooses, but cannot tolerate lole as a wife in her house 
 Wilamowitz-Mallendorf, Staat und Gesellschaft, p. 34). 
 
 ♦ Odyssey, XXH. 468. 
 
 ' The right of exposing a child was limited in Sparta by the meeting of 
 he tribesmen (Plutarch, Lycurgus, 16, cited by Iieist). Leist (p. 59) 
 hinks the iyxi<rre7s must be meant. Exposure was forbidden by law only 
 a isolated instances and those of the archaic period. Thebes is the naost 
 loteworthy case. In general it remained a serious factor in Greek life 
 Wilamowitz, p. 35). The legitimacy of the child had to be acknowledged 
 ly the kindred in order to secure its right of inheritance. The adult son 
 vas emancipated. 
 
204 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 children and slaves in the courts.^ Nor were limitations on 
 personal liberty and responsibility peculiar to the wife, for here 
 again woman was subject to the three obediences to father, 
 husband or son, and failing them, to her nearest blood relation. 
 The sons in most cases divided the inheritance, the daughters 
 having only a right to maintenance and dowry. But what 
 property women had remained theirs during marriage, and in 
 some states they even had the right of management.* In early 
 times the father might sell his daughters, or brothers their 
 sisters, when under their guardianship. This right was abolished 
 by Solon except in the case of unchastity,* but a father retained 
 the right of controlling his daughter and even of disposing of 
 her by will,* or of giving his son, while a minor, in adoption to 
 another family.* There could be no legitimate marriage without 
 an assignment of the bride by her guardian.* The wife passed 
 into the husband's family, and was separated from her own kin 
 and their sacra. At Athens she might be divorced on payment 
 of the bride price, while on her side she could only obtain a 
 divorce by the sanction of the archon.' At Sparta, where, in 
 some respects, e.g. in regard to property, she had a higher 
 position,^ it seems that looser relations prevailed. Brothers 
 
 ^ The Athenian woman could follow no suit of a value exceeding a 
 medimnos, except through a guardian. The wife had very limited powers 
 of alienation without the husband's consent. 
 
 " Busolt, Handbuch der Klassischen Altertumewissenschaft, 19, 20. 
 
 Here Dorian and Ionian custom stand in contrast. From the preoccupa- 
 tion of the Spartiate with military exercises it followed that his wife was 
 left in charge of the land, and she might inherit and hold estates as her own. 
 The Athenian woman seems only to have received " movables " as her 
 dowry (Wilamowitz, pp. 34, 94). The land ia Attica belonged to the 
 family. Hence if the daughter inherited she must marry her nearest kin — 
 sons of the same father not excluded (Wilamowitz, 33, 34). 
 
 ' Iti S' oSSe Bvyarepas iraXsiv oSt' aSe\(pa.i SlSaxri irX^v &y fiii \<!i$-y irapBevov ayS/il 
 trvYy^'y^vw^''''iv (Plut., Solon, 13, 23, cited by Busolt, loc. cit.). 
 
 * Letourneau, La Femme, 416. 
 
 ^ Busolt, p. 19. According to Leist (p. 62) he had practical, but not 
 legal control over the son's marriage. 
 
 " At any rate at Athens (Busolt, 210). The ayxi(rTc'is (relations to the 
 fovurtih degree on both sides) had to see that the orphan heiress was married, 
 and her nearest male relation (after her brothers) had the right of marrying 
 her, and correspondingly the duty of so doing or of fining a husband 
 for her (Busolt, 20 ; Leist, 40, 47). 
 
 ' Letourneau, La Femme, 423. At" Sparta divorce for sterility seems to 
 have been expected at any rate of a king (Herodt., v. 40). 
 
 ' According to Aristotle two-fifths of the land of Sparta had come 
 into the hands of women by inheritance and bequest in his time, and the 
 Spartiate women, having successfully resisted the attempt of Lycurgus to 
 impose on them the same discipline as the men accepted, enjoyed a state of 
 liberty which in Aristotle's view amounted to licence, and was disastrous 
 to Sparta (Politics, ii. 1269 B, 1270 A). 
 
rOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 205 
 
 light share a wife in common, and wife-lending was recognized, 
 hereas at Athens the punishment of adultery was enforced.^ 
 [onogamy prevailed,^ but concubinage was legaU^ recognized, 
 rovided that the handmaiden did not reside in the same house 
 ith the legal wife. The concubine's children might be legiti- 
 lated by adoption, and might then enter the phratry, whereby 
 ley acquired all the privileges of citizenship.^ 
 But the woman, though imder ward, was certainly not regarded 
 s a chattel. Probably Aristotle expressed the ordinary Greek 
 iew accurately enough when he said that a man should rule his 
 [aves as a despot, his children as a king, and his wife as a magis- 
 rate in a free state. Yet it was a Greek poet who first let women 
 peak for themselves and not in terms of male sentiment, and 
 , Greek thinker ~ who first frankly argued the case for the free 
 idmission of women to aU the duties and rights of man. Plato's 
 wsition differs from that of his modem successors in that he 
 iisists rather on women's duties than on their rights, more on 
 chat the state loses by their restriction to the family circle than 
 in the loss to their own personality. Further, though he had 
 he experience of Sparta to go upon, his own teaching was too 
 riuch associated with polemics against the family and with a 
 anciful ideal of communism to be taken quite seriously. On the 
 )ther hand, Aristotle summed up the whole philosophy of the 
 mcient world, of the East, and perhaps the prevailing sentiment 
 n modern Europe, when, discussing those who are fit to bear rule 
 md order the affairs of men, he says that a slave does not possess 
 ihat power of deliberation (t6 PovXcvtikov) which is the basis alike 
 )f self-government and of the government of others. A child 
 Dossesses it but imperfectly. A woman possesses it, but in her 
 t is without authority {aKvpov). After all, the Greeks did little 
 io develop it. There appear to have been no regular schools 
 
 ' By the Solonian legislation the husband who concealed his wife's 
 idultery was punished with aniiia. Yet the punishment of the adulterer 
 vas left in the husband's hands. If caught flagrante delicto he was abso- 
 utely at the husband's mercy. In any case he could be imprisoned at the 
 luaband's pleasure, and was released on payment of a fine (Letourneau, p. 
 t22). The wife was not killed, but divorced (Leist, p. 300). For an 
 nstanoe of wife-lending at Athens, Letourneau cites the case of Kimon 
 ILetoumeau, p. 415). 
 
 ' Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, declined to divorce his barren wife, 
 iut consented to take a second. This was regarded as quite un-Spartan 
 [Herodt., V. 40). Bigamy was not a punishable offence, but might be a 
 ground of divorce. It was actually legalized at Athens after the losses of 
 ihe Sicilian expedition (Zimmern, Greek Commonwealth, p. 334). Super- 
 lumerary wives in foreign parts are an occasional theme of the New Comedy 
 ^Wilamowitz, p. 34). 
 
 ^ Busolt, op. cU., p. 201. 
 
206 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 for girls at Athens.^^ and it was only the courtesan of the higher 
 class who was a fit helpmeet mentally for Pericles or capable of 
 sustaining a conversation with Socrates.^ Xenophon's ideal wife 
 is a good housekeeper, like her of the Proverbs. 
 
 8. The modern European marriage law has three roots — Roman 
 Law, Primitive Teutonic custom, and the Christian doctrine of 
 marriage; but it has been largely remodelled in the modern 
 period under rationalizing influences. It cannot be studied 
 statically, but has a long, varied and interesting history, of 
 which an attempt will be made here to give the briefest possible 
 outline. This history starts with the early Roman family, 
 organized as it was under the highly-developed potestas of the 
 father. All the children are the father's, and in law he can 
 dispose of them at pleasure.* He can chastise them, sell them 
 into slavery, and even put them to death (jus vitce necisque).* 
 Before exercising this supreme power he has, it is true, to con- 
 sult the council of relations, but he is not bound by their judg- 
 ment. In short, the paternal power is nowhere more strongly 
 developed, nor does the position of wife and children anywhere 
 approach in law more nearly to that of slaves, owned by the 
 paterfamilias, and except as a matter of grace, incapable of 
 owning anything themselves. 
 
 Into the family thus constituted a wife passed on her marriage. 
 The marriage might be accomplished by either of two forms, and 
 it might also be made valid apparently without any form at all. 
 The first form was confarreatio, in which the essential feature 
 was the eating by both bride and bridegroom of a cake — an act 
 of the kind which we call symbolic, but which to primitive man 
 is rather magical, actually efficacious in establishing a unity of 
 
 * Here the Spartans were more liberal, as they admitted women to the 
 gymnasia (Busolt, ii. 158). 
 
 ' Mr. Zimmern, after weighing the arguments of Wilamowitz {Arist. und 
 Athens, ii. 100), adheres to the traditional view of the high qualities and 
 position of women like Aspasia (op. cit., p. 332). 
 
 ' Exposure, however, if the law attributed by Dionysius (ii. 15, Bruns, 
 p. 7) to Romulus is correct, was limited to female infants and required the 
 consent of the neighbours — airatrav Si^fieva 7ei'6av 4KTp€<t>eiv, Kat BvyaTepwi' riij 
 Trpii>Toy6vous. No child was to be killed under three years — ttK^v et ti y^voito 
 iraiSiov civdirTipoy if repas eitdbs &?ri yoyijs. ravra 5' ovk eKdiXvffev ('O 'VwfiiiKos 
 fKTiQivai Tovs yeiva/xevovSi ^-KiSei^avras irpiTepov irevTe aydpdfft rois fyytfrra oiKovffty, 
 etc. 
 
 * Bruns (p. 7), quoting Dion. ii. 26. ('O "Poi/^uAoj) Uttairav ISaKev ^Joufflav 
 irarpl KaQ* viov, Kol irapk iravra rhv tou ^lov xp^^ov idv re etpyeiv idv re fuitm- 
 yovVf 4dv T6 Sefffj.iov iiri rwv Kar ayphv epyuv Kartx^^^j ^^^ 1"^ hiroKTivvvvai 
 irpoaiprJTai, — iWci. Kol ituiXelv 4<priKe rhv vihv rip irarpi,— Kol toEto (TvvfX^f^"^ ""f 
 irarpl, yiiexP' TpifTTjs trpdatms lup' viou ^PW^^coo'S'"- — lifrb, Se tV rplrni' irpaaiy 
 itir-fiWaKTO rav irarpds. 
 
fOMAN AND MARRIAGE 'UNDER CIVILIZATION 207 
 
 le man and woman. The second form was called coempiio, 
 id was of the nature of a formal sale, almost certainly, in the 
 rht of what we know of other peoples, preserving <fche memory 
 ' a real purchase of the wife by the husband, which as anything 
 it a form had already fallen into disuse when history begins, 
 oth these forms transferred the wife from the power (potesias) 
 ■ hand {mamts) of her father into that of her husband, to whom 
 te became as a daughter. For all purposes, sacred and profane, 
 le passed from the one family to the other.'- But just as 
 animate property, which normally passed from hand to hand 
 i a special ceremony of transfer, might acquire a new owner 
 f long unchallenged possession and use, so was it also with 
 iman property. The woman who without either of the two 
 remonies mentioned was given by her father to a man and 
 red with him as his wife for a whole year without interruption 
 scame in law his wife by use (itsits) and passed as completely 
 . manum mariti as if she had eaten with him the sacred cake. 
 AU these three modes of marriage were in existence at the 
 me of the drawing up of the XII Tables, and whichever of 
 lem she chose, the woman passed into the family and into the 
 )wer of her husband. Yet her position differed in two essential 
 spects from that of the Oriental wife. She was her husband's 
 Jy wife. At_no period of^oman.history are there any traces 
 
 polygamy s)r concubinage. ^ Andnot only was she the sole 
 ireTbut the tie which bound her to her husband was difficult 
 
 break and rarely broken. It is true that each form of union 
 luld be undone by a certain prescribed ceremony — confarreatio 
 r diffarreatio, coemptio by remancipatio. But these were 
 sorted to rarely, and it would appear only for grave offences, 
 .e council of relations being first called in to give judgment.* 
 
 ' Cf. on the religious marriage Dion., yvvaiKa yafufTiiv riiv /caTcL ydfiovs 
 oils aui/(\eov(rav avSpl Koiyavhv tmavTuv clvai xpiM'^Toji' re Ka\ Upuv (Bruns, p. 
 
 ' The concubinate of which we hear in Roman law is a form of union, 
 reft of some of the civil rights of marriage, not the relation of a married 
 m to a secondary wife. 
 
 ' Bryce, Studies in Jurisprudence, vol. ii. p. 403. The offences for 
 lioh, according to Dionysius, ii. 25 (Bruns, p. 7), she was brought to 
 al before a council of relatives were, however, punishable with death. 
 ley were adultery and wine-drinking (raCTO — oi avyyivils fierci rov avSpbs 
 iea(ov). The grounds for divorce stated by Plutarch are poisoning the 
 ildreu, the use of false keys, and adultery. Divorce for any other reason 
 fi punished by confiscation of property. The wife could not leave her 
 sband in any case. {yvvaiKl /*^ Sidols iiroJ^elireiv £v5pa, yvvaiKa 8e StSovs 
 ia\\€ij/ int (pap^aKfitf t4kvojv J) KKetSwv viro^o\fi Koi fiotxevBeTffav' el S* &\\as 
 4iro7re/tiJ(oiTO, ttjs ovtrias avTov rb /liv ttjs yvvaixhs elcoi, tIi 8e rrjs ATj/i^rpoj 
 iv KcKeiuv. Bruns, p. 6; cf. Girard, p. 154.) Divorce by the husband 
 s recognized in the XII Tables. The husband takes the wife's keys 
 
208 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 It does not appear that the wife had any means of repudiating 
 the husband, or of emancipating herself from his manus. In 
 practice marriage was so nearly indissoluble that the divorce of 
 his wife by Spurius CarvUius Ruga in 231 B.C. was declared to 
 be the first instance ^ known since the foundation of the city. 
 On the other hand, it must be remembered that the unfaithful 
 wife might be put to death without trial, and that the husband 
 who had other good causes of complaint would be supported by 
 the family council in executing or in repudiating her.^ 
 
 9. Such was the primitive Roman marriage with the manus. 
 But even in the days of the XII Tables a whoUy different union 
 had made its appearance. If the enjoyment of property was 
 broken for awhile before the year was out, no title to it arose 
 out of the usufruct. This idea was applied to marriage by 
 usus, and already in the time of the XII Tables we find that 
 if the cohabitation was broken for three nights in every year, 
 the wife did not become the property of the husband. When 
 or how it became a custom to convert this breach of cohabita- 
 tion into a system, and so establish a form of marriage in which 
 the wife did not pass into the manus of the husband, we do 
 not know. What is certain is that this new form of free mar- 
 riage rapidly ousted its older rivals. The bride now remained 
 in her father's power, she was stUl a member of her own family, 
 and by consequence had no position in that of her husband. 
 Subject to the nominal control of her father or her guardian, 
 she thus acquired complete control of her own property, and 
 became, in fact, her own mistress. She was not in theory a 
 free woman unless emancipated. She was only free from her 
 husband. But it need hardly be pointed out that the practical 
 control of relations with whom as a married woman she no longer 
 lived was not likely to be a very serious matter, and in point 
 of fact, where it was felt to be irksome, it was from time to 
 time limited by law. Thus the father had naturally, as a part 
 of his fotestas, the right to break the marriage at will. But 
 this logical appHcation of the paternal power was abolished 
 
 away and turns her out of the house. " Illam suam suas res sibi habere 
 jussit, ex XII tabulis, claves ademit, exegit " (Cic. Phil. ii. 28. Bnms, 
 p. 22). 
 
 '^ Ruga's wife was divorced for sterility, and Lord Bryoe takes the sweep- 
 ing statement of the authorities to mean that it was the first instance of 
 a divorce in which no crime was alleged (ii. 403). 
 
 ^ At the same time, if Plutarch (Rom. 22) is to be trusted, it was a 
 religious offence to sell her as a slave {riv 5' hiroi6iiivov ■yvvaiKa Siwia' 
 xSoyiois BeoTs (Bruns, 7). In this point she enjoyed a material advantage 
 over the children. 
 
DMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 209 
 
 ier the Antonines, or restricted to cases where there was 
 ive cause for its exercise.^ ^ 
 
 Dn the other hand, the tutela was a reality for unmarried 
 men, and the Roman law never seems to have fully acknow- 
 ged that the consent of the adult woman, and her consent 
 ne, was the one necessary condition to her marriage. Origin- 
 Y, indeed, the consent of the parties does not seem to have 
 )n required at all. This would be all in accordance with 
 mitive ideas. But here again the law was modified as time 
 nt on, and the consent of the woman, as well as the man, 
 ;ame a normal and, in some cases, a legally necessary con- 
 ion.^ Further, with the general emancipation of women 
 ) necessity for a guardian appears to have gradually died 
 ay.^ Hence the Roman matron of the Empire was more 
 ly her own mistress than the married woman of any earlier 
 ilization, with the possible exception of a certain period of 
 yptian history, and it must be added, than the wife of any later 
 ilization down to our own generation . Practically independent 
 her father, she was legally independent of her husband. She 
 lid bring an action against others and, with some limitations, 
 linst him.* She could hold property and dispose of it 
 
 The separation of a wife from her husband by her father was forbidden 
 Antoninus Pius, but was permitted " magna et justa causa interveni- 
 e " by his successor (Sir F. Jeune, Ency. Brit., art. " Divorce," p. 471 ; 
 aid, p. 165). The son also acquired the right to emancipation in case 
 U-treatment (Girard, 183). 
 
 The consent of the parties was, of course, required if they were sui 
 is. On the other hand, by the strict logic of the law, if either was in 
 'la, and this would be the normal case with a girl (and even with a 
 wn-up woman), the aSair would have been one for the guardians alone, 
 as XJlpian (v. 2) says, " Consentiant si sui juris sunt, aut etiam parentes 
 am si in potestate sunt " (cited by Girard, p. 147 note). The Lex Julia 
 U.C. 736) gave an appeal from the guardians, if they refused consent, 
 a court. Further, the best jurists, including Ulpian himself, held the 
 sent of the parties to be necessary as well as that of their guardians, 
 fuptise consistere non possunt nisi consentiant omnes ; id est qui 
 unt, quorumque in potestate sunt " (Digest, XXIII. ii. 2). With this, 
 vever, we must read : " Sed quae patris voluntati non repugnat con- 
 tire inteUigitur. Tunc autem solum dissentiendi a patre licentia filiae 
 iceditur si indignum moribus vel turpem sponsum ei pater eligat " 
 St Digest, XXIII. i. 12. CSted in VioUet, Droit Civil Frangais, p. 404). 
 
 Originally all women were in tutelage. " Veteres voluerunt feminas, 
 imsi perfectae setatis sint — in tutela esse — exceptis virginibus vestalibus, 
 «... liberas esse voluerunt; itaque etiam lege XII Tabulanma 
 itumest" (Gaius, i. 144, 145, in Bruns, 21). On the extinction of the 
 •la, see Girard, pp. 196 and 213. 
 
 In case of adultery the husband could originally kill the wife. The 
 : JtiUa compelled him to prosecute, the punishment being relegatio. The 
 M law punished fornication with women of rank (Girard, Manud, 
 nentaire du Droit Romain, 160, 176). 
 
 P 
 
210 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 freely.^ On the other hand, being separated from his family, 
 she does not succeed to his property if he dies intestate, nor do 
 her children succeed to her, nor she to them. So much followed 
 from the strict theory of marriage without the manus, though 
 here, as elsewhere, natural feeling had its way, and practical 
 rules were introduced by the Praetorian legislation to prevent 
 consequences which would seem harsh to the temper of the time. 
 
 These changes naturally afiected the stability of marriage. 
 We have seen that under the old law divorce was rare and 
 difficult, but the revolution efEected in marriage by the dis- 
 appearance of the manus was nowhere more conspicuous than 
 in its effect upon the permanence of the marriage tie. By the 
 newer form of marriage neither did the wife pass into the hus- 
 band's family nor the husband into the wife's family. They 
 remained distinct persons, distinct individualities, and as they 
 freely entered into the marriage relation, so could they freely 
 leave it. Divorce, in short, as in so many primitive tribes, 
 stood freely at the choice of either party. In the best time of 
 the Republic divorce without adequate cause incurred penalties, 
 a pecuniary fine, or, stiU more serious, the nota censoria. But 
 with the growth of the new form of marriage opinion rapidly 
 changed, and, as Lord Bryce points out, we find at the close of 
 the Republic not only Pompey, but " such austere moraUsts as 
 Cato the Younger and the philosophic Cicero " putting away 
 their wives. The reader of Cicero's letters who is unacquainted 
 with the Roman law of divorce wiU perhaps remember the 
 shock of surprise with which, after becoming well acquainted 
 with Terentia from many allusions he suddenly finds Cicero 
 calmly referring to his divorce and re-marriage. At this period 
 divorce had, in fact, become as commonplace an incident of life 
 as marriage itself. 
 
 How far the freedom of women had the demoralizing results 
 which have been generally attributed to it by those whose 
 business it has been to paint the Roman Empire in the darkest 
 colours, is a matter on which the best authorities do not speak 
 with confidence. It must be remembered that our accounts of 
 Roman social life are drawn in part from satirists like Juvenal, 
 or satirical historians like Tacitus, and that we should be as far 
 
 1 Girard, p. 159. The dos or dowry brought by the wife from her own 
 family's resources to the maintenance of the joint life passed originally to 
 the husband ; but while he continued to administer it, his right over it 
 became more and more restricted in favour of the wife, so that the jurists 
 (c. g. Ulpian) speak of it as being her property, and this is recognized by 
 Justinian, who gives her a right to reclami it on the dissolution of the 
 marriage from whatever cause (Girard, pp. 922-926). 
 
^OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 211 
 
 itray in taking their description as an impartial account of the 
 )ciety in which they lived as we should be if we^accepted the 
 icture of our own social life as it could be painted for us by 
 ime preacher of reform, or some contemporary censor of morals, 
 he satirist has a great function in the world, but it is not that 
 : supplying the historian of manners with material ready for use 
 ithout analysis. Other sources are the writings of Christian 
 thers, who from a different point of view were even more prone 
 I denounce the wickedness of the world as they found it. 
 The very fact that the Romans took so serious a I view of 
 minine profligacy militates against the belief that the corrup- 
 3n had gone quite so deep as is generally supposed. Lucius 
 iso declared that modesty had vanished since the censorship of 
 essaUa and Cassius in 154 B.c.^ Yet we have the testimony 
 
 VeUeius that in the proscription of the Second Triumvirate, 
 bile the sons were never faithful and freed-men only sometimes 
 ', the wives could be trusted always. The freedom of divorce 
 is abused, as it is in the present day in America. According 
 
 Seneca there were women who reckoned the years not by the 
 iusuls, but by their husbands, but this, again, is obviously 
 tire. On the other hand, there are instances of three, four, or 
 ^e wives, and, again, of three to five husbands. A marriage of 
 rty-one years is recorded as unusually long, and in this case 
 e wife had urged divorce and re-marriage upon her husband 
 ter the death of their daughter, for the sake of getting children, 
 lis, however, is remote in sentiment from anything like pro- 
 bacy, and connects itself rather with the primitive idea of the 
 cessity of children. The literature of the time has stories of 
 thful wives as well as of profligate women to record — stories of 
 ves accompanying their husbands in suicide, dying with them 
 proscriptions, or going with them into exile. Every one knows 
 Arria, who thrust the dagger first into her own bosom, and 
 m offered it to her husband, with the words, " Paete, non 
 let." But we do not aU know that she became a kind of 
 :oine of the time, and upon a gravestone in Anagnia is addressed 
 ng with Laodamia by a woman who asks her to receive her 
 il.V 
 
 Che evidence of the tombstones, which in aU ages bear a 
 gular family resemblance, shows that the domestic ideal held 
 
 Friedlander, Sittengeschichte Eoma., i. 475. Friedlander's whole dis- 
 lion (pp. 475-607) is instructive, if somewhat indecisive. The judgment 
 "rofessor Dill, whose work has appeared since the above was written, is 
 e clearly favourable {Roman Society, pp. 77, 79, 145, etc. ). 
 Friedlander, i. 514. 
 
12 ' MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 way under the free manners of imperial Rome, as under the 
 nasculine despotism of the East or the sentimentality of the 
 ^est. A panegyric on Murdia in the second half of the first cen- 
 lUry says all gravestones of women must be alike, " because their 
 virtues admit of no heterogeneity, and it is enough that all have 
 ihown themselves worthy of the same good report." " All the 
 greater renown has my dearest mother won, who has equalled 
 md in no way fallen behind other women in modesty, rectitude, 
 jhastity, obedience, household work, carefulness and loyalty." 
 (biother inscription says, " She was of pleasant address and noble 
 jait, took care of her house and span." In another, the husband 
 las sworn not to take another wife. Another, " I await my 
 lusband " ; another, " Never have I experienced a pain from 
 bhee, except through thy death." 
 
 Upon the whole, the Roman matron would seem to have 
 retained the position of her husband's companion, counsellor 
 md friend, which she had held in those more austere times 
 svhen marriage brought her legally under his dominion. 
 
 10. To understand how Roman marriage became modified in 
 the Middle Ages we must retrace our steps and hark back to the 
 two other influences mentioned at the outset. The first of these 
 need not detain us long, for the primitive law of the Germanic 
 tribes which overran the Roman Empire closely resembled 
 the early law of the Romans themselves. The power of the 
 husband was strongly developed; he might expose the infant 
 children, chastise his wife, dispose of her person. He could 
 not put her to death, but if she was unfaithful he was, with 
 the consent of the relations, judge and executioner.^ The 
 wife was acquired by purchase from her own relatives without 
 reference to her own desires,^ and by purchase passed out of 
 her family. She did not inherit in early times at all, though 
 at a later period she acquired that right in the absence of male 
 heirs. She was in perpetual ward, subject, in short, to the 
 Chinese rule of the three obediences, to which must be added, 
 
 ^ Conversely the adultery of a man is no offence against his own wife, but 
 only against another husband. The proprietary view appears strongly in 
 the old English law. " If a freeman lie with a freeman's wife let him pay 
 for it with his wergild, and provide another wife with his own money " — 
 i. e. to replace his mistress who has been slain by her husband (Howard, 
 Matrimoniai Institutions, ii. 35). 
 
 * Whether it was the woman or the guardianship over her which was 
 technically sold is a fine legal point, on which a host of authorities may be 
 seen arrayed on both sides in Howard, i. 260, 261. The only ethical points 
 in question are (1) whether her consent was necessary; (2) what rights she 
 enjoyed when sold. 
 
NOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 213 
 
 ,s feudal powers developed, the rule of the king or other feudal 
 uperior.^ And the guardianship or mundium ^waa frankly 
 egarded in early law rather as a source of profit to the guardian 
 han as a means of defence to the ward, and for this reason it 
 etched a price in the market, and was, in fact, saleable far down 
 a the Middle Ages. Lastly, the German wife, though respected, 
 lad not the certainty enjoyed by the early Roman matron of 
 eigning alone in the household. It is true that polygamy was 
 are in the early German tribes, but this, as we have seen, is 
 miversaUy the case where the numbers of the sexes are equal, 
 'olygamy was allowed, and was practised by the chiefs. 
 
 This primitive marriage system came into contact not only 
 nth the Roman Law, but with the stiU more powerful influence 
 if the Church. The Churchy regarded jnarriage. as a concession 
 the weakness ofthe flesh. It is not a sin, and those who 
 [enounce it as such are severely reprobated. Nevertheless it is 
 if the nature of a hindrance in spiritual duties. It is incom- 
 latible with the performance of the sacraments, and thus 
 ontinence is enjoined on priests. It was, indeed, only after a 
 jng struggle that the celibacy of the priesthood was established 
 8 a law of the Roman Church. Such a prohibition was mooted 
 t the Coimcil of Nice, but not carried, whQe by the rejection of 
 he proposal at the Sixth Council the Eastern Church escaped 
 rom this burden altogether. Nor was it tiU the time of HUde- 
 irand that it became the definitive rule in the West. With 
 egard to the laity, the chief concern of the Church was to 
 ave souls by preventing the deadly sin of fornication. Hence 
 ame several results; on the one hand, the form of marriage 
 ras reduced to its simplest possible terms. The mere statement 
 f each party that they took one another as spouses was deemed 
 ufficient, providing that the mutual pledge referred to the present 
 per verba de prmsenti)? Even witnesses were not necessary, 
 tough, of course, they were in practice required in order to 
 rove that the pledge had been made. It was the duty of 
 be parties to have a wedding ceremony in church — in fact, it 
 ecame a breach of law and morals to marry by any other form, 
 ut the omission of such a ceremony did not affect the validity 
 f the marriage.^ 
 
 * Waitz, Verfasaungsgeachichte, i. 57-60. 
 
 ' At least from the time of Alexander III. The controversies as to the 
 £act condition of a valid marriage (e. g. as to whether consummation was 
 iquired, as Gratian maintains, to complete the marriage) need not trouble 
 3 here (Howard, op. cit., i. 336, 337. Decret. Grat, 1062 seq.). 
 
 ' For the stages by which the ecclesiastical ceremony grew up, and 
 as made legally obligatory, see Howard, i. chap. vii. Lay marriage and 
 
14 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In close connection with this law as to the form of marriage 
 3 the position to which the Church was gradually led, and 
 ifhich it finally maintained with great firmness, that the con- 
 ent of the parties alone is the only thing necessary to constitute 
 , valid marriage. Here the Church had not only to combat 
 lid tradition and the authority of the parents, but also the 
 eignorial power of the feudal lord, and it must be accounted to 
 t for righteousness that it emancipated the woman of the servile 
 ^well as of the free classes in relation to the most important 
 I vent of her life.'- 
 
 A third consequence was that the marriage, once concluded, 
 vas indissoluble ; it was deadly sin for one man to have to do 
 vrith more than one woman, or for one woman with more than 
 ine man. That being so, divorce in the fuU sense became 
 ,t once an immorality; there might be separation for grave 
 ause, but even that is jealously restricted as giving occasion for 
 in. There might also be annulment of marriage, which is simply 
 
 landestine marriage, though illegal, remained valid down to the Council 
 f Trent in Catholic countries. In England, except for the period of the 
 Jommonwealth, they were valid down to the passing of Lord Hardwicke's 
 Lot in 1753 (Howard, i. 351 and 446, etc.). For the scandalous Fleet 
 aarriages which made the Act necessary, see ib., 437 seq. 
 
 ^ The early Fathers held by the consent of the parents, and Ambrose 
 pparently thinks that the whole matter should be left to them. He 
 [uotes with approval Euripides — 
 
 fiepifivav e|6i, k*ovk 4fihv Kpiveiy rdBe 
 
 nd says, " ergo quod et ipsi philosophi mirati sunt servate virgines " 
 Decretum Oratiani, Corpus Juris Ganonici, 1124). 
 
 In Gratian it is admitted that the " paternus consensus desideratur in 
 uptiis, neo sine eo legitimse nuptise habeantm-," and he quotes "illud 
 Ivaristi Papse : Alitor non fit legitimum conjugium, nisi a parentibus 
 paditur " (p. 1 123). But the consent of the parents was incompatible with 
 he self -marriage of the parties, which the Church held necessary for the 
 voidance of fornication. Accordingly Gratian's own view is that consent 
 lakes marriage (pp. 1062, etc.), though he has difficulty in reconciling 
 his with the further condition that consummation should have taken place. 
 Vith these difficulties we are not concerned here. The question of parental 
 ssent was decided by Innocent III., who declared it unnecessary (Viollet, 
 I. 406. See Howard, vol. i. p. 336, etc.). The Decretals of Gregory IX. 
 ,re perfectly clear, " Matrimonium solo consensu contrahitur " (Corpus 
 ^uris, p. 660). 
 
 The Coimeil of Trent, while compelled by the abuses of private marriages 
 o declare marriage void if not performed by a priest, anathematizes those 
 yho maintain that marriage without the consent of the parents is invalid 
 Acts of Council of Trent in Corpis Juris, p. 71). It is, of course, not 
 mplied that the father has no right of veto, but only that the marriage, 
 ince consummated, is indissoluble. But further, the daughter who dis- 
 )beyed her father's order to marry was protected by the Church. She 
 vas declared free of the sin of ingratitude, and is therefore not to be 
 lisinherited (Owen, Institutes of Canon Law, p. 133). 
 
/■OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 215 
 
 recognition that what purported and was supposed to be a 
 larriage, never was a lawful union at all, but there could be no 
 utting asunder of those whom God had once joined"together.^ 
 
 Lastly, the moral consequences of any violation of the marriage 
 iw were held by the Church to affect the man no less than the 
 Oman. And though the Church never succeeded in converting 
 16 world to this view, it must be noted here as a departure 
 ardly, if ever, paralleled in the history of ethical thought before 
 le rise of the spiritual religions.^ 
 
 The whole domain of marriage was in the end conquered 
 y the Church, but the victory was only gradual. Polygamy 
 imained among the Eranks in the days of Chilperic and Dago- 
 ert, the latter of whom had three queens, and in some districts 
 E France, such as Bigorre, concubinage lasted up to the fifteenth 
 3ntury. But monogamy speedily became the rule everywhere.* 
 1 the matter of the bride's freedom the struggle was more pro- 
 inged, and two voices were sometimes heard within the Church 
 self, but from the ninth century onwards the consent of both 
 irties was at least supposed, and by the decision of Innocent III. 
 le consent of the father ceased to be even a necessary condition, 
 he feudal power of disposing of widows and orphans was also 
 owly worn away. In 614 we find it repudiated by Clothaire II., 
 it it survived, and in 1232 we find the Emperor resigning his 
 ght in this direction at Frankfort.* Generally speaking, the 
 
 * This was the final view of the Church, reached by slow degrees. The 
 iliverances of the New Testament being uncertain, the views of the early 
 athers waver, but nearly all agree that divorce is forbidden except for 
 fornication." This term is, however, sometimes given a wider spiritual 
 nse so as to include idolatry and even covetousness. But Augustine 
 fho had at first admitted the wider view) came to regard adultery as the 
 ily cause of separation, refused to allow any difference between man and 
 aman, and allowed no dissolution of the nuptial bond even for adultery. 
 lis view was accepted by the Council of Carthage in 407. In its final 
 rm the Canon Law allowed separation for (1) adultery, the wife having 
 I equal right of action with the husband ; (2) " spiritual " adultery, which 
 me to mean apostasy, and perhaps compulsion of one party by the other 
 commit crime ; (3) cruelty (Howard, ii. S3). 
 
 ' Gratian quotes Ambrose, who is very precise : " Omne stuprum 
 lulterium est, neo viro licet quod mulieri non licet. Eadem a viro quae 
 I uxore debetur castimonia " (Corpus Juris, 1128). 
 " VioUet, p. 388. 
 
 * VioUet, p. 410. As to the authority of feudal superiors, the Council of 
 ent finds that in the sixteenth century it is still common for secular lords 
 compel men and women in their juriBdiotion to marry against their wiU, 
 d denounces the practice svb anathematis poena " quum maxime nefarimn 
 I matrimonii libertatena violaie " (Council of Trent, p. 74). From an 
 rly period the Church had given sacramental sanction to the conoubinate, 
 e. marriages of the unfree, or between unfree and free (Howard, i. 276). 
 1 the other hand, the sacramental view enables the Church to justify 
 
216 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 families of serfs required authorization to marry, and in England 
 no mark of servile tenure was more resented than the payment 
 of the merchet, or fine on marriage, which implied that the right 
 of marrying was at the lord's discretion.^ In 1408 we find 
 the Parlement of Paris contesting the right of the Due de Berry 
 to force a girl of eight into marriage. The king's right was 
 exercised frequently by Louis XL, and Louis XII. forced Alain 
 d'Albret to consent to the marriage of his daughter to Caesar 
 Borgia. The Council of Trent wholly forbade seignorial inter- 
 ference, yet complaints are heard of it as late as 1576 and 1614, 
 and in 1623 it was necessary for Philip IV. of Spain to forbid it 
 in Franche-Comte. The royal right was still exercised in Erance 
 in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth it died away, 
 save that the king's consent was still required in the case of 
 princes of the blood and grandees. Napoleon made a last effort 
 to revive it.^ 
 
 Nor did the Church get its own way with regard to divorce at 
 one blow. Constantine did not attempt to prohibit divorce, but 
 confined himself to the imposition of pecuniary penalties accord- 
 ing to the cause. . But Theodosius and Honorius in 421 carried 
 the matter a step further, prohibiting re-marriage in case either 
 husband or wife divorced the other party without sufficient 
 reason. The next step was the abolition of divorce by mutual 
 consent by Justinian; but this step proved unpopular, and 
 the law was repealed by Justin, who substantially re-enacted 
 the Theodosian code ; and the Church did not get its way in the 
 Byzantine Empire until the reign of the Emperor Leo.' 
 
 the dismissal of a mistress for a wife of free status, " Ancillam a toro 
 abjioere et uxorem oertse ingenuitatis aceipere non duplioatio oonjugii 
 3ed profeetus est honestatis " (Pope Leo, in Decret. Qrat., p. 1123). This 
 was to invest the most callous and heartless form of wickedness with an 
 air of piety. 
 
 ^ Connected with the merchet was the fine for incontinence payable to 
 the lord, since in the loss of virginity there was a risk that the chance of 
 marriage might be lost and therewith the lord's merchet might never 
 accrue. Yet the merchet appears to have been sometimes paid by free- 
 men, and not universally by serfs (Vinogradoff, Villeinage in England, 
 p. 153). For a striking picture of the arbitrary marriage of serfs by a 
 Russian proprietor in the modem period, see Kropotkin, Memoirs of a 
 Revolutionist, vol. i. p. 61. 
 
 2 VioUet, p. 410-414. 
 
 ' By the law of Constantine, the wife could divorce her husband for 
 murder, the preparation of poisons, or the violation of a tomb. If she 
 divorced him for any other cause, she forfeited her dowry and was liable to 
 deportation. The husband could divorce the wife for adultery, the pre- 
 paration of poisons, and for acting as a procuress. If he divorced her for 
 my other cause he forfeited the dowry, and if he married again, the first 
 wife could take the dowry of the second. The legislation of Theodosius 
 
OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 217 
 
 In Western Europe the conquest of the barbarians was gradual. 
 . the eighth and ninth centuries the capitularies absolutely 
 ohibited divorce, yet exceptions were admitted subsequently 
 re and there. In the Canon Law itself traces of a more lenient 
 Bw appear.^ Dissolution of marriage for impotence is not in 
 cordance with the Roman custom, but, says a rescript of 
 exander III., " if the custom of the Gallic Church so had it, 
 3 will patiently endure it." ^ Moreover, a case is recorded in 
 lioh a husband, having been absent for more than ten years 
 id refusing to return, a bishop had pronounced him divorced, 
 id declared the wife free to marry. Though this decision is not 
 nfirmed, and nothing apparently came of it, yet it is held, 
 view of the bishop's sentence, that the children of the wife 
 this case are to be deemed legitimate.* All these doubts 
 id exceptions were swept away by the Council of Trent, and 
 the present day in countries dominated by the Canon Law 
 ere exists no divorce dissolving the vinculum matrimonii by 
 e ordinary law.* The Pope, of course, having the power of the 
 
 d Honorius in 421 allowed the wife to divorce for grave reasons, including 
 me, but if she divorced her husband for moderate faults, including 
 iriminal conduct," she forfeited her dowry, became incapable of re- 
 irriage and liable to deportation. The husband, if divorcing for serious 
 ine, retained the dowry ; if for " criminal conduct," he did not retain it 
 t could marry again ; if for mere dislike, he forfeited the common pro- 
 rty and could not marry again. In 449, after an experimental restoration 
 the law of the early empire, Theodosius specified twelve offences (includ- 
 » cruelty and adultery) for which a wife could divorce her husband. The 
 me mutatis mutandis applied to the husband, but he could further go upon 
 6 ground that his wife dined with men without his knowledge, left home 
 night without adequate cause, or frequented the circus, etc., after being 
 rbidden to do so. If he divorced her for any other reason, he forfeited 
 B dowry and property brought into the marriage. If she did so she 
 ffered the same penalty, and could not marry again for three years. 
 Justinian took the fiu-ther step of abolishing divorce by mutual consent 
 ider penalty of being immured in a monastery, and he re-enacted the 
 leodosian law of divorce by one party with some modifications of detail, 
 vorce by mutual consent was re-introduced by Justin and finally abolished 
 Leo (Bryce, ii. 408, and Howard, ii. 28-33). 
 
 ' Still more clearly do the Penitentials of this period show the com- 
 omise necessary to adjust the Canon Law to Germianio cvistom (Howard, 
 45). 
 
 ^ Decret. Greg., 705. In other chapters divorce for impotence is recog- 
 :ed under conditions. In Gratian's view it would prevent the com- 
 ition of marriage (for conjugium confirmatur officio), but if occurring after 
 iBummation, would not he a ground of dissolution (1149). 
 ' Decret. Greg. IX., Corptts Juris, p. 713. 
 
 ' On the other hand, down to the Council of Trent, the recognition of 
 ndestine marriages on the one hand, and the complicated system of 
 trictions on the other, made the annulment of marriage only too easy. 
 1 the whole, the marriage tie during the Middle Ages seems to have been 
 Qost aa loose in practice as it was rigid in theory. 
 
218 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Keys, can override all laws, but this does not affect the general 
 principle, nor does it bring relief to those who are without the 
 means of setting the spiritual machinery in motion. 
 
 11. Both as to the tutelage of women and as to the general 
 , power of the father the early Germanic law in large measure 
 reproduced the features of early Rome. Both were modified 
 by the impact of civilization, of the civil law and of Christian 
 influences. But they were modified in different ways. The 
 father's power decayed more rapidly and more completely than 
 the husband's, and while the unmarried woman became personally 
 free, the wife remained sub virga mariti. 
 
 The primitive German father had the power of life and death 
 over his children.'^ At any rate he could expose them befoiie 
 they had taken food,^ and he could sell his children certainly, 
 and in most tribes probably his wife also, into slavery. Even 
 in the seventh century the Church has to admit the right of a 
 father to seU a son under seven into slavery.* Down to the 
 ninth century the husband was possibly within his rights in 
 killing his wife f or a " good " reason.* The Lombard law ran, 
 " Non licet earn interficere ad suum libitum sed rationabiliter," 
 and at Worms, in the eleventh century, witnesses were asked, 
 " Est aUquis qui uxorem suam absque lege aut probatione 
 interfecerit ? "* The sale of children had been prohibited in 
 the Empire by Diocletian, but the law was found to lead to 
 infanticide, and it was again aUowed by Constantine, though 
 at birth only, and that with an option of redemption. It was 
 prohibited by the laws of the Visigoths and by the Carlovingians, 
 but instances in which it occurred are quoted from French law- 
 books as late as the fifteenth century. The sale of a wife appears 
 in the eleventh century at Cologne,* and in the same century 
 Cnut had to forbid the sale of a woman to a man whom she 
 disliked.'' 
 
 ^ Waitz, Verfassungsgeachichte, 49. 
 
 2 Viollet, 497, 499. 
 
 ^ Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, ii. 436. 
 
 * Viollet, p. 500. 
 
 ° Viollet, loc. cU. . Even in the Canon Law the murder of a faithless wife 
 is somewhat faintly deprecated. Gratian is at pains to show that the 
 apparent countenance given by Pope Nicholas refers to the practice of 
 civil law alone, but Pope Pius, whom he also quotes, merely says, " Qui- 
 cunque propriam uxorem absque lege vel sine causa et certa probatione 
 interfecerit aliamque duxerit uxorem, armis depositis publicam agat 
 poenitentiam " (1152). Gratian himself is clear that the murder of an 
 adulteress is unlawful (1154). 
 
 • Viollet, p. 502. ' PoUook and Maitland, ii. 364. 
 
)MAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 219 
 
 WbUe these grosser excesses of marital and paternal power 
 d away during the earlier Middle Ages, the subieotion of 
 ( wife remained. But of the wife only .J- From the Conquest 
 w&Tds the unmarried English woman on attaining her majority 
 same fully equipped ^ with aU legal and civil rights, as much 
 egal personahty as the Babylonian woman had been three 
 )usand years before. But the wife was stiU, if not the husband's 
 ve, at any rate his liege subject. Her personality is merged 
 his. The law does not hold her responsible even for crimes 
 nmitted in his presence, and therefore it is presumed under his 
 luenoe and authority. If she kills him it is petty treason — 
 ) revolt of a subject against a sovereign in a miniature 
 igdom. She could not bring an action against him nor he 
 linst her. But, of course, the theory could not be pushed to 
 fuU length. The wife was human, and so, after all, were 
 ) legists, and if ill-treated she could go to the ecclesiastical 
 irts for protection, and if the husband was obstinate they 
 lid call in the power of the secular arm.^ The King's Court 
 uld punish him for maltreating her,* but the right of chastise- 
 int remained, and the history thereof, together with the whole 
 sory of marriage thereunto appertaining, is explained with 
 ich unconscious humour by Blackstone. 
 
 ' The very being or legal existence of the woman is suspended 
 ring the marriage, or at least is incorporated and consolidated 
 10 that of the husband, under whose wing, protection and 
 rer, she performs everything." Hence a man cannot grant 
 ything directly to his wife, or contract with her, " for the 
 
 While vmmaTried women become emancipated, the wife remains sub- 
 t to her husband's oorrection. In Normandy, in the thirteenth century, 
 B held that a man could not be prosecuted for beating his wife, slave, 
 , or daughter, or any one " en aa mesgnie." And it is the same in 
 er parts of France, though in Flanders the magistrates condemned a 
 iband for beating his wife till the blood flowed. The subservience of 
 
 wife was expressed by her waiting at table, kissing the husband's knees 
 1 calling him her lord (VioUet, pp. 503-504). As to property, however, 
 France and some parts of Germany a doctrine of community of goods 
 w up in which the husband had the right of management, but the 
 its of the wife were considerable. And owing to the law of dower, 
 
 French wife in the thirteenth century could institute an action without 
 ' husband's consent, which at present she cannot do (VioUet, p. 293). 
 re, however, we touch on the indirect consequences of laws of property, 
 her than on customs flowing from the central conception of the position 
 women. 
 
 PoUock and Maitland, ii. 437. The writers do not consider it clearly 
 ibiished that a life-long tutela of women ever existed in Bngland, as 
 ong the other Germanic peoples. 
 
 In 1224 a wife obtained a writ directing a sheriff to provide her with 
 intenance out of the husband's lands (Pollock and Maitland, ii. 435). 
 
 Pollock and Maitland, ii. 436. 
 
220 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 grant would be to suppose her separate existence, and to cove- 
 nant with her would be only to covenant with himself." He is 
 bound to provide her with necessaries, but for anything besides 
 necessaries he is not chargeable. She can bring no action 
 without his concurrence, nor be sued without making him a 
 defendant. In criminal cases she may be convicted and punished 
 separately, but she is considered as acting under his orders, and 
 in some felonies (though not murder) she is excused, if acting 
 under his constraint. 
 
 " The husband also (by the old law) might give his wife 
 moderate correction. For, as he is to answer for her misbe- 
 haviour, the law thought it reasonable to entrust him with the 
 power of restraining her, by domestic chastisement, in the same 
 moderation that a man is allowed to correct his apprentices 
 or children." ..." But this power of correction was confined 
 within reasonable bounds, and the husband was prohibited from 
 using any violence to his wife, ' aliter quam ad virum, ex causa 
 regiminis et castigationis uxoris suae, licite et rationabiliter 
 pertinet.' The civil law gave the husband the same, or a larger 
 authority, over his wife, allowing him for some misdeamours, 
 ' flagellis et f ustibus acriter verberare uxorem ' ; for others, 
 only ' modicam castigationem adhibere ' (Nov. 117, c. 14). But, 
 with us, in the politer reign of Charles ll., this power of cor- 
 rection began to be doubted, and a wife may now have secvirity 
 of the peace against her husband; or, in return, a husband 
 against his wife. Yet the lower rank of people, who were 
 always fond of the old common law, still claim and exert their 
 antient privilege, and the courts of law will still permit a 
 husband to restrain a wife of her liberty in case of any gross 
 misbehaviour. These are the chief legal effects of marriage 
 during the coverture, upon which we may observe, that even 
 the disabilities which the wife lies under are for the most part 
 intended for her protection and benefit. So great a favourite 
 is the female sex of the laws of England." ^ 
 
 12. With Blackstone we arrive at the middle of the modern 
 period, and we find the position of woman somewhat anomalous. 
 In particular, the legal status of the married and unmarried 
 woman stood in strong contrast. The gradually deepening 
 sense of personal rights extended itself to women as well as to 
 men, and we have seen that the Church worked along with 
 the growing sentiment of social justice to emancipate the un- 
 married woman from bondage, and make her her own mistress 
 
 ' Blackstone, vol. i. pp. 430-433 (edition 1765). 
 
3MAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 221 
 
 the most important matter of her own marriage. Women 
 such, had few, if any, disqualifications as to the tenure of 
 )perty, as to inheritance, and as to the full exercise of legal 
 i civil rights.^ Though still debarred from the professions, 
 sy were, generally speaking, competent as witnesses, could 
 ! and be sued like a man, could inherit and bequeath freely ; 
 T, if any, relics of the tutela remain beyond the years of 
 nority.* Further, the sentiment that first becomes marked 
 mediseval literature had given them a position in the esteem 
 man which it would be difficult to parallel in earlier thought.' 
 t in law the whole personality of the married woman was 
 much as ever absorbed in that of her husband. In this 
 action the old conception of the right of the husband was 
 idified rather than combated by the influences of religion 
 1 the romantic attitude to women and marriage. For if 
 ise influences emphasized the beauty of womanliness, it was 
 beauty which depended on meekness and self-denial. The 
 ength of woman was in her weakness. She conquered by 
 ilding. Her gentleness had to be guarded from the turmoil 
 the world, her fragrance to be kept sweet and fresh, away 
 m its dust and the smoke of battles. Hence her need of 
 champion and guardian. Again, in the romantic view of 
 irriage the two beings were united in one, and this was easily 
 erpreted to mean that the woman was merged in the man 
 i against him was rightless, or had a claim to protection only 
 the most extreme cases. Thus the law, as Blackstone with 
 sleek satisfaction expounds it, was not far removed from 
 ivailing sentiment either in what it gave to women or in what 
 withheld. Yet Blackstone wrote two centuries after the 
 formation, and the Reformation had already begun to break 
 
 Except in relation to property the history of the position of women 
 ! broadly alike on the Continent and in England. 
 
 I need not here deal with exceptions which are interesting enough as 
 vivals. For certain disabilities in modern French law, see VioUet, p. 291. 
 
 Two opposed streams of thought are discerned in the Christian teaching 
 lO woman. On the one hand, Christianity, and particularly Catholicism, 
 ! essentially a feminine religion. Its appeal was to the womanly type, 
 I among women at all periods it has found its heartiest response. 
 Jugh debarred from the priesthood, as saints, martyrs, and virgins, 
 nen occupied a high place in the hagiology, and a woman was the mother 
 irod. On the other hand, woman was no less certainly the door of hell, 
 
 source of temptations, the corrupter even of the saints. The filthiest 
 w of love and marriage was taken by the ascetics and is embodied in the 
 utentials. The horrible saints of the desert could scarcely bear to see 
 ster or a mother (Lecky, ii. 127). A fair estimate of the influence of 
 'istianity as a whole, for which, perhaps, sufficient material has not yet 
 n accumulated, must at least give full weight to both these tendencies, 
 the whole subject, see Lecky, especially vol. ii. p. 316 seq. 
 
222 MORALE IN EVOLUTION 
 
 up the canonical view of marriage. The Reformers differed 
 from the Romish Church in two points of capital importance 
 They declined to regard marriage either as a Sacrament^ or as 
 a concession to the weakness of the flesh. On the contrary, 
 they considered it the most desirable state for man. Hence, 
 on the one hand the abolition of celibacy amongst the clergy, 
 and on the other the tendency to treat marriage as a civil contract 
 and the revival of divorce, freedom in which latter respect was 
 advocated by many great Protestant writers, and notably by 
 Milton.2 But in cutting itself free from the legal and moral 
 structure built up by the mediaeval Church, Protestantism failed 
 to provide a clear and consistent standard of its own. The 
 conception of the marriage relation as a civil contract was not 
 at bottom compatible with the rigorous treatment of the most 
 venial sexual irregularity as a rehgious ofEence of the deepest 
 dye, and the Old Testament influences which made the husband 
 absolute head of the family suited ill with the measure of equality 
 already conceded to the wife.^ Hence, even in Protestant 
 countries legislation moved but slowly, and on the whole it was 
 only during the nineteenth century and under new influences 
 that the law of marriage and the position of women underwent 
 a fundamental change. The modern conception of personal 
 
 ^ t. e. not in the magical sense. In the spiritual sense, Luther regarded 
 the word " sacrament " as necessary to express the holiness of the marriage 
 state (Howard, i. 387). 
 
 ' Adultery and malicious desertion, widened so as to include cruelty, 
 were reckoned by the continental reformers generally as good causes of 
 divorce, and it was agreed that re-marriage was allowable to the innocent 
 party (Howard, ii. 62, 65, etc.). The English reformers followed somewhat 
 more cautiously in the same line {ib., p. 73). 
 
 ' The influence of the Old Testament told both ways on the reformers. 
 On the one hand, it aided them in cutting down on the whole to reasonable 
 limits the absiu-d mass of restrictions on marriage which the mediaeval 
 Church had accumulated. On the other, it tended to justify a barbaric 
 view of the prerogatives of the husband, and led Luther and other early 
 reformers to admit polygamy and concubinage. 
 
 The fierceness of Puritan sentiment in regard to the sins of the flesh 
 appears to combine Old Testament barbarism with early Christian con- 
 demnation of unchastity. The early reformers considered death the appro- 
 priate penalty for adultery, and in the American colonies, where Pro- 
 testantism most influenced legislation, savage penalties were imposed, not 
 only for adultery, but even for the pre-nuptial incontinence of betrothed 
 persons, e. g. couples who had children bom within seven months of mar- 
 riage were publicly flogged. See the extraordinary collection of sentences 
 in Howard, vol. ii. p. 169 seq. Here are records of sentences : " A. F., for 
 having a child bom six weeks before the ordinary time of women after 
 marriage, fined for uncleanness and whipt, and his wife set in the stocks. 
 " C. E., for abusing himself with his wife before marriage, sentenced to be 
 whipt publicly at the post, she to stand by while the execution is performed. 
 Done, and he fined five pounds for the trouble " (p. 186). 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 223 
 
 rights proved to be incompatible with the old marriage law, and 
 indeed with the mediaeval sentiment in regard to woropn. Apply- 
 ing the doctrine that moral worth and the adequate realization 
 of character imply full responsibility, it has dismissed as a piece 
 of false sentiment the ideal of feminine innocence shrouded from 
 the world, has bade women take their own lives in hand, and in 
 considerable measure broken down the barriers which debarred 
 them from other occupations than that of marriage.^ Within 
 marriage it has revolutionized the position of the wife, giving 
 back to her the personal independence which she enjoyed under 
 the later Roman law. This change was not consummated in 
 England until the Married Women's Property Acts of 1870 and 
 1882. As we have seen from Blackstone, women had acquired 
 personal protection from the wife-beating husband during " the 
 poUter reign of Charles II.," but their property, except where 
 protected by settlement, remained at the absolute disposal of 
 their lord and master. This protection was a privilege of the 
 daughters of the propertied classes. There was literally no 
 protection for the wife of a drunkard struggling to support her 
 children by the labour of her hands from the husband who 
 should choose to sponge upon what she earned. Such earnings 
 were emancipated from the husband's control by the Act of 
 1870. In 1882 the same principles were applied to all property ; 
 and the Enghsh law, which was the most backward in Europe, 
 became in twelve years the most forward, Russia and Italy, 
 strange combination, being the only other countries which fully 
 recognized the independence of the wife's property in the absence 
 of a settlement.^ 
 
 ' Though there have been times in earlier history when women have, in 
 fact, taken a prominent part in intellectual or public life (witness, e. g. 
 India in Buddha's time), the systematic and reasofted insistence on the 
 claims of women to free admission to any occupation for which they can fit 
 themselves, seem — apart from the case of Plato — to be almost confined to 
 the latter half of the modem period. Works in defence of women's rights 
 appear sporadically in England, France, and Germany, from the end of the 
 seventeenth century onwards. The first which is now at all remembered, 
 however, is probably Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication, published in 
 nOZ (Howard, op. cit., iii. 238, 239). 
 
 ' The movement of other countries is, however, in the same direction. 
 Sweden emancipated the wife's earnings in 1874, Denmark in 1880, 
 Norway in 1888 ; the German Civil Code places the vrife's earnings amongst 
 her separate property which is beyond the husband's control. Property 
 bequeathed to the wSe is separate only when so stipulated by the donor. 
 
 Our Married Women's Property Act applies to England and Ireland only. 
 In Scotland, by the Acts of 1877 and 1881, the wife acquired complete 
 control of her earnings and income from personalty. But she may not 
 dispose of the principal sum without her husband's oonfeent. It should, 
 however, be borne in mind that the Scottish common law gave the wife 
 substantial claims on the husband's estate. 
 
224 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 13. Thus the tendency of the modem marriage law is to 
 guarantee to the wife equality of civil status, with fuU legal 
 protection for her person and free disposal of her property. 
 We are next to consider its effect upon the permanence of the 
 marriage tie. In the previous stages of the development of 
 marriage which have been traced we have seen it treated — 
 
 1st. As an imperfectly-organized relation which does not 
 identify husband and wife as members of one family. 
 
 2nd. As an act of appropriation by capture, purchase or 
 service, whereby the wife has passed into a semi-servile relation. 
 
 3rd. As a sacrament, whereby an indissoluble union was 
 created which man could not undo.^ 
 
 4th. In the Roman Law, and perhaps in that of Egypt, as a 
 contract on specified terms, revocable at the will of one party or 
 of both, or, finally, voidable under certain specified conditions. 
 
 The law of modem countries since the Reformation appears to 
 have fluctuated between the two latter conceptions of marriage. 
 
 The French law is not easily to be compared with ours. Here and in 
 similar codes there are mutual obligations which, in a measure, compensate 
 the wife for a certain loss of liberty. The code states that the husband 
 owes her protection and the wife owes him obedience. She is under an 
 obligation to live with him, and he to receive her and furnish her with 
 everything necessary for the wants of life according to his means and 
 station. She has the absolute right to the one-half of everything he earns, 
 but, on the other hand, she may not, without authority, alienate property 
 even it it be her own, nor can she sue even if she be carrying on a trade, 
 nor make a contract, without his authorization. On the other hand, if the 
 authorization is unreasonably refused, she may apply for it to a court. 
 
 In one direction the primitive marital power is maintained in a modified 
 form in some continental, particularly in Latin, countries. In France the 
 husband still has the right to kill the paramour of his wife taken in the 
 act. This is perhaps of the nature of a concession to the strength of passion. 
 But further, the husband, and he alone, can denounce his wife to the 
 tribunals for adultery, and cause her to be imprisoned for not less than 
 three months or more than two years at his pleasure. " Le mari restera le 
 maitre d'arreter I'effet de cette condanmation en consentant k reprendre ea 
 temme " (Penal Code, 336, 337; VioUet, p. 505). This is a survival of 
 the law of the Anoien K6gime, by which the husband might immure the 
 adulteress in a monastery, or even in a house of correction, by an authority 
 obtained from the king. The imprisonment might be for life. 
 
 The German Civil Code breaks whoUy with the marital power, by 
 equalizing the crime of husband and wife. Yet it preserves the private 
 character of the ofience by making adultery pimishable with imprisonment 
 on the application of the injured party. 
 
 The Portuguese under the old regime erected a monument more durable 
 than brass to the Catholic interpretation of equal moral responsibility by 
 a law which punishes the adultery of the wife with from two to three years 
 hard labour, and of the husband, if committed under the conjugal roof, 
 with a fine of not less than £2, nor more than £480. 
 
 ^ In this relation, the religious marriage may fittingly be enumerated as 
 a distinct type. 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 225 
 
 Countries which have maintained the rule of the Roman Church, 
 of course, do not allow divorce under any circumstances what- 
 ever. This is the case with Italy, Spain and, till the revolution, 
 Portugal in Europe ; and with Mexico, Brazil, Chili, the Argentine 
 Republic, and most of the South Ajnerican States. In some 
 states of mixed religions the Canon Law is applied to Catholics : 
 thus in Austria there is no divorce even if one party to the 
 marriage should not be a Catholic.^ The same rule applies in 
 Hungary. 
 
 The Greek Church, adhering in the main to the traditions of 
 the Roman Law as re-modeUed by Justinian, allows divorce, 
 and it is an interesting point of historical continuity that the 
 law of divorce in Greece at the present day is, with unimportant 
 amendments,^ that established by Justinian.* 
 
 In France divorce was unknown until 1792, and a wife could 
 not even obtain a separation from an unfaithful husband. In 
 that year the Convention went to the other extreme, admitting 
 divorce, not only by mutual consent, but even for incompati- 
 
 1 In Bavaria and in Wurtemberg, before the consolidation of the German 
 law under the new Imperial code, there was no absolute divorce for Catholics, 
 but the restriction did not apply to mixed marriages (Parliameniary 
 Papers, 1894 ; Miscellaneous, No. 2, p. 24). 
 
 ' Parliamentary Papers, 1894; Misc., No. 2, p. 81. 
 
 ' The law of the Greek Chjuch is followed pretty closely in Servia. 
 Divorce oases are tried by the spiritual courts, and the grounds are : 
 Adultery, an attempt on the life of either consort, treason, leaving the 
 Church, " if the wife without the husband visits the baths, beer gardens, 
 or other suspicious places with men, or if the husband brings strange 
 women into his house, or keeps them elsewhere," an accusation of adultery 
 against an innocent wife, or xirging her to unchastity, condemnation to 
 seven years' imprisonment, desertion for seven years or for three years, 
 if the husband has left the country and cannot be traced, or for four years 
 if it is proved to be wilful. 
 
 In Russia the rules of divorce vary according to the religion of the parties, 
 but it is admitted both for the Kusso-Greek and the Lutheran in cases 
 where the fault of one party has violated or practically nullified the marriage 
 contract {Parly. Papers, ib., p. 128). 
 
 In the case of members of the Busso-Greek Church, the groimds of 
 divorce are : Adultery (though only when provable by an eye-witness), 
 impotence, a sentence involving a loss of civil rights, five years' desertion. 
 It should be noted that the guilty party may be condemned to celibacy for 
 adultery. Among members of the Lutheran Church the grounds are : 
 Adultery, prenuptial unchastity of the wife, attempt to poison, five years' 
 desertion, repugnance to marital intercourse, refusal to fulfil conjugal 
 duties, incurable infectious disease, madness, depravity of life, cruelty and 
 oSensive treatment, attempted dishonour, unnatural propensities, crimes 
 involving capital punishment or penal exile. 
 
 In Roumania divorce is allowed by mutual consent of the parties, 
 provided that the court is satisfied that the maintenance of a common life 
 is impossible, that the separation is sanctioned by the parents, and provision 
 is made for the maintenance of the wife and children (Party. Papers, ib., 
 pp. 126, 127). 
 <3 
 
226 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 bility of temper alleged by one party. There was a re-action 
 under the Directory in 1795, and in 1797 the Church re-afifirmed 
 the indissolubility of marriage. Napoleon, however, allowed 
 divorce by mutual consent \inder some restrictions.^ On the 
 restoration of the Bourbons divorce was entirely suppressed 
 (1816), and though its re-introduotion was voted by the Chamber 
 in 1831, it was thrown out by the Peers, and there was no divorce 
 in France until 1884. Under the law of that year and of 
 1886 the grounds of divorce are equal for either party, and 
 are — 
 
 (1) Adultery. 
 
 (Exces. 
 Sevices. 
 Injures graves. 
 
 (3) Conviction for crimes involving certain aggravated 
 punishments. 
 
 " Exces " is interpreted to mean acts of violence endangering 
 life; "sevices," other acts of violence; while as to "injures" 
 involving lesser misconduct, the courts have a wide discre- 
 tion. They take it generally to cover calumnious imputations, 
 desertion, refusal of cohabitation, and habitual drunkenness.' 
 
 In Germany the revolutionary epoch left its mark, and by 
 the Prussian Code of 1794 divorce was allowed for any of ten 
 causes, including mutual consent in case of insuperable aversion 
 where the marriage was childless, and even if there were cMldren 
 where the cause was held good by the judge. But under the 
 
 1 The husband had to be over 25, and the wife over 21 ; they must 
 have been married more than two and less than twenty years. The 
 approval of the parents was required, and a proper agreement had to be 
 made for the maintenance of wife and children. In other respects, how- 
 ever, the law was not equal between husband and wife, as she could not 
 claim divorce for adultery unless with certain aggravations (Jeune, art. 
 " Divorce," in Ency. Brit.). 
 
 ' Belgium preserves the Imperial Code of 1803, but Holland, though the 
 law of marriage is, in general, based on that code, restricts the grounds of 
 divorce to adultery, malicious desertion, imprisonment for over four yeare, 
 and ill-treatment endangering life (Pa/rly. Papers, ib., pp. 33 and 100). 
 The Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, keeping closer to its original, " allows 
 the mutual and continued consent of both parties " under legal conditions 
 and tests to be "a sufficient proof that life in common is insupportable to 
 them " {Pa/rly. Papers, ib., p. 90). 
 
 In Switzerland, the recognized causes are adultery, an attempt on the 
 life of either party, cruelty, grave indignities, infamous crime or base con- 
 duct rendering married life intolerable, malicious desertion for two years, 
 insanity (under certain conditions), and, finally, conduct rendering married 
 life unbearable. This represents a slight modification, carried in 1907, of 
 the older law, which was criticized as facilitating dissolution for trivial 
 causes (Bepart oj Divorce Commiasion, p. 24; of. Parly. Papers, Misc., 
 No. 2 of 1894, p. 150). 
 
WOMAN AND MAJIRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 227 
 
 new civil code, which came into force on January 1, 1900, the 
 conditions are more stringent, the grounds recognized being — 
 
 (1) Adultery; which, it is to be observed, is further punish- 
 able by imprisonment on the application of the innocent party. 
 
 (2) Endangering of life. 
 
 (3) Desertion.^ 
 
 (4) Insanity. 
 
 (5) Gross neglect of duties by one of the parties or the 
 leading of such an immoral or dishonourable life as entirely 
 destroys the conjugal relations. 
 
 Denmark ^ and Sweden ^ recognize adultery, desertion, and 
 conviction of serious crime, as causes of divorce. Norway, by 
 the Act of 1909, has gone much further and admitted divorce 
 after a separation of three years, or a shorter time if there has 
 been a formal decree.* Portugal, by the Act of 1910, also allows 
 divorce by mutual consent under certain conditions.* 
 
 Thus the divorce laws of Europe present an almost bewildering 
 variety. To find some order and method in them we may group 
 them under four heads. 
 
 There are (1) the coimtries which remain under the Canon 
 Law and admit no divorce. 
 
 There are (2) countries or populations governed or influenced 
 by the law of the Greek Church, running back to Justinian. 
 
 There are (3) the countries governed or influenced by the Code 
 Napoleon. 
 
 And (4) there is the group of Protestant countries. 
 
 The common tendency in the last three cases is to place 
 divorce upon an equal footing for both parties, and to permit 
 it in all cases where the act of one party without the collusion 
 of the other has practically nullified the marriage contract. 
 Thus, desertion and conviction of serious crimes are generally 
 recognized causes; but in countries influenced by the Code 
 Civile the element of personal injury is especially pressed, and 
 where this is loosely interpreted divorce becomes easy. In the 
 
 ' Provided that the guilty party has for one year refused to obey an 
 order for restitution of the conjugal life, or has refused to cohabit for one 
 year, having gone abroad or to such place as makes conununication difificult 
 {PtM-ly. Patera, Misc., No. 2, 1903). 
 
 ' Parly. Patera, No. 2, 1894, p. 53. 
 ib; p. 146. By appeal to the king's prerogative divorce may be 
 obtained for irreconcilable aversion as well as for other causes (Divorce 
 Cennmismon Rept., p. 24). 
 
 * Report, of Commission on Divorce, col. 6478, p. 23. 
 
 * ib. The main grounds of unilateral action are adultery, conviction 
 of certain crimes, ill-treatment, desertion, incurable lunacy, inveterate 
 gambling habits and incurable contagious disease. 
 
228 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Protestant countries conviction of crime and the distinct refusal 
 of one party to perform his or her duty is more prominent. 
 There is, moreover, a partial tendency to divorce by mutual 
 consent which appears most noticeably in the most recent laws. 
 
 14. In the United Kingdom the history of the Divorce Law is 
 altogether peculiar. The Scottish courts began to grant divorces 
 soon after the Reformation, and in 1573 recognized desertion, 
 as well as adultery, as a cause ; this remains the Scottish law 
 to the present day. But in England the course of events was 
 different. The Commission appointed by Henry VIII. and 
 Edward VI. recommended divorce for adultery, desertion and 
 cruelty, and Lord Northampton {temp. Edward VI.), who married 
 again after a separation a mensa et thoro, was held justified, but 
 the recommendations of the Commission never became law, and 
 in Eoljambe's case at the end of Elizabeth's reign marriage was 
 held indissoluble. In 1669 the first divorce was granted by 
 private Act of Parliament, but there were only five such Acts 
 before George I.'s time, and it was not till 1857 that divorce 
 was allowed by Enghsh law, and this law differs from that 
 of the majority of continental countries in not recognizing the 
 practical destruction of the marriage life through desertion, 
 crime or drunkenness as a ground for anything more than 
 separation. Neither does it place husband and wife on an 
 equal footing. Down to 1884 the courts could enforce an 
 order for the restitution of conjugal rights by imprisonment, 
 but in 1884 this power was withdrawn, and in the Jackson case, 
 a few years later, it was apparently held that though such an 
 order could be obtained by a husband or wife, it could neither 
 be enforced by the courts nor could the injured party be allowed 
 to enforce it for himself. Thus the tendency of recent English 
 legislation has been to facilitate separation, but not to enable 
 him or her who has made the mistake of marrymg a confirmed 
 criminal, a lunatic or an habitual drunkard to marry again. 
 
 The British Colonies, and with them, of course, the United 
 States, started with the English law, but have for the most part 
 modified it in the direction of greater liberty. Canada forms 
 the exception. In the Dominion, under the influence of the 
 Roman religion, no divorce courts have been instituted, and 
 none exist except in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince 
 Edward's Island and British Columbia, where they had been 
 instituted before the Union, and where the conditions of divorce 
 are the same, or nearly the same, as under English law.^ 
 1 Parly. Papers, 1894, vol. Ixx, part iii. p. 54 fi. 
 
'OMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 229 
 
 In South Africa the Roman Dutch law in Cape Colony recog- 
 zes adultery and graver sexual offences, malicic^s desertion, 
 irpetual imprisonment, long absences and refusal of marital 
 ivileges as grounds of divorce, but in practice it appears 
 at only the first two causes are brought forward. Natal 
 30 recognizes desertion in addition to adultery.^ In the 
 istralasian group divorce is either on the English lines or 
 odified so as to admit desertion, drunkenness and crime as 
 ounds.^ 
 
 15. The divorce laws of the United States form a study by 
 emselves, and the utmost that I can attempt is a summary 
 the principal features. In one state or another twelve 
 Eferent causes of divorce are recognized ; they are — 
 
 (1) Adultery. This is recognized generally as a ground of 
 TOrce. 
 
 (2) Bigamy. General. 
 
 (3) Impotence. General, but as a rule with the require- 
 int that the plaintiff must be ignorant of the fact at the time 
 marriage. 
 
 (4) Idiocy. Most states. 
 
 (5) Wilful desertion. The term varying from six months to 
 e years. This is usually a ground of absolute divorce, but 
 netimes of separation only, and as a rule the deserted party 
 ist not have consented to it or have rejected reconciliation. 
 
 Parly. Papers, od. 1785 (1903), p. 21. 
 
 South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania adhere to English law 
 irly. Papers, 1894, vol. Ixx. pp. 15, 16, 33, 95). New South Wales 
 ses husband and wife on an equal footing in the matter of adultery 
 vided the husband is domiciled in the colony {Parly. Papers, 1903, 
 
 1785, p. 13). It also recognizes desertion, cruelty, conviction for 
 ne, and habitual drunkenness ; while, further, it is a ground of divorce 
 le wife has " habitually neglected or rendered herself unfit to discharge 
 domestic duties ; or if the husband has habitually left the wife without 
 
 means of support " {ib., p. 14). Victoria recognizes desertion, im- 
 onment and habitual drunkenness. This must be coupled, in the 
 > of the husband, either with cruelty or with the charge that he has 
 abitually left his wife without means of support " ; on the part of the 
 i, "with neglect of her domestic duties." Adultery by the husband 
 he law of this colony is only a sufficient ground of divorce if committed 
 he conjugal residence, or coupled with circumstances or conduct of 
 ravation {Parly. Papers, 1894, vol. Ixx. part i. p. 19). New Zealand, 
 oh, till 1898, adhered closely to the English law, now recognizes im- 
 onment for serious crime, desertion and habitual drunkenness, coupled 
 1 cruelty on the part of the husband, or habitual neglect of domestic 
 es on the part of the wife {Parly. Papers, 1903, cd. 1785, p. 16). 
 e 1908 lunacy under certain conditions is also a clause {Div. Rept., 
 !0). West Australia since 1912 recognizes very similar conditions 
 
 p. 21). 
 
230 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 (6) Absence. New Hampshire and Connecticut. 
 
 (7) Neglect of husband to support wife. Twenty states, 
 but in some of these it is a ground of separation only. 
 
 (8) Habitual drunkenness for a term of years. Almost all 
 states. 
 
 (9) Use of opium. Two states. 
 
 (10) Conviction of felony. The greater part of the country. 
 
 (11) Extreme cruelty. Almost all states, but in some only 
 as a ground of separation. 
 
 (12) Indignities to the person. Eight states. 
 
 To these may be added a variety of causes, recognized in one 
 state or more. In Illinois divorce may be given at the general 
 discretion of the court.^ In Washington ^ divorce may be given 
 for any cause deemed by the court suflScient, and when it shall 
 be satisfied that the parties can no longer live together. In 
 South Carolina there is no divorce at all.^ 
 
 1 The summary given in the text is derived from Parly. Papers, 1894, 
 Misc., No. 2. The statements given by W. F. Wilcox {Ency. Brit., ed. 10, 
 article " Divorce ") may be summarized as follows : In six out of seven 
 states divorce is allowed for adultery, desertion, and cruelty ; in thirty- 
 nine states for imprisonment, in thirty-eight for habitual drunkenness, 
 in twenty-two for neglect to provide. In all states but two, complete 
 separation lasting from one to five years is a ground of divorce (ib., art. 
 " Marriage," p. 549). From the summary statement in the Report of the 
 Divorce Com/mission (p. 27) there appears to have been no essential 
 change. 
 
 ' Bryce, Studies in Jurisprudence, ii. 440. 
 
 ' The charge brought by critics of the United States marriage laws, 
 however, is not so much directed against loose rules of law, as against lax 
 interpretation by courts. This is carried so far in some states, that it 
 would seem as though divorce were placed at the free disposal of either 
 party. One wife alleges that her husband " has never offered to take her 
 out riding " ; another, that he quoted verses from the New Testament 
 about wives obeying their husbands ; a third, " that he does not come 
 home till ten o'clock at night, and when he does come home he keeps 
 plaintiff awake talking." These cases, with further details which have 
 their ludicrous side, are quoted by Lord Bryce {op. cit., vol. ii. p. 445) from 
 a report of the United States Labour Bureau of 1880. The number of 
 divorces granted in the Union increased from 9,937 in 1867, to 25,535 in 
 1886, a proportion of 250 to 100,000 married couples. In some of the 
 laxer states, however, the proportion is much higher, there being in Ohio, 
 for instance, some 3,000 divorces annually to from 33,000 to 44,000 marriages. 
 In two-thirds of the suits the wife is the plaintiff, but statistics combat 
 the suggestion that desire for another marriage is the common cause of 
 divorce. Thus, in Connecticut, where the figures are best available, only 
 one-third of those divorced re-marry in each year. A further point of 
 high importance is that the number of divorces in proportion to the popula- 
 tion does not vary with the number of causes for which divorce can be 
 obtained — e.g. in 1880, New York admitted adultery only as a cause; 
 New Jersey added desertion, and Pennsylvania further added cruelty and 
 imprisonment. Yet New York had 78 divorces per 100,000 couples ; New 
 Jersey 26, and Pennsylvania 16 (Howard, iii. 217). 
 
WOMAN AND MARRIAGE UNDER CIVILIZATION 231 
 
 16. Comparing the divorce laws of modern states as a whole, 
 the general tendency, notwithstanding the bewildering differences 
 in detail, is tolerably clear. Legislation moves in the direction 
 of allowing divorce for adultery, cruelty, persistent desertion, 
 habitual drunkenness, serious crime — in short, for such behaviour 
 of one party as makes the married life impossible or unbearable 
 to the other. So far the dissolution of marriage is regarded as 
 a reUef which one party may claim on the ground of the other 
 party's delinquency, and in a measure as the punishment of that 
 delinquency. But there is also a more radical movement, not 
 so marked but apparently growing, to regard marriage con- 
 sistently as a contract voidable, like other contracts, by the 
 agreement of the parties to it, and to restrict the fimction of 
 the state to the duty of seeing that no fraud is committed, and 
 that the involuntary parties to the original contract, the children, 
 do not suffer. 
 
 In any case, marriage, in modern legislation, is more a con- 
 tract than a s acram ent. It is a relation which binds two parties 
 together without annulling the legal personality of either, and 
 is terminable by the fault of either. In ethics, the change that 
 it has undergone may be expressed by saying that from being 
 a sacrament in the magical, it has become one in the ethical, 
 sense. Regarded as a magical sacrament, marriage is a rite 
 which removes the taboo on sexual intercourse between a man 
 and a woman, while at the same time imposing a lifelong taboo 
 on the intercourse of either of them with a third person. As 
 an ethical sacrament, marriage is the fruition of perfect love, 
 in which, at its best, men and women pass beyond themselves 
 and become aware through feeling and direct intuition of a 
 higher order of reality in which self and sense disappear. If 
 it is not given to all to obtain this best, yet the humbler lessons 
 of unselfishness and mutual aid are learnt by ordinary men and 
 women in greater or less degree from marriage, and seldom 
 effectually learnt from other sources. But this ethical concep- 
 tion implies the retention of full personal rights by the wife, 
 and though doubtless realized often enough under the older 
 quasi-servile marriage, that was because the facts of human 
 nature and the relations based upon them cut deeper than aU 
 law, and wives have been men's helpmates and sometimes their 
 tyrants even when law made them most abjectly their slaves. 
 The modem view of marriage recognizes a relation that love 
 has known from the outset. But this is a relation only possible 
 between free self-governing persons. If it be true that " woman 
 is not undeveloped man, but diverse," that diversity will best 
 
232 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 express itself through her freedom to act as a responsible agent, 
 and only when so expressed can we justly measure its character 
 and amount. Such freedom is the basis of marriage as an 
 ethical sacrament, and that conception of marriage is accordingly 
 bound up with the general liberation of women. 
 
 In the lowest stages of society the life of women is less differ- 
 entiated from that of men than it afterwards becomes, but there 
 is a tendency for the heavier drudgery to fall on them, while the 
 men do the hunting or fighting. At a higher stage the sphere 
 of woman becomes more clearly restricted to the house. She 
 does hard outside work only when compelled thereto by poverty, 
 and the idea grows that she should be protected by her men-folk 
 and as far as possible sheltered from the world. She becomes a 
 different being, romantically conceived as of finer, more ethereal, 
 texture than the male, but is practically allowed no will or 
 character of her own. At a stiU further stage the ethical con- 
 ception of personality comes into play. To be the ideal being 
 that man would have her it is recognized that woman must be 
 a responsible agent, and it is seen that her special talents and 
 qualities must have all the scope which freedom gives to come 
 to the fulness of their development, while it is only through free 
 development that the extent of her differentiation can be deter- 
 mined. Roughly parallel to this movement of thought is the 
 evolution of the marriage tie as we have traced it — the natural 
 family at first incomplete and the marital relation loose and 
 uncertain ; next, a close union under the lordship of the husband, 
 based in its lower forms on proprietary right, and at a higher 
 stage on religious sanctions ; and, finally, a union, not less inti- 
 mate because less mechanical, between two free and responsible 
 persons, in which the equal rights of both are maintained, based 
 not on a magical sacrament, but on the most sacred human 
 relation. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 EELATIONS BETWEEN COMMtTNITIES 
 
 1. In the early stages of ethics, rights and duties do not attach 
 to a human being as such. They attach to him as a member of a 
 group. A stranger may enter a community with a safe conduct, 
 or under the protection of some god or some taboo. He may 
 come as a guest under the aegis of his host. But except under 
 such special conditions he is destitute of rights. The members 
 of the community will give him no protection because he is not 
 one of themselves. They stand by one another, but, except for 
 such special reasons as have been mentioned have no concern 
 with outsiders. Morality is in its origin group-morality. This 
 division between the community and the stranger cuts deep 
 into the ethical consciousness. In primitive society it implies a 
 very narrow circumscription of the ethical area, since primitive 
 societies, besides being exclusive, are generally small. But, far 
 from being confined to primitive society, the essential features of 
 group-morality are maintained with great persistence, though in 
 very varying shapes, into the higher civilizations. Civilized 
 humanity is still organized in groups, and there is still a deep 
 distinction between the obligations binding members of the same 
 group to one another and those which are recognized as holding 
 as between members of different groups. Every independent 
 nation is such a group. In greater or less degree every distinct 
 class within a nation is such a group. Religious bodies, political 
 parties, all sorts of voluntary associations and, finally, the family 
 itself, are other instances. 
 
 But here one distinction is to be noted. All these groupings 
 may be the basis of special obligations, but it does not foUow 
 that they all alike maintain group-morality in its distinctive 
 features. For these distinctive features consist not so much in 
 the recognition of special obligations as in the denial of more 
 general rights and duties arising out of more general relations. 
 The special and the general need not necessarily conflict. The 
 one may supplement the other. It is where a wider obligation 
 is ignored or overridden in favour of the narrower that we speak 
 
 233 
 
234 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of group-morality.^ A great part of the comparative study of 
 ethics consists in tracing the forms assumed by group-morality 
 and its modification by wider ideas of obligation, and much of 
 ethical evolution is constituted by the interaction of the two 
 principles. In the present chapter and the next we shall con- 
 sider the two departments in which this evolution appears to 
 be of the greatest importance. We shall begin with the mutual 
 relations of independently governed communities and their 
 respective members. 
 
 2. Early society is, as has been said, organized generally in 
 small groups, and between these groups and their respective 
 members there is not, except under special conditions, any bond 
 of mutual regard. Hence, man being a pugnacious creature, it 
 is natural that disputes should arise and that they should be 
 settled by recourse to arms. To represent primitive man as in 
 a state of perpetual warfare with his fellows is, indeed, a gross 
 exaggeration. Normally border relations are friendly, and there 
 are some peoples, particularly in the lowest economic grades, who 
 seem naturally mild, unaggressive and peaceable, and to whom 
 war is unknown. Such were some of the Eskimo.^ Such are 
 one or two small, favoured and isolated South Sea Island peoples.' 
 Such are some of the Asiatic jungle peoples.* But these, after 
 all, are rare exceptions,^ and among the great majority of peoples 
 disputes arise which from time to time give occasion for the resort 
 to arms. 
 
 The actual frequency and seriousness of warfare, of course, 
 vary very greatly, according to the more or less martial character 
 
 ^ The term is, of course, one of disparagement, so far as we assume the 
 correctness of the modem point of view. It may, however, be, and at 
 times has been, that the more humanitarian view is too crudely expressed, 
 and the group-morality which protests again^st it may then prove to be 
 relatively right. 
 
 ^ For example, the people of Baffin's Land had no warfare, and Ross 
 could not make them understand the meaning of battles (Reclus, 108). 
 
 ' The Lower Carolinas are said by Waitz to live at peace, while furnish- 
 ing the upper islands with arms. In the small islands of the Tokilan and 
 EUice group no weapons are known except those washed ashore, which are 
 stored in the temples (Waitz, v. ii. 190). 
 
 * The little Kubu family groups do not fight among theniselves and 
 never come into contact with others. If menaced, they run away {Hagen, 
 p. 70). The Punans rarely have fights either within or between groups, 
 the only exceptions known to our authorities being cases where they have 
 been egged on by other tribes (Hose and McDougall, ii. 183). 
 
 ' Among tribes of whose " foreign " relations we obtained information 
 we found twelve which could be said to have "no war," ten in the hunting 
 or lowest agricultural stage, one in the higher pastoral where war was 
 said to be rare, and one in the highest agricultural, where it was mild 
 {Simpler Peoples, p. 232). 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 235 
 
 of the people, their geographical conditions and economic cir- 
 cumstances. Regular organized war implies a dbrtain social 
 development, and is hardly to be found at the lowest grades^ but 
 we find " a sort of " warfare in the form, perhaps, of perpetual 
 predatory raids, as where an outcast tribe like the Bushmen 
 live largely by piUaging its more settled neighbours, who reply 
 whenever they can with pitiless massacres.^ We find fighting 
 arising from disputes about the infringement of the tribal 
 border — ^the " frontier incidents " of savagery — as often among 
 the Australian clans. ^ It may arise out of personal injuries, the 
 capture of a woman or the slaying of a man, which the injured 
 tribe is determined to resent. In this latter case there is no 
 very deep distinction between a war of distinct tribes and the 
 blood feud of two clans within a tribe.* In both cases the 
 fighting may be of the nature of a trial by combat, and so it is, 
 perhaps, that we find here and there a regular arrangement of 
 the campaign in which time, place, and even the number of the 
 combatants and their weapons are predetermined. Thus, in the 
 Malay region, clan disputes are sometimes settled by duels, or 
 by battles arranged at fixed times and places. Among the 
 Battas of Sumatra the relatives of the combatants mingle freely 
 while the war is in progress. Yet the actual fighting is waged 
 to the extermination of the beaten party, saving always its 
 chief.* The tale of the Horatii and Curiatii preserves the memory 
 of a custom of " representative fighting " among the early 
 Latin tribes, and instances occur in Greek history down to 
 the sixth century.* We may, perhaps, connect with this range 
 
 '■ Letoumeau, La Guerre, -pp. 56, 57, quoting Moffat, Tweniy-threeYeara 
 in Central Africa. 
 
 * Letoumeau, ib., p. 29. Border relations, however, according to 
 Messrs. Spencer and Gillen {Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 32), 
 are generally amicable, and there is no such thing as a constant state of 
 enmity, 
 
 ' Technically, the term feud should be used of a fight within what 
 is, for many purposes if not for all, one community, or of a fight waged by 
 a part of a community — e. g. a kindred avenging a murder. War should be 
 used of a fight organized by a community as a whole. But the distinction 
 is difficult to carry through, as the normal organization of a fight with 
 a hostile tribe may be by a volunteer party under a chief chosen ad hoc^ 
 This is common, e. g. among the North American Indians . 
 
 * Waitz, v. i. 161, 162. In some peoples, though there may be no 
 precise arrangements as for a judicial combat, a very little bloodshed 
 seems to appease the martial ardour of the combatants. Thus, among the 
 Mioronesians, it is said, wars break out on small pretexts, but on the death 
 of two or three warriors the rest run away, and offer gifts which terminate 
 the war. Yet prisoners are often tortured and the land laid waste (Waitz, 
 V. ii. 132). 
 
 ' Herodotus, Book I. chap. Ixxxii. 
 
236 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of ideas certain indications of what we might caU a sportsman- 
 like view of war. Instances might be found among the North 
 American Indians — ^for example, in the story of the Arkansas 
 giving a share of their powder to the Chickasaw to fight with 
 them, or of the Algonquin refraining from pressing an attack on 
 the Iroquois on its being pointed out that night had fallen.^ 
 
 Apart from this half-judicial, half-chivalrous view, the warfare 
 of savage and primitive societies is not always without its rules 
 and limitations. Often an open and honourable declaration of 
 war is insisted on, as among the Kaffirs,^ and in early Rome.^ 
 The persons of envoys are, as a rule, respected, and often women 
 are employed for this purpose. Agreements are understood and 
 bad faith is condemned.* We even hear of instances in which 
 the use of poisoned weapons is avoided,^ and in which permanent 
 ; injury to property is forbidden.* 
 
 ' Waitz, hi. 154. For a similar case among the Australians, see 
 Letourneau, op. ait., p. 33. 
 ' Waitz, ii. 398. 
 ' Cicero, De Republica, ii. 17, quoted in Bruns, p. 11. 
 
 * e. g. the N. A. Indians had their regular flags of truce, peace councils, 
 and pipes of peace (Catlin, N. A. Indiana, ii. 242). In early Rome 
 those who offended against a foreign nation by an attack on envoys, were 
 made over to them (ded/Uio) to deal with as they pleased. By an intricate 
 perversion of moral sentiment, the people might refuse to ratify a truce 
 made by a general in the field on its behalf, but in that case surrendered 
 the general, as though it were he who had broken his word to the injured 
 enemy. By this vicarious sacrifice the conamonwealth was to be relieved 
 from all guilt (ut populus religione solvatur), the injury being put on to 
 the head of the general who had done his best for it (quandoque noxam 
 nocuerunt . . . ob eam rem hosoe homines vobis dedo, Livy, ix. 10; 
 Ihering, Oeist des Romischen Rechts, i. 131). In all this, however distorted, 
 a feeling of the obligation of good faith between nations is indubitably 
 present. 
 
 ° e.g. among the Kaffirs (Waitz, ii. 398, 399). According to this au- 
 thority, the Kaffirs also avoided the starving out of an enemy, and, generally 
 speaking, showed a certain chivalry in war which they have unlearnt 
 in contact with the whites. 
 
 • Among the Eastern Carolinas, the victor carries off the movables, but 
 does not take the land of the vanquished, and avoids cutting down their 
 fruit-trees (Waitz, v. ii. 118, H9). Even the Book of Deuteronomy, 
 which lays down a kind of ideal code of extermination, based on religious 
 principles, deprecates the cutting down of fruit-trees, but rather for the 
 advantage of tlie invader than for any more magnanimous motive : " For 
 thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down : for is the 
 tree of the field man, that it should be besieged of thee ? " (Deut. xx. 19). 
 Quaint illustrations of savage chivalry occur where some primitive con- 
 ception, colliding with the ordinary instincts of warfare, places enemies 
 under a sacred obligation to each other. Instances may be found among 
 some of the Indian hill tribes, for whom hospitality is so sacred a duty 
 that a defeated enemy can avail himself of it against his conqueror. M. 
 Beclus (p. 261) mentions the case of a Bengalese clan being driven out of 
 their homes by an enemy, and coming to claim asylum as guests with their 
 conquerors, to whom they proved so expensive as lodgers, that it became 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 237 
 
 3. But while war, like other departments of savage life, has its 
 customs and obligations, and while in some of tltem we can trace 
 germs of moral feeling, of honour and fair play, we must not 
 blind ourselves to the broad fact that this same rule of custom 
 generally lends to savage warfare something of the character 
 of a personal feud. We shall not be far wrong in saying of 
 uncivilized warfare in general terms that it is in its essence as 
 much a struggle between individuals as between communities, 
 that the conquered enemy has no recognized rights of immunity 
 to protect him, but that his person and property, his wives and 
 children, stand at the mercy of the conquerer. As in other 
 departments of ethics, so here, we find that this principle is not 
 always pushed to an extreme. There are aU manner of variations 
 in the rigour with which it is applied, and still more in the 
 practical consequences drawn from it. Here and there we find 
 touches of humaner feeling investing themselves with a religious 
 sanction. In other cases social circumstances mitigate the lot 
 of captives. But in the main the defeated enemy is rightless, 
 and is treated as best suits the victor's convenience. 
 
 This will readily appear from a brief survey of the possible 
 alternatives in the treatment of prisoners. Quarter may be 
 refused altogether, or if the prisoner is taken he may be enslaved, 
 tortured, eaten, adopted, ransomed, exchanged, or liberated. 
 Further, a distinction may be, and in practice often is, drawn 
 between the adult raales among the enemy on the one hand, and 
 the women and children on the other, e. g. the males may be put 
 to the sword, while the women and children are enslaved or, 
 perhaps, adopted. Coming now to the actual practice of savage 
 and barbarous races, we find that, at least so far as regards males, 
 the milder alternatives are by far the rarer. Of exchange there 
 are several instances among the North American Indians — 
 for example, in the tribes of New California, where, though 
 enemies are kUled in battle, they are not scalped, and prisoners 
 are not enslaved, but exchanged.^ Ransom is also very seldom 
 
 more profitable to restore the lands and goods taken from them. The 
 same author mentions the case of a murderer playing the same trick upon 
 the father of the murdered man, who not only could not touch him as long 
 as he was his guest, but was compelled to support him — a situation which 
 could only be paralleled by that of the N. A. Indian widow, who might be 
 appeaaed for the murder of her husband by the adoption of the murderer 
 in his place. 
 
 ' Waitz, iv. 241. But they would seem to take women captives, as one 
 of their war-songs begins ; " Let us go, leader, to the war, let us go and 
 make booty of a fine maiden." Catlin (ii. 71) relates that the Comanches 
 kept a little white boy as a prisoner, and finally exchanged him for three 
 members of their own tribe bought by the whites from the r 
 
238 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 understood by savages, but the Creek Indians were said to 
 adopt boy and girl prisoners and to hold grown men and women 
 for ransom, though apparently they were alec subject to an 
 ordeal, as it is stated by the same authority (an eighteenth- 
 century writer who lived among them) that the women of the tribe 
 were wont to make payment in tobacco for the privilege of whip- 
 ping prisoners as they passed.^ The third alternative was that 
 of adoption, which, especially among the North American Indians, 
 forms the main exception to the rule that the prisoner is only 
 saved in order to become a slave. For several tribes saw another 
 use, based upon another phase of savage ideas, to which he 
 could be put. He might impersonate a deceased warrior of the 
 tribe. It is a part of savage make-believe that one man can 
 stand for another, that a man's personality can be transferred, 
 possibly by the supposed transfusion of the soul, possibly by a 
 ceremonial investiture with the names, rights and possessions of 
 the deceased. It was a fairly common practice among the Red 
 Indians to spare prisoners for this purpose. They had, in the 
 first instance, to undergo an ordeal, a severe whipping or other 
 torture, and then, if a widowed woman of the tribe chose to 
 adopt one as her husband, he might live and become a member 
 of the tribe, replacing the dead man in every respect, as husband 
 to his widow, as father to his children, as bearer of his totem, as 
 successor to all his rights and duties — in short, as perpetuating 
 his personahty.^ 
 
 Among two hundred and fourteen peoples we find evidence of the in- 
 discriminate killing of the conquered in one hundred and five cases, and 
 of the killing of men only in forty-one more. It is fair, however, to say 
 that in the first number we include cases of head-hunting, which do not 
 necessarily imply that the injured are slain in any large numbers, or even 
 that quarter would be normally refused. We find sixty cases in which 
 both sexes may be enslaved, thirty-two in which women and children are 
 enslaved, thirty-nine cases of adoption, and eighteen in which prisoners are 
 exchanged or set free. In many cases, of course, more than one practice 
 is followed by the same tribe {Simpler Peoples, p. 232). 
 
 ^ Caleb Swan, in Schoolcraft, v. 280. 
 
 ' Catlin gives it as the general practice of the Indians known to him 
 that they inflict appalling tortures on their prisoners, in sufficient numbers 
 to atone for those similarly dealt with by their enemies, while the re- 
 mainder were adopted as husbands by widows in the tribe (op. cit., ii. 
 240). The element of fiction comes out strongly when we learn that a boy 
 may be adopted in place of a deceased husband, and is then called father 
 by the children of the deceased (Schoolcraft- Diake, i. 218-220). Among 
 the Dakotas male prisoners were seldom taken, except by previous arrange- 
 ment, which would be made when the warriors of the tribe wished to take 
 one or more for adoption to recruit their number. The fate of the warrior 
 would in this case depend upon the decision of the war-chief (Scbool- 
 craft-Orake, i. 188). Among the Iroquois, prisoners had to run the 
 gauntlet all tibrough the villiages lying near the line of march. At the 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 239 
 
 ^To pass to the more severe alternatives, the refusal of quarter 
 in battle is widespread. In North America we find it in place 
 of either torture or adoption among the Apaches/ the Chepe- 
 wyans,* and generally among the Californian tribes.* In negro 
 warfare the defeated are often annihilated. The men are killed 
 sometimes for eating, sometimes merely for the killing; the 
 women and children are sometimes killed, sometimes enslaved. 
 The Waganda and the Masai killed all the adult males, the 
 Bechuana took no prisoners. The Fans took them, but ate them. 
 The Gallas first massacred indiscriminately in Abyssinia; they 
 now castrate their male prisoners.* But mere killing did not 
 always suffice ; an easy death might be too good a fate for an 
 execrated foe. Torture, which, as is well known, reaches its 
 most extreme development among the North American Indians, 
 seems to be due to no more recondite motive than that of 
 revenge. Thus, according to Catlin,^ prisoners are tortured in 
 sufficient numbers to atone for those similarly dealt with by 
 their enemies ; and it is stated that children are encouraged to 
 take part in the process in order to instil hardness and vindic- 
 tive feelings into their minds. The rude Takhali, according to 
 Waitz,* give their children a regular training in cruelty, especially 
 to animals — as though this were necessary. Torture is com- 
 
 joumey's end they might be adopted by those who had lost relations, and 
 when bereaved famihes were satisfied, if the remaining prisoners seemed 
 desirable acquisitions to any family the gauntlet test would be applied to 
 them. They would be lashed by the women and children, and those who 
 fell from exhaustion under the ordeal would be dispatched, the survivors 
 being adopted. It should be added that when adopted captives became 
 discontented with their new life, they were in some cases set at liberty. 
 Adoption, as already mentioned, was in this tribe the rule for the treat- 
 ment of women and children captives (Schooloraft-Drake, i. 218, 247; 
 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 341-344). Morgan adds that a distinguished 
 chief was sometimes restored to his own people as a mark of admiration. 
 He was then bound in honour not to fight against his conquerors in 
 future. 
 
 Outside the North American Indians we do not hear so much of adop- 
 tion, but according to De Kochas (quoted by Letourneau, op. cU., p. 49) it 
 occurs in New Caledonia, presumably when the victors' larder does not 
 need replenishing, or when the need of making good the losses of the 
 village is more pressing. Similarly among the Andamajiese, Man (J. A. I., 
 sdi. 356) states that though women and children may be killed in a night 
 attack on a village, the child, if taken alive, would be treated kindly, in 
 the hope of inducing it to join the captor's tribe. 
 
 ' Reclus, p. 128, but Waitz (iii. 157) says that the Apaches sometimes 
 tormented their prisoners, sometimes sold thena. 
 
 ' Waitz, toe. cil. 
 
 ' Powers, Tribes of Galfomia, 405. 
 
 ■• Post, Afrih. Jurisprudenz, i. 84, 85. 
 
 ' Catlin,ii. 240. « Waitz, iii. 117. 
 
240 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 monest among the eastern and southern tribes of North America, 
 and did not occur among all the tribes of the West.^ The hor- 
 rible history is only lightened by the extraordinary stories of forti- 
 tude with which it was borne and by occasional instances of self- 
 sacrifice, such as that of a certain Chippewa chief, Bi-ans-wah, 
 who, having been taken captive, was saved by his father, a noted 
 warrior, who voluntarily surrendered himself to the conquering 
 tribe and offered himself for torture in his son's place. It is one 
 of the few gleams of light which break the darkness of savage 
 history to read that later in life the rescued Bi-ans-wah made 
 an agreement with the Sioux by which the burning of prisoners 
 was stopped on both sides. 
 
 The next alternative to torture is that of cannibalism. 
 Cannibalism may have either a magical, a religious, or a 
 purely materialistic value ; and, as warfare develops and becomes 
 systematic, and especially as some barbarous tribe consolidates 
 itself and grows stronger than its neighbours, the practice 
 assumes gigantic proportions. Prisoners are not merely killed 
 and eaten on the spot,* but are taken home, well treated and 
 fattened for the slaughter, possibly provided with a wife and 
 encouraged to breed a family for the same purpose. There comes, 
 indeed, a stage, perhaps the most revolting in the history of human 
 development, at which the weaker tribes are made almost to 
 perform the functions of cattle in the economy of life for the 
 stronger. This tendency has its parallel — ^to some extent its 
 alternative — ^in the development of human sacrifice, whether for 
 rehgious or magical reasons. In the higher grade of agriculture 
 we find a drop in the proportion of cases of cannibalism reported, 
 but a marked rise in human sacrifice (Simpler Peoples, pp. 241- 
 242). The human victim may be a feast for the gods. Or it 
 may be that by eating the dead man, and particularly by eating 
 certain parts of him, such as his heart,* the conqueror is held to 
 acquire his virtues, or some occult influence is supposed to, be 
 exercised upon the crops, the weather, the stability of a bridge, 
 or the fortunes of war. 
 
 1 WaitE, iii. 167. Except among the North American Indians, I find the 
 torture of prisoners but rarely referred to by ethnologists, unless as an 
 incident of cannibalism, human sacrifice, or the slave trade. But Waitz 
 (v. ii. 134) attributes the practice to some Micronesians. It was not 
 uncommon in mediseval Europe. 
 
 ' The suggestively named ' Niam-niam " are said to advance to battle 
 with the cry, " Meat, meat ! To the oven, to the oven ! " (Letoumeau, 
 p. 86). 
 
 ' For example, among the Yoruba, hearts are regularly sold to give 
 courage (Ellis, Tortiba-speaking Peoples, p. 69). 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 241 
 
 Canuibalism is, or has been, widely spread ^ throughout Africa, 
 Oceania, South America and Australia (though»it would be 
 too much to say that it was general any where), ^ and often 
 where it is not now a flourishing institution there are distinct 
 traces of it in legend^ or, as among the Micronesians and the 
 Andamanese, in the belief that strangers or neighbouring tribes * 
 are cannibalistic or, again, in certain magical rights and customs 
 having a cannibalistic significance. The Melanesians are not 
 cannibals, yet they will eat a piece of a dead man's flesh to estab- 
 lish communion with his ghost. ^ Among the North American 
 Indians, where it is rare within the times of which we have a 
 record, we have phrases like " eating the heart of an enemy and 
 drinking his blood," which probably are not mere metaphors. 
 The Sioux, who in later times abhorred cannibalism, used at 
 one time to eat the heart of an enemy. The Chippewas are 
 said to have practised cannibalism. The name " mohawk " 
 means " man-eater," and in certain tribes there were special 
 societies of cannibals who were deemed to possess magical 
 powers.^ Passing to tropical America, the Caribs, who lived a 
 blameless and well-ordered life among themselves, made such 
 frequent cannibal raids that the very name of " cannibal " is 
 supposed to be a corruption of their tribal name. In Guatemala 
 and Nicaragua, prisoners were generally' sacrificed and eaten, 
 while it was in ancient Mexico that cannibalism and human 
 sacrifice reached probably their greatest development in history. 
 The Mexicans maintained an eternal warfare with the Tlaxcala 
 
 '■ It is not, of course, confined to captives, though they are the handiest 
 material if available. Sometimes the aged are eaten, as among the Battas 
 of Sumatra (Waitz, v. i. 189). Sometimes the young. For example, 
 among the Central Australians, a younger child is eaten in order to give 
 strength to an elder (Spencer and Gillen, i. 475). Sometimes a slave. 
 Sometimes it is a gruesome punishment, e.g. for adultery, treason, 
 espionage, and robbery by night among the Battas, who also eat their 
 prisoners (Waitz, toe. cit., 188). 
 
 ' It is very rare in Asia and North America. We have found only one 
 case of cannibalism and none of human sacrifice among Pastoral peoples 
 {op. cit., pp. 240, 242). 
 
 ' Enemies are still eaten in the Luritcha tribe of the Central Australians. 
 Among the Anmta, cannibalism, if not wholly discarded, is very slightly 
 practised, but its memory lives in many traditions of the " Alcheringa " — 
 the Australians' " great long ago " — and some of the Engwura ceremonies 
 are thought to represent its suppression (Spencer and Gillen, i. 324, 473-475). 
 The Ainus of the Tokapchi district are particularly addicted to night 
 attacks, and are alleged to have been cannibals, and are even now abhorred 
 by their neighbours (Batchelor, Ainu of Japan, 288). ' 
 
 » Codrington, J. A. I., x. 285. 
 
 ' Waitz, iii. 159. 
 
 ' According to Torquemada. According to some other authorities, the 
 practice was confined to certain tribes (Waitz, iv. 264). 
 B 
 
242 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 in order that the supply of captives for sacrifice might be kept 
 up. The victim was identified with the god, and his killing and 
 eating meant a resxirrection of the god and a renewal of his 
 strength.^ According to the Mexican legend the gods them- 
 selves sacrificed themselves to the sun to endue him with strength 
 to do his work, and they handed on the duty to their human 
 representatives, directing men to fight and kill each other to 
 provide the sun with food.* Among the Guaranis of South 
 America a sixteenth-century account describes the cannibal 
 sacrifice of prisoners, who, with an exaggeration of cruelty, 
 were given a wife previously, and if there was a child it was 
 fattened and eaten.* 
 
 Finally, with the category of ideas to which cannibalism and 
 human sacrifice belong we should connect the head-hunting 
 raids especially common in the Malayo-Polynesian region. The 
 carefully-preserved skuU is at once a trophy and proof of valour, 
 a memorial of vengeance, and a property of magic powers. 
 Different aspects are specially prominent among different peoples. 
 The Nagas of the Indian Hills, all of whom are head-hunters, 
 are said to keep the skuU to glut their vengeance.* In Melanesia 
 the idea of human sacrifice is prominent and we are closer to 
 cannibalism. For at the funeral of a chief an expedition starts 
 off to take heads in his honour, and any one with whom it 
 falls in, not being of the chief's own people, serves the pur- 
 pose. The object alleged, in one of the islands — Florida — for 
 human sacrifice to the dead, is that " mana " is obtained — the 
 mysterious power with which chiefs are endowed in life as well 
 as after death, which they can transmit from the grave to those 
 who then put themselves into communion with them. Further, 
 in another Melanesian island — Ysabel — the human victim is 
 eaten, and we have full-blown magical cannibalism ; and, to illus- 
 trate the affinity of ideas, we find that in Florida, where the 
 victim is supposed only to be sacrificed, it is admitted that a 
 little flesh is eaten.^ But with these customs we are passing 
 away from the special ethics of war into those of primitive 
 religion generally. Head-hunting may be a purely private 
 matter. It may be an incident in the making up of a blood 
 feud, as among the Lampongs of Sumatra, where the miirderer 
 must appease his victim's family with two skulls and a victim 
 to be buried at the grave.^ It may be a matter of private ven- 
 
 ^ Payne, History of the New World called America, i. 470. Frazer, iii. 
 134 fl. 
 ^ Payne, i. 504. ' Letoumeau, La Ferrwne, 160, 161, 163. 
 
 * Goddeii, J. A. I., xxvii. 15. 
 
 * Codrington, J. A. I., x. 308, 309. « Waitz, v. 149. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 243 
 
 geance or gain or glory, as among the Nagas, where men lurk 
 about the water-ghat of a hostile village for the fkst woman or 
 child that comes to draw water. Or it may be, as sometimes 
 among the same people, the express object of an organized 
 expedition.^ In the former case it is at most an incident in the 
 life of neighbouring hostile villages. Only in the latter is it the 
 object of regular warfare. 
 
 A horrible feature of Naga head-hunting is that the skull of a 
 woman or child, even a baby in arms, in prized as much as a 
 man's. It is even thought a greater feat to obtain one, since 
 it impHes the boldness of penetrating into the heart of the 
 enemy's country. This indiscriminate slaughter of women and 
 children is frequent, but not universal, in savage and barbaric 
 warfare.^ Among these same Nagas, in the feuds of clans as 
 distinguished from the wars between tribes, the women are 
 sometimes spared. In the quarrels of the Luhuga killing is 
 limited by agreement, and the women are not injured. It is a 
 bright spot in the sombre picture of the North American Indian 
 warfare that women were respected. The reason was a magico- 
 religious belief, in which it is open to us to find an ethical 
 element, that unchastity would bring misfortune. The Dakotas, 
 we are told, " generally treat female captives with respect. We 
 hear of no violation of chastity on their war parties. During 
 their absence the cause of their being chaste on their excursions, 
 they say, is that they may not bring vengeance down upon their 
 own heads — that is, displease the spirits of the deceased and the 
 war medicine, as they would be made to suffer for their incon- 
 tinency. They must keep themselves from women all the time 
 they are out at war. Superstition has a controlling influence 
 over them in this as in other respects." * Among the Hurons 
 and in Virginia, though no quarter was given, as a rule, in the 
 fight, women and children were generally made prisoners. The 
 Winnebagos * say that they respect chastity in war at the bidding 
 of the Great Spirit. The Iroquois did no violence to women 
 captives, and Catlin states this as the general rule of the 
 Indians that he knew. An exception are the Indians of Texas, 
 who treated female captives with cruelty. But the general rule 
 for women captives was adoption in a servile condition. Simi- 
 larly in Oceania, it is stated that in the feuds of the little island 
 
 ' Godden, he. cit. * Godden, op. cit., p. 13, quoting Sir J. Johnstone. 
 
 ' Prescott, in Schoolcraft, iv. 63. The magical element in this con- 
 ception comes out well in the point that among the Iroquois the war-chief 
 was generally unmarried (Waitz, iii. 168). The general idea is clearly 
 that women are taboo to fighting men as injuring their powers. 
 
 ' See Schoolcraft-Drake, i. 188. 
 
244 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of Rotuma women are respected, and that in the Carohnas and 
 the Marshall and Gilbert Islands women prisoners are generally 
 spared. At a higher level, among the Kabyles of North Africa 
 we are told that women are respected in war, and even in an 
 assault upon a village are not molested. Sometimes the women 
 are so completely free from danger that they come and go with- 
 out hindrance in the hostile territory, or look on calmly at the 
 battle and perhaps in the end effect a reconciliation. This is 
 the more intelligible when the fighting tribes are exogamous, so 
 that the wife of a warrior on one side is sister or daughter of a 
 champion on the other. In this capacity they act as reconcilers 
 among the Kolarian tribes of Bengal.'^ Often, as among the 
 Australians and the Papuans, they are employed as envoys and 
 are inviolable.^ But more often, though unmolested in the 
 actual warfare, the fate which awaits them as prisoners is no 
 enviable one. While the men are tortured, eaten, sacrificed or 
 simply kiUed, the women and children are carried off as slaves.' 
 This is one of the commonest methods of dealing with prisoners 
 in the uncivilized world. A slightly higher level is reached 
 when the male captives are allowed to share the fate of their 
 wives and children. 
 
 For there comes a time in social development when the victor 
 sees that a live prisoner is, after all, better than a dead one. 
 Speaking generally, the custom of enslaving male prisoners does 
 not arise until two conditions have been satisfied. On the one 
 hand, a certain level of industrial organization must have been 
 reached, making slave labour desirable, unless slaves are taken to 
 sell to other peoples as by the Kirghiz ; on the other, a certain 
 warlike supremacy must have been attained by the slave-holding 
 tribe which has familiarized it with the possession of captives, 
 and so given scope for the habit of utilizing them to grow up.* 
 
 ^ Reolus, 295. ' Letourneau, La Ouern, p. 36. 
 
 ' Among the North American Indians, while the males (unless adopted) 
 were generally tortured and killed, women and children were more often 
 taken captives, and adopted in a servile position (Waitz, iii. 154, 156). 
 The enslavement of women in Black Africa is referred to below. Similarly, 
 at the other end of the old world, among the Ainus, the result of the fre- 
 quent night-raids, whereby a quarrel between villages is avenged, is that 
 nearly all the males are killed while the women and children are enslaved, 
 the women often as concubines (Batchelor, 288). In this connection it 
 must be remembered that in forty or more peoples practising marriage by 
 capture as a full reality, the possession of a woman is the direct object of the 
 war or raid. 
 
 * The proportion of cases in which slaves are taken stands at about 
 one-fifth or one-sixth among the Higher Hunters and the two first grades 
 of agriculture, and moves abruptly to seven-twelfths in the higher grade 
 (Simpler Peoples, p. 232). 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 245 
 
 Perhaps- a third negative condition may be added, that the 
 vindictive passions must be suflSciently held in •heck to pre- 
 vent their gratification in the moment of victory. It is thus 
 not imtil the higher savagery, or, perhaps, the lower levels of 
 barbarism, that we find slavery beginning to develop in any 
 marked degree, and universally it has fiourished more in races 
 capable of permanent and steady labour than with those which 
 are either hunters or fighters or nothing. It was impossible 
 to create a large slave population among the North American 
 Indians east of the Rockies, and we only find the practice of 
 slave-holding among them in scattered instances. West of the 
 Rockies, on the other hand, slavery is general.^ In other parts 
 of the savage world it is the ordinary alternative to the exter- 
 mination of the vanquished. In Oceania, the one method of 
 treatment sometimes replaces the other. Thus, among the 
 Papuans, war is the more savage and cannibalistic where slavery 
 is little practised.* Or the two methods may be combined, as in 
 the Solomon Islands, where, in addition to war, a regular trade 
 recruits the slave market, not only, however, for purposes of 
 labour, but also for purposes of cannibalism and human sacrifice. 
 Again, in Fiji the slaves are not worked hard, but are fattened 
 for eating; and throughout Melanesia, on the whole, slavery 
 rather subserves cannibalism than opposes it. In Poljmesia, 
 human victims were generally chosen from prisoners of war and 
 from slaves. In tropical South America prisoners may be put to 
 death (and perhaps eaten), enslaved or adopted.* Throughout 
 Black Africa the two institutions also coexist, the general rule 
 being that where the men are killed, and perhaps eaten, the 
 women and children may be enslaved. Thus, the Waganda 
 slay aU the men and enslave the women and children; the 
 Bali kill aU the men; the Wakuafi enslave them ; the 
 Bechuana take no prisoners.* On the whole, however, through 
 savage and barbarian Africa, with the exception of the Kaffir 
 
 ' e. ff. it is universal in Oregon (Waitz, iii. 345). Cf. Major Alvord, in 
 Schoolcraft, v. 654, where an instance is given of a slave being sacrificed 
 on his master's death. 
 
 ' Letoumeau, L'Eedavage, p. 35. According to the same authority 
 (La Oiierre, pp. 38, 39) head-hunting is common, and a woman's skull is as 
 valuable as a man's. But women and girls are often spared in raids and 
 taken for concubines. According to Kohler {Z. f. vgl. Rechtewissenachaji, 
 1900, p. 364) slavery and a slave-trade occur in certain parts, and slaves 
 are sometimes eaten. Adoption, however, is another possible alternative 
 to cannibalism in some paits of Oceania, e. g. in New Caledonia, where 
 slavery is imknown (Letoumeau, La Qutrrt, p. 49). 
 
 » Schmidt, Z. f. V. R„ 1898, p. 294. 
 
 ' Post, Afrik. JuHsprudenz, i. 85. 
 
246 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 tribes,^ slavery is universal and strongly developed, and its 
 principal source of recruitment is war. Throughout the Malay 
 world the enslavement of captives is found as an alternative to 
 cannibalism and head-hunting, while, again, in the tribes of the 
 Asiatic Steppes the captives are often put to death, but slaves or 
 serfs are numerous in proportion to the wealth and fighting 
 power of the people who hold them. 
 
 We may briefly summarize these characteristics of savage and 
 barbaric war by saying that it is waged, not merely by tribe 
 against tribe, but by individuals against individuals. Its motive 
 is often vengeance, the slaying of a man or the kidnapping of 
 a woman, and whether it ends in the extermination or the en- 
 slavement of the beaten party, or even in the milder alternative 
 of their adoption, it is equally directed against the individual 
 persons who constitute the hostile community. The conquered 
 in war stand with their persons and property wholly at the 
 disposal of the victors. Their fate may be harsher or milder. 
 They may be eaten, or sacrificed, or tortured, or simply slain 
 where they stand ; their lives may be spared, and they may 
 be led into slavery. But in all these cases — and they form 
 the overwhelming majority — they are treated as rightless and 
 defenceless against those who conquer them. Even in the case 
 where they are adopted as members of the conquering tribe, it 
 can scarcely be said that their personal rights are taken into 
 consideration. 
 
 4. In early civilization the character of war is not fundament- 
 ally changed in this respect. Only the growth of industry and 
 of a settled order is a stimulus to the general enslavement of 
 prisoners in preference to their destruction, while the develop- 
 ment of military power increases the means of capture. Canni- 
 balism generally dies out — the case of Mexico is an exception. 
 Human sacrifice also occurs, but in the majority of instances, if 
 the prisoners are not slain in pure vengeance, they are either 
 carried off as slaves to the conqueror (and many of the great 
 works of early civilization were built by slave labour of this kind) 
 or a tribute is laid upon them, and they become a semi-servile 
 population. 
 
 In ancient Egypt we find traces of cannibalism in the pyra- 
 midal inscriptions, but they are not specially connected with 
 warfare. Something of the nature of human sacrifice, however, 
 
 1 For very divergent accounts of the Kaffirs both as to treatment of 
 prisoners and as to the extent to which they recognized slavery, see Waite, 
 ii. 398 ; Letoumeau, La Guerre, 96, 97 ; id., L' Esdavage, p. 53. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 247 
 
 ippears to have persisted to a late epoch. No bas relief is 
 nore familiar to the traveller in Egypt than t^at represent- 
 ng the king as a gigantic figure holding up a mace to smite 
 ihe heads of a bunch of little captives, whom he holds with 
 )ne hand, in the presence of a triad of gods. This scene, 
 Eound among some of the very earliest of Egyptian monuments, 
 recurs in the Middle and New Kingdoms.^ In some cases the 
 bulk of the males were simply exterminated, but chiefs were 
 selected, either for sacrifice or for special vengeance. Thothmes 
 LI. (18th Dynasty) records : " This army of his Majesty over- 
 ihrew these foreigners. They took the life of every male accord- 
 ing to all that his Majesty commanded, except that one of 
 those children of the Prince of Kush was brought alive as a live 
 prisoner, with his household, to his Majesty, and placed under 
 the foot of the good god."^ Again, Amenhotep II. (18th Dynasty) 
 larrates how " His Majesty returned in joy of heart to his father 
 ^men. His hand had struck down the seven chiefs with his 
 mace himself. . . . They were hung up by the feet on the 
 front of the bark of his Majesty. . . . The six of these enemies 
 weie hung in front of the walls of Thebes, and the hands in 
 the same manner." ' The hands in this passage refer to the 
 method of enumerating the slain. Of those who were kiUed 
 the hands were cut off and sent to the king as a voucher for the 
 lumber destroyed, and so the number of hands is a recognized 
 jxpression for the number of slain warriors, and we have 
 •epresentations upon the monuments of heaps of hands of dead 
 iaptives being brought in and piled before the triumphant 
 king. 
 
 On the other hand, many of the Egyptian warlike expeditions 
 were apparently mere slave razzias. Thus, the officer Se'anch, 
 ivho opened up Hammamat under the 11th Dynasty, records how 
 le " repaired to the sea and hunted people and hunted cattle, and 
 [ came to this region with sixty full-grown people and seventy 
 
 ' Usurtesen (12th Dynasty) set up a stele cgmmemorating his victories 
 )ver the peoples beyond the Cataract. Ten of their principal chiefs had 
 passed before Amon as prisoners, their arms tied behind their backs, and 
 leid been sacrificed at the foot of the altar by the sovereign himself. There 
 ire instances of human sacrifice as late as the Christian epoch (Am61ineau, 
 La Morale Egyptienne, Introduction, p. 76). Amru, the Mohammedan con- 
 lueror of Egypt, forbade a young girl being thrown into the river to get 
 i good inundation. This, of course, is not connected directly with warfare, 
 )ut as prisoners had been the principal source of sacrifice to the gods 
 n earlier times, the persistence of the idea of human sacrifice throws an 
 U-omened light upon their lot, even in later days. 
 
 ' Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, nth and lith Dynasties, p. 73. 
 
 ' ib., 156. 
 
248 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of their young children at a single time." Similarly, Usurtesen 
 III. (12th Dynasty) commemorates his victory over the Nubians : 
 " I have carried off their women and captured their men, for I 
 marched to their well. I slew their oxen, cut down their com 
 and set fire to it." ^ 
 
 The appropriate god, of course, took a part with zest in these 
 proceedings. "The good god exults when he begins to fight; 
 he is joyful when he is to cross the frontier, and is content when 
 he sees blood; he cuts off the heads of his enemies, and an 
 hour of fighting gives him more delight than a day of pleasure." 
 So say the inscriptions of the 19th Dynasty. Mercilessness is 
 idealized. Eulogizing the king, Sinuhit says : " He is a lion 
 who strikes with the claw ... he has a heart closed to pity; 
 when he sees the multitudes he lets nothing remain behind 
 him." And Sinuhit himself, in narrating a single combat with 
 his foe, expresses with admirable terseness the primitive theory 
 of retaliation : "I shot at him, and my arrow struck in his neck. 
 He cried out and fell upon his nose. I brought down upon him 
 his own battle-axe. . . . Then I took his goods, I seized his 
 cattle. What he had thought to do to me I did it unto him. 
 I seized that which was in his tent; I spoiled his dwelling; 
 I grew great thereby." ^ 
 
 Thus the rightlessness of the captured enemy was complete. 
 The ideas of vengeance and retaliation were practically unmiti- 
 gated, and no softening influence was exerted by religion. Upon 
 the other hand, the idea of a regular treaty with a foreign nation 
 was distinctly understood. Thus we have, in the reign of 
 Rameses II., a treaty with the Hittites, providing for the return 
 of deserters from either country to their original home, and 
 promising that neither the deserter himself nor his wives or 
 children shall be destroyed, nor his mother be slain.^ 
 
 In the sister civilization of the Euphrates and Tigris Valleys 
 more is known of the warlike methods of the relatively bar- 
 barous Assyrians than of the relatively civilized Babylonians. 
 Of the Babylonians our principal information comes from their 
 treatment of the Jews, which included their arbitrary removal 
 from their own land into a species of captivity, of the conditions 
 
 • Cf. the complacent account in the inscription of Uni (Sayce, Beeordt 
 of the Past (new series), vol. ii. p. 7). Sometimes the captives became 
 the spoil of the general himself. Aahmes, in the beginning of the 18th 
 Dynasty, gratefully acknowledges his Majesty's goodnesB to him in this 
 respect (Flinders Petrie, op. cit., p. 22 ; cf. Erman, 606). 
 
 ' Sayce, op. dt., vol. ii. p. 22. 
 
 ' The treaty, however, is now held to be more Hittite than Egyptian in 
 origin. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 249 
 
 if which we know little, but, with the exception of the putting 
 ut of Zedekiah's eyes, we hardly hear of the personal tortures 
 
 savagely boasted of by one after another of the Assjrrian 
 ;ings. Towards the Babylonians the Assyrians themselves 
 rere mUd in comparison with their treatment of other people ; 
 lut the boasting of the Assyrian conquerors over the horrors 
 lerpetrated under their orders, though it appears in certain 
 letails to have been exaggerated by mistranslation, will 
 irobably always remain the classical exposition of naked and 
 loastful ferocity in warfare. " To the city of Kinabu," says 
 Issur-nasir-pal (883-885 B.C.), " I approached. ... I captured 
 b. Six hundred of their fighting men I slew with the sword, 
 lOOO of their captives I burned with fire. . . . The people of 
 he country of Nirbu encouraged one another . . . the city of 
 ?ela was very strong . . . 3000 of their fighting men I slew 
 dth the sword; their spoil, their goods, their oxen and their 
 heep I carried away; their numerous captives I burned with 
 ire. I captured many of the soldiers alive with the hand. I 
 ut ofi the hands and feet of some ; I cut off the noses, the ears 
 .nd the fingers of others ; the eyes of the numerous soldiers 
 
 put out." Again, in another city, " I impaled 700 men 
 ipon stakes at the approach of their great gate. The city I 
 iverthrew, dug up and reduced to a mound and ruin. Their 
 'oung men and their maidens I burned as a holocaust." ^ 
 Lnd so on through a list of mutilations, burnings and 
 mpalements. 
 
 Quarter, of com'se, was not always refused. Often the king 
 larrates that the captives " took my feet. I laid hold upon them 
 .nd counted them among the men of my own country." And 
 fc should be noted that, in the Assyrian Pantheon, there was at 
 sast one god who apparently made for righteousness and mercy. 
 Isshur is always identified with the conquering king, who fights 
 rath Asshur, and wins victories for Asshur. But Shamash bestows 
 is favours on the kings for righteousness, and it is at least 
 rarth noting that we find Tiglath-Pileser setting captives free 
 
 1 Shamash's presence. The conquered might be carried off as 
 laves, or they might remain as tributaries, and the unwieldy 
 nd short-hved empires of the Near East consisted of such 
 dbutary states, frequently rebelling, and reduced by great 
 arbarity to submission and the pa3rment of further tribute, 
 'robably the increased number of slaves in later, as compared 
 rath earher Babylonian times, may be ascribed to a long course 
 i successful warfare. 
 
 ' Sayce, Records of the Pott, ii. 146, 159, etc. 
 
250 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 5. The religious motive which, among the Assyrians and 
 Egyptians, merely adds emphasis and a certain exaltation to 
 warlike ferocity, became among the Hebrews a reason for carry- 
 ing the savage practices of extermination to the extreme. We 
 are perhaps hardly to assume that the primitive tribes who 
 conquered Canaan were in reality so bloodthirsty as their 
 historians represent them. The destruction, as commentators 
 say, takes place on paper, but it is none the less ethically signifi- 
 cant. The rules of war are laid down in the twentieth chapter of 
 Deuteronomy. A distinction is drawn between the cities which 
 are far off and those of the Canaanites. In the former case the 
 Hebrews were first to proclaim peace to the city to which they 
 drew nigh, and " if it make thee answer of peace, and open unto 
 thee, then it shall be that all the people that is found therein 
 shall become tributary unto thee and shall serve thee." This 
 is the milder fate. But if it makes war and the Lord deliver it 
 " into thine hand, thou shalt smite every male thereof with the 
 edge of the sword ; but the women and the little ones, and the 
 cattle, and all that is in the city, even all the spoil thereof, shalt 
 thou take for a prey unto thyself." This corresponds closely 
 enough to what we have found to be the most common practice 
 of barbarian warfare — ^tribute or forced labour from those who 
 submit voluntarily, the massacre of the males and enslavement 
 of women and children in other cases. A tjrpical case is narrated, 
 presumably as an example,'^ in Numbers, where aU the male 
 Midianites are slain, but the women and children are taken ; but 
 Moses is wroth with the host for saving all the women aUve, on 
 the ground that they cause Israel to trespass, and he bids them 
 kill every male among the little ones and every woman, except 
 the virgins, whom they may keep for themselves. Here the 
 fear of reUgious contamination comes in, and this is carried to 
 an extreme in the case of the Canaanite cities with which we have 
 now to deal. They were to be utterly destroyed. " Of the 
 cities of these peoples which the Lord thy God giveth thee for 
 an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth." 
 And so, in the conquest of Canaan, Jericho is " devoted," that is 
 to say, it is made over absolutely to Jahveh ; the city with every- 
 thing belonging to it is sacred, and so taboo to man, and a curse 
 is laid upon the site, so that it can never be buUt up again. When 
 Achan secretes a wedge of gold taken from the spoil, he com- 
 municates the curse to the whole host, and the people suffer 
 defeat until they remove from them the accursed thing. In 
 point of fact this religious extermination was, of course, very 
 1 Num. xxxi. 8, 9. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 251 
 
 loomplete, for the Canaanites remained, and we find Solomon ^ 
 ivying a tribute of bond service upon them. But there was 
 luoh savage barbarity, whether from religious motives or merely 
 :om revenge. Joab smote every male in Edom,^ and when he 
 3ok Rabbah, " he brought forth the people that were therein, 
 ad put them under saws, and under harrows of iron, and 
 nder axes of iron, and made them pass through the brick- 
 iln,' and thus did he unto all the cities of the children of 
 Linmon." * 
 
 Indiscriminate massacres were sometimes practised in the 
 Lvil wars of the people, as in the case of the male Ephraimites 
 rho could not pronounce the famous shibboleth,* and of the 
 ienjamites,* and the people of Jabesh-gilead who were de- 
 troyed, men, women and children, for not joining in the destruc- 
 ion of the Benjamites.' Only in two points does a higher ethical 
 onoeption emerge. First, there is the provision for a female 
 aptive in Deuteronomy, referred to in a previous chapter, 
 he was to have her time for mourning, and, if married by her 
 iptor, was not to be sold nor dealt with as a slave, " because 
 iou hast humbled her." Here there is a touch of humanity 
 iavening general barbarism. Another point is the observance 
 f the oath made to the children of Gibeon. They deceived 
 oshua into thinking they were strangers, but the covenant 
 ith them was to be observed to the letter, and so they became 
 ewers of wood and drawers of water unto aU the congregation, 
 he oath, that is to say, was inviolable though taken in covenant 
 ith a foreigner and a heathen. 
 
 The spirit of retaliation and the taking of captives persists 
 ren in the post-exilic writer of Isaiah xiii. and xiv. : " They shall 
 ike them captive whose captives they were, and they shall 
 
 1 1 Kings ix. 20, 21. « 1 Kings xi. 16. 
 
 ' The Revised Version mercifully suggests a slight change in the text, 
 hioh would run : " Made them labour at the brick mould " (2 Sam. xii. 
 !)■ 
 
 ' 1 Chronicles xx. 3. ° Judges xii. 6. 
 
 ' Judges XX. and xxi. 
 
 ' The whole story of Judges xx. and xxi. is complex and probably 
 srived by putting different and incompatible versions together. It is 
 itended to represent an execution of justice for a wicked act upon a tribe, 
 at it incidentally reveals the barbarities mentioned in the text. It is to 
 B observed, however, that the Israelites shrink from the utter destruction 
 E a tribe, and so they preserve four hundred virgins from the people 
 E Jabesh-gilead as wives for the sm-viving Benjaniites, whose women had 
 Ben destroyed, while they further encourage the Benjamites to carry off 
 laidens from the feast at Shiloh to make up for deficiencies, an inter- 
 lingling of crude barbarisms with an attempt at a moral which could 
 ardly be surpassed for confusion. 
 
252 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 rule over their oppressors." ^ Yet Micah is one of the first to 
 dream of a universal peace. God " shall judge between many 
 peoples, and shall reprove strong nations afar off, and they shall 
 beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning- 
 hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
 shall they learn war any more." With this passage, which is 
 repeated in almost the same terms in the post-exilic " Isaiah," we 
 find the religion of the Jews turning its face away from the 
 fierce exclusiveness which led merely to an idealization of the 
 most savage elements of warfare towards those hopes of a world- 
 embracing religion, which was destined to so mighty a growth, 
 though the fruits of universal peace have not yet been borne. 
 
 6. So far we have dealt with the essentially warlike peoples. 
 As we go further east we come to that part of the human race 
 in which the inherent preference of peace to war, professed by 
 other peoples, appears to be more of a reality. Both in Hindu 
 and in Chinese ethics, widely different as they are in other 
 respects, war takes a lower place than in Western civilization. 
 India, of course, had its heroic age. War is frequently mentioned 
 in the Vedas. War chariots were used, and spears, swords, 
 knives and defensive armour. Probably the Aryan invaders of 
 India did not differ much in the rules of warfare from their 
 kindred in other parts of the world. In the Mahabharata 
 we find the fighting spirit idealized. Chivalry is recognized, 
 and honourable and dishonourable methods of warfare are 
 distinguished. 
 
 " Red with rage, Bhima stepped up to the king-lion, who lay 
 outstretched, with his club beside him, beat in his skull with his 
 foot, and said : ' We have not laid fire to burn our enemies, nor 
 cheated them in the game, nor outraged their wives; by the 
 strength of our arms alone we destroy our enemies.' " ^ 
 
 The victors, however, carry off slave-women along with the 
 booty ; so that, though there might be rules of chivalry in the 
 fight, the prisoners, as in barbaric warfare, were at the disposal 
 of the conqueror. But not at his absolute disposal ; quarter for 
 the vanquished and general respect for women, though they 
 appear to have been lawfully part of the spoil, are strongly 
 insisted upon. Manu has, in fact, a complete, though brief, 
 legal code of warfare. 
 
 When he fights with his foes in battle, let him not strike with 
 weapons concealed (in wood), nor with (such as are) barbed, 
 
 1 Isaiah xiv. 2. ' Dunoker, History of Antiquity, vol. iv. p. 93. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 253 
 
 poisoned, or the points of which are blazing with fire. Let him 
 not strike one who (in flight) has climbed on an eminence, nor a 
 eunuch, nor one who joins the palms of his handU (in supplica- 
 tion), nor one who (flees) with flying hair, nor one who sits down, 
 nor one who says, " I am thine." Nor one who sleeps, nor one 
 who has lost his coat of mail, nor one who is naked, nor one who 
 is disarmed, nor one who looks on without taking part in the 
 fight, nor one who is fighting with another (foe). Nor one whose 
 weapons are broken, nor one afilicted (with sorrow), nor one who 
 has been grievously wounded, nor one who is in fear, nor one who 
 has turned to flight ; (but in all these cases let him) remember 
 the duty (of honourable warriors).^ 
 
 This recognition of chivalrous usage and limitation of the 
 use of barbarous methods may be associated with that general 
 tendency of Indian thought which put the priestly caste above 
 the warrior. Purity of life is the &-st object, and the spiritual 
 law, involving, as it does at its best, careful abstinence from 
 injury to every living creature, man or beast, becomes an ideal 
 of life which, in the Brahmanic teaching, ranks above the old 
 knightly ideal.^ This ideal of peace and universal beneflcence 
 was further emphasized by Buddhism, to which the taking of 
 human life under any conditions is a crime. 
 
 Passing stiU further east, we flnd that Chinese thinkers, so 
 different from Indian in other respects, agree with them in their 
 attitude to warfare. Yet Chinese warfare itself was, at any rate 
 in early times, thoroughly barbaric. Few prisoners were made ; 
 the vanquished chiefs were put to death, while the common 
 soldiers were released after an ear had been cut off. The left 
 ears of the slain were also cut ofi, no doubt for purposes of 
 reckoning.' Captives, however, were at times made slaves and 
 were also tortured. We find allusions to both these practices in 
 the classical books, e. g. in the She-King — 
 
 " With our prisoners for the question and our captive crowd we return." * 
 Again — 
 
 " My sorrowing heart is very sad, 
 I think of my unfortunate position. 
 The innocent people will all be reduced to servitude with me." ' 
 
 * Alanu, vii. see. 90-93. ^ Duncker, op. cit., 107. 
 
 ' Biot, in the Journal Asiatique, translated in Legge's Prolegomena to 
 the She-King, chap. iv. p. 158. 
 
 * She-King, Part 11. Book I. Ode 8, Stanza 6. On this Dr. Legge notes : 
 " Those who would be questioned " (put to the tortiire) " indicate, we may 
 suppose, chiefs of the Heen-yun ; the ' crowd of captives,' the multitude of 
 their followers." 
 
 ' Part II. Book IV. Ode 8, Stanza 3. 
 
254 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 And again — 
 
 " The engines of onfall and assault were gently applied 
 Against the walls of Ts'ung, high and great. 
 Captives for the question were brought in one after another. 
 The left ears (of the slain) were taken leisurely." ' 
 
 The classical books, however, more than once represent the 
 superiority of peaceful to warlike methods. The emperor or 
 prince who gives an example of justice and graciousness is re- 
 presented as attracting the people to him, and warlike chiefs are 
 depicted as being influenced by an example of goodwill and 
 readiness to give up a point. This is brought out very quaintly 
 in such stories as those of the chiefs of Joo and Juy, who had a 
 quarrel about a strip of territory, which they went to lay before 
 the lord of Chow. But " as soon as they entered his territory, 
 they saw the ploughers readily yielding the furrow, and travellers 
 yielding the path, to one another " ; and in fact every one giving 
 way to every one else. All this made them ashamed of their 
 own quarrel. They became reunited, and the affair being noised 
 abroad, more than forty states tendered their submission to 
 Chow.^ But in this glorification of the virtues of an excellent 
 passivity and of conquering by the meek surrender of claims, we 
 come perilously near to a thin excuse for mere cowardice or 
 failure. The reader must judge in which way the following 
 story may be interpreted. When the Emperor Yu could not 
 conquer the rebels of Meaou, he was admonished by Yih that 
 " pride brings loss, and humility receives increase." Moved by 
 the " excellent words," he drew off his army and " set about 
 diffusing his accomplishments and virtue more widely." The 
 better part of valour had its reward. " In seventy days the 
 Prince of Meaou came to make his submission." One would 
 like to know the precise nature of the " submission." * 
 
 In the teaching of Mencius, however, there is no doubt at all 
 about the strenuous opposition to war and militarism. The 
 protests of this great teacher against the use of force were 
 repeated and strenuous. They were based upon the purest of 
 humanitarian principles and applied with great psychological 
 insight. When Mencius saw King Seuen much touched by the 
 frightened appearance of an ox being led to the sacrifice and 
 ordering that a sheep should be substituted for it, he told him 
 
 1 Part III. Book I. Ode 7, Stanza 8. On this Dr. Legge notes : " When 
 prisoners refused to submit, they were put to death and their left ears 
 taken oH." 
 
 ' She-Kin^, vol. ii. p. 441, note. 
 
 ' Shoo-King, part ii. book ii., iii. 21. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 255 
 
 ery justly that it was because " you saw the oxen and had not 
 sen the sheep." A superior man, he went on, cannot eat the 
 nimals whose dying cries he has heard, and so h# keeps away 
 •om his cook-room. Mencius had thus grasped the fundamental 
 lot of the part played by want of imagination in maintaining 
 arfare. He proceeds to point out that here " is kindness 
 ifficient to reach to animals, and no benefits are extended from 
 ; to the people." ^ The king should begin, he says, with rever- 
 ice to age and kindness to youth in his own family, and the 
 sample would spread and tend to humanize the people. In- 
 «ad of doing this the king prepares for war. Does this give 
 im pleasure ? The king admits that it does not, but says he 
 oes it to " seek for what I greatly desire." Mencius asks for 
 hat reason he desires it — ^for lack of food, clothing or sounds ? 
 To; it is for none of these. "You wish to enlarge your 
 srritories ... to rule the middle kingdom and to attract to 
 ou the barbarous tribes that surround it, but to do what you do 
 ) seek for what you desire is like climbing a tree to seek for 
 sh." In fact, it is worse, for it is calamitous. " Now, if your 
 [ajesty will institute a government whose action should aU 
 B benevolent, this would cause all the officers in the empire to 
 ish to stand in your Majesty's court, and the farmers all to 
 ish to plough in your Majesty's fields, and the merchants both 
 •aveUing and stationary, all to wish to store their goods in your 
 [ajesty's market-places . . . and all throughout the empire 
 ho feel aggrieved by their rulers to wish to come and complain 
 ) your Majesty." In short, Mencius' prescription for making 
 ae's self a universal monarch was to prove one's self the best 
 ad most just monarch.^ He would disallow the annexation of 
 )nquered territory except by the will of the conquered people, 
 ^en King Seuen had conquered Yen, he asked Mencius if he 
 lould take possession of it. Mencius replied that, if the people 
 E Yen would be pleased with his doing so, let him do it ; other- 
 ise not.* War itself Mencius denoimces as a crime, and those 
 ho make war as worthy of death and worse. Confucius, he said, 
 ould have nothing to do with the ministers of oppressive 
 riaces; "how much more would he have rejected those who 
 :e vehement to fight for their prince. When contentions about 
 rritory are the ground on which they fight, they slaughter 
 en imtU the fields are filled with them . . . this is what is 
 <lled leading on the land to devour human flesh." Death, he 
 ys, is not enough for such a crime, and those who are skilful to 
 
 ' Mencius, Book I. part i. chap. vii. par. 8-10. 
 
 ' Book I. part i. chap. vii. ' Book I. part ii. chap x. 
 
256 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 fight should suffer the highest punishment. Again, " to employ 
 an uninstructed people in war may be said to be destroying the 
 people. . . . Though by a single battle you should subdue Tse 
 and get possession of Nan-yan, the thing ought not to be done." i 
 The mere transfer of territory is wrong, but the bloodshed by 
 which it is achieved is worse. " If it were merely taking the place 
 from the one state to give it to the other, a benevolent man 
 would not do it; how much less wiU he do so when the end 
 is to be sought by the slaughter of men." ^ As to ministers who 
 advise a warlike policy with a view to conquest, they might be 
 tolerated in these degenerate days, but in the good old times 
 they would have been called robbers of the people. Mencius 
 said : " Those who nowadays serve their sovereigns, say, 
 ' We can for our sovereign enlarge the limits of the cultivated 
 ground and fill his treasuries and arsenals.' Such persons are 
 nowadays called ' Good Ministers,' but anciently they were 
 called ' Robbers of the People.' " ^ The generals Mencius 
 involved in one condemnation with the warUke ministers. 
 " There are men who say, ' I am skilful at marshalling troops; 
 I am skilful at conducting a battle.' They are great criminals." * 
 The warlike Western world has scarcely known a more vigorous 
 and sweeping protest against warfare and everything connected 
 with it and every principle upon which it is based. And if it is 
 said that the Chinese Empire, under the inspiration of such 
 teaching, has ceased to be able adequately to defend itself 
 against barbarians, it should also be remembered that, under the 
 Chinese system, a population larger than that of Europe live in 
 permanent peace with one another, and that they have, in a 
 sense, as their own religious books recommend, absorbed those 
 who have conquered them by peaceful arts. 
 
 7. From these ideals of peace we return to the fighting nations 
 of the Western world. In Homeric Greece wars were often 
 little more than raids for women and cattle lifting, or they were 
 reprisals for similar raids by fi hostile clan. Piracy was held to 
 be improper and displeasing to the gods, but not shameful, and 
 Thucydides remarks that to ask a stranger whether he was a 
 pirate was apparently not considered an act of discourtesy.^ In 
 a captured town the normal fate of the men was to be slain, and 
 of the women to be carried off as bond slaves. Achilles boasts 
 of the pillage of which he has been guilty.^ Quarter may be 
 
 * Book IV. part i. chap. xiv. ; Book VI. part ii. chap. viii. 
 
 ' t6., sec. 8. ' Book VI. part ii. chap. ix. 
 
 * Book VII. partii. chap. iv. ' Thueyd., i. 5. 
 
 * Iliad, IX. 325, etc. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 257 
 
 refused at •will. Before the death of Patroclus Achilles often 
 accepted ransom, but after it he declares his intention of refusing 
 all quarter and rejects Lycaon's prayers for his life. The corpse 
 of the dead is insulted ; Hector is dragged at the chariot wheels, 
 and twelve youths are sacrificed to the spirit of Patroclus. Even 
 in the historical period prisoners of war were unconditionally 
 the property of the conqueror.'- Custom enjoined quarter,^ but 
 prisoners were often killed.* Generally prisoners were held for 
 exchange or ransom,* or sold as slaves. The booty was divided, 
 and a tithe was given to the gods. In the case of the Medising 
 cities the patriot Greeks took oath to devote a tithe of their goods 
 to Delphi. But generally the terms obtained by a surrendered 
 city depended upon the Homologia.^ When a town was stormed 
 all the males were often put to the sword and the women and 
 children enslaved.* At the capture of Platsea the Spartans put 
 all the prisoners to death after a judicial trial, and the Athenians 
 were no better. On the suppression of the revolt of Chios all the 
 men were slain and the women and children enslaved. The same 
 fate befell Melos,' while at Mende the generals intervened to 
 prevent the massacre.* At times the dead were mutilated,* and 
 the same fate might even befaU the hving.^" The massacres did 
 not always go without a protest. In the famous case of Mitylene, 
 the destruction of the entire city, after having been voted by the 
 assembly, was rescinded by the redoubled efforts of the friends 
 of the Mityleneans, who, by the aid of a specially swift trireme, 
 overtook the first order in time to prevent its execution, so that 
 only 1000 Mityleneans were put to death. 
 
 On the other hand, the Greeks were perhaps the first people 
 to develop something like a regular international law. Feuds 
 between neighbours were replaced by spondee, which passed 
 ultimately into aUiances, generally of a defensive character, and 
 
 * Busolt, Handbuch der klassischen Altertvmnswissenachaft, Bd. iv. p. 59. 
 Aristotle, Politics, i. 2-6, 1255a. 
 
 ' Thucyd, iii. 58, 66, 67. The surrendered Platseans plead that " the 
 custom of Hellas does not allow the suppliant to be put to death." The 
 plea, however, was not allowed. 
 
 ' Thucyd., i. 30 ; ii. 67 ; iii. 32. Xenophon, Hellenics, II. i. 32. Plutarch, 
 Lyaander (tr. Langhome), p. 311. 
 
 * Thucyd., ii. 103 ; iv. 69 ; v. 3. Herodt., i. 89. 
 
 ' In the case of Potidsea, the men were allowed to leave the city with 
 one garment, the women with two. The Athenians blamed the general 
 for concluding the agreement instead of forcing a smrender at discretion 
 (Thucyd., u. 70). 
 
 ' lUad, IX. 590. Thucyd., iii. 28; v. 3, 32, 116. 
 
 ' Thucyd., v. 116. « Thucyd., iv. 130. 
 
 ' Xenophon, Anabasis, iii. 4. 
 
 '° Xenophon, Hellenics, ii. 1. 
 S 
 
258 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 for a specified number of years.^ But, further than this, they 
 developed a regular system of arbitration. Periander of Corinth 
 arbitrated between Athens and Mitylene as to the possession of 
 Sigeum. In the sixth century Sparta arbitrated between Athens 
 and Megara, and appeals to Delphi were not uncommon.^ Some- 
 times states were pledged by oath or by the deposit of a sum 
 of money to abide by arbitration, but in other cases the loyal 
 acceptance of the decision was a matter of goodwill, and was 
 sometimes refused, as in the case of Thebes * and of EUs.* 
 
 Furthermore, the instances of severity quoted above represent 
 the darkest side of Greek warfare. There was a better spirit 
 at work which recognized certain common laws of the Hellenes, 
 " unwritten laws " prescribing a measure of justice in inter-state 
 dealings, and of moderation and humanity to the vanquished. 
 The conquered Platseans appeal, though they appeal in vain, 
 to the custom of Hellas, which does not aUow supphants to be 
 put to death .^ The deahngs of the Athenians with Melos are 
 scathingly exposed by Thucydides by the absolute contempt of 
 right which he puts into the mouths of the apologists for Athens, 
 and the incident is dramatically set immediately before the 
 narrative of the Syracusan expedition, in which the impieties of 
 Athenian aggression were heavily punished. Mr. Murray con- 
 siders that the same incident was the immediate occasion of 
 Euripides' moving representation of the sufferings of the " Trojan 
 Women " played in the following year. Further, the whole 
 principle of Greek warfare was challenged by the philosophers. 
 The enslavement of Greek prisoners, the stripping of the slain, , 
 the erection of trophies in temples, the ravaging of the land 
 (apart from carrying off the crop of the season) and the burning 
 of houses are all condemned by Plato. The refusal of quarter is 
 not exphcitly mentioned, from which we may infer that at least 
 as a matter of principle this was sufficiently recognized as a 
 wrong in the fourth century. On the other hand, this milder 
 practice is only insisted on in wars between Greek and Greek. 
 These should be conducted as civil strife is at present — that is to 
 say, with the mitigations specified, while in future, Greeks should 
 behave to barbarians as they now do to one another.^ Nor was 
 Plato alone in his attitude. Aristotle, while recording that the 
 law " is an agreement wherein they say that what is conquered in 
 
 1 Busolt, op. cit., p. 54. 2 Thucyd., i. 28. ' Herodt., vi. 108. 
 
 * Thucyd., v. 31. ' Thucyd., iii. 58. 
 
 * Observe, however, that this summary of the argument is put into the 
 mouth of Glauoon, not of Socrates. Possibly Plato would have been 
 willing to preach a more comprehensive humanity, but feared to push the 
 argtunent too far [Bepublic, v. 469-471). 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 259 
 
 kr is the property of the conqueror," records that many jurists 
 ing a charge as it were of illegaUty against this l^w, and both 
 lists and philosophers are divided on the point .^ Aristotle 
 mself points out that the origin of a war may not be just, and 
 ao one would say that he is a slave who does not deserve to be 
 slave, for if so those who are held noblest might be slaves and 
 ns of slaves if they happened to be captured and sold." The 
 dth is that the Greeks " do not mean to caU themselves slaves, 
 it the barbarians." The solution is that there are natural 
 ives, who are slaves everywhere. In other words, the bar- 
 brian is ordained by nature as slave to the Hellene, but the 
 eUenes should be free.^ In this argument Aristotle clearly 
 nceives himself to be merely stating expUcitly and consistently 
 e principle which is confusedly held in the uninstructed thought 
 
 the period. He thus represents the stage which the best 
 reek ethics reaUy attained in this direction — an acceptance of a 
 gher rule of warfare enjoining respect for the persons of the 
 nquered (Plato's argument would add for their property as well) 
 ithin the limits of HeUas.* Outside these limits the old rules 
 
 barbaric warfare persist unaltered. 
 
 At Rome a defeated enemy was in principle rightless. The 
 !ry tjrpe and exemplar of property is that which is captured 
 Dm an enemy. Stranger and enemy are identical terms. The 
 ranger can have no rights except through the protection of a 
 bizen, and even apart from war and hostihty it is a juristic 
 axim that a member of a foreign community not bound to 
 ome by any treaty might be lawfully enslaved ; in other words, 
 I legal rights are confined to citizens and those to whom their 
 'otection is extended, and the ahen, and therefore stiU more the 
 ptured foeman, is at the disposal of the conqueror. In point of 
 ct the conquered were often put to death in great numbers, for 
 :ample, the population of Vacca by Metellus in the Jugurthine 
 ir.* The same fate befeU many towns of Gaul under the com- 
 batively clement Juhus Caesar. The taking of Eurgis in Spain 
 18 succeeded by a general massacre in which neither women nor 
 ildren were spared.* Tacitus, describing the ravaging of the 
 arsi by Germanicus, says that neither sex nor age were grounds 
 
 rovro 8J) ri hiKaiov ttoWoX ruv fv rots v6fX0is ^ffirep ^ropa ypd(t>oyrai irapai/6fj.a)v 
 . /col Toii fiiv oSru Softfi tois !' iKcivas, xai ray cro<puv (Aristotle, Politics, 
 vi. 2). 
 
 ' ib., para. 4r-6. 
 
 ' The principle found practical expression in the oath of the Delphian 
 aphictyony not to destroy any allied state, nor to out off its water in war 
 peace (Busolt, p. 65). 
 ' Letoumeau, La Guerre, p. 466. 
 ' Grotius, iii. 4, 9, quoting Appian. 
 
260 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of mercy.^ The good Emperor Titus massacred or sold as slaves 
 all the captives at the taking of Jerusalem.^ 
 
 But these are extreme cases. There is no reason to doubt 
 that the general feehng of the Roman world condemned excesses 
 of barbarity. Livy makes CamiUus say that his soldiers direct 
 their arms not against that age which is spared even in the 
 capture of a town, but against armed men.* The slaughter of 
 non-combatants, old men, women and children, is frequently 
 Spoken of in terms of condemnation, even of horror,* and Livy's 
 words, " jure belli in armatos repugnantesque caedes," ^ imply 
 the full limitation of the right of killing to active combatants 
 as understood in modem warfare. The violation of women, if 
 frequently allowed, was as frequently condemned, and measures 
 were by some generals taken to prevent it.* Upon the whole,'^' 
 personal barbarity, indiscriminate massacre, the refusal of 
 'quarter, the violation of women, and the slaying of captives, 
 though practised in times of excitement or loose discipline, are 
 condemned by the better minds as contrary to the jw belUc 
 On the other hand, the enslavement of prisoners, if desired, and 
 the confiscation of property were admitted to be regular.* 
 
 The importation of slaves into Italy on a large scale, owing to 
 war and the slave trade, revolutionized the Roman economic 
 system, and led thereby to the fall of the RepubUc. But, 
 instead of being enslaved, the conquered people might become 
 tributary — dediticii. The formula in this case expresses the 
 absoluteness of surrender exacted by an ancient conqueror : "I 
 give my person, my town, my land, the water which runs there, 
 my boundary gods, my temples, my movables, aU the things 
 
 • Grotius, iii. chap. iv. section 9, and authorities there cited, especially 
 the cynical remark of Horace which sums up the whole matter : " Vendere 
 cum possis captivum occidere noli " (Ep. xvi. 69). 
 
 ' Letoumeau, La Querre, p. 467, quoting Josephus, Bell, Jud., Book VI. 
 chap. xlv. 
 
 ' Livy, V. 27, and other passages quoted in Grotius, iii. 11. 
 
 * Instances, Greek and Latin, in Grotius, loc. cit. 
 
 ' Livy, xxviii. 23. Grotius, ib. Grotius further cites Sallust {Juguf 
 thine War, chap, xcvi.) for a condemnation of the slaughter of men after 
 surrender as contra jus belli. Elsewhere (par. 6) he quotes Cicero as saying 
 that captives who have not shown cruelty should be spared, and Seneca as 
 insisting that an enemy should be set free, and even held in honour, if he 
 has fought for honourable reasons. 
 
 ' 6. g. Maroellus and Scipio. Grotiiis, Book III. chap. iv. par. 19. 
 
 ' An exception must be admitted in the case of the vanquished king or 
 general, who might be, and not infrequently was, put to death in the 
 Mamertine prison before the sacrifice to Capitoline Jupiter was proceeded 
 with (Grotiiis, iii. 11, 1). 
 
 ' See Livy, cited in Grotius, iii. 5, 1 : " Esse qusedam belli jura qua 
 ut facere ita pati sit fas : sata exuri, dirui teota : prsedas hominum 
 pecorumque agi." 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 261 
 
 vhich belong to the gods, to the Roman people." ^ The people 
 vho surrendered on these terms retained their lande on payment 
 »f tribute and accepted a Roman governor. They had in 
 trictness no rights as against the Roman Government, and 
 whatever liberties were accorded to them were reversible at will.^ 
 But a more liberal system grew up as the Roman conquests were 
 ixtended. In some cases a community was allowed to retain 
 ts own government white brought under the political hegemony 
 if Rome as an ally, with rights secured by foedus. A consider- 
 ible measure of local self-government was left to the civilized 
 ommunities fully incorporated in the Empire, and the spread 
 if Roman civilization was regularly marked by the extension of 
 aunicipal privileges. Further, civic rights were extended to 
 he subjects of Rome, first in the form of the jvs Latinum, which 
 rem early days had conferred the principal civil rights on in- 
 labitants of the cities of Latium, and finally, as civilized order 
 idvanced, of the full Roman franchise, which, though its political 
 ralue disappeared with the fall of the RepubHc, placed subjects 
 ,nd masters on equal terms before the law. The boast of Virgil 
 hat Rome spared the submissive and warred down the proud 
 vas not wholly without justification, and the Roman Empire 
 ;radually approached the ideal of a world state, in which dis- 
 inctions of nationality carried no difference of privilege, but 
 itizenship was extended to aU free men. There was in this a 
 ertain approach to universaUsm which might hold within it 
 ome promise, if not of an aboUtion of war, at any rate of a 
 econstitution of its character. 
 
 8. We have now to consider the bearing of universaUsm, as 
 epresented by the world religions, upon the morahties of war. 
 n the teaching of the Koran it appears to be assumed that 
 rue believers will live at peace, while they wiU conquer and 
 ubdue the unbeUever. " If the two parties of beUevers quarrel, 
 lien make peace between them ; and if one of the twain outrages 
 lie other, then fight the party that has committed the outrage 
 ntU it return to Grod's bidding ; and if it do return, then make 
 eace between them with equity and be just. Verily God loves 
 tie just. The believers are but brothers, so make peace between 
 our two brethren and fear Grod, haply ye may obtain mercy." * 
 fo Moslem captive might be enslaved.* Very different was the 
 
 ^ Latoumeau, p. 468. 
 
 ^ Mommsen, Hiat. of Rome, Book IV. chap. vii. 
 ' Koran, Sacred Books of the East, vol. ix. chap. xlix. 
 Grotius, iii. 7, ix. 2. 
 
262 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 attitude to unbelievers. "And when ye meet those who mis- 
 believe, then striking off heads until ye have massacred them, 
 and bind fast the bonds." Theoretically, in fact, there is per- 
 petual war with aU countries which have not embraced Islam. 
 But there are degrees. No compromise was possible -nith 
 Arabian idolaters or with apostates. Non- Arabian idolaters 
 might be reduced to slavery, and, generally speaking, captives 
 might be slain, since the Prophet did so, and slaying them 
 terminates wickedness, but if a captive became a Moslem on the 
 battlefield, he might not be put to death, but in this case he might 
 still be enslaved, as the reason for enslaving him, that is to say, 
 securing his person, came into operation before the change of 
 faith. Slavery, then, was the second alternative, and beyond 
 this there was the milder possibility that the captive might be 
 released as a Zimmi — that is to say, as a non-Moslem subject, 
 liable to tribute. In any case a woman was not to be slain in 
 war. Mohammedan teaching, then, rests on the distinction 
 between Moslem and non-Moslem. Within the Moslem world it 
 looks forward to universal peace and forbids the enslavement of 
 the captive. Outside that world it allows not only enslavement, 
 but the refusal of quarter. 
 
 The character and effects of Christian teaching are somewhat 
 complex. While the Gospels pronounced definitely against 
 violence in any shape or form, the Church accommodated her 
 teaching to the practice of a warhke age, and Augustine up- 
 holds the soldier's profession, and endeavours to lay down the 
 conditions upon which war is justified. " To wage war is not a 
 crime, but to wage war for the sake of booty." ^ There is no 
 moral distinction between open fighting and ambuscade in a 
 just war, " but just wars are commonly defined as those which 
 avenge injuries, if any race or state which is to be attacked in 
 war has either neglected to punish wrongs done by its own 
 citizens or to retrieve what has been wrongfully carried off."^ 
 Again, the kind of war ordained by God is Just. Ambrose, 
 strongly denouncing the principle of non-resistance, declares 
 that he who does not defend a friend is as bad as the aggressor.' 
 On the other hand, malice, cruelty and vengeance, the implac- 
 able spirit, savagery in insurrection {feritas rebellandi) and the 
 lust of dominion are condemned by Augustine.* The purport 
 of these distinctions, for what they are worth, is to condemn 
 
 ' Serm. xix. Quoted by Gratian, Corpus Juris, 893, but apparently of 
 doubtful authenticity. 
 
 * Corpus Juris, 894. Reading " si qua gens vel civitas quse bello petenda 
 est." 
 
 ' ib., 898. Contra Maniehseos, Corpus Juris, 892. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 263 
 
 aggression and restrict warfare to the defensive. Private war- 
 fare, moreover, was persistently combated by the. Church,^ and 
 with regard to the rules of warfare generally, the canons deaHng 
 with the treatment of the enemy in person or property mark a 
 distinct advance in European custom. To enslave a fellow- 
 Christian or to put him to death, except in the actual fighting, 
 was forbidden from an early date,^ and Augustine lays down, 
 though not in very forcible language, the broad principle of later 
 warfare, that the slaughter of the enemy is to be limited by 
 aecessity (hostem pugnantem necessitas deprimat non voluntas)? 
 From this it follows that the lives of non-combatants, as weU as 
 japtives, should be spared. Women and children are therefore 
 secured from violence. Priests naturally enjoyed the same 
 privilege, and it was extended by the Canon Law to husband- 
 men and tradesmen.* Even as to the practice of ransom, which 
 yrew up when quarter came to be allowed, the Canon Law had 
 ts doubts, to be overcome by a lawyer's quibble. " A captive's 
 ^oods are unjustly extorted from him, but are justly proffered 
 ;o redeem his Ufe," is the solution proposed by Gratian ; ^ a 
 solution which in practice justifies ransom, and in theory must 
 be taken to admit that the captive's life is forfeit. 
 
 How far these relatively enhghtened principles were from 
 •estraining the barbarity of the Middle Ages every one knows. 
 Prom the dechne of the Western Empire to the Peace of West- 
 jhaha the internal wars of Western Europe present a series of 
 sarbarities and horrors which fuUy equal those of the Greek 
 )r the Itahan peoples, and Grotius, in his search for instances 
 )f magnanimity, generosity and the reprobation of methods of 
 lavagery, more often quotes Greek or Roman generals than 
 ihose of the Middle Ages or of his own time. Yet the idea of 
 
 ' According to Westermarck, however, with comparatively Httle success 
 Moral Ideas, p. 356 seq. ). 
 
 ' Grotius, loc. cit., quoting Gregoras, who lays it down as a rule holding 
 imong Chnatians, Sio t^v ttjs Trlffreus ravror-ftTa, recognized not only among 
 Jomans and Thessalonians, but among Illyrians, Triballi, and Bulgarians, 
 •a fifv Tpiyfiara fi6va ffKV?^eieiv to; 5e ffto^ra /n^ AySpoiroS^^eirtfat, fiijSh (ftofcijeiv 
 la TTJs iroAt/iuKijs iropoT(i|€iBj fvrfiiva.. 
 
 ' Augustine, Ep. 207. C. J., 892. 
 
 * Grotius, iii. 11, 12. Hall (A Treatise on International Law, p. 397) 
 efers to the Canon de Treuga (Decret. Oreg., p. 203, lib. i., Tit. xxxiv. 
 ap. 2), which laid down that monks, merchants, husbandmen and their 
 nimals, travellers, etc., are not to be killed. Hall also cites Franciscus & 
 ^ictoria as maintaining " quod etiam in bello contra Turcos non licet inter- 
 Loere infantes. Imo nee feminas inter infideles." The tradition lingered 
 ong that a garrison which held out d Vovirance might lawfully be massacred. 
 rhis is discussed by Grotius, iii. 11, 16, etc. See Hall, 400. 
 
 ' Grat., Corpus Jwris, 896. 
 
264 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 chivalry — ^the cult of the very parfait gentil knight, sworn to 
 succour the oppressed, to defend the women and children, and 
 to avoid all unknightly deeds — ^is a true product of the Middle 
 Ages, and its appearance side by side with the barbarities of 
 actual warfare is characteristic of the period. In the genera- 
 tions before Grotius' own time and during his life the savagery 
 of warfare had gathered itself for a supreme effort, and under 
 the guiding genius of an Alva and a TiUy had shown what men 
 could do to one another. But with the Peace of Westphalia 
 the period of the religious wars came to an end. Men were 
 sickened with horrors, and were the more ready to listen to 
 those who, like Grotius, had a rule to propound whereby even 
 in war men might be saved from becoming fiends. The devas- 
 tation of the Palatinate, which halt-a-century earlier would 
 have passed unnoticed as an ordinary incident of war, coming 
 in 1689, caused a thrill of horror in Europe, and from that time 
 onwards the practice of war underwent a slow and insufficient, 
 but still a real amendment. 
 
 9. The principle to which Grotius appealed was the Law of 
 Nature, which, however fictitious in the form in which it was 
 conceived by him and his contemporaries, expressed the pro- 
 found ethical truth that the rights and duties of men are not 
 circumscribed by the limitations of positive law or of revelation, 
 but rest upon certain universal attributes of humanity. But 
 this principle was pregnant with great consequences. By rest- 
 ing rights and duties on human nature as such, it gets below 
 the distinction of compatriot and foreigner and destroys the 
 basis of group-moraUty. Once grant that an enemy does not 
 cease to be a man, to whom as a man certain primary duties 
 are owing, and we have a principle which undermines the whole 
 structure of the earlier ethics of warfare. As a human being 
 possessed of human rights, the enemy comes under the ordinary 
 civiHzed conceptions of justice. He cannot fairly be punished 
 for the deHnquencies of his nation. Grant, what every beUigerent 
 assumes, that his own cause is just and that of the opponent 
 indefensible, grant that this is proved to the full satisfaction of 
 the military conscience by the verdict of the god of battles, still 
 it is only the hostile government that is in fault. The citizen 
 of the conquered country, even the soldier of the beaten army, 
 is not in fault. He has merely done his duty as a patriot, and 
 to make him suffer either in person or property for the delin- 
 quencies of his government would be to apply the barbaric 
 principle of collective responsibility. The custom of nations. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 265 
 
 i,nd in recent times explicit Conventions, especially the Geneva 
 Convention of 1864 and the Hague Convention^ of 1899 and 
 L907,^ have built up an extensive theoretical code for the pro- 
 tection of individuals. The employment of poison, killing by 
 ireaohery, the refusal of quarter, the use of weapons " of a nature 
 ID cause superfluous injury, to compel people to serve against 
 heir own country and to destroy or seize property unless it 
 'be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war," are 
 iMngs forbidden by the Hague Convention of 1907, art. 23. The 
 jombardment of undefended places is forbidden by art. 25, 
 jiUage by arts. 28 and 47, collective penalties, pecuniary or 
 )ther, for the acts of individuals by art. 50. Art. 46 stipulates 
 ;hat " Family honour and rights, the lives of individuals and 
 Drivate property, as weU as religious convictions and liberty of 
 ^forship, must be respected. Private property cannot be eon- 
 iscated," money and requisitions in kind can only be levied for 
 Durposes of administration or for mihtary necessities (arts. 48 
 md 52). The treatment of prisoners and the wounded is elabor- 
 itely safeguarded. If much of this reads like a satire on the 
 ictnahties of modem warfare it is due to two causes. In the 
 irst place, there is no authority whatever but the goodwill of 
 ihe authorities or the fear of reprisals ^ to enforce the code . In the 
 lecond place, mihtary necessity is a cloak covering a multitude of 
 lins. Thus, it is illegal to destroy private property, but mihtary 
 lecessity may require and justify the devastation of an entire 
 iountry.^ In practice it is to be feared that modern war inflicts 
 10 less suffering on the general population while it lasts than 
 ihe warfare of old days. But this is not a question which 
 san be judged in a dry hght in the autumn of 1914. In ethical 
 iheory, and in the customs which it has codified, the civihzed 
 TOrld has sought to safeguard the obligations of humanity 
 md the rights of the person. Though the citizens of a hostile 
 tate are enemies war is not waged indiscriminately upon 
 ndividuals, but is "a contention of states* through their armed 
 
 ' See The Hague Peace Conference, by A. P. Higgins, IV., " The Laws and 
 luBtoms of War on Land." 
 
 " Reprisals on innocent persons are not forbidden and the Hague Con- 
 entions are silent about hostages. But the practice of executing innocent 
 aeu in cold blood for the misdeeds of others is one of the most hideous 
 iractiees of modem war and goes far to deprive non-combatants of their 
 Bcurity. On Reprisals, see Oppenheim, Internal. Law, vol. ii. p. 305, and 
 n Hostages, p. 317, etc. 
 
 ' Oppenhein, vol. ii. p. 190. 
 
 * Oppenheim, ii. 63. The doctrine of Rousseau, that war is a relation 
 ictween states and not between individuals, goes a step ' further, and is 
 irgely accepted on the Continent. British and American writers regard 
 
266 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 forces," 1 and neither its progress nor its victorious close is to 
 deprive the vanquished of those rights which civilized codes 
 accept as inherent in human beings. 
 
 10. In emancipating individual rights from the violence of 
 war, the international lawyers were merely applying the concep- 
 tion of the rights of the individual personality on which modem 
 ethics rest. The further question remained, whether the various 
 groups of mankind have as groups assignable rights. Has a 
 state rights as against other states ? Has a nationality which has 
 no independent government a right as against the state or empire 
 of which it forms a part ? Has a locality rights as against the 
 country within which it lies ? Confining ourselves for the present 
 to the first question, we may point out that the utter denial of 
 all obligations as between communities under separate govern- 
 ments has seldom, if ever, been consistently carried out. Even 
 savages recognize the obligations of good faith, and the wicked- 
 ness of breaking a covenant when once made. On the other 
 hand, the right of the stronger to impose what terms he pleases, 
 and if necessary to push his demands to the point of the utter 
 annihilation of his enemy as an independent power, has been 
 almost as generally admitted. Yet in its denial of international 
 justice the world has always been singularly halting. The fable 
 of the wolf and the lamb has always appHed to the dealings of 
 strong and weak peoples, and men are never content to destroy 
 their enemies without first proving them to be wholly in the 
 wrong and utterly unworthy to live. In our own day the con- 
 fusion of ideas has reached its height, and results in changes of 
 attitude which succeed one another with bewildering rapidity, 
 men who at one moment deny all pleas for international justice 
 as silly sentimentality firing up immediately afterwards when 
 they are accused of applying their own principles with perfect 
 consistency, and denying as a disgraceful slander the charge that 
 they have followed practices which they have always declared 
 to be justifiable. Prom these symptoms we may conclude that 
 
 it as formally inaccurate, but Professor Oppenheim points out that the 
 difference is rather one of terms than of substance. Rousseau's dictum 
 may be said to express the ethical, if not the legal, conception of modern 
 war. 
 
 * See Hague Convention of 1899, iv., art. 1. This was unaltered in 1907. 
 Art. 2, which accords belligerent rights to the population of an invaded 
 territory which spontaneously takes up arms without having had time to 
 organize itself, was modified in 1907 by the condition, " if they carry arms 
 openly." The limitation is a serious one, for in practice the accusation 
 against the people of an occupied territory is constantly that they attack 
 by stealth. 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COSIMUNITIES 267 
 
 the human conscience is uneasy when it is finding formulae to 
 sanction wrong-doing in international affairs, a^d that in the 
 back of their minds people recognize that justice is justice even 
 though there be no power to enforce it. 
 
 In the mediaeval world such a power was, in fact, found in the 
 spiritual supremacy of the Pope, which accustomed men to the 
 reconciliation of national independence with a spiritual authority 
 to whom aU alike could appeal. When the Reformation broke 
 up this unity and the discovery of America raised new problems 
 of international right and wrong, the modern idea of an inter- 
 national code soon emerges. The early writers, like Franciscus 
 a Victoria, who boldly challenged the whole position of the 
 Spanish in the Indies, were too far ahead of their generation, 
 and passed away without sensibly influencing it. The work of 
 Grotius, as we have seen, had a more enduring influence, and 
 that not only on the usages of war, but on the whole conception 
 of nations as being at once poUticaUy independent and yet morally 
 subject to the law of Nature. A more revolutionary principle 
 was introduced, or rather was brought into prominence, by the 
 Society of Friends, who denounced all warfare as contrary to 
 the teaching of Christ, and sought to recall men to the principle 
 of non-resistance. The influence of the Society on the modem 
 world is not to be measured by the number of converts to its 
 principles. It is a protest which has set the military spirit the 
 task of justifying itself. Such justification may be founded in 
 theory on the necessities of self-defence. But if seK -defence is 
 a fuUy sufficient justification when the genuine motive of resis- 
 taiice, the study of history compels us to recognize that it is too 
 often a mere cloak for aggression. Nor if people are in earnest 
 in the desire to restrict war to the occasions on which a nation 
 can maintain its plain rights by no other means, will they ques- 
 tion that war is a radically rude and barbarous method of attain- 
 ing that end, justifiable at best only until means of obtaining 
 justice in international affairs are devised by the common-sense 
 of civilized humanity. The repeated settlement of difficulties — 
 sometimes of a most anxious and iritating nature — by arbitra- 
 tion in recent years, the instances of general agreements settling 
 outstanding controversies and providing for arbitration on 
 future matters of disagreement, and, finally, the provision of a 
 standing machinery for such occasions, aU point to a partial re- 
 placement of war by arbitration, and there seems every reason 
 to hope that within a generation the employment of judicial 
 arbitrament will be as common among the European states as 
 it was in the fifth century B.C. between the states of Greece. 
 
268 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The doctrine of natural liberty, particularly as preached by 
 Cobden and the Free Traders, also told heavily on the side of 
 peace, just as the recrudescence of miUtarism in our own day 
 has been associated, not in this country alone, with economic 
 Protection. But the Cobdenite doctrine was negative, and 
 might even, if rigidly appUed in cases Uke that of the Armenians, 
 be made a justification for a cynical policy of national isolation. 
 More elastic and more human was the Gladstonian creed, which, 
 following in the tradition of Fox, and equally of Canning, utterly 
 broke with the doctrine of state morality and rested international 
 dealings on the simple ground of right and wrong as applicable 
 to all other human relations. This is the Grotian principle, but 
 more thoroughly carried out. For Grotius, holding that states 
 were bound by the Law of Nature, conceived their conduct as 
 restricted only in those directions — and they were not so many— 
 with which the Law of Nature dealt. The fuller view allows 
 of no fundamental difference between one branch of morality 
 and another. One is as " natural " as the other, and so the 
 conception that we form of the honour, the true interest, the 
 advancement of our country is to be measured by the same 
 standards as we apply in judging of what redounds to the honour, 
 the true interest, the advancement of our dearest friends. At 
 this point we reach the result to which Mazzini was led by one 
 road and Comte by another, of each nation as a member of the 
 family of nations which constitute humanity, as possessing duties 
 as well as rights in virtue of its position, and as deriving a higher 
 honour and more lasting glory from its services to the greater 
 whole of which it is a part than from any exhibition of superior 
 strength shown in rivalry with its fellow-members. Just as 
 international law rests in its beginnings on the conception of 
 humanity as incarnate in the person of every human l^eing, so 
 in the consummated conception of right and brotherhood between 
 nations, it touches the other pole of modern ethics — the con- 
 ception of humanity as a whole, the sum of all human beings 
 and their collective history. In this conception the old group- 
 morality disappears. The special relations of citizenship impose 
 special obligations, but they are no longer incompatible with 
 the wider obligations to humanity at large, but supplement them. 
 The Englishman owes a duty to England — ^the mother of free- 
 dom, the land of his fathers, the state which protects him, the 
 nation which stimulates and guides him with a glorious tradition, 
 which it is his most splendid ambition to carry further on its 
 true line of growth. He does not owe the same duties to France 
 or Grermany, but he owes them recognition as members of the 
 
RELATIONS BETWEEN COMMUNITIES 269 
 
 'amily of nations, and there are times when he can best serve 
 England by reminding her of what is due to them. The true 
 Qatriotism is the comer-stone of true internationShsm. 
 
 In all this it is true that we are describing the ideals of thinkers 
 md statesmen rather than the practice of nations. Still, that 
 such ideals should have come into touch with practical states- 
 manship, as in the course of the nineteenth century they un- 
 ioubtedly did, is itself a fact of the highest importance for 
 3thical history. And notwithstanding a certain counter move- 
 ment in more recent thought, the actual reaUzation of internation- 
 ilism contrives, on the whole, to move forward. The develop- 
 ment may be compared to the rise of justice within society. 
 The civiUzed world has passed through the age of the blood feud 
 in which any quarrel gave rise to a war of extermination. Custom 
 das long since restricted the quarrel, excluded non-combatants 
 from the ring, and prohibited the general massacre or enslave- 
 ment of the kinsfolk. But, as in many primitive societies, there 
 is no physical force behind these customs, there is nothing but 
 the pressure of opinion and the ethical and rehgious ideas shared 
 by the nations concerned in common with their neighbours. The 
 Qext stage is to institute a court for the settlement of disputes. 
 Such a court generally has no powers in early society except the 
 moral power of an appeal to opinion, and precisely this is the 
 position of the Hague tribunal. It is not difficult to imagine a 
 bime when the decisions of that tribunal shall have gained such 
 authority that to dispute them wUl be held at once an outrage 
 on justice and a menace to the world's peace — such a menace 
 as would provoke a combination of powers to coerce the recalci- 
 trant party. At that point the world's tribunal will have gained 
 the executive authority needed to transform it into a fully- 
 developed court of justice. 1 
 
 ' The above section was ■written in days of peace. How far and in what 
 direction it should be altered in the light of subsequent events, are ques- 
 tions to which it is premature to attempt an answer. The passage has, 
 therefore, been left as it stood. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 CLASS RELATIONS 
 
 1. We have seen that moraUty at its outset is bound up with 
 the structure of the social group. Between members of any 
 one community the obUgations recognized may be many and 
 stringent, while in relation to outsiders no obligations are re- 
 cognized at all. The typical primitive community is, as it were, 
 a little island of friend.s amid a sea of strangers and enemies. 
 The consequences of the group principle we have traced in the 
 history of warfare. We have seen it apphed in its extreme form 
 in the treatment of conquered enemies as men destitute of any 
 title to consideration ; we have seen that as moral development 
 proceeds, it is moderated and softened, but that, except in the 
 highest ethical thought, it does not wholly disappear. Through- 
 out history we have the standing contrast of the comparative 
 peace, order and co-operation within each organized society, 
 and the disunion constantly tending to hostiUty found in the 
 relations of different societies to one another. We have now to 
 trace the operation of the same principle upon the structure of 
 society itself. 
 
 The primitive community is, as a rule, small, but compact and 
 homogeneous. There is always the distinction between its own 
 members and outsiders ; there is also a greater or less distinction 
 in the rights enjoyed by the two sexes. In other respects the 
 obligations constituting its ethical life are fairly uniform. But 
 as society grows and its industrial Ufe develops, as primitive 
 barbarism gives Avay to some degree of culture, this simplicity 
 of the early social organization breaks up, and now the group 
 principle obtains a fresh development. Distinct groups arise 
 within each society, wdthin the limits of a single community, 
 under one king or one governing body. Besides the group of 
 free men — to use that term provisionally — who constitute the 
 members of the community in the fullest sense of the word, there 
 arise inferior classes, slaves or serfs or low-caste men who are in 
 the community and yet not of it, who are subject to its laws and 
 customs, but not possessed of all the civil rights which member- 
 ship confers. These inferior groups within the community 
 
 270 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 271 
 
 3cupy a position which is morally and legally analogous to 
 lat of strangers and enemies. In extreme cases they are wholly 
 evoid of rights, in other %ases their inferiority is marked by a 
 lore or less serious lack of the civil rights enjoyed by their 
 iperiors. Historically, in the case of slaves, their position is, 
 1 point of fact, very largely that of incorporated enemies, and 
 hether this corresponds to the historical fact or not, ethically 
 peaking, the denial of personal rights from which they sufEer is 
 consequence of that same group-morality which from the first 
 jntrasts friend and neighbour with stranger and enemy, and 
 Bnies to the one the elementary rights of a human being, which 
 re readily accorded to the other. 
 
 Not merely political privileges, but civil rights, the right of 
 olding property, the right of personal freedom, the right of 
 larriage, even the right of protection of life or hmb, are wholly 
 r in part denied to classes excludpd' from full membership of 
 le community. Such distinctions of personal status are found 
 1 one form or another in the great mass of societies, civiUzed 
 r uncivilized, which stand above the lowest stages of culture, 
 hey persist well into the modem period, and are but slowly 
 Lodified, and partially abrogated in proportion as the whole 
 rinciple of group-morality yields to ethical criticism. Of these 
 istinctions the commonest is,- of course, the distinction between 
 ave and free, but slavery is in many cases replaced by serfdom 
 id in others by caste. What is common to all three institutions 
 
 the derogation from full rights which they imply. In detail 
 ley are distinct, though the line of demarcation is not always 
 isy to draw. We may say that the slave, properly regarded, 
 a man whom law and custom regard as the property of another. 
 1 extreme cases he is wholly without rights, a pure chattel ; in 
 iher cases he may be protected in certain respects, but so may 
 1 ox or an ass. As long as he is for aU ordinary purposes com- 
 'etely at his master's disposal, rendering to his master the fruits 
 ' his work, performing his work under orders, rewarded at his 
 aster's discretion, and liable to punishment on his master's 
 dgment, he may, though protected in other relations, fairly be 
 blled a slave. If, on the other hand, he has by his position certain 
 luntervaUing rights, c. g. to inherited property from which he 
 innot (except for some default) be dislodged, he becomes, though 
 ill liable to labour under his master's direction, still subject, 
 trhaps, to punishment and stiU in an inferior legal position, 
 ) longer a slave, but a serf. Serf and slave alike belong to some 
 (finite master, public or private. A servile caste, on the other 
 md, is not necessarily in the ownership of any man or body 
 
272 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of men. It is distinguished by a greater or less lack of personal 
 rights, by social inferiority, and probably by a taboo cutting it 
 off from intercourse with others. And as there may be servile 
 castes falling below the normal level of free men, so there may 
 be privileged castes of nobles possessing, as it were, an excess 
 of rights, and these privileges may indirectly depress the position 
 of the ordinary member of society and impair his freedom by 
 withholding protection from him in relation to one of the nobility. 
 Finally, the whole community may suffer a similar depression in 
 relation to the king, who, in the extreme development of the 
 despotic principle, becomes, as we have seen, eminent owner of 
 all property and lord of the persons of his subjects. In such 
 cases, though there may still be distinct grades in society, yet 
 all subjects alike are in principle destitute of rights. 
 
 Now all these methods of the gradation of rights, if the phrase 
 be allowed, rest ultimately on the principle of group-morality— 
 the principle that rights and duties do not attach to the human 
 being as such, but are determined by extraneous considerations, 
 social, political, or reUgious. The development which this prin- 
 ciple attains varies very greatly in different societies, and depends 
 upon economic and social, as well as on ethical and religious 
 conditions ; but its operation, in one form or another, persists 
 throughout history, and is one of the dominant facts, if not the 
 dominant fact, ethically considered, in the evolution of human 
 society. In tracing its varied development, we shall for the 
 most part follow the history of slavery and serfdom as the 
 main line along which it runs. We shall, however, deal with 
 other forms which the principle assumes, as occasion requires. 
 
 2. In the primitive group, as has been said, we find, as a rule, 
 no distinction of slave and free, no serfdom, no caste, and httle, 
 if any, distinction between chief and follower. Taking this 
 statement alone, one might infer that the primitive savage 
 reaUzes the ideal of the philosopher of a community of free men 
 and equals ; but the savage enjoys freedom and equahty, not 
 because he has reaHzed the value of those conceptions, but be- 
 cause neither he nor his feUow is strong enough to put himself 
 above his neighbour. Two conditions suffice to ensure the 
 growth of slavery or of a servile caste in the savage world. The 
 first condition is a certain development of industriahsm. In a 
 hunter tribe, which fives from hand to mouth, there is Httle 
 occasion for the services of a slave. The harder and less in- 
 teresting work can be put upon the women, and the chief occupa- 
 tion of the men is to fight. This brings us at once to the second 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 273 
 
 iiidition, which is a measure of warlike prowess, giving to a 
 ibe the means of supplying slaves from its capti'yjps. But not 
 ily must a tribe that is to obtain captive slaves, conquer ; it 
 ust also refrain from putting its captives to death, and we have 
 ready seen how the difficulty of exercising such restraint 
 Uitates against the rise of slavery in savage society, and how, 
 consequence, though the idea of slavery is widely diffused in 
 e unciviUzed world, the institution grows more important step 
 r step with the development of civilization. We find many 
 (dUzed peoples, where slavery has attained a luxuriant growth, 
 taining a tradition of a time at which there were no slaves, 
 id these traditions may well preserve an historical truth. But 
 e enslavement of the vanquished is not the only alternative 
 len to a conquering people. Instead of apportioning the 
 ptives to individuals as their booty, they may reduce the 
 nquered tribe collectively to a servile position. In that case 
 ) get from the first a system of pubhc serfdom. In other cases, 
 ain, possibly as a development of this practice, the distinction 
 conqueror and conquered hardens into a distinction of caste 
 Qctioned by religion. Finally, the development of miUtary 
 ganization, and the consequent rise of the power of the chief, 
 B responsible for that form of " rightlessness " in which all 
 3mbers of the tribe become slaves of the king.^ 
 In one or other of these different forms we find the conception 
 a class of men, whoUy or partly destitute of rights, widely 
 BEused throughout the uncivilized world. The special home of 
 ivery is, of course, Negro Africa, where the exceptions in which 
 e institution is not found are quite inconsiderable.^ In 
 
 ' Post {Afrik. Jurisp., vol. i. p. 115 seq.) gives a number of African 
 Jples in which the king has absolute powers of life and death over his 
 Jple, and a number in which all subjects are regarded as his slaves, 
 long the Kaffirs the king could take any man's cattle to replace his 
 n. 
 
 ' According to Waitz (vol. ii. p. 398), slavery was for the most part 
 known among Kaflfirs, and the ease of a sale of children recorded by 
 iffat is regarded as exceptional. A 16ss favourable view of Kaffir warfare 
 taken by Letoumeau {Eaclavage, p. 53), who says that they took girl 
 soners as concubines and youths as slaves, though their manners were 
 ) savage for regular slavery. Letoumeau also draws attention (pp. 54, 
 I to a servile class, called balala, among the Beohuanas, who had no 
 isessions, had to perform manual labour in return for food, might be 
 in for disobedience, and supplied victims for human sacrifice upon 
 iasion. We have here something more nearly approaching a caste 
 tinction than ordinary slavery. 
 
 rhe Hottentots, according to Letoumeau {ib., pp. 49-51), gave no 
 irter and held no slaves, but, according to authorities cited by Kohler 
 /. V. R., 1902, p. 340), slavery, though it has now disappeared, existed 
 •nsrly, and the slaves were at the masters' mercy and often ill-treated. 
 T 
 
274 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Oceama there is more variety. In some of the islands, as hag 
 been seen, war is but little known, and in these cases slavery is 
 also absent ; ^ but there are other causes mihtating against its 
 development. In Melanesia cannibalism is frequent, and in 
 some cases, for example in Fiji, slaves are kept for cannibal 
 purposes.^ In Micronesia, again, a strongly-marked caste divi- 
 sion partially replaces slavery, though there may be slaves in 
 the proper sense in addition to the servile caste. Throughout 
 Polynesia caste is more prominent than slavery.* It is a Poly- 
 nesian saying, that " a chief cannot steal," and in Tahiti, if a 
 chief asks, " Whose is that tree, etc.," the owner answers, 
 " Yours and mine." The kilhng of one of the lower by a member 
 of the higher class is regarded as merely a peccadillo.* In 
 Micronesia the original principle of the constitution seems to 
 have been a division into two castes, the one god-hke, immortal, 
 and possessing aU the power; the other having no souls, no 
 property, no wives, and doing aU the hard labour; but below 
 these again were the enslaved prisoners.* In the Malay region 
 slavery is widely diffused, especially in the towns,^ though, as 
 we shall see later, its forms differ, and in some cases, particularly 
 under Mohammedan influence, the slave is by no means rightless. 
 Among the rude Indian hiU tribes the institution is naturally 
 less developed. In some cases, as among the Bodos and Dhimals, 
 there are apparently no slaves, and the same is said to be true 
 of some of the Naga tribes. Other Nagas, however, make slaves 
 of captives,' and among many other hill tribes slaves are held.' 
 
 1 For example, in the little island of Rotuna slavery proper did not exist 
 and casual strangers were usually married and adopted into a clan. Some 
 Fijians and Melanesians, however, have been treated as inferiors, not being 
 adopted (J. S. Gardiner, in J. A. I., xxvii. 486). In parts of New 
 Guinea there is no slavery (Letourneau, p. 39) ; it is the exception among 
 the Papuas (ib., p. 35, and Kohler, Z. f. V. E., 1900, p. 364). 
 
 * Letourneau, op. cit., p. 41. Broadly, Letourneau concludes Melanesian 
 slavery originated for the sake of cannibalism. 
 
 ' Thus in the Marquesas Islands there were no slaves, but a despised 
 lower class who furnished victims for human sacrifice (Letomneau, p. 183). 
 « ib., 188. 
 
 * Waitz, v. ii. 125. In the Carolinas not only was intermarriage 
 forbidden, but the lower caste had to avoid contact with the higher on 
 pain of death. Fishery and sea-faring were forbidden occupations to the 
 lower caste. 
 
 * See Waitz, Anthropologie, v. i. 154 seq. ; Batzel, History of Mankind, 
 i. 446. 
 
 ' Slavery is said to be universal among the Aos (Godden, J. A, I., 
 xxvi. 184), but the Luhupas and one or two other tribes are said to 
 have no slaves and to be opposed to the institution. All the Nagas are 
 head-hunters (Godden, J. A. I., xxvii. 12). 
 
 ' e. g. Kukis, Garos, Gonds and Khonds, who use slaves for sacrifices. 
 The Lakka Kols have serfs instead of slaves (Letourneau, pp. 305-306). 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 
 
 275 
 
 The nomad tribes of Central Asia do not generally spare their 
 captives, and still practise human sacrifice, but tBe richer tribes 
 are slave-holders.^ Among the North American Indians slavery 
 is but little developed east of the Rockies, though there were a 
 few tribes which occasionally practised ^ it as an alternative to 
 the torture or adoption of prisoners. In the west and north, 
 however, it was widely diffused,^ though here also, in some cases, 
 the indiscriminate massacre of prisoners was the common 
 alternative. In some tribes of tropical South America war 
 captives are enslaved, but prisoners may also be put to death 
 or adopted as members of the tribe.* The dependence of slavery 
 on the economic factor is shown by its regular increase at each 
 economic grade. The following table ^ shows the number of 
 peoples who hold slaves either in permanence or as objects of 
 a regular traffic ; the second column reduces this number to a 
 fraction of all the oases in each grade where information was 
 obtained about war and warhke matters, this being the depart- 
 ment of ethnography in which we are most hkely to meet with 
 statements as to slavery if it exists. 
 
 Lower Hunters 
 Higher Hunters 
 Agriculture I 
 Pastoral I 
 Agriculture II 
 Pastoral II 
 Agriculture III 
 
 Numbers of 
 
 Slave-holding 
 
 Peoples. 
 
 Fraction of the 
 
 Total Number 
 
 of Peoples. 
 
 1 
 
 
 02 
 
 26 
 
 
 326 
 
 59J 
 
 
 33 
 37 
 46 
 
 12 
 
 
 71 
 
 77 
 
 
 78 
 
 ^ Ratzel, vol. iii. p. 346. According to Letoumeau (p. 223), a form of 
 serf cultivation is more strongly developed than personal slavery. 
 
 ' e. g. according to Waitz (vol. iii. p. 158), the tribes of North Carolina, 
 the Navajos, Iroquois and Hurons. 
 
 ' Thus, among the Oregons, prisoners were enslaved " from time im- 
 memorial " and sometimes sacrificed at the death of a master (Alvord, 
 in Schoolcraft, v. 654). . Slavery is said to have extended over the 
 whole north-west coast' (Waitz, vol. iii. p. 329). At Nootka Soimd 
 prisoners when spared were enslaved. The Chinooks made slave razzias 
 and held the slave as a chattel and object of trade {ib., pp. 334, 338). 
 The Apaches killed the m|,le captives, but sometimes held the women as 
 slaves (Reclus, p. 128). 
 
 * Schmidt, Z. f. V. R., 1898, p. 294. According to Letoumeau (p. 123) 
 the nomads of the Pampas rarely give quarter to males, but sometimes 
 take women as slave concubines and bring up children to be adopted into 
 the conquering tribe. 
 
 ^ From the Simpler Peoples, pp. 235-236. 
 
276 
 
 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The proportions show an increase at each grade ^ which, 
 rough as the classification necessarily is, and imperfect as our 
 information must be, can hardly be altogether accidental. It 
 is of interest to set side by side with these figures the correspond- 
 ing table for "nobility," by which we mean an upper rank, 
 other than the ruUng chief with his immediate family, distin- 
 guished by privileges, greater or less, from the mass of the 
 people. 
 
 Nobles 
 
 
 Cases. 
 
 Fractions. 
 
 Lower Hunters 
 
 . . 
 
 
 
 Higher Hunters . 
 
 . . 9 
 
 ■11 
 
 Agriculture I 
 
 . . 14 
 
 •03 , 
 
 Pastoral I . . . 
 
 . . 3 
 
 •20 
 
 Agriculture II 
 
 . . 19 
 
 •15 
 
 Pastoral II . . . 
 
 . . 4 
 
 ■24 
 
 Agriculture III . 
 
 . . 23 
 
 •23 
 
 The proportions are much smaller, but the tendency is in the 
 same direction.^ The same advance in social and industrial 
 organization which tends to the formation of a servile class 
 below the ordinary free man works, though less surely and 
 rapidly, to the elevation of a small class above him. 
 
 Thus we may fairly say (1) that in the rudest tribes there are 
 no class distinctions, the harder and more menial work falling 
 often (though not always) upon the women; (2) as a tribe 
 grows in culture, and especially in military strength, the first 
 result is, as a rule, that the conquered enemies are sacrificed, 
 eaten, tortured, or in any case put to death. But (3) with a 
 certain softening of manners, or at any rate with a cooler 
 perception of permanent advantage, prisoners are spared and 
 enslaved. This grace is first reserved for women "and children, 
 but is afterwards extended to male captives. A class is thus 
 formed who are within the jurisdiction of the conquering tribe, 
 but from the point of view of law and morals remain outside it. 
 Either in the form of a class of slaves or of a degraded quasi - 
 servile lower caste, the presence of such an element in the 
 
 ^ The results do not differ markedly from Dr. Nieboer's, whose work 
 should be consulted on the point, though we include (1) cases where women 
 and children only are held as slaves, and (2) cases in which slaves are taken 
 to sell again, both of which he excludes. 
 
 ' It should be said that of the nine eases among the Higher Hunters 
 eight are from the Fisher peoples of the Pacific Coast, who also supply the 
 great majority of the oases of slavery in this grade. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 277 
 
 population is a general feature in societies which have emerged 
 from the lower savagery and the rawest militaiisin. On the 
 strict principle of group-morality this class is destitute of rights, 
 and only too often the principle is consistently carried out. 
 The typical slave can neither marry nor hold property except 
 on sufierance. His very hfe is in his master's hands. He may 
 be flogged, maimed, sold, pawned, given away, exchanged, or 
 put to death. 
 
 3. In many slave systems, however, this " rightlessness " is 
 quaJifled "in various ways. How this qualification arises we 
 shall best understand if we take a more complete view of the 
 actual sources from which slaves are recruited. Hitherto we 
 have spoken only of captives in war. But this, though probably 
 the original method by which a servile class is formed, is not the 
 only method by which it is recruited. Of other methods the 
 first and greatest is inheritance— for normally a slave's child 
 is also a slave. Secondly, in most barbaric and semi-civihzed 
 societies the numbers of the slave class are swollen by other 
 causes, principally by debt, crime, and the slave trade. In some 
 cases slavery is the prescribed penalty for crime. More often 
 the man who cannot pay the prescribed composition either falls 
 into slavery himself as a debt-slave in order, as it were, to work 
 out his debt, or sells, particularly under the sway of the fully 
 developed palria potestas, his wife or child for that purpose. 
 " What ! shall I starve as long as my sister has children whom 
 she can sell ? " was the remark of an African negro to Burton- — 
 a remark which comprises a whole chapter upon primitive ethics 
 in a few words. 
 
 The formation of debtor-slaves, and even the increase of 
 hereditary slaves, has, however, a certain softening influence 
 upon the institution of slavery itself, for while the captive slave 
 remains an enemy in the sight of law and morals and is there- 
 fore rightless, the debtor or the criminal was originally a member 
 of the community, and in relation to him there is apt to arise 
 some hmitation of the power of the master. The family of the 
 debtor-slave will not see him treated with unhmited cruelty; 
 they retain some right of protection, however illogically, just 
 as they retain protection over the purchased wife, however 
 illogically. In fact, the slave is no longer a mere stranger or 
 enemy. He is partially incorporated in the community and has 
 some recognized rights, though by no means those of a free man. 
 The improvement tends to extend itself to the hereditary slave 
 who also was bom in the community, though within the slave 
 
278 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 class. Thus there comes to be a distinction between the 
 domestic slave and the slave who is captured or bought from 
 abroad. The one remains a chattel-slave, the other is becoming a 
 serf. There are thus many gradations of " rightlessness " in the 
 servile status, and these must very briefly be passed in review. 
 
 Customs protecting the slave frbm undue tyranny are found 
 in the barbaric and semi-civiHzed world, though in many cases 
 they are not derived from barbaric ideas, but are traceable to the 
 influence of Mohammedanism. In these customs the distinction 
 between the domestic and the foreign slave is generally well 
 marked. Illustrations of almost every degree in " rightlessness " 
 may be drawn from African slavery. Thus, among the Foulah, 
 house slaves are treated as members of the family, and are sold 
 only in necessity or for a punishment, while war captives and 
 purchased foreign slaves are wholly without rights. In Bambara 
 captives are pure chattels, but house slaves have a good position 
 and in some cases are treated as members of the family. Among 
 the Timmanees, the BuUoms, and the Beni-amer, no one is sold 
 as a slave who was not bought as such. Among the Mandin- 
 goes native slaves are protected, while others are at the mercy of 
 the master to sell or kill. On the Congo the captive slave may 
 be sold, but house slaves only after a palaver — ^that is, with the 
 consent of the community. Among the Barea and Kunama the 
 master has no right of life and death over native slaves. At 
 Timbuctoo no native can be enslaved at aU. Among the West 
 Equatorial tribes the slave may be killed by his master, but not 
 sold abroad except for some transgression. At Nuffi a master 
 may strike, but not mutilate or Idll his slave. In Sokoto and 
 among the Yolofs the captive slave may be sold at wiU, the bom 
 slave only after repeated chastisement. In Bihe pawn-slaves 
 are protected, while bought ones can be arbitrarily punished, 
 and only in the case of their death is a small fine due from the 
 owner to the king. Among the Mpongwe the house slave can 
 only be sold for some offence, and here slaves call their master 
 " father " and are well treated. The Fantis recognize the dis- 
 tinction between the slaves of their own tribe and those of other 
 tribes, and among the Ibu, on the Niger, slaves can hold property, 
 build houses and marry .^ They then rank as free, owing only a 
 yearly tax, and the relation, in fact, passes into a kind of light 
 serfdom. Similarly at Sokoto, the slave is at about the age 
 of twenty given a wife and set up in a hut in the country. At 
 Boussa they farm the land on the mitayer principle, and though 
 in law the masters could sell them and take their wives, children 
 ' Bati Post, Afrih. Jurisprudenz, i. 88, 92, 96 ; Waitz, ii. 213-214. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 279 
 
 md goods, in practice they enjoy much liberty and property .^ 
 (Various forms of serfdom, existing often side Jby side with 
 ilavery, are common in Africa, the serf cultivating the land 
 md owing labour service or payment in kind, and sometimes 
 lolding property of his own.^ 
 
 A right frequent in Mohammedan countries, found also in one 
 )r two instances of non-Mohammedan tribes, is that of changing 
 ;he master. This a slave can effect by the legal process of noxce 
 iatio, by which, on inflicting some injury on some man other 
 ihan his own master, he, ipso facto, becomes that man's slave, 
 ^ong the Barea and Kunama a native slave can simply leave 
 'or another viUage and so become free. In Zanzibar slaves 
 )btain this right as the result of deUberate ill-treatment, and the 
 same custom is found on the Congo, among the Apingi, and 
 jther West Equatorial tribes. In Ashanti slaves can commend 
 ihemselves to a new master by giving him the right of hfe and 
 ieath over them, and in Timbuctoo, if ill-treated, a slave may 
 ippeal to the court in order to be sold. Among the Beni-amer 
 ;he distinction between the bom slave and the foreign slave is 
 rell marked in the case of homicide. For the bought slave only 
 the " wer " can be demanded, but the bom slave can be avenged 
 by blood. The marriage of slaves depends generally upon the 
 wiU of the master. In relation to property their rights vary 
 greatly, and here again the distinction of origin of slaves makes 
 itself felt, e. g. among the Bogos and Marea a slave who is the 
 son of a free-born man has the right to buy his freedom, a right 
 ivhich is denied to the slave by birth.* 
 
 Of the various tribes mentioned, those in which protection is 
 jarried furthest are for the most part either partially Mohammed- 
 inized or partially Christianized,* and while some distinction 
 between domestic and foreign slaves may be attributed to 
 Negroland generally, such further amehoration of the slave's 
 position as is to be found in barbarous or semi -civilized Africa 
 s probably to be attributed to the higher ethics of a civiUzed 
 feUgion.^ The same influence is found at work among the 
 Malays, where the distinction of natiye and foreign slaves also 
 
 * Letoumeau, p. 103. Yet at Sokoto captive slaves, besides being 
 requeutly sold, are treated as beasts of biixden and chained for trivial 
 iSenoes (Post, A. J., i. 96 ; Letoumeau, L'Esdavage, p. 102). 
 
 ^ For instances, see Post, Afrik. Jurisp., pp. 98, 101, 106. In case of 
 :ailure to make due payments the serf is often reduced to the position of a 
 iiave, e. g. among the Takue, Marea, and Bogos. Among the Beni-amer 
 the penalty of failure is death (Post, A. J., i. 101). 
 
 Instances are found at Khartoum, among the Usagara the Futatoro, 
 md among the Kimbunda (Post, A. J., 103, 105, 112). 
 
 * Letoumeau, 88. ' I.ietoumeau, p. 72 seq. 
 
280 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 re-appears. Speaking generally, the captive slaves are destitute 
 of rights, and the capture and sale of slaves is a chief line of 
 business among all Malays who trade in ships of their own. 
 But crime and debt are also rich sources of slavery,^ and in some 
 parts at least the slave has a measure of protection. In the 
 Malacca Peninsula, where the influence of Islam is strong, the 
 slave, if struck, may bring his master into court, and the slave 
 woman who bears a child to her master goes free.^ The Battaks 
 also, head-hunters though they are, put a limit on the master's 
 right of punishment.* 
 
 Thus in the barbaric world we already find degrees of right- 
 lessness, and a measure of legal or customary protection, at least 
 for certain classes of slaves. This alleviation is often, but not 
 always,* traceable to the influence of one of the higher religions. 
 The free man who has become a slave is not wholly cut off from 
 membership of the community, but retains certain recognized 
 rights, though by no means those which full membership confers. 
 _We have now to see how the idea of slavery, and of rightlessness 
 generally, fare in the main forms of civihzation. 
 
 4. In the early Babylonian Empire slavery was fully de- 
 veloped as an institution, though slaves were not so numerous as 
 they afterwards became. The slave is spoken of in the contracts * 
 not as a man, but as a chattel. Slaves are reckoned in a transfer 
 as so many pieces of goods. They were distinguished by a 
 brand, and, if they were runaways, often wore fetters.* They 
 are recruited by capture, by debt, and by the sale of wives or 
 children by husbands or fathers. They pass on a man's death 
 to his heirs, and can be pawned, given away or sold. With 
 the exception of debt-slaves, the Code of Hammurabi makes no 
 
 1 Waitz, V. i. 143, 163. » ib., 153-155. 
 
 ' According to Letourneau (p. 200), the master may punish, but not put 
 the slaves to death. According to Waitz {op. cit., p. 188), punishment 
 must be inflicted by a magistrate. The slave becomes a concubine by 
 prolonged cohabitation, and sometimes a legitimate wife (Letourneau, 
 loc. cit.). Among the more savage Battaks slaves are used for human 
 sacrifices (Letourneau, p. 203). 
 
 * Apart from some of the instances already given, in ancient Mexico, 
 where captive slaves were taken principally for food, domestic slaves 
 were protected. They might not be sold without their consent, nor 
 chastised without previous warning. If ill-treated they might take refuge 
 with the king, and to kUl them was a capital offence. T^ey could hold 
 property and marry, and their children were free (Letourneau, pp. 157, 
 168 ; cf . also Payne, vol. ii. p. 485 note 3). 
 
 ' The contracts yield no instance of more than four in a family, and 
 great houses often have only one (Meissner, Altbahylon. Privatrecht, pp- 
 6-7). 
 
 ' Meissner, loc, cit. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 281 
 
 provision for their protection against their masters. The only 
 case in which it prescribes any treatment is that o4 the repudia- 
 tion of their master, in which the penalty assigned is the com- 
 paratively Kght one of losing an ear. In practice, however, 
 it would seem that the punishments for running away were 
 severe.^ The provisions in the Code for cases of injury to a 
 slave by some one other than his master are full of significance. 
 The slave's life has its price, but clearly the price goes to the 
 master, for in the passages which refer to the killing of a slave 
 the law is that the offender shall render slave for slave. For 
 example — 
 
 " If a doctor has treated the severe wound of a slave of a 
 plebeian with a bronze lancet and has caused his death, he shall 
 render slave for slave. 
 
 " If he has opened his abscess with a bronze lancet and has 
 made him lose his eye, he shall pay money, half his price." ^ 
 
 Similarly, the defaulting builder who causes a free man's death 
 is punished by the law of retahation, but if it is a slave who 
 dies " he shall give slave for slave." ^ This is pleasant for the 
 master, but of no particular value to the slave, and so when 
 sec. 199 says that if a man " has caused the loss of the eye of 
 a gentleman's servant, or has shattered the Umb of a gentleman's 
 servant, he shall pay half his price," we may assume that it is 
 the owner who benefits.* The loss of hfe or hmb by a slave is 
 loss to the master, and is made good by compensating him — 
 so completely is the slave his chattel.^ Debt-slaves, however, 
 were, as has been noticed, in a more favourable position. Their 
 bondage is hmited to three years. If a man has a debt, says 
 clause 117, " and he has given his wife, his son, his daughter, 
 for the money, or has handed them over to work off the debt, for 
 three years they shall work in the house of their buyer or ex- 
 ploiter, in the fourth year he shall fix their hberty." Further, 
 the person seized by a creditor in distraint is protected by 
 retahation or price, according as he is a free man or slave." 
 
 ' Meissner, loc. cit., and De Servitxide, p. 2. 
 
 ' Hammurabi, sees. 219, 220. ' Op. cit., sec. 231. 
 
 * Compare the clauses dealing with miscarriage, 213, 214 : " If he has 
 struck a man's maidservant, and caused her to drop that which is in her 
 womb, he shall pay two shekels of silver. If that maidservant has died, 
 he shall pay one-third of a mina of silver." 
 
 ° Notwithstanding the bad legal position of slaves, the code contemplates 
 the marriage of slaves with free women, sec. 175. 
 
 " Sec. 116. The clause contemplates distraint upon the person only 
 (Dareste, Journal dea Savants, Oct. 1902, p. 526), and apparently the seizure 
 of the son or slave of the actual debtor. 
 
282 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In practice, the position of the Babylonian slave was probably 
 much more favourable than it appears in legal theory. In the 
 records of the New Kingdom, slaves often appear as principals 
 in business transactions. They carry on trades or businesses, 
 such as banking, and have a pecuUum which is virtually assured 
 to them, though in law it may be their master's, and for which 
 they pay a yearly tribute to the owner. Out of this pecuUvm 
 some slaves, if not all, might buy back their liberty.^ We find 
 them entering into contracts with other slaves and even with 
 free men, suing and sued at law, and in many ways acting as 
 though free .2 On the other hand, they might be branded. The 
 rich Itti-Marduk-Balatu buys two slaves, one marked on the 
 ears and the eyes and one who is simply described as branded, 
 for three mince. ^ This same great banker disposes of a slave 
 girl to one purchaser after another for immoral purposes, and a 
 contiact selling a woman to a brothel-keeper is preserved.* The 
 slave girl was entirely at the disposal of her master, and 
 indeed, if he totally neglected her, it was held that she would 
 in time become a malevolent being with demoniac powers, 
 against whom magical conjurations were pronounced.* Slaves 
 were freely pawned, given away and sold. Putting all the facts 
 together, it would seem that there were different classes of 
 slaves, distinguished in practice and by custom if not in law, 
 and that, while some of them had practical enjoyment of various 
 important rights, the conception of chattel slavery had by no 
 means disappeared. 
 
 Our information as to ancient Egyptian slavery is not so 
 precise as it is for Babylon, and when dealing with a history 
 extending over, perhaps, four or five thousand years, it is easy to 
 make statements which would be true of one period, but would 
 not hold of others. Some broad features, however, appear 
 tolerably constant. The main sources of recruitment of slaves 
 in the full sense of the term were capture and the slave trade. 
 The conquering Egyptians did not always kill all their male 
 captives, but frequently took them aUve, and throughout their 
 history down to the New Kingdom frequently organized warlike 
 expeditions or razzias for the purpose of slave -hunting.* Prisoners 
 
 ^ Oppert, Condition des Esclaves d Babylone, p. 4. 
 
 * Kohler and Peiser, Aiis dem babylonisehen Beehtsleben, hft. i. 1; 
 ii. 6. 
 
 " Meissner, De Servitute, p. 20. 
 
 • Kohler and Peiser, op. cit., iv. 28-29. 
 
 " Maspero, Dawn of Civilization, p. 735. 
 
 ' See above, chap, y^ pp. 247-248, and frequent references in Breaated's 
 Ancient Records. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 283 
 
 s'ere taken for service on the public workSj^ or to the harems, 
 md it appears from the Tell-el-Amarna letters that, in addition 
 io thousands of female slave captives, there was a regular 
 iribute of girls from various places.* On the public works, the 
 jyramids, the great temples and palaces, the labour and lives of 
 ihe captives were prodigally spent. Rameses IV., in one expedi- 
 ion for transporting great blocks of granite, employed 5000 
 ■ommon soldiers, 800 barbarian mercenaries, 2000 bond-servants 
 )f the temples and 200 officers. When foreign captives were not 
 ivaUable the Pharaohs employed their subjects.^ 
 
 An idea of the number of slaves in Egypt may be formed 
 rem the fact that in the cause of thirty years Rameses III. 
 jresented 113,433 to the temples alone.* These slaves were 
 ipparently entirely at the disposal of their master, who removed 
 ;hem from place to place, sold them, used them as he pleased, 
 rarsued them if they succeeded in escaping, and had the right 
 )f re-capturing them as soon as he received information of their 
 vhereabouts. They worked for him under their overseers' 
 )rders, receiving no regular wages, and with no hope of recover- 
 ng their liberty.^ The captives, however, apparently inter- 
 narried frequently with natives, and had families and descendants 
 vho, at the end of two or three generations, became assimilated 
 vith the indigenous races, and passed into the condition of 
 lerfdom. How far this serfdom extended, and what classes 
 vere free, it is difficult to say with precision.^ Erman points 
 mt that in the early Empire, if we went only by the monuments 
 ind representations in the tombs, we might conclude that there 
 ras no intermediate class between the great men in the kingdom, 
 he priests and officers, on the one hand, and the crowd of 
 abourers and serfs on the other ; but probably there must have 
 )een some middle class which helped to bring Egyptian art and 
 landicraft to their pitch of perfection.' In the New Kingdom 
 
 ' Diodorus describes the suffering of captive slaves, including women 
 Jid old men, in the Nubian gold mines. His description refers to the 
 imea of the Ptolemies, but there is no reason to suppose that things had got 
 ny worse under the rule of the Greeks (Erman, lAje in Ancient Egypt, 
 :63; Diodorus, iii. 11). 
 
 ' Flinders Petrie, History of Egypt, vol. ii. p. 274. 
 
 ' Erman, p. 476. ' Maspero, p. 326. 
 
 • Maspero, loc. cit. In a large measure the slave work was done in the 
 egular workhouses, or ergaatula. For the employment of bondwomen in 
 hese places, see W. Max Miiller, Liebespoeaie, p. 6. 
 
 ' Inscriptions of the Old Kingdom bequeath or transfer the " people " on 
 he land along with the small cattle (Breasted, 1. 77, 91, etc.). 
 ^' Erman, pp. 100, 101. On the other hand, from the calculations of 
 Ireasted (iv. 98) it appears that not more than two per cent, of the 
 opulation were temple property in the time of Rameses III. 
 
284 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the peasant serfs were strictly part of the property of the crown, 
 or the temple to which the land belonged. They were despised 
 by the scribes, and their condition is the subject of many 
 contemporary descriptions implying abject servility. 
 The following verses refer to the slaves — 
 
 " The poor child is only brought up, 
 That he may be torn from his mother's arms ; 
 As soon as he comes to man's estate, 
 His bones are beaten like those of a donkey ; 
 He is driven, he has indeed no heart in his body." '■ 
 
 Even more graphic are the descriptions in the Sallier 
 papyrus— 
 
 " The stone-cutter, who seeks his living by working in all kinds 
 of durable stone, when at last he has earned something, and his 
 two arms are worn out, he stops; but if at sunrise he remain 
 sitting, his legs are tied to his back. . . . When the (mason's) 
 work is quite finished, if he has bread, he returns home, and his 
 children have been beaten unmercifully (during his absence). 
 The weaver within doors is worse off there than a woman; 
 squatting, his knees against his chest, he does not breathe. If 
 during the day he slackens weaving, he is bound fast as the 
 lotuses of the lake ; and it is by giving bread to the doorkeeper 
 that the latter permits him to see the light." ^ 
 
 As in other ancient civilization debt was probably one source 
 of slavery. At any rate, under the New ELingdom we have con- 
 tracts of slavery in which a man or woman acknowledges him- 
 or herself as the slave of another. All his or her property belonged 
 to the master, and the status might be hereditary,^ but to judge 
 from the wording, which is nearly the same as that of adoption, 
 this form of servitude was easy. Documents relating to the 
 sale of slaves from the same period are quite different in tone. 
 We may suppose that in accepting servitude a man might retain 
 certain rights which would not belong to a captive or hereditary 
 slave.* 
 
 More than this, it would seem that even the free man, who 
 was unrestricted in his power to move about and dispose of 
 himself and his labour, was insecure unless he had his master, 
 
 ' Erman, p. 128. ' Maspero, p. 312. 
 
 ' I am thy slave for ever. Nevermore shall I be able to act as nembe 
 (perhaps debtor, or tenant) to thee . . . together with my children that 
 are bom and those who shall be bom to u5, and all that belongeth to us 
 (Griffith, Rylands Papyri, iii. 52, cf. 56). 
 
 * GriEfith, iii. 58, 59. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 285 
 
 who would afford to him protection. Egyptian society, in fact, 
 was orgaaiized upon a feudal basis. ^ 
 
 " From the top to the bottom of the social scale every free 
 man acknowledged a master, who secured to him justice and 
 protection in exchange for his obedience and fealty. The moment 
 an Egyptian tried to withdraw himself from this subjection, the 
 peace of his life was at an end; he became a man without a 
 master, and . . . without a recognized protector. . . . Any one 
 might stop him on the way, steal his cattle, merchandise and 
 property on the most trivial pretext, and if he attempted to 
 protest, might beat him with almost certain impunity." ^ 
 
 Further, it is only in a qualified sense that freedom can be 
 spoken of at aU in relation to a country governed as Egypt was. 
 As against the king or a great feudal lord, the Egyptian peasant 
 often, if nominally free and possessed of his own plot of land, 
 was ■without defence and without recognized rights. The 'tax- 
 gatherer was in ancient Egypt what he remained to the Modern 
 Period. Here is the description of him true to the life in the 
 Sallier papjrrus.^ 
 
 " The scribe steps out of the boat at the landing-place to levy 
 the tithe, and there come the keepers of the doors of the granary 
 with cudgels and the negroes with ribs of palm-leaves, who come 
 crying : ' Come now, corn ! ' There is none, and they throw 
 the cultivator full length upon the ground; bound, dragged to 
 the canal, they fling him in head first ; his wife is bound with 
 him, his children are put in chains ; the neighbours, in the mean- 
 time, leave him, and fly to save their grain." 
 
 The system of forced labour was no less oppressive to the 
 peasantry than that of the collection of taxes. The slaves were 
 insufficient to cultivate the royal and seignorial lands, and the 
 balance of the work fell upon the neighbouring peasantry, none 
 being exempt except the destitute, soldiers on service, with their 
 famiUes, certain pubhc employes and servitors of the temple. 
 The work was hard, and enforced by the stick, and not only 
 did it recur at regular periods, but in addition there were 
 irregular corv^es whenever it suited the king or lord to demand 
 them.' 
 
 ^ *., 309. 2 ib., 331. 
 
 ' ib., 333, etc. Most of our information refers to the Ptolemaic period, 
 but the practice was undoubtedly more ancient, being referred to in 
 inscriptions of the Middle Empire. " The entire Oryx nome laboured for 
 me," says Ameni (12th Dynasty — Breasted, i. 252). • "The rod is in my 
 hand; be not idle," says the taskmaster to the builders under the 18th 
 Dynasty (Breasted, ii. 293). 
 
286 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The slave, properly so called, was not indeed wholly, or, at 
 any rate, not at all times, destitute of rights. According to 
 Diodorus his murder was punished with death, the object of the 
 law being, in the view of the Greek historian, to keep people 
 from bad actions not through differences of fortune, but rather 
 from the nature of the actions themselves, and at the same time 
 to accustom a man by care for slaves to avoid far more all 
 offences against free men.^ This is a thoroughly Greek inter- 
 pretation of the facts. It would probably be truer to say that 
 in a despotic land like Egypt the distinction between free man 
 and slave before the law was of less account than in a civic state. 
 The king was by Egyptian principle master of the whole land 
 of Egypt, owner of all property and lord of all men who dwelt 
 therein. The Egyptian recognized duties to dependents, as 
 appears from pleadings in the Book of the Dead, in which the 
 deceased denies that he has oppressed those under him.^ But 
 these are rather the duties of benevolent consideration than of 
 legal right. Egypt is a typical Oriental monarchy, a country 
 in which it may be rather said that all classes were rightlesB 
 than that slaves were distinguished from free men by the lack 
 of rights. 
 
 5. The history of slavery among the Hebrews is interesting, 
 both for the strong distinction made between Jew and Gentile, 
 and still more for the progress which we can trace in law and 
 custom affecting the position of the slave. According to the 
 later law all the Canaanites ought to have been utterly destroyed 
 upon the conquest, but this represents an ideal of barbarity 
 which there is no reason to think was ever reaHzed, and the 
 narrative itself admits as much, especially in the case of the 
 Gibeonites, who became "hewers of wood and drawers of water." ' 
 Whether by capture or by purchase Gentiles clearly became 
 slaves, and the law ended by regarding the Gentile as the only 
 slave whom a Hebrew ought in strict propriety to hold. Further, 
 though the stranger is constantly recommended to considera- 
 tion and just treatment, laws for the protection of the slave 
 
 ' Diodorus, i. 76-77. 
 
 ' In another well-known pleading, the soul protests according to some 
 translators that he has not caused harm to be done to the servant by his 
 chief. This, if correct, is an interesting recognition of a social duty to 
 the slave, but the translation is uncertain, and Mr. Griffith renders it : 
 "I have not turned the servant against his master" (World's Literature, 
 p. 5321). 
 
 ' Further, Solomon levied tribute of bond service upon all the Canaanites 
 left, but not upon the Israelites (1 Kings ix. 21). 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 287 
 
 apparently apply in the main to the Hebrew only. We pass 
 now to the consideration of these laws. ^ 
 
 In the earUest code,^ the period of service for a male Hebrew 
 is limited to six years. " In the seventh he shall go out free for 
 nothing." But the case is contemplated that his master has 
 given him a wife, and in that case she, with her children, would 
 remain with her master, and he might therefore choose to abide 
 also. If so, " then his master shall bring him unto God (that is, 
 to the temple) and shall bring him to the door or unto the door- 
 post, and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl ; and 
 he shall serve him for ever." ^ The Hebrew father might sell 
 his children into slavery, and the daughter who had thus been 
 sold was not released in the seventh year, as were the men- 
 servants ; but she might be redeemed, and if not suitably married 
 to the son of her master, regain her freedom. As to general 
 protection, " If a man smite his servant or his maid with a rod 
 and he die under his hand, he shall surely be punished" — ^in 
 what way is not stated. The protection given to the slave would 
 be more valuable if it were not for the quaKfying clauses which 
 follow. " Notwithstanding, if he contin.ue a day or two he shall 
 not be punished ; for he is his money." * This is chattel slavery 
 partially ashamed of itself. The code further provides that 
 either a male or female slave should obtain freedom for the loss 
 of an eye or a tooth. As in the Code of Hammurabi,* the master 
 takes the value of the servant when he is kiUed by another man's 
 ox, the price being fixed at thirty shekels of silver. It is a 
 noteworthy inconsistency that retahation is to be exercised 
 upon the ox in this instance — ^that is to say, it is to be stoned 
 to death. But where the ox gores a free man or woman, re- 
 tahation can also be exercised upon the master (supposing he 
 has been guilty of negUgence) unless he can buy himseK off. 
 The distinction is significant of the true position of the slave as 
 a chattel whose price must be made good, rather than as a human 
 being for whom retaliation can be demanded. 
 
 The code of Deuteronomy does not make any fundamental 
 change in the position of the slave, though here, as in other 
 respects, it breathes a more humane spirit. In this code the 
 Fourth Commandment reads differently, the remark being in- 
 serted, " that thy man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest 
 as well as thou." The insertion of this considerate reason is 
 
 ' Exod. xx.-xxiii. " Exod. xxi. 2-6. 
 
 ' Exod. xxi. 20. Here the qualification " Hebrew " does not appear, but 
 it IS perhaps to be understood from its use earlier in the chapter. 
 * Hammurabi, sec. 252. 
 
288 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 thoroughly in keeping with the character of the prophetic code. 
 The Hebrew slave is still to be released in the seventh year, and 
 released with gifts. " When thou sendest him out free from 
 thee thou shalt not let him go away empty. Thou shalt furnish 
 him liberally out of thy flock," and so forth. " Thou shalt 
 remember that thou wast a bondman in the land of Egypt and 
 the Lord thy God redeemed thee." 
 
 The provisions as to the marriage of the slave to a wife pro- 
 vided by his master disappear, and the Hebrew woman is to be 
 free as well as the man. Nor is there here any reference to the 
 sale of daughters. The man-stealer is (as in the earUer code) 
 to be put to death, but apparently only when offending against 
 an IsraeUte ; ^ and by a not infrequent inconsistency the fugi- 
 tive slave is not to be given up, but " shall dweU with thee, in 
 the midst of thee, in the place which he shall choose within one 
 of thy gates where it liketh him best. Thou shalt not oppress 
 him."2 
 
 In the priestly code the most definite change is one which 
 appears at first sight reactionary. The slave is now to be re- 
 leased, not in the seventh year, but in the year of Jubilee ; yet, 
 in other respects, the code is considerate to the Hebrew slave, 
 and indeed denies that he ought to be a bondman at all. "If 
 thy brother be waxen poor," the true duty of the more fortunate 
 Hebrew is to uphold him. " As a stranger and a sojourner 
 shall he live with thee," but if he " sell himself unto thee, thou 
 shalt not take him to serve as a bond-servant. As a hired 
 servant and as a sojourner he shall be with thee; he shall 
 sojourn with thee until the year of jubile." ' 
 
 It is the Gentile — and here is the true spirit of ancient slavery 
 — ^it is the Gentile who is the appropriate bondman. " As for 
 thy bondmen and bondmaids ... of the nations that are round 
 about you, of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. 
 Moreover, of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among 
 you, of them shall ye buy." " Over your brethren ye shall not 
 rule with rigour." 
 
 Thus the Levitican code comes as near as possible to the 
 abohtion of Hebrew slavery. Nevertheless, it lengthens the 
 term from seven years to fifty. The explanation of this change 
 is probably to be found in a passage in Jeremiah,* from which it 
 appears that the provision for releasing the slaves in the seventh 
 year was practically, if not avowedly, a novelty in Josiah's time. 
 It is, of course, treated by Jeremiah as having belonged to the 
 
 ^ Deut. xxiv. 7. ' Deut. xxiii. 15. 
 
 ' Leviticus xxv. 35, 39, 40. * Jeremiah xxxiv. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 289 
 
 original Covenant ; but nevertheless it appears from his account 
 that King Zedekiah proclaimed this liberty as a* new thing, 
 doubtless in accordance -with the recently promulgated code of 
 Deuteronomy; and that, while it was temporarily obeyed, a 
 relapse very speedily followed for which punishment by pesti- 
 lence and famine is proclaimed. It would seem, therefore, that 
 the law of Jubilee, while probably of ancient date and a survival 
 of communal tenure so far as regards land, is applied to slaves in 
 the hope of rendering the benevolent intentions of Deuteronomy 
 a practical reaUty.^ 
 
 In any case, regarded as a whole, the development of Hebrew 
 law and custom in relation to slavery is an interesting example, 
 on the one hand, of the amelioration of the slave's position by 
 a distinct touch of humanitarian sentiment ; and, on the other 
 hand, of the persistence, owing to the dominance of an exclusive 
 national religion, of the deep distinction between the domestic 
 slave and the foreign. 
 
 6. India. — In India, slavery was already known in the Vedic 
 age. The institution persisted in the Brahmanic period , although 
 its existence was denied by the Greek travellers of Alexander's 
 time. Whether the Greeks only saw certain districts in which 
 slaves were few or were misled by the absence of rural slavery 
 is not certain, but the recognition of slavery as an institution in 
 the Brahmanic law-books is perfectly clear. Manu distinguishes 
 slaves of seven kinds — 
 
 " There are slaves of seven kinds, (viz.) he who is made a 
 captive under a standard, he who serves for his daily food, he 
 who is born in the house, he who is bought and he who is given, 
 he who is inherited from ancestors, and he who is enslaved by 
 way of punishment." 
 
 He proceeds to declare that, like the wife and the son, the 
 slave has no property. The wealth which he earns is acquired 
 for him to whom he belongs. 
 
 ' The picture of Hebrew slavery would not be complete without a 
 reference to the attitude of the wise man in Ecclesiasticus. He bids his 
 reader treat a good servant well, and not defraud him of release. This, of 
 course, with an eye on the year of Jubilee (chap. vii. 21). Indeed, he 
 would have him treated as a brother : " For thou hast need of him as of 
 thme own soul." And a more practical reminder follows, which may serve 
 to help us, too, to understand a factor which must always have tended to 
 mitigate the slave's lot : " If thou treat him evil and he run away from 
 thee, which way wilt thou go to seek him." On the other hand, you should 
 be severe with a bad servant, and if he be not obedient, put on him heavy 
 fetters. Making a bad servant's side bleed is one of the list of things of 
 which a man ought not to be ashamed (chap. xlii. 6). 
 U 
 
290 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " A Brahmana may confidently seize the good of (his) Sudra 
 (slave); for, as that (slave) can have no property, his master 
 may take his possessions." 
 
 Quarrels with slaves are to be avoided. They should be 
 treated, Manu says, " as one's shadow." If offended by them one 
 should "bear it without resentment." ^ Much more moderate 
 rules for their punishment are laid down than by the Hebrew 
 lawgiver.^ 
 
 But slavery is of very secondary importance in Hindu society 
 as compared with caste. It would be out of place here to attempt 
 a full discussion of the origin and nature of caste in India. We 
 have seen the more elementary forms of the institution in other 
 races. In India it reached an altogether abnormal develop- 
 ment, which is of more interest for the student of Hindu society 
 than for the general history of ethics. Caste did not exist 
 in the primitive society of Vedic times, though conditions out 
 of which it in all probabihty arose were already present. The 
 Aryans found themselves a conquering white minority among 
 the subject dark-skiimed population, and the contrast between 
 the Aryan and the Dasyu is already deeply marked. " Varna," 
 the Sanskrit word for caste, means originally colour, and some 
 at least of the Sanskrit authorities adopted the distinction 
 of colour as their explanation of the origin of the institution,' 
 In fact, towards the close of the Vedic age it would seem that 
 the institution has taken shape. Four castes are mentioned in 
 the Purusha-Sukta, one of the latest hymns found in the Vedic 
 collection : * " When they formed Purusha, into how many parts 
 did they divide him ? What was his mouth ? What were his 
 arms ? What were called his thighs and his feet 1 " The 
 answer is that the Brahman issued from his mouth, the Ksha- 
 triya from his arms, the Vaisya from his thighs, and the Sudra 
 from his feet. The first three, the priests, the warriors, and 
 the farmers, were aU Aryans and twice-born men. The Sudras 
 alone were the once-born and the slaves of all the rest. These 
 were the four original and legitimate castes. The mass of lower- 
 caste men were held to have issued from various mixtures be- 
 tween the four original orders. Without attempting here to go 
 into the Brahmanic theories of the origin and nature of caste in 
 general, or dwelHng on this occasion upon the position of the 
 Brahman, it may suffice to quote a few laws from Manu iUus- 
 
 1 Manu, viii. 415, 416, 417; iv. 185. 
 
 2 See above, chap. v. p. 190 ; Manu, viii. 299-300. 
 ^ Muir, Sanscrit Texts, vol. i. p. 140. 
 
 * Muir, i. 156, 157. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 291 
 
 kating the position of the Sudra, which tend to show the ethical 
 analogy between a caste system and a slave system. • 
 The Sudra in Manu is as such a bom slave. 
 
 " A Sudra, though emancipated by his master, is not released 
 from servitude ; since that is innate in him, who can set him free 
 from it ? " 1 
 
 If a Brahman requires any article for a sacrifice which he 
 carmot find handy, " he may take at his pleasure two or three 
 articles from the house of a Sudra, for a Sudra has no business 
 with sacrifices." ^ To kill a Sudra is a minor offence, placed in 
 the same fist with the cutting down of green trees for firewood, 
 neglecting to kindle the sacred fires, superintending mines, 
 stealing grain, etc., and the penance for kOhng a Sudra is to give 
 ten white cows and a buU to a Brahman.^ On the other hand, an 
 assault by a Sudra upon any twice-born man is punished by 
 mutilation of the offending Hmb.* The defamation of a Brahman 
 or an insult to a twice-born man by a Sudra is punished with 
 equal severity : "He shall have his tongue cut out, for he is of 
 low origin " ; while, " if he arrogantly teaches Brahmanas 'their 
 duty, the king shall cause hot oil to be poured into his mouth and 
 into his ears." ^ 
 
 For a Sudra to have anything to do with a woman of the 
 twice-born caste was a serious offence, but as to marriage with 
 a Sudra woman, Manu's opinion fluctuates.^ Lastly, the Sudras 
 serve as scapegoats. " Takman," says the Atharva Veda, 
 addressing the demon who brings fever, "go to the Mujavant 
 or further. Attack the Sudra woman, the teeming one, shake 
 her, Takman." ' The relative values of the hves of men of 
 the four castes are summed up. " One-fourth (of the penance) 
 for the murder of a Brahmana is prescribed (as expiation) for 
 (intentionally) kilHng a Kshatriya, one-eighth for kilhng a 
 Vaisya; know that it is one-sixteenth for kilHng a virtuous 
 Sudra." 8 
 
 It ought only to be subjoined that the distinction of caste 
 
 1 Manu, viii. 414. ' Manu, xi. 13. = ib., xi. 64, 65, 66, 67, 131. 
 
 ' «6., viu. 279, 280. = ib., viii. 270, 272. 
 In one place (iii. 17) the Brahman who takes a Sudra to wife will, after 
 death, sink into hell ; and other passages equally condemn any relations 
 with Sudra women (e. g. iii. 191, 250). But in other places marriage 
 with a Sudra is contemplated, and merely affects inheritance. In ix. 151, 
 the son of the Sudra wife is to take one share of the estate as against three 
 shares of the son of the Brahman ; but in sec. 160, the son of a Sudra is not 
 an heir at all. Commentators explain that this is the case in which the 
 Sudra wife is not legally married. 
 
 ' Duncker, Hist, of AnH^mty, vol. iv. p. 281. ' Manu, xi. 127. 
 
292 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ■was a matter of some perplexity to moralists, even in the Brah- 
 manio age. Among the different accounts of castes given in the 
 Mahabharata some roundly assert that character makes caste. 
 
 Nahusha, who had been condemned to take the form of a 
 serpent, asks Yudhishthira the question : " Who is a Brahman, 
 and what is the object of knowledge ? " Yudhishthira replies : 
 " The man in whom are seen truth, liberality, patience, virtue, 
 innocence, devotion and compassion " — he is a Brahman accord- 
 ing to the religious tradition. The serpent answers, " But ia 
 Sudras also we meet with truth, liberaUty, calmness, innocence, 
 harmlessness and compassion, O Yudhishthira." Yudhishthira 
 replies : " Whenever a Sudra has any virtuous characteristics, 
 and a Brahman lacks it, that Sudra will not be really a Sudra, 
 nor that Brahman a Brahman. The man in whom this virtuous 
 character is seen is a Brahman, and the man in whom it is not 
 seen is a Sudra." The serpent proceeds : "If you regard him 
 only as a Brahman whom his conduct makes such, then caste 
 is of no avail until deeds are superadded to it." Thus pressed, 
 Yudhishthira admits the confusion of castes in the actual world, 
 and concludes that good conduct and the fulfilment of the pre- 
 scribed ceremonies are alike necessary.^ 
 
 Other passages declared that fundamentally " there is no 
 difference of castes. This world, having been at first created 
 by Brahma, entirely Brahmanic, became separated into castes 
 in consequence of works " ; * and the speaker, Bhrigu, being now 
 asked what constitutes membership of a caste, repUes that — 
 
 He who is pure, consecrated by the natal and other initiatory 
 ceremonies, who duly studies the Veda, practises the six kiads of 
 works, and the rites of purification, who eats of offerings, is 
 attached to his religious teacher, is constant in austerities, and 
 is devoted to truth, is called a Brahman. He in whom are seen 
 truth, liberality, inoffensiveness, innocence, modesty, compassion 
 and devotion, is declared to be a Brahman. He who is unclean, 
 is addicted constantly to all kinds of food, performs all kinds 
 of work, has abandoned the Veda, and is destitute of pure 
 observances, is called a Sudra.' 
 
 Here we have an ethical doctrine of equahty, or — which is 
 the same thing — of distinction by merit alone, strictly in line 
 •mth the teachings of Buddha, in whose Order there was no 
 thought of caste, and for whom the true Brahman was he who 
 lived the perfectly pure and holy life. 
 
 ' Summarized from Muir, Sanscrit Texts, vol. i. p. 133-138. 
 ' Muir, i. 140. ' Summarized from Muir, i. 142. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 293 
 
 7. China. — In China, a tradition is preserved of an epoch at 
 which there was no slavery, and in the classical bdok of poems, 
 the She-King, there is little that points definitely to the exist- 
 ence of the institution in its strict sense. Few prisoners were 
 taken at that time, and therefore it was very possible that 
 slaves were also few, but the evidence appears clear that slavery 
 did exist in the Chow Dynasty.^ The institution is certainly 
 ancient, and even at the present day general, although no 
 doubt far less important than in some other countries. Debt 
 slavery no longer exists, and in the pacific land of China war has 
 ceased to be a source of supply ; but the slave-trade is general,^ 
 and the sale of daughters by their parents, and of wives by their 
 husbands, particularly in times of famine, is a rich source of 
 recruitment of the slave class. Kidnapping is also frequent. 
 The slaves, we are told, are generally treated well, and there is 
 that social equality between mistress and slave-girls which we 
 so commonly find in the East, mitigating the harshness of legal 
 institutions. But the protection of the slave is very inadequate. 
 It is true that the master has not the power of life and death, 
 but the punishment for killing a slave is only the bamboo.* 
 Further, if death is caused by a canonical or legitimate punish- 
 ment the man is held guiltless ; * branding, we are told, is but a 
 small part of the punishment of a slave for running away,^ while 
 the slave who strikes his master is liable to death by beheading. 
 
 8. Slavery, like polygamy and divorce, was an institution which 
 Mohammed found fully established among his feUow-countrjrmen, 
 which he disUked and set himseK to mitigate, but could not 
 attempt to abolish. A difference, however, is made between 
 Moslem and non-Moslem captives. In a war with Moslems 
 prisoners were not enslaved. If the prisoner on the battlefield 
 became a Moslem he might not be killed, but according to the 
 traditions he ought even to be set free, though if he became 
 a Moslem subsequently he remained a slave.* The holding of 
 
 ' Legge, Prolegomena to the She-King, p. 166 and footnote. In point of 
 fact there are passages in the She-King itself which can hardly admit of 
 two interpretations (vol. ii. part ii. book iv. ode viii. stanza 3). 
 
 ' Douglas, Society in China, p. 346. 
 
 ' The punishment applies to deliberate murder, or mutilation with death 
 as the result, and if the slave is innocent, banishment is added (Kohler, 
 cited by Post, Grundriss, i. 373). 
 
 * If an innocent slave is put to death, his wife and children become free 
 (Kohler, cited by Post, Grundriss, i. 372). 
 
 " Douglas, op. cit., p. 350. 
 
 ° But according to Hidayah, the conversion to Islam on the battlefield 
 did not necessarily save a man from slavery (Hughes, Dictionary of 
 Iskm, 697). 
 
294 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Moslem slaves was not, as such, prohibited, but their emancipa- 
 tion was regarded as an act of special merit. According to the 
 tradition : " Whosoever frees a slave who is a Moslem, God will 
 redeem every member of his body limb for limb from hell fire." i 
 Mohammed sought mitigation of the slave's lot by ethical rather 
 than legal means. The slave has no civil hberty, and can only 
 possess property by the owner's permission. The master's 
 power is unlimited, and he is not slain for the murder of his 
 slave. He has unlimited power over his female slaves; as a 
 matter of law he may prostitute them ; he may give a slave in 
 marriage to whom he will, though he may not annul the marriage 
 when once completed.^ On the other hand, the Prophet en- 
 joins upon Moslems to exercise kindness to slaves, forbids the 
 prostitution of slave-girls as a rehgious offence, and enjoins 
 emancipation whenever a slave is able to redeem himself. 
 " When a slave of yours has money to redeem his bond, then 
 you must not allow him to come into your presence afterwards." 
 " Behaving well to slaves is a means of prosperity, and behav- 
 ing ill to them is a cause of loss." " Whenever any one of 
 you is about to beat a slave and the slave asks pardon in the 
 name of God, then withhold yourself from beating him. Peed 
 your slaves with food of that which you eat and clothe them 
 with such clothing as you wear, and command them not to 
 do that which they are unable." Wrongful punishment, 
 which, in some institutions, as we have seen, is a legal ground 
 of manumission, was held by Mohammed to be a moral ground. 
 " He who beats his slave without fault or slaps him on the 
 face, his atonement for this is freeing him." As an illustration 
 of the spirit in which this behest was conceived, we may quote 
 the story of the Cahph Othman, who, having twisted his 
 memlook's ear, bade the slave twist his own.' A further 
 humane provision forbade the separation of mother and child : 
 " Whoever is the cause of separation between mother and child 
 by selHng and giving, God will separate him from his friends on 
 the day of resurrection." * 
 
 Conversely, the Prophet had certain promises for the dutiful 
 slave : " It is well for a slave who regularly worships God and 
 
 1 Hughes, Dictionary of Islam, p. 597. 
 
 ^ If a slave-girl has a child by her master she becomes free at his death, 
 while, if the child be acknowledged by the master, she becomes free there- 
 upon (ib., 597, 598). 
 
 » ib., 599. 
 
 * Though this sashing is attributed to Mohammed, it is said by Tabir that 
 " we used to sell the mothers of children in the time of the Prophet and 
 of Abu Bekr but Umar forbade it in his time " (Hughes, 599). 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 295 
 
 discharges his master's work properly " ; and again : " When a 
 slave wishes well to his master and worships God* well, for him 
 are double rewards." On the whole, the authorities tell us that 
 the Prophet's rules of good treatment are observed. Masters 
 are bound to maintain their slaves or emancipate them. To 
 sell a slave of long standing is considered disgraceful, and female 
 slaves are seldom emancipated without being provided for. 
 The Egyptian slaves in Lane's time were numerous, but well 
 cared for, and ranked socially above free servants. With all 
 these mitigations it must be admitted that the recognition of 
 the slave traffic by Mohammedanism has been, and is to this day, 
 a curse to Africa and a source of disturbance to the world's 
 politics. 
 
 9. Greece. — Like the Chinese, the Greeks had a tradition of a 
 prehistoric epoch in which there were no slaves .^ But in the 
 Homeric epoch we find slavery in full swing, and the regular 
 issue of the capture of a town is that the men should be slain 
 and the women enslaved. Hector knows — and no thought is 
 so bitter to him — ^that when Troy is taken and he himself is 
 slain, it will be Andromache's fate to be a bondwoman to one 
 of her conquerors. Her family had already suffered the same 
 fate. The swift-footed, godhke Achilles had destroyed her 
 father and her seven brothers, and had carried off her mother 
 " with the rest of the spoil," though he afterwards set her free 
 ' for an immense ransom. Now, Hector was aU these to her, but 
 the day would come when the Argives would sack the sacred 
 town of Hium and Hector in his turn be taken from her, and it 
 would be her lot to fall into slavery.^ Apart from legitimate 
 warfare, piracy — which, for that matter, was in the Homeric 
 view hardly less legitimate — was a frequent source of slavery. 
 Many children suffered the fate of Eumaeus the swineherd, 
 and were carried off by the pirate and sold across the wine-dark 
 sea. Slavery was hereditary, and the slave might be sold or 
 put to death, as the faithless female slaves were hanged by 
 Telemachus.^ On the other hand, slaves might own houses and 
 property of their ovni and live in the practical freedom in which 
 we find the goodly Eumseus. Lastly, it should be noted that 
 the slaves were not the only rightless class, for the stranger is 
 also outside the protection of the law, though, even if a beggar 
 and a fugitive, he is under the shelter of Zeus so long as he is a 
 guest and claims the right of hospitahty. 
 
 1 Herodt., vi. 137 ; Busolt, Handbuch, p. 11. ^ Iliad, vi, 414-495. 
 
 ' Odyssey, xxii., Tr, Butcher and Lang, p. 374. 
 
296 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In the rural districts of Greece slavery remained rare. 
 Pericles lays stress on the fact that the Peloponnesians are 
 autourgoi — cultivators of their own lands.^ It is even said that 
 slave-holding was forbidden in Phocis and Lokris down to the 
 fourth century .2 But in the more developed states the growth 
 of wealth meant, as always in the ancient world, increase in the 
 number of slaves and — what was most fatal — the behef that 
 work was not compatible with the dignity of a free man. 
 Slavery remained a recognized fate for prisoners of war as an 
 alternative to massacre, and even Plato could only hope that 
 Greeks would abandon the practice of enslaving fellow -Greeks, 
 restricting themselves to the barbarian, who, as Aristotle held, 
 was the only natural slave. But through the institution of debt 
 slavery the poorer classes in each state were frequently menaced 
 with faUing into enslavement. Before Solon's time the land 
 was tilled by poor cultivators for the rich, and on their failure 
 to pay five-sixths of their produce to the landlord, they fell 
 into the position of serfs along with their wives and children. 
 The prohibition of debt slavery and the pledging of the person 
 by Solon was thus the salvation of civil freedom for Athens ; and 
 with the progress of Athenian democracy, although it was a 
 democracy of free men only, the position of the slaves was 
 indirectly improved. The master had the right of corporal 
 punishment and of branding, but could not put a slave to death 
 without a judicial decision.^ A right of action for vPpvs protected 
 the slave from ill-treatment by strangers, and if maltreated by his 
 master he could take refuge in the Theseum or some other asylum 
 and demand to be sold — a demand which was investigated either 
 by the priests or by a judicial process. On the other hand, the 
 slave was not directly recognized as a personality by the law ; 
 he could only be represented by his master, who could sue for 
 damages on his account. Except in murder cases he could only 
 give evidence under torture, to which he might be given up at 
 the will of his master, the belief being that this was the only 
 way to get truth from him. He could only give evidence against 
 his master upon a charge of treason. At the same time, he 
 was often allowed to hold property and found a family, while 
 he might buy his freedom by entrusting his earnings to a priest. 
 Manumission was frequent and the hope of it used as a stimulus 
 
 1 Thuoyd., i. 141. 2 Busolt, p. 12. 
 
 ' This held in other states as well (see Isocrates, Panath. 181, in 
 Busolt, p. 12). In the Laws (ix. 856) the slayer of his own slave is to undergo 
 a legal purification corresponding to that imposed on the unintentional 
 homicide of a free man, and incur no further penalty. For a case in wljiob 
 the kilUng of a slave might be treated as mjirder^ of. ib., 872, 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 297 
 
 to industry, but the freedman retained a semi -dependent 
 condition and had no poHtical rights unless enfranchised by a 
 special statute like that of Cleisthenes.^ 
 
 The development in the Dorian states was somewhat different. 
 Here serfdom was more prominent than slavery, though the 
 two institutions existed sometimes side by side. The Dorian 
 conquerors divided part of the land among themselves, leaving 
 it /to be tilled by the conquered people as public serfs,^ while 
 part was left to its original possessors, who were personally free 
 but had no pohtical rights. Hence the two classes of Helots 
 and Perioeci. The conquered population were bound to the soil, 
 but could not be sold or set free except by the state, though 
 the landlord, for whom they cultivated the land at a fixed rate, 
 was their immediate master. The Helots of Sparta, as is well 
 known, were seditious, and were ill-treated and frequently put 
 to death in fear, or at least in anticipation, of some rising. The 
 Penestae of Thessaly, who were otherwise in a closely analogous 
 position to the Helots, were better off in this respect, as they 
 could only be put to death by judicial process. In Crete there 
 were two classes of serfs, those on the pubhc land and those 
 belonging to private owners, who might contract a legal marriage 
 and hold and inherit property, and, according to Aristotle, 
 were treated by masters on terms of social equaUty. Besides 
 these classes of serfs there were slaves who might be bought 
 and sold. 
 
 It should be added that the distinction between the citizen 
 and the non-citizen is strongly marked throughout Greek history. 
 In principle the ahen has no status of his own. He requires 
 a ir/Dofevos — the official successor of the host who protects his 
 guest — to represent him. Aliens were forbidden at Sparta 
 altogether, and at Athens, where their numbers became great, 
 they were as such destitute of rights, but in practice, on inscrib- 
 ing themselves on the Hst, they came under special state pro- 
 tection, for which, and for the right to exercise a trade, they paid 
 a certain tribute. They still required a representative in a law 
 
 ' Zimmem, pp. 356-358; Wilamowitz, p. 37. Slaves often carried on 
 trade or busineas and must then have had a large measure of practical 
 freedom (Wilamowitz, p. 120). On the other hand, the conditions in the 
 mines of Laureion were admittedly abject (Zimmern, 394r-396). 
 
 The intervention of the god — ^Apollo was especially active — in manu- 
 iMssion illustrates the precarious nature of the slave's " rights." If he 
 offered money to his master for his freedom, the master might take the 
 money and refuse the freedom. Hence the precaution of depositing it 
 with the god, who then carried through the trust (Famell, Cults, iv. 179). 
 -^it in some cases also as serfs to private masters, e. g. at Sparta 
 SWilamowitz, p. 37), 
 
298 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 court, and had neither the right of marriage with citizens, unless 
 by treaty with their own state, nor the right of holding land.^ 
 
 The organization of the city state, in fact, led naturally 
 to a deeply marked distinction between the full citizen and all 
 others, whether Greek or Barbarian, whether free or unfree. 
 And we may take it as a mark of the ethical superiority of the 
 Greeks that the logical consequences were so far mitigated, as 
 we see them to have been in the legislation for the protection 
 of slaves. 
 
 10. Rome. — At Rome the strict limitation of civil rights to full 
 citizens, combined with the pecuUar development of the powers 
 of the paterfamihas, had a depressing efiect upon the position 
 of slaves. Not only captured enemies, but, even down to the 
 time of Justinian, any unprotected foreigner was liable to en- 
 slavement. A free Roman could not become a slave within 
 Rome itself, but deserters, and all those who were omitted 
 from the census, could be sold abroad by the magistrate, children 
 by their parents, debtors by their creditors, the thief by the 
 injured party. 
 
 In practice, the slave of the earUer period was, as a rule, fairly 
 well treated, and there was probably no great social distinction 
 between him and his master ; but he was in law a chattel. He 
 had no family of his own; his union {contubernium) was no 
 legal marriage. He had no status in a court of justice, but if 
 he wished to sue for an injury could only do so through his 
 master. Even if abandoned by his master he did not become 
 free, but was the lawful property of the first comer. Not that 
 cruel treatment passed without condemnation. Cruelty, even 
 to animals, was subject to reUgious and even legal penalties.^ 
 Gross cases might involve the intervention of the censor. Though 
 the slave could legally hold no property, custom secured him 
 his own peculium, and he might even come to purchase his 
 freedom. 
 
 Such was the position of the slave in early Rome. The 
 growth of the Roman dominion, the rise of the great estates, 
 submerging the old freeholder with his small plot of ground, 
 and the facihty of obtaining slaves from the numbers thrown 
 
 1 Busolt, pp. 12-14, 15, 68, 119. Cleisthenes, however, enrolled many 
 lisToiKOi among the citizens, and mixed marriages became frequent until 
 the conditions of the citizenship were tightened up by a law of 451. After 
 this, left-handed marriages with aliens obtained, the wife having a status 
 below that of an Athenian but above a concubine, and the children being 
 personally free (Zimmern, pp. 333, 334). 
 
 " Girard, Manuel, 89, 91, 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 299 
 
 into the market by capture in war and by traffic with pirates, 
 combined to give Roman slavery towards the close of the 
 Republic a new and dark character. The land was cultivated 
 in many districts by slave-gangs, working in chains and confined 
 by night in prison-workhouses under conditions described by i 
 Mommsen as such that by comparison with their sufferings it 
 is probable that all that was endured by negro slaves was 
 but a drop. But some relief came from the humaner ideas of 
 advancing civUization, fostered by contact with Greek culture. 
 In particular, the Stoic philosophy was the champion of the . 
 slaves. Seneca vigorously pleads their cause, and in particular ' 
 reprobates the cruelty of the gladiatorial games. The jurists 
 of the next century went further, and distinctly laid down that 
 by natural law all men are equal and that slavery is a human I 
 institution contrary to nature. " Quod ad jus naturale attinet, 
 omnes homines SBquales sunt," writes Ulpian ; ^ and more 
 distinctly Florentinus : " Servitus est constitutio juris gentium, 
 qua quis dominio alieno contra naturam subjicitur." ^ The 
 Stoical teaching had its effect on legislation. The practice of 
 the exposure and sale of children and of pledging them for 
 debt was forbidden, while an edict of Diocletian forbade a 
 free man to seU himself. Man-stealers were punished with, 
 death. The insolvent debtor was no longer made a slave. The 
 right of bequest was granted to slaves. Some approach was 
 made to a recognition of their marriage, not only after emanci- 
 pation, but even^ while in slavery, with a view to hindering the 
 separation of families. Some legal security had already been 
 given to their personal property, the pecuUum, by the praetorian 
 edicts. The Lex Petronia (perhaps of a.d. 19) forbade throwing 
 a slave to the wild beasts without a judicial decision.* Under 
 Hadrian the power of life and death was taken from the master, 
 and under Antoninus Pius the master who kiUed his own slave 
 sine causa was punished as a homicide. An edict of Claudius 
 had meanwhile enfranchised the old or sick slave who was 
 abandoned by his master.^ Under Nero the slave had been 
 given the right to complain of ill-treatment to the magistrate. 
 Under Pius the slave who was cruelly treated could claim to be 
 sold, and by a special refinement it was held cruelty to employ 
 an educated slave on degrading or manual work. Constantine 
 deprived masters who abandoned new-born slaves of their rights 
 over them.* Emancipation, though restricted by Augustus, 
 
 1 See Girard, p. 92. ' See Girard, p. 88, note 1. 
 
 ' Assez Hmidement, Girard, p. 94. * Girard, p. 94. 
 
 ' Itoc. cit. " ib., p. 95. 
 
300 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 was again made easier, and though the use of torture at judicial 
 investigation remained, it was in some respects limited.'- 
 
 While the legal position of the slave was being thus improved 
 by the imperial legislation, a new form of serfdom was growing 
 up under the name of the Colonate. Some of the Coloni were 
 probably foreign captives and immigrants settled upon the soil, 
 while others were originally free tenants, who lapsed into a 
 semi-servile condition through the insecurity of the times and 
 largely through self-commendation. The status of the Coloni 
 was regulated in the fourth century for fiscal purposes. Under 
 Constantine, in 332, the Colonus could not quit his holding nor 
 could he marry off the property of his lord. On the other 
 hand, he could not be disturbed or be subjected arbitrarily to 
 increased charges, and as the status was hereditary, we have 
 ,here a fully developed predial serfdom with fixed but limited 
 'rights for the serf.^ The master might infiict moderate chas- 
 tisement, but the Colonus had a legal remedy for injury or 
 excessive demands.^ While the Colonate was partly recruited 
 from the previously free peasantry, a compensating process was 
 going on whereby rural slaves obtained a settlement upon the 
 land as quasi-Coloni or Casati. They were assimilated to the 
 Coloni by the law of Valentinian I. in 377, could not be sold 
 apart from the land, and by the end of the seventh century were 
 merged in the Colonate.* 
 
 We have now reached a point in the history of slavery at 
 which two fresh influences have to be considered. The first of 
 these is the barbarian conquests ; the second that of the mediaeval 
 Church. The Gterman tribes, generally speaking, recognized 
 chattel slavery, and slaves were recruited from the sources 
 ordinarily recognized among barbarians — war, unprotected 
 strangers, voluntary commendation, and in certain cases debt 
 ({. e. in cases of incapacity to pay the wergild. This was the 
 only form of debt slavery known).* Even in Merovingian times 
 the slave was a true chattel, whose life had indeed a price, but 
 a price payable, like that of the Babylonian slave, to his lord, 
 and not a fixed wer like a free man, but a sum proportionate to 
 
 ^ Ingram, History of Slavery, 60-64, etc. 
 
 « ib., pp. 78, 79, etc. 
 
 ^ Titb colonus could also contract a valid marriage, but he had to marry 
 within the domain unless he purchased a dispensation. The right of punish- 
 ment was conceded to the master for certain specified faults (Letourneau, 
 L'Eaclavage, pp. 422, 423). 
 
 ' Ingram, History of Slavery, p. 80; of. VioUet, Histoire du Droit CivU 
 Fran^ais, p. 312. Valentinian prohibited their sale apart from the land. 
 
 ' Schroder, Lehrhuch, p. 46. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 301 
 
 his value.^ But besides the slaves, who were not numerous, 
 the Germans recognized a class of imperfectly free men, the 
 Liti, who had land of their own, without which a German could 
 not be a citizen, but were in a dependent position. Their 
 status varied very much from tribe to tribe, and from one 
 period to another. At first tributary to the people, we find 
 them at a later stage in subjection to an individual master. 
 They took no part in the meetings of the people, and while 
 originally they could plead before a court, their wergild was 
 ordinarily half that of a free man. Their marriage with free 
 people was a mesalliance, wherein the children followed the rank 
 of the mother. As we approach the " Frankish " period we 
 find their position more distinctly assimilated to that of serfs.^ 
 
 11. Thus the Middle Ages begin with two fairly distinct classes 
 of the unfree ; on the one hand, the slaves proper, whose position 
 has been amehorated in Roman law, but remains that of pure 
 chattels by the law of the conquerors ; on the other hand, a 
 class of serfs in various degrees of unfreedom, which had already 
 grown up in the later ages of the Empire and was reinforced by 
 the corresponding class of Liti among the conquerors. 
 
 The moral influence of the Stoic philosophy which had in- 
 spired the imperial legislation for the benefit of slaves was now 
 replaced by that of the Church. Like the Stoics, the Church 
 accepted slavery as an institution which it did not seek to abohsh, 
 but it was so far influenced by the philosophic idea of natural 
 equahty that it set itself to minimize an evil which it could 
 not cure. There was, indeed, one distinction which in the event 
 became a distinction of importance. The Stoic philosophy 
 was strictly universahst in charactier. For the Stoic all men 
 were brothers and there was no distinction of nationality, class, 
 or creed. For the Church all men ought to be brothers, but 
 many men were, unfortunately, unbelievers, and the brother- 
 hood of men was for many purposes limited to members of the 
 Church. Thus it followed naturally from Christian principle 
 that the holding of Christians in slavery, and still more the 
 reducing of Christians to slavery by capture or by purchase, 
 were actions which, if not wholly illegal, were contrary to 
 the best rehgious teaching. Accordingly, from an early period 
 the custom of enslaving prisoners of war began to be abandoned, 
 
 } Schroder, p. 346. The price was, however, becoming a fixed tariff, 
 arid so gradually approximating to a true wergild (ib., 218). 
 
 ^ Schroder, pp. 50, 61, 221-223. In the latter period their position 
 still varied very greatly as between different peoples. 
 
302 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 at any rate in war between Christians, while the Church further 
 set itself energetically to combat the traffic in slaves.^ The 
 custom of treating the slave as a fixture on the estate, which in 
 the Empire had been made matter of legal enactment, was first 
 adopted by the West Franks among the barbarians, and spread 
 from them to other peoples by degrees. ^ The prohibition to 
 enslave captives is treated by Gregoras as the traditional law 
 " not only of the Romans and Thessahans, but of the Ulyrians, 
 Triballi and Bulgarians on account of the unity of faith."' 
 But as this prohibition did not apply to pagans, until the conver- 
 sion of the Slavs it left them as the one source open to the 
 Western European countries for the acquisition of fresh slaves 
 whether by capture or by traffic. The interval before their con- 
 version lasted long enough, and this source of slaves was during 
 that time sufficiently important to alter the European name 
 for the institution. The former " servus " was now accurately 
 represented in mediaeval and modern language by the " serf " ; a 
 " Slav " was, vfith. sUght modification, in German, French and 
 Enghsh, a "slave."* As the Slavs became converted to Chris- 
 tianity this source of recruitment for the slave class was cut ofE. 
 There remained debt slavery, the sale of wife and children by hus- 
 band and father, and the sale of a man by himself in time of need. 
 All these sources of slavery remained in the earher Middle 
 Ages,^ but they were already in process of decay. Self-enslave- 
 ment was a desperate resource to which men were only driven 
 in times of great need, and probably became infrequent in 
 proportion as a more settled order made years of famine rarer ; 
 and the downfall of free men tended rather to swell the class 
 of serfs than of slaves. The sale of men was on the whole opposed 
 by the Church,^ and debt slavery was also hmited under religious 
 influences. From the CaroHngian age onward it became limited 
 
 ' For example, the Bristol slave trade was suppressed by Wulf stan, Bishop 
 of Worcester, towards the close of the eleventh century. It had been 
 prohibited previously by Ethelbert and Canute, and again by WilUam the 
 Conqueror. The selling of a countryman beyond the seas was forbidden 
 in the " Dooms " of Ina, and the same prohibition, so far as Christians 
 were concerned, in the " Dooms " of Ethelred (Pollock and Maitland, 
 i. 85). 
 
 ' Schroder, p. 219. ' See Grotius, book iii. chap. ix. 
 
 ' In addition to possible sources of capture by war there was the slave 
 trade in the hands of the Jews (Schroder, p. 459, quoting T. Waitz, 6, ii. 
 207). 
 
 ' Schroder, p. 220. 
 
 ° For example, at the Council of Coblenz, in 922 (Viollet, 311); and 
 Wulfstan again is prominent with protestations against the enslavement 
 of " cradle children." Nevertheless, the Church allowed a man to give 
 himself up along with his wife and children as slave to an abbey, at any 
 rate until he could redeem himself (Schroder, p. 220, note 26). 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 303 
 
 to a period necessary for the paying off of the debt,'^ and thus 
 ceased to be a source of hereditary slavery properly so called. 
 Meanwhile, the Church was also urgent in pressing the claims of 
 manumission. The grounds for this are based on the broadest 
 Stoical principle by Gregory the Great, who urges that " it is a 
 good deed if men, whom nature created and brought forth free 
 from the beginning and the law of nations has put under the yoke 
 of slavery, are by the benevolence of a liberator restored to their 
 liberty in that natural condition in which they were born." This 
 is the full doctrine of human rights applied in somewhat halting 
 fashion by way of recommending a beneficent practice. But, 
 however haltingly appUed, the moral conception of universalism 
 introduced by the Stoic philosophy and favoured with limitations 
 by the Church, was in principle fatal to slavery. That institution 
 depends, as we have argued throughout, upon group-morality 
 and the distinction between man and man. It is suited to the 
 genius of primitive rehgions, whether in the form of separate 
 family cults or of national creeds, but it is opposed in spirit to 
 any doctrine which teaches that the same moral obhgations 
 must apply to all humanity ahke. The Stoics first preached 
 this doctrine with effect in Western Europe, but unfortunately, 
 in appljdng it to the case of the slave, they were hampered by 
 their view of the indifference of all outward circumstances, and 
 preached that the slave in his slavery could be and should be 
 as truly king and lord of himself as the emperor on his throne. 
 The slave Epictetus was no less his own master than the 
 Emperor Marcus AureUus. The leaders of the Church accepted 
 the principle of human brotherhood, but to them also worldly 
 institutions were secondary, because salvation, if obtained in 
 this world, was not obtained for this life, but for the life to 
 come. They dealt with slavery, therefore, not so much from 
 the point of view of the rights of the slave as from that of the 
 duties of the master, and hmiting their conception of equal 
 rights by the principle of brotherhood in Christ alone, they 
 took less account of the fate of those outside the Christian 
 community. The results are written deep in history. The 
 question is always asked how far the abohtion of slavery in 
 Europe was due to moral, how far to economic, causes. The 
 answer appears to be that, so far as regards slavery proper, the 
 two factors worked in harmony. The transition to serfdom was 
 favoured by the economic situation.^ But the disappearance 
 
 See Schroder, 220, compared with 459. 
 ' See Vinogradoft, Growth of the Manor, pp. 202-204. A great social 
 reform like the abolition of slavery is seldom brought about by moral 
 
304 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of slavery is no less distinctly connected with the rise of 
 universahsm in ethics, first in philosophy and afterwards in 
 religion. In neither form was the institution of slavery directly 
 combated, but the indirect effect, first by amehorating the 
 position of the slave and thereby curtailing the rights of the 
 master, secondly by encouraging hianumission, and thirdly and 
 most important of all by cutting off the sources of supply, was 
 that slavery died of inanition, and by the end of the twelfth 
 century was almost unknown in Europe. On the other hand, 
 when the Christian world came into contact, a century or two 
 later, as a conquering power with non-Christian races, there was 
 no moral force at hand to resist the natural result, and new 
 forms of slavery grew up. 
 
 12. The history of serfdom in the Middle Ages is more compli- 
 cated and obscure, especially as to the causes and progress of its 
 disappearance. We have seen a form of predial serfdom already 
 growing up within the Roman Empire. We have seen also that, 
 in addition to the slave class, the barbarian conquerors introduced 
 into the constitutions of Western Europe imperf ectlydistinguished 
 classes of semi-free citizens. All these elements contributed to 
 form that great mass of the population which throughout the 
 Middle Ages stood between the free man and the slave, and 
 whilst slavery, as we have seen, was slowly dying out, serfdom 
 for a long time continued to flourish and increase, recruited in 
 part from the ranks of the slaves and in part from free men who, 
 either by conquest or through economic causes, sometimes even 
 by voluntary surrender of their freedom with a view to gaining 
 the protection of a lord, swelled the number of the semi-free. 
 Thus mediaeval serfdom represents, on the one hand, a progress 
 from slavery, and, on the other hand, a degradation of free men 
 which is a not uncommon incident of epochs of unrest and of 
 mihtary conquest. It is not within our limits to characterize 
 all the different grades of unfreedom which resulted. At most 
 a general idea may be given. Serfdom, though not essentially 
 
 agencies alone. It is only when these can take advantage of a favourable 
 political or econofnic situation that they get their way. Hence there is 
 always on the surface of things colour for the cynical view that what appear 
 to be moral improvements are really due to non-moral causes. But this 
 view ignores the cases in which the political and economic forces tend in 
 the opposite direction. In modem industry, for example, the circum- 
 stances, if we eliminate the moral factor, are eminently favourable to the 
 development of a servile system, but every move in this direction has 
 constantly been combated, on the whole with conspicuous success, by the 
 deliberate efforts of men and women animated by a sense of justice and 
 humanity. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 305 
 
 and universally confined to peasants settled upon the land, 
 tended in point of fact through the Middle Ages to lose its 
 domestic and assume a territorial character. In the Frankish 
 Empire the serf was, generally speaking, glebce adscriptus. He 
 might not leave his land, while, on the other side, he could not 
 be sold apart from the land. He could acquire property, but 
 had not complete control of it. He had to perform certain 
 definite services to his master, which could not be altered 
 arbitrarily, and in the earher period he required the lord's 
 consent to marriage, at any rate outside the domain, while he 
 had also to pay for securing the lord's consent. He came under 
 the protection of the law, having, as a rule, half the wergild and 
 half the fines of a free man. In other respects, the position of 
 the serf was extremely different among different peoples . Among 
 the Saxons the Liti were a part of the people. Among the 
 Frisians, and probably among the Saxons also, they could 
 plead in court, and in cases of injury received a part of the wer 
 themselves, only one portion going to their lord. Among the 
 Lombards, on the other hand, the corresponding class could not 
 appear in the courts, and the lord received their wer as though 
 they were slaves. Between these extremes there were numerous 
 intermediate grades .^ As the Mddle Ages advanced the heaviest 
 burdens of serfdom tended to disappear in the Empire. In 
 particular, the right to marry was acquired by the serf, and 
 here, as has been mentioned in chap, v., the influence of the 
 Church was probably decisive. The payment upon marriage, 
 however, was continued, at any rate in cases where it took the 
 bride off the estate, and in this case it still required the approval 
 of the lord — not that the withholding of such approval would 
 invahdate the marriage, but that it would render the parties 
 liable to punishment.^ The old right of the lord to inherit from 
 the serf had been reduced * to the right to a duty on the inherit- 
 ance ; and the other restrictions on the serf's right to property 
 were in process of disappearance. His personal tribute was 
 converted into a rent upon his holding and his stock, and the 
 limitation upon his power to ahenate his land into a right of 
 pre-emption on the part of the lord.* Finally, the growth of 
 free cities favoured freedom. The serf, escaping to them, could 
 be reclaimed by his master within a year and a day, but from 
 that time onwards was free. The principle "Air makes free," — 
 that is to say, that the position of a person follows the general 
 law of the land on which he is settled and does not depend upon 
 
 » Schroder, pp. 222, 223. " ib., p. 455. 
 
 ' " Schon in der vOrigen Periods " ; SchrSder, i6. * Schroder, p. 456. 
 
306 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 his birth, became adopted in the later Middle Ages and naturally 
 tended to emancipation.^ 
 
 In France, the conditions of serfdom varied from province 
 to province and from period to period. ^ A conception of the 
 different grades of unfreedom covered by the term may be 
 derived from the description given at the close of the thirteenth 
 century by Beaumanoir. In one grade the whole property of 
 the serf was at the mercy of the lord, who might also imprison 
 him at pleasure ; in the other grade, the lord could command 
 nothing from the serf except a fixed customary sum, though he 
 was still the serf's heir unless the children redeemed the succes- 
 sion.' Serfdom had already become rare and had in some 
 provinces disappeared. Some serfs gained the right of paying 
 a fixed "taille," and the right of holding and transmitting pro- 
 perty were, generally speaking, acquired early. In a m-ediseval 
 decision given at Paris the characteristics laid down as dis- 
 tinguishing a serf are (1) he cannot marry without the permis- 
 sion of the lord, and (2) he cannot give or bequeath goods. The 
 second condition was the more general, and the milder form of 
 serfdom persisted to the eighteenth century.* 
 
 In England, as elsewhere, serfdom was increasing just at the 
 period when slavery was disappearing, and the number of serfs 
 was swelled by the merging of different classes, slaves, villeins, 
 and even free men, under a single denomination. The serf 
 was not, properly speaking, adscriptus glebcB, although he passed 
 with the manor when it was sold or inherited ; but he could be 
 moved from place to place and from one service to another at 
 the lord's wiU,^ and by strict right could be sold, though the 
 right was rarely exercised.* The general characteristics of the 
 villeinage were that the viUein by birth could not marry his 
 daughter without paying a fine, nor permit his son to take holy 
 orders, nor sell his calf or horse ; that he is bound to serve as a 
 reeve in the manor, and that his youngest son succeeds to his 
 holding on his death.'' To this it must be added that while the 
 serf has full legal rights in relation to third parties, the criminal 
 law makes a great distinction between his lord and him. Thus, 
 in the Leges Henrici, if the lord takes away the man's land or 
 deserts him in mortal peril he forfeits his lordship, but the man 
 
 ^ Schroder, p. 460. On the reaction which began in the fifteenth century, 
 and which was due largely to the unfavourable economic position of the 
 landless free labourers, see Schroder, pp. 460, 461. 
 
 2 VioUet, pp. 307, 313 ff. 
 
 ' ib., p. 314. « ib., p. 315. 
 
 ° Vinogradofi, Villeinage in England, p. 57. 
 
 « ib., p. 151. ' ib., p. 166. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 307 
 
 must bear with the lord's ill-treatment of him for thirty days in 
 war and a year and a day in peace. To kiU on^s lord is Uke 
 blasphemy and is punishable with death by torture, whereas 
 if a lord kills his man without cause a fine will suffice. This 
 is the " high -water mark of English vassalism." ^ The Norman 
 law is more liberal, but still draws a distinction. " If a lord 
 kiUs his man he shall be punishable with death, if the man his 
 lord he shall be drawn and hanged, and even if it be by mis- 
 adventure he shall be punishable with death." The lord would 
 be punished for kiUing or maiming the viUein, but might beat or 
 imprison his serf.^ 
 
 The history of the decUne of serfdom in the later Middle 
 Ages, both in France and England, is not very clear. The 
 lawyers who had been unfavourable to freedom down to the 
 thirteenth century changed their attitude during that period 
 under the influence of the new ideas of the state as a whole, no 
 longer broken up into half -independent feudal territories, but as 
 a single authority, having equal claim upon all its subjects ahke.^ 
 That these more enhghtened ideas accompanied the improvement 
 of social organization was an extremely fortunate circumstance 
 for the Enghsh serf. In England, as on the Continent, freedom 
 might be acquired by escaping from the lord's jurisdiction, and 
 the courts now favoured liberty. Feudal barbarism admitted 
 this rough-and-ready method of emancipation largely because it 
 lacked the means of securing the person of the runaway. With 
 the growth of the kingly power and the better settlement of 
 society, this primitive check upon oppression would naturally 
 disappear, and thus where the ethical conception of freedom was 
 wanting, the growth of civilization meant the prolongation of the 
 old bondage and even, as in Russia and Germany, deterioration 
 in its character. In England and France, upon the other hand, 
 there was something of the nature of an ethical resistance to any 
 tightening of the bonds, and thus the development of order had a 
 beneficial effect on the slave rather than the reverse, for it tended 
 to encourage the system of money payments as a substitute for 
 labour service, and though in theory the serf remained the lord's 
 man, yet in practice, in proportion as labour services were com- 
 muted for a money rent his position became scarcely distinguish- 
 able from that of a tenant farmer. From whatever causes, 
 servile tenure was in fact rapidly becoming obsolete during the 
 fourteenth century. One of the latest records we have of the 
 existence of bondmen in England is in a document in which 
 
 > Pollock and Maitland, i. 300. 
 
 = ib., i. 416. ' Vinogradoff, p. 131. 
 
308 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Elizabeth enfranchises some remaining serfs of the Crown in 
 1574,^ but there were Scottish miners who remained serfs down 
 to 1799 and were not particularly desirous of having their 
 condition changed. 
 
 Yet elements of servihty remain in the position of the labourer. 
 The Statute of Labourers in 1348 was passed with the intention of 
 preventing workmen from taking advantage of the rise in wages 
 due to the depopulation of the country by the Black Death, and 
 was the beginning of a series of labour laws which brought the 
 labourer into a position which, as described in Blackstone,^ stood 
 as follows : (1) The law first of all compels all persons with 
 no visible effects to work ; (2) defines their hours in summer and 
 winter ; (3) punishes those who desert their work ; (4) empowers 
 justices to fix the rate of wage for agricultural labour and punishes 
 those who give or exact more than the wages so settled. We 
 know that these laws were largely a dead letter. Nevertheless 
 they illustrate the attitude of the governing classes. What was 
 in practice more important was the Statute of Apprentices (Fifth 
 of Elizabeth), which restricted the right to carry on a trade to 
 those who had served an apprenticeship, while the operation of 
 the Poor Law, especially of the Act of Settlement, tended in 
 practice to restrict the motions of the EngUsh labourer almost as 
 much as regular serfdom would do.' Lideed, had this statute 
 been rigidly and universally carried out, it would have had the 
 effect of fixing the labourer in his parish like a predial serf without 
 the right upon the land which redeems the serf's position. To 
 describe its practical operation in these terms might savour of 
 exaggeration, yet the historian of the Poor Law declares that 
 with this Act the "iron of slavery entered into the soul of the 
 English labourer," and those who know the midland or south 
 
 ^ This is sometimes spoken of as the latest record, but ProfeSBor 
 Vinogradoff informs me that this is not absolutely correct. 
 
 « I., p. iU. 
 
 ' In the effort to deal with vagabondage the law has at different times 
 come perilously near to re-introducing slavery. A statute of Edward 
 VI. ordained that all idle vagabonds should be made slaves, fed on bread 
 and water and refuse meat, wear iron rings, and be compelled by beating, 
 chains, etc., to do the work assigned to them. This was repealed in two 
 years. It is now laid down that slaves acquire freedom by landing in 
 England, but this does not affect the right a master may have acquired 
 to a man's perpetual service, and " the infamous and Tm.christian practice of 
 withholding baptism from negro servants, lest they should thereby gain 
 their liberty, was totally without foundation." The Law of England will 
 not dissolve a civil obligation between master and servant on account of the 
 alteration of faith in either of the parties, " but the slave is entitled to the 
 same liberty in England before' as after baptism; and, whatever service 
 the heathen negro owed to his English master, the same is he bound to 
 render when a Christian " (Blaokstone, i. 412, 413). 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 309 
 
 country labourer of the present day can see the scar still there. 
 Again, Blackstone writes — 
 
 " A master may by law correct his apprentice or servant for 
 negligence or other misbehaviour, so it be done with moderation ; 
 though if the master's wife beats him, it is good cause of de- 
 parture. But if any servant, workman or labourer assaults his 
 master or dame he shall suffer one year's imprisonment and 
 other open corporal punishment not extendrug to life or hmb." 
 
 Further, in Blackstone's time a servant through whose negH- 
 gence a fire happens forfeits £100, and in default of payment 
 might be committed to a workhouse with hard labour for eighteen 
 months. It is not difficult to recognize in these distinctions 
 between the rights of master and servant an echo of the law as 
 to lord and serf. 
 
 Nor was the EngUsh law altogether free from caste distinctions 
 in the earher part of the modern period. The benefit of clergy, 
 which had originally been an immunity claimed by ecclesiastics 
 from the secular courts, had been gradually transformed into 
 a mere class privilege, whereby educated persons could escape 
 punishment for secondary offences. Thus, in the seventeenth 
 century the question whether a man would be hanged for larceny 
 or not depended on whether he could read, unless indeed he had 
 forfeited the benefit of clergy by contracting a second marriage 
 or by marrying a widow. In 1705 the necessity for reading was 
 abohshed, and benefit of clergy could thereafter be claimed by 
 all persons alike for a first offence in the case of secondary crimes. 
 But important distinctions were still made. The offender, unless 
 he was a peer or a clerk in orders, was, until 1779, branded in 
 the hand and liable to seven years' transportation. Clerks in 
 orders, meanwhile, might plead their clergy for any number of 
 offences, and peers had received the same privileges as clerks by 
 the statute of 1547. On the other hand, during the eighteenth 
 century benefit of clergy was gradually withdrawn from an in- 
 creasing number of offences, but it was not until 1827 that it was 
 finally abohshed, and even then it was doubtful whether the 
 privilege of peers fell with it. This question was not settled 
 until 1841, when the statute of Edward VI. was repealed, and 
 peers accused of felony became liable to the same punishments 
 as other persons. 
 
 When it is remembered, further, that the whole administration 
 of petty justice and of the prehminary process in graver crimes 
 was in the hands of the landed gentry, upon whose estates the 
 labouring classes, rendered landless by economic changes, were 
 
310 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 fixed, as has been shown, by the Act of Settlement ; when it is 
 further borne in mind that the same justices had the power of 
 fixing Wages, and that the whole of the working classes in the 
 country were always upon or over the verge of pauperism and 
 dependent upon the support of the poor law, the control of which 
 was substantially in the same hands, it wiU be recognized that the 
 nominal freedom of the English labourer down to the beginning 
 of the reform period was a blessing very much disguised, and 
 that the reahty compared unfavourably with the fighter forms 
 of serfdom. The first stages in the progress of the factory 
 system made matters even worse. The new demand for child 
 labour introduced for a period what was in essence, if not in 
 name, a form of child slavery, pauper children being regularly 
 imported in the manufacturing districts as apprentices, and set 
 to work under conditions as to hours and also as to housing 
 which would have been onerous even at less tender years. But 
 these abuses, when fully realized by the pubhc, were met within 
 a period of time which, in comparison with the normal slow- 
 ness of reform, may almost be called brief, by a series of legis- 
 lative measures, overriding the so-called freedom of contract, 
 and protecting the children from their legal guardians. The 
 factory system, in short, reproduced the economic conditions 
 under which, in other circumstances, a form of slavery would 
 have arisen. And from this result England and the other 
 industrial nations with it have been saved by a distinctively 
 ethical movement. 
 
 On the Continent the direct manumission of serfs was 
 perhaps more frequent than in England. Enfranchisements en 
 bloc were common. We even hear of such things being done by 
 abbeys. St. Benedict of Aniane, in the ninth century, emanci- 
 pates serfs on the land which he receives.^ Charters were 
 sometimes given upon payment to whole villages and by kings 
 to whole counties. In 1315 Louis X. invited all the serfs on 
 the Crown lands to purchase their liberty, but the price asked 
 was too high. A general abolition of personal serfdom was 
 demanded by the Third Estate at Blois in 1576, and again at 
 Paris in 1614. This was not granted, but the institution was 
 quite unknown in many provinces in the seventeenth century. 
 It remained in Franche-Comte, Bourgogne, Alsace-Lorraine, 
 Trois Eveches, Champagne, Bourbonnais, La Marche, Nivemois, 
 Berry ; but the burden was relatively light, and when the Duke 
 of Lorraine proposed a money commutation for their services 
 in 1711, the serfs who were to benefit by it themselves raised 
 1 Ingram, op. cit., p. 93. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 311 
 
 objections. The question was raised by Voltaire, and by an edict 
 of 1779 Louis XVI. enfranchised the serfs of the roy|,l domain and 
 encouraged general aboHtion. Serfdom was finally abohshed in 
 France without compensation on the night of August 4, 1789, 
 along with the other incidents of feudal tenure. At the same time 
 fell the whole system of privileges which had made the nobles 
 and the clergy castes set apart from the mass of the people. 
 
 In the German Empire the progress, which we have seen 
 going forward until the thirteenth century, was arrested in the 
 fifteenth, and a reaction took place, leading to the Peasant's War 
 at the time of the Reformation. Serfdom lingered on, but in 
 1719-20 it was abolished on the Crown lands of East Prussia by 
 Frederick Wilham I. Frederick the Great attempted to forbid 
 corporal punishment and aimed at a general emancipation, but 
 achieved Uttle except in Prussian Poland. The hberation of 
 the German serf was to come indirectly from the IVench Revolu- 
 tion. Napoleon carried out emancipation in the conquered 
 territory, and as part of the general preparation for resistance 
 to France, the Prussian statesmen issued an edict in 1807 by 
 which the whole population of Prussia was made free by a 
 stroke of the pen.^ Serfdom admitting arbitrary exactions and 
 corporal punishment remained, notwithstanding the efforts of 
 Maria Theresa and her successors, in a great part of the Austrian 
 Empire down to 1848. It was abolished in Russia in 1861. The 
 emancipation of the Russian serf may be taken as the final 
 termination of the enslavement by law, whether complete or 
 partial, of white men. The later stages of the process in the more 
 backward countries were thus clearly deliberate acts of govern- 
 ment, based upon general conceptions either of human rights or 
 of the conditions of social well-being. And on the whole the 
 continental serf gained something through the delay. Emanci- 
 pated in England more by economic causes than on ethical 
 principles, he tended to become a landless labourer, more abject 
 in some relations than a serf with defined rights. On the Conti- 
 nent, in most countries, he retained his land, subject to servile 
 restrictions, and when the ethical movement struck off his 
 chains, it left him a free peasant cultivator. In England his 
 practical freedom was to be won at a later date and at the cost 
 of a depletion of the rural districts, which is raising the agrarian 
 problem in a form elsewhere unknown. So much depends on 
 the nature of the causes determining a change like that from 
 servitude to freedom, however great the inherent importance of 
 the change itself. 
 
 ^ Ingram, op. cit., pp. 119-129. 
 
312 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 13. The abolition of slavery and serfdom in the modem world 
 may, from one point of view, be described as a process whereby 
 the obligations of group-morality were extended so as to cover 
 all Christians, or, at any rate, all white Christians. Unfortun- 
 ately, this result is not the same thing as a strictly universalistic 
 morality. As long as the Christian communities lived in isola- 
 tion and did not come into touch with weaker races as their 
 conquerors, the matter was not one of any very practical moment, 
 but when, with the discovery of a new world and the circum- 
 navigation of Africa, a fresh economic position arose, making 
 slave labour industrially advantageous, while at the same time 
 a vast black population was put at the disposal of the far stronger 
 white man, slavery grew up again in a new and, in some respects, 
 a more debased form. It is worth noting, as illustrating the 
 ethical principle involved, that the old Roman slavery had 
 never entirely disappeared. In the eleventh century we find 
 Gregory VII. exacting from Demetrius of Dalmatia a promise not 
 to sell men. There was a slave trade with Mussulmans in Venice 
 and in Sicily right through the mediaeval period. In the twelfth 
 century slaves were sold at fairs in Champagne, and Saracen 
 slaves were found in the south of France in possession of a bishop 
 at that period.^ Though the French law in the sixteenth century 
 recognized that no slave could exist on French soil, the maxim, 
 as formulated by Loisel, is apphed to those who enter France 
 only upon their being baptized. But these smouldering embers 
 of slavery were now destined to burst out into flame. The 
 Portuguese began importing negro slaves in 1442, and obtained 
 a bull sanctioning the practice from Pope Nicholas V. in 1454. 
 The reason was characteristic. A great number of the captives 
 had been converted to the CathoHc faith, " and it is hoped that 
 by the favour of the divine clemency, if this process is continued, 
 the nations themselves may be converted to the faith, or at any 
 rate the souls of many from among them may be made of profit to 
 Christ." 2 In fact, the hope — probably the quite sincere hope — 
 of saving souls paralyzed, to say the least, the protest which 
 would otherwise have been made against what was in essence a 
 revival of one of the worst features of barbarism. It was quite 
 a logical exception made by Pope Calixtus III. in 1456, when 
 he prohibited the enslavement of Christians in the East, and 
 by Pius II. in 1462, when he severely blamed Christians who 
 
 ' So at Karboime and in Provence in the thirteenth century, and in 
 Roussillon down to its annexation by France. A Saracen waa publicly 
 sold in 1296 (VioUet, pp. 329, 330). 
 
 2 VioUet, p. 330. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 313 
 
 enslaved negro neophytes. When Columbus shipped 600 Lidian 
 prisoners to Spain to sell as slaves, the law of,the case was 
 investigated by Isabella, and, theologians differing in their 
 view, she finally ordered the Indians to be sent back to their 
 homes.^ Meanwhile, in the New World the Spaniards were 
 making slaves freely of Indians and treating them with great 
 cruelty. Las Casas, impressed with the horrors which he saw, 
 was struck with the idea that negroes would endure that bond- 
 age without sinking under it, and with the most benevolent 
 intentions gave the most unfortunate advice that residents in 
 Hispaniola should be allowed to import negro slaves.^ Regular 
 black traffic accordingly began, notwithstanding successive 
 efiorts made by the Popes, when they grasped the situation, to 
 suppress it.^ All the great trade nations of Western Europe 
 joined in the traffic, and must share the blame ahke. Europe 
 itself was not preserved whole from this scourge. In England, 
 indeed, it was held in the case of the negro Somerset (1772) that 
 EngUsh soil emancipated, but this doctrine, which had been good 
 law in France in 1571, was suspended in 1716 and again in 1738. 
 Slaves became common, and were even sold at Paris down to 
 1762. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century the Popes 
 themselves had Turkish galley-slaves, and Louis XIV., besides 
 these, had Jewish slaves and Russian captives.* 
 
 This second slavery was put down by a distinctly ethical move- 
 ment. It began with the Quakers in the seventeenth century. 
 George Fox had already desired the Friends in America to treat 
 their negroes well, and "that after certain years of servitude 
 they should set them free." In 1727 the Society declared that 
 slavery was not an allowed practice. In 1761 they excluded 
 from membership all concerned in it, and in 1783 formed an 
 association for liberating negroes and discouraging the traffic. 
 The Pennsylvanian Quakers had condemned it from 1696 
 onwards. Many leading names in Enghsh thought are quoted 
 in Dr. Ingram's History as opponents of the slave trade from 
 the end of the seventeenth century to that of the eighteenth. 
 Among them are Baxter, Steele, Pope, Cowper, Day, Hutcheson, 
 Wesley, Whitefield, Adam Smith, Johnson and Paley. An 
 
 » Ingram, 142, 143. 
 
 • " Which advice," says Las Casas himself, " after he had apprehended 
 the nature of the thing, he would not have given for all he had in the world " 
 (Ingram, 144). 
 
 ' e. g. The Bull of Urban VIII., 1537, and of Benedict XIV., 1741 
 (VioUet, p. 331). 
 
 ' VioUet, p. 332. The position of slaves in France and her colonies was 
 minutely regulated by the Code Noir of Louis XIV., 1685. 
 
314 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 English Committee for the abohtion of the slave trade was 
 formed in 1787, and the motion for abohtion, which was defeated 
 in the House of Lords in 1794, was carried under Fox's premier- 
 ship in 1807.^ The French Revolution had gone further. In 
 1791 the old principle that the French soil emancipates was re- 
 asserted by the Convention, and in 1794 slavery in the French 
 colonies was abolished by decree. But the moment was ill 
 chosen, as Hayti was in revolt, and Napoleon restored slavery 
 in 1802. At the Congress of Vienna, British influence was active 
 in obtaining the consent of other nations for the suppression of 
 the slave trade, and France acquiesced, in the treaties of 1814 
 and 1815. The British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was 
 founded in 1823, and secured Abohtion ten years'later. Slavery 
 was abohshed by France in 1848, by Portugal in 1858, by the 
 Dutch in 1863, and by Brazil in 1888. The founders of the 
 United States had been opposed to slavery and attempted to 
 exclude it by the Constitution, but were defeated by the opposi- 
 tion of South Carohna and Georgia. An Abohtion Society was 
 formed in 1774 and reconstructed by Franklin in 1787. The 
 Northern States adopted measures for abohtion between 1777 
 and 1804, and importation was prohibited by the United States 
 in 1807. An Anti-Slavery Society was founded in 1833, and at 
 the cost of civil war emancipation was proclaimed in 1863.^ 
 Unfortunately, the legacy of slavery remains in that racial feeUng 
 which is the greatest unsolved problem of the American Common- 
 wealth, and which does not become less serious as the negro 
 population increases and extends its borders. 
 
 14. Slavery is no longer admittedly practised by any white 
 nation. On the other hand, the problem of deahng with coloured 
 labour has not been yet satisfactorily solved. Here and there 
 " forced labour " has been allowed, and forms of contract labour 
 are common, which, to say the least, are difficult to keep free from 
 every servile taint. The questions raised by the various forms of 
 contract allowed by the British and other civihzed governments 
 since the abohtion of slavery belong, however, rather to the con- 
 troversies of the moment than to the historical study which is the 
 object of the present work, and I do not propose to discuss them 
 here. It may, however, be allowable to say that the modem 
 tendency to the concentration of wealth, or at least of the forces 
 directing labour in a few hands, taken in conjunction with the 
 vast reserves of cheap labour to which access has been given by 
 
 1 The trade had been abolished by Denmark in 1792. 
 
 2 Ingram, 154-182. 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 315 
 
 the opening-up of China and the African continent reproduce in 
 very essential features the conditions out of which great slave 
 systems have arisen in the past, and the temptation to utihze 
 the cheap and relatively docile labour of a weaker and perhaps 
 a subjugated race against the well-organized battalions of the 
 white artisans, is one by which leaders of industry, being human, 
 caimot fail to be attracted, and therefore raises possibilities 
 which no statesman can ignore. 
 
 The result of this brief review is to show that the principle of 
 the equaHty of all classes before the law can hardly be said to have 
 been accepted by the Western world as a whole before the revo- 
 lutionary period. The whole structure of mediaeval society had 
 been based upon the principle of subordination and was moulded 
 in the spirit of caste. Confronted at aU times with the doctrine 
 of Christian Brotherhood, and, later on, with the principle of 
 natural equality, this structure was also undermined by the 
 growth of industry and the complex forces, ethical, political, 
 and economic, which transformed the feudal kingdom into the 
 organized state. Under these influences slavery proper dis- 
 appeared, as we have seen, in the course of the twelfth century ; 
 and in the most advanced nations serfdom followed it in the 
 period between the thirteenth century and the sixteenth. But 
 for the completion of the work fuUy two more centuries were re- 
 quired. In the less advanced countries serfdom itself lingered on 
 into the nineteenth century. In France, though caste privileges 
 grew more and more out of harmony with the spirit of the time, 
 they could only be destroyed by a revolution. In England, where 
 they were rather a practical consequence of pohtical superiority 
 than the express subject of legal enactment, they yielded later, 
 but more peacefully, to the influences of the Reform period. So 
 modem is the change whereby law and pubhc institutions have 
 turned towards equaUty rather than subordination as their ideal. 
 An ideal such equaUty must, perhaps, always be. Wealth and 
 influence wiU always have their weight, not only in social Ufe, but 
 in the business of government and even in the administration of 
 justice. Yet the true spirit of caste is gradually being reduced to 
 a shadow of its former self. Expelled by slow degrees from the 
 sphere of law and government, it has been left to amuse itself 
 with a mock kingdom in the region of ceremonial and social 
 intercourse, in which the ghosts of bygone realities keep up 
 a mock state for the amusement of the philosopher. 
 
 As long as class, racial, and national antagonisms play a part 
 in Ufe we cannot say that group-morahty has been altogether 
 overcome. Nevertheless, the evolution sketched in the present 
 
316 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and preceding chapter is of no small significance for ethics. At 
 the outset men are organized in small groups bound to mutual 
 aid and forbearance, while they are indifferent or hostile to out- 
 siders. There is no organic bond uniting humanity as a whole. 
 Hence the captive enemy and, in principle, unless there are 
 special reasons to the contrary, the peaceful stranger are " right- 
 less." But by degrees a wider conception of obligation arises. 
 Fellow-Greeks, co-religionists, fellow-white men, ultimately 
 fellow-men, enter the circle to which obligations apply, and even 
 the violence of conquest is limited by the rights attaching to 
 the conquered as human beings. The " group " is thus widened 
 till it includes all humanity, at which point group-morality dis- 
 appears, merged in universaUsm. But the rights first recognized 
 are those of the person. To take into account the rights of the 
 organized community is a further step, following logically from 
 the first, no doubt, but following slowly. Here, too, we recognize 
 a slow advance in the civilized world, an advance which, if un- 
 impeded, would finally overcome the ' ' group-morahty ' ' of nations 
 in favour of a true internationalism of morals and law. 
 
 Turning next to the internal composition of the community, 
 we saw that the primitive group was relatively small and homo- 
 geneous. But as society grows divisions come, and a new form 
 of group-morahty arises — distinctions of high caste and low caste, 
 bond and free, and the like. In engendering, accentuating and 
 maintaining these distinctions, mihtary conquest, economic in- 
 equahties, rehgious differences, race and colour antipathies, have 
 all played their part, and up to the middle civihzation social divi- 
 sions probably tend to increase rather than diminish. Combated 
 by the teaching of the higher ethical and rehgious systems, they 
 have been mitigated and in large measure overcome in the 
 modern world. Most tenaciously maintained where the " colour 
 hne " is the outward and too visible symbol of deep-seated 
 differences of race, culture, character, and tradition, they are 
 countered even here by the fundamental doctrine of the modern 
 state that equal protection and equal opportunity are the birth- 
 right of all its subjects. Thus, though the colour line is the last 
 ditch of group-moraUty, here too in the modern period, taken as a 
 whole, UniversaUsm has made great inroads. With the improve- 
 ment of communication and the growth of commerce. Humanity 
 is rapidly becoming, physically speaking, a single society — 
 single in the sense that what affects one part tends to affect 
 the whole. This unification intensifies the difficulties of ethics 
 because it brings into closer juxtaposition races and classes who 
 are not prepared by their previous history to five harmoniously 
 
CLASS RELATIONS 317 
 
 together. Hence it is not surprising that law and morals do not 
 show a regular, parallel advance. Nevertheless, the upshot of 
 the evidence here reviewed is that, ethically as well as physically, 
 humanity is becoming one- — one, not by the suppression of differ- 
 ences or the mechanical arrangement of lifeless parts, but by a 
 widened consciousness of obligation, a more sensitive response to 
 the claims of justice, a greater forbearance towards differences 
 of type, a more enlightened conception of human purposes. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PROPEETY AND POVERTY 
 
 1 . Among primitive peoples there is comparatively little scope 
 for the institution of private property. Apart from land and its 
 produce, of which we shall speak later, such peoples possess httle 
 which can be appropriated, except their small personal belongings. 
 These, it would seem, belong to the individual from the first. 
 Indeed, tools and weapons are so completely identified with their 
 owner that they are very frequently buried with him or destroyed, 
 in the one case that he may use them in his future life, in the 
 other because, as belonging to a dead man, they are regarded as 
 dangerous and are therefore best done away with. Now the 
 recognition of individual property in personal belongings and of 
 personal or communal property in land and its produce may 
 both be explained as resting on one and the same principle — ^the 
 principle of occupation and use. It is the individual who actually 
 carries and handles the spear or fishing-net, the family or the 
 tribe which actually occupies and hunts over the land. But we 
 must also allow for the influence of sacral conceptions. Thus, 
 among the Kunama, Dr. Tylor remarks that a hedge may be 
 mended by a cotton thread.^ That would certainly not do in 
 the civilized world. But then the civihzed man does not fear 
 that death will follow from a breach of the fence as a magic result. 
 In Oceania,^ where taboo reaches its extreme development, it 
 is freely used for protection of property, real and personal. In 
 ancient Babylon boundary stones were secured by an impreca- 
 tion ^ — that is to say, a curse was laid upon them which would fall 
 on those who should remove them. The heap of stones which 
 Jacob and Laban set up were to be witnesses between them, and 
 it is possible that here, too, the power to punish the transgressor 
 was conceived as lying within the stone itself ; while at a later 
 stage, in accordance with the regular development of rehgion, 
 the curse was laid upon him who moves the stone by Yahveh. 
 When we read of the Western Eskimo, whose honesty is highly 
 praised by travellers, that other people's goods left about 
 with a stone placed over them are quite secure, we can hardly 
 
 ' Tylor, Contemp. Review, April 1873, p. 704. 
 
 ^ Ratzel, History of Mankind, vol. i. p. 285. ' Maspero, p. 762. 
 
 318 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 319 
 
 avoid wondering whether this is due to simple honesty of 
 character or to the magic quahties of the stone. 
 
 The rights of property stand on much the s&me footing as 
 other rights in early society. When simple peoples are described 
 as dishonest it is generally because they steal from strangers or 
 outsiders. But this is only an illustration of the general principle 
 that strangers have no rights, except in so far as protected by 
 the law of hospitaKty. Thus, among the Red Indians, the guest 
 was safe while under the roof of his host, but might be freely 
 robbed on the prairie.^ Within the community property is, as 
 a rule, respected.^ There are, indeed, exceptions. Thus among 
 the Nagas,* in some tribes theft is punishable by fines, beating, 
 and even death, but in two of the tribes it is not considered dis- 
 graceful at all. In some peoples successful theft is held as 
 by no means dishonourable. The case of Autolycus has been 
 referred to in chapter i. Among some of the Eskimo theft, 
 when discovered, is merely held a clever trick ; * among the 
 Balantes in Africa it is held honourable, while among the Kafiirs 
 the children of chiefs may steal within their own tribe .^ Even 
 in some civihzed or semi-civihzed communities, as at one time in 
 ancient Egypt, we find a recognized organization of theft under 
 constituted authorities, who duly restore the property to the 
 owner on payment of a portion of its value .^ But in general 
 the difference between early and developed law is that the former 
 treats theft rather as an injury to be avenged, the latter as a crime 
 to be punished. This is illustrated by the distinction between 
 the "manifest " and the "non-manifest " thief — that is to say, 
 between the thief taken in the act and the thief who has got clear 
 away.' The owner, surprising the thief in the act of carrjring 
 
 ' Waitz, vol. iii. pp. 129, 130. 
 
 ' Cf. Schoolcraft-Drake, vol. i. p. 222. " Theft is very scandalous 
 among them since they have no locks but those of their minds to preserve 
 their goods." (From Coldan's account.) Among the Dakotas pilfering by 
 women and children was common, but the men despised it as too low a 
 practice for them {ib., vol. i. p. 206). 
 
 ' Gk)dden, J. A. I., xxvi. p. 174. • Waitz, vol. iii. p. 309. 
 
 ° Post, Afrik. Juris., vol. ii. p. 83. Similarly there was a class of privi- 
 leged thieves in Ashanti. 
 
 ' In Abyssinia thieves are organized under a chief who pays tribute 
 (Post, loc. oit.). Waitz (vol. ii. p. 218) mentions that in some parts of 
 Africa the thief keeps half of what he steals. For the organization of 
 thieves in Egypt, see Diodorus, i. 80, 1. 
 
 ' See Pollock and Maitland, vol. ii. p. 497. Instances of the " receiver " 
 being vested with ownership of movables occur in contemporary Africa 
 (Post, Afrik. Juris., vol. ii. p. 162). On the Congo, according to Waitz {loc. 
 cit.), secret theft is held slavish, but open robbery lordly, and he states that 
 the Kaffirs generally condemn theft, but admire it when cleverly executed 
 (op. cit., 401). 
 
320 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 off his goods, will naturally attack, and will very likely kill him. 
 If so, who, on primitive principles, can blame him 1 But if he 
 does not come up with the thief, but finds out the robbery in 
 cold blood, then he ought to control his vindictive feehngs, and 
 be thankful if custom allows him to get restitution, with perhaps 
 something more, for his pains. In early English law, the thief 
 caught red-handed could be hanged without opportunity of 
 self-defence before an impromptu court. But an action for 
 robbery, even in the twelfth century, involved only a double 
 restitution.^ In the Book of the Covenant, " if the thief be found 
 breaking in and be smitten that he die, there shall be no blood- 
 guiltiness for him. If the sun be risen upon him, there shall be 
 blood-guiltiness for him." The owner should not let the sun rise 
 upon his wrath. The thief must merely make restitution. If 
 the stolen animal is ahve he shall pay double, if he has killed or 
 sold it " he shall pay five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a 
 sheep." * The Moors, on the other hand, at the present day do 
 not punish theft by night, but only by day, and then only when 
 the thief is caught in the act.* It is clear that in such distinctions 
 as these the law takes account, not of the right and the wrong of 
 the case, as we should conceive it, but merely of the degree of 
 resentment natural to the man who is wronged and of the manner 
 in which he may be expected to appease it. Clearly, wherever 
 the thief is allowed to keep a part of the stolen property, or 
 has simply to make restitution, steaHng can hardly be con- 
 sidered a wicked act in our sense of the term, and even where 
 restitution is double or manifold, we must regard it as rather 
 intended to satisfy the injured party than as a punishment of 
 the wrong-doer.* 
 
 On the other hand, there are also many cases, even in the 
 uncivilized world, where theft is severely punished, not only by 
 fines, which are a form of manifold restitution, but also by beat- 
 ing, enslavement, mutilation, humiliating exposure, and even 
 death.^ Indeed, as soon as public punishments arise, it is 
 generally punished with great severity. Thus, in England, an 
 action for robbery, which only involved double restitution in 
 the time of Glanvil, who died in 1190, was punished by death 
 and mutilation in the time of Bracton, who died in 1268,* and 
 a little while later death was the invariable penalty, even in 
 
 1 Pollock and Maitland, vol. ii. pp. 494 and 579. 
 
 » Exod. xxii. 1-4. ' Post, Afrik. Juris., vol. ii. p. 85. 
 
 * Restitution is a very common penalty in Africa (Post, Afrik. Juris., 
 vol. ii. p. 83). 
 
 ^ Instances of all these in Africa (Post, loc. cit.). 
 ' Pollock and Maitland, ii. 494. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 321 
 
 the end for the theft of a shilling ; while smaller thefts — petty- 
 larceny — were punished by whipping, piUory, or by the loss of 
 an ear, and on repetition by death.^ • 
 
 Socially, by far the moat important question of property con- 
 cerns what in modern phrase is called the ownership of the means 
 of production. The man, the household, the clan, which com- 
 mands the instruments and opportunities of providing for the 
 maintenance of life is economically free. He who has to use 
 the property of others is, so far, dependent, and it is this depen- 
 dence which is the centre of the modern social problem. Now 
 in all societies the land is one of the essential means of production, 
 but in a high economic development the plant erected on the 
 land becomes equally or more important. In the lowest grades, 
 on the other hand, where the instruments of tillage are very 
 simple, or where there is no tillage at all and the only weapons 
 required are those of the chase, where a rude shelter can be put 
 up anywhere for the night and there is no important accumu- 
 lation of personal belongings, the land is the only means of pro- 
 duction that need seriously be considered. He who has access 
 to the land has, if he be able-bodied, the means of maintaining 
 himself. The question of the evolution of property in its earher^ 
 phases, then, is the question of land ownership. 
 
 How, then, is land owned in primitive society ? The evidence 
 available is of the same kind that we find in other departments. 
 There is the history of civilized society and the indications to be 
 derived from its most archaic institutions, indications which in 
 this case have given rise to lively and prolonged controversy. 
 There is, secondly, the mass of custom observable among con- 
 temporary societies of the lower culture, which, as evidence for 
 historical development, may be used provisionally with the 
 customary cautions. Unfortunately, this evidence itself is by 
 no means free from ambiguity. It does not enable us to state 
 in universal terms that either the communal, the individual, or 
 any other principle flourishes exclusively at a given grade, and 
 
 ' In Kome the Law of the XII Tables — like most laws of that stage — 
 distinguished the thief caught in the act — ^the fur manifestus — ^from the 
 thief not caught in the act — the fur nee manifestus. The latter must make 
 double restitution, the former is punished corporally — in the case of 
 robbery by night or with the strong hand, by death; in other cases by 
 beating and slavery. In the later legislation the injured party had choice 
 of a new form of criminal action whereby corporal punishment might be 
 inflicted, or of the actio furti which carried infam,ia and double or quadruple 
 restitution (Girard, pp. 392-394). In the Code of Hammurabi, both 
 death and restitution are recognized (sections 6 and following). Manu 
 prescribes fines, corporal punishment and mutilations for thefts of various 
 kinds (viii. 319 ff.). 
 Y 
 
322 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 what it has to teach can only be educed by careful and elaborate 
 comparisons. 
 
 Among hunting peoples as a whole our authorities most fre- 
 quently deny any individual and family ownership of land. 
 Thus, among the Thompson River Indians there was no private 
 land. Even the territory of the band was not held exclusively 
 but was common tribal property. But it must not be supposed 
 that the tribal territory was a mere no man's land. On the 
 contrary, though the related Shushwaps might be allowed on 
 it, trespass by any one else might be punished with death. 
 Further, game was divided among the hunters, and a rich kill 
 generally among the fellow villagers.^ The tribe, then, exercises 
 true exclusive ownership as against all outsiders except certain 
 connected people whom it tolerates, and knows of no internal 
 divisions. This is true tribal property and is a by no means 
 infrequent institution. 
 
 Very often, however, land belongs in common to a section 
 of the tribe, a clan, or a local group. Thus, among the Central 
 Australians, while each tribe has its known and definitely marked 
 area, within it each local group is similarly the collective owner 
 of a defined portion. This portion is not further divided but is 
 free to all its members to dwell in or to hunt over as they wiU, 
 trespass by an outsider being strongly resented, and the bounda- 
 ries being habitually preserved. Moreover, in this case we can 
 find something of a sacral basis for the right of property, for in 
 strictness it would seem that the land belongs to the ancestors 
 of the " Alcheringa " whose souls are deposited at known spots 
 in the area, whence they issue from time to time and are rein- 
 carnated in hving members of the group.^ Among the hunting 
 and fishing tribes of the Pacific Coast the clan is, as a rule, the 
 landowner. Thus, among the Lkungen Sahsh, there were twelve 
 gentes, each with exclusive rights of hunting and picking berries 
 and fishing on a definite stretch of coast or river bank.' Among 
 the Thlinkeets there was tribal, gentile, and family land.* Some- 
 times the limits are vague and we come nearer to the conception 
 of a no man's land. The very primitive Tsekehne have a tra- 
 ditional hunting ground for each band, but the hmits are ill 
 
 ^ Teit and Boaz, The Jesv/p Expedition, 1900, p. 293. The only exception 
 to communal ownership was that artificial fishing stations and deer fences 
 belonged to those erecting them and were hereditable. There are very 
 similar rules among the Eastern Shushwap (Teit, vol. ii. p. 572). 
 
 * Spencer and Gillen, ii. 13, 14. 
 
 3 Boaz, B. A., 1890, p. 569. So, too, among the Kwakiutl (Boaz, B. A., 
 1889, p. 833). 
 
 * Swanton, iJ. B. E., xxvi p. 425. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 323 
 
 defined and they often hunt one another's land.^ Among the 
 Central Eskimo there were no precisely Hmited reservations. 
 Each family might settle where it Uked, but visitors from a 
 strange tribe would be an exception, and any newcomer would 
 have to fight a duel with the risk of being killed in case of defeat.' 
 
 Not only is the land common to the tribe, clan or group, but 
 its products are subject to rules of customary distribution tending 
 to equahze the chances of obtaining food, to share superfluity, 
 and obviate starvation. Thus, in Greenland, a godsend hke a 
 walrus or a whale is divided among the whole village, and in 
 any case, if there is a famine, the successful hunter must share 
 his spoil.' So, among the Central Eskimo, the regulations de- 
 termining the ownership of game and the obligations of the 
 hunter to his village are elaborate. A whale belongs to the whole 
 settlement. If food is plentiful a seal is reserved for a man's 
 housemates (usually a joint family), but if scarce its flesh is dis- 
 tributed among all the hunt.* In AustraUa, the rules of distri- 
 bution are numerous and varied. The Wiradjuri divide food 
 among the whole community. The Gringai make equal division 
 of the game. The Chepara seem to share all the food in the 
 camp.5 Some rules are elaborate and quaint : "In the Wotjo- 
 baluk tribe . . . when a man kiUed a kangaroo and there were in 
 the camp his mother's brother, an old man, his wife's parents, 
 a married man and two young men, he gave the body of the 
 kangaroo to the old man, who gave some to his sister's son who 
 was with him ; the head and forequarters to his wife's parents ; 
 a leg, the tail and some fat to the married man ; and the young 
 men had the remainder." * 
 
 Not infrequently etiquette prescribes that the hunter shall 
 take the smallest, worst, or last portion,' and it may be that 
 wMle a man feeds his own relations his wife must look to hers 
 for support rather than to him.* Not only hunting but the 
 gathering of roots, berries, etc., may be subject to similar rules. 
 Thus, among the Shushwap, the berry picking was carried out 
 by the whole tribe under the direction of the chief, and the 
 collection then systematically apportioned.^ Among the Seri 
 every man was entitled to support in the first instance from 
 his nearest kin but ultimately from the whole clan. It is 
 
 ' Morice, Trs. Canadian Institute, 1893, p. 28. 
 
 ' Boaz, E. B. E., 1884-5, p. 581. Among the Greenland Eskimo there 
 is no private property in land, but no one builds at a place where people 
 are already settled without their consent (Nansen, Eskimo Life, p. 109). 
 
 ' Nansen, loc. cU. * Boaz, foe. cU. ° Howitt, pp. 764, 767. 
 
 • ib., p. 764. ' e. sr. in S.-W. Victoria, ib., p. 765. 
 
 ' e. g. among the Wolgal, ih., p. 764. » Boaz, B.A.,\ 890, p. 637. 
 
324 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 not surprising to learn that, if persistently idle, he might be 
 ostracized and ultimately expelled.^ 
 
 So far we have seen the communal principles at work among 
 the hunting peoples, the community being sometimes as wide 
 as the tribe, sometimes narrowed to the clan or local group. 
 But we also find evidence of private property among some of 
 the lowest hunters. The most definite evidence concerns the 
 Veddas, if it is to be taken as holding of their original condition 
 of pure hunters and gatherers. Here Dr. and Mrs. Seligmann 
 tell us that each little group has its own definite territory, but 
 that within it each individual has his own ground, which is his 
 for life and descends to his heirs. It may be ahenated only with 
 the consent of the whole group, even presents to children or sons- 
 in-law requiring the consent of every adult male, so that what 
 we may call eminent ownership is collective, while the individual, 
 to apply our phraseology, is rather the Hfe tenant.* StUl, to 
 this quahfied extent, private property in land exists among the 
 Veddas. 
 
 The Kauralaig, a non-agricultural people of the Western 
 Torres Straits, also own land in severalty,* but the only group 
 of hunters supplying numerous instances of individual or family 
 property are the Austrahans. Here Grey,* who travelled over 
 a great part of West AustraUa, Eyre,^ who knew the South and 
 West, and J. D. Lang,* writing of Queensland, all assert individual 
 ownership. The subdivision does not seem to accord with the 
 Australian habits of life, according to which we always seem to 
 find a gtoup, small, but larger than the simple family, roaming 
 the country in intimate relations, and often foregathering with 
 others in large numbers. It would be true that in parts the 
 local group is so small as not to exceed an enlarged family, but 
 our authors suggest a more distinct apportionment to individuals 
 than this. Some light is thrown on the question by Howitt, 
 who relates that, among the Yuin, when a child was bom the 
 father " pointed out some hills, lakes or rivers to the men and 
 women then present as being the bounds of his child's country, 
 being that where his father Uved or where he himself was born 
 and had lived. It was just the same with a girl, who had her 
 mother's country and also that in which she was bom. Besides 
 this, the father took the country where his child was born, if 
 
 1 MoGee, B. B. E., xvii. 273. 
 
 * Seligmann, The Veddas, pp. 107, 111, etc. 
 ' Haddon, Cambridge Expedition, v. 284. 
 
 * Expedition, p. 232. ' Journal, vol. ii. p. 297. 
 
 * <2Mecna;ond(1861), p. 236. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 325 
 
 away from his own locality, and the mother took that where 
 her daughter was bom under similar circumstances. . . . One 
 of the old men of the Wolgal said that ' the place where a man 
 is born is his country, and he always has a right to hunt over it, 
 and all others born there had also the right to do so.' " ^ 
 
 This is clearly nothing Uke individual ownership. It is joint 
 ownership by any and aU who happen to be born in a particular 
 district, and it is inteUigible if we suppose something Uke the 
 Central Australian belief in the reincarnation of ancestors to 
 be at the back of it. Such a behef would account for certain 
 obscure rights of private property noted by Brough Smyth as 
 qualifying the communal tenure of which he was aware in Vic- 
 toria,^ and would explain the system described by J. Browne* 
 on King Gteorge's Sound, where land was possessed by famihes 
 and individuals but hunted over by the tribe (or probably the 
 group). It was difficult, says Browne, to say in what the right 
 of the owner consisted except that he took the lead in a fight 
 to repel or punish trespass. We must suppose local differences 
 in Austraha, the system in some parts being clearly collective, 
 but we shall hardly be on safe ground in accepting pure indi- 
 vidual ownership for the rest. Howitt's account shows a possible 
 source of misunderstanding, for any of the men whom he men- 
 tions might and, if asked, probably would have said of the land, 
 " It is mine," while at the back of the system is a conception 
 which is neither individual nor collective but more probably 
 sacral. Lastly, Browne's account shows how the individual and 
 collective might be blended in actual practice. We shall be on 
 the safest ground in supposing some quahfication of collective 
 by private ownership in considerable tracts of Austraha, and 
 this constitutes the main exception to the rule among hunting 
 peoples that land is the common property either of the tribe, 
 local group, or clan. 
 
 When agriculture begins it is generally in clearings that are 
 very small in comparison with the tribal area.* Moreover, the 
 clearing is temporary. One or, perhaps, two or three crops are 
 taken, and, the first fortuity being exhausted, a new clearing is 
 made. The right of hunting the whole area remains to the whole 
 tribe or clan as the case may be, and though the individual family 
 is not disturbed in the tilling and reaping of the land that it has 
 cleared there can be no question at this stage of anything more 
 
 1 Howitt, p. 83. ' Brough Smyth, vol. i. p. 144. 
 
 ^ In Dr. Petermann's Mitteilungen, 1856, p. 446. 
 
 * Thus, Schoolcraft (vol. ii. p. 188) says that the Dakotas cultivated 
 from a quarter to two acres per family, and estimates the total area per 
 family at 2200 acres. 
 
326 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 than a possessory right, for permanent ownership is of no value.^ 
 Any man may occupy uncleared land or till it, or the apportion- 
 ment may be made at the beginning of the season by the chiefs 
 or council.^ The harvest may be reaped in common and the 
 stores apportioned to each single or joint family.^ Where tillage 
 is separate possession may only last for a few years* or during 
 cultivation, the land, if deserted, reverting to the community.^ 
 
 ^ Thus, among the Dakota, planting on another's field gave no right to 
 the crop (Schoolcraft, ii. 193). Among the Omaha each head of a house- 
 hold had a possessory right recognized by the tribe during cultivation, but 
 could not sell it (Dorsey, R.B.E., 1881, p. 366). Among the Brazilian peoples 
 land is the property of the tribe, the boundaries being fixed by magical 
 processes, but the possession of the clearings by the small or the joint 
 family is recognized as a right (Von Martius, i. 81-83). 
 
 ' Thus, anaong the Kayans, untilled land is open to any one, but once 
 tilled it passes into private ownership and may be let (Nieuwenhuis, 
 Quer durch Borneo, p. 159). Among the Sea Dyaks a man acquires title to 
 land by clearing it. Among the Hill Dyaks only the land near the villages 
 is private, and the plots are assigned by the tribal council so that one road 
 serves all. The apportioned land becomes hereditary (Ling Roth, Natives 
 of Sarawak, vol. i. p. 419). Among the Ainu, the chiefs are said to have seen 
 to the distribution of land (Batchelor, p. 157). Among the Roueoyennes, 
 large clearings round the villages are apportioned by lot (Coudreau, Chez 
 nos Indiens, p. 127 seq.). Among the Creeks, the right of hunting over the 
 tribal land was oonmion to all, but in the neighbourhood of the village the 
 community assigned lots to ea,ch household according to their desires and 
 convenience (Bartram, Tre. American Ethn. Society, 1853, pp. 37-39). Among 
 the Basonge Meno, each village owns a strip along the river bank, the 
 harvest going to the families severally {Annates, Series iii. tome 2, p. 26). 
 An annual apportionment of this kind is the system described in Tacitus 
 (Germania, xxvi). 
 
 ' Among the Creeks, each village had a common field divided into patches 
 for each family, the harvest was conducted in common, and a certain 
 portion was set aside for the common store out of which the needy were 
 supported. Among the Iroquois, the land was the property of the tribe. 
 The harvest was carried out by the joint family in common, and the pro- 
 ducts distributed by the women among the different departments ; though 
 the village did not make a common stock, the obligations of hospitality 
 would prevent anybody from going short (Morgan, Houselife, pp. 61-66). 
 Common cultivation and division of the harvest is also found on the Sierra 
 Leone Coast (Post, Afrilc. Juris, ii. 172). Sometimes the communism is 
 of a rough and general character rather than a matter of distinct right. 
 Among some of the Papuans, for instance, .every one is expected to give 
 when asked. " The people is God," it is irreligious to refuse anythiog. 
 We see here the borderland between regular communism and the indis- 
 criminate profusion and liberality which are such common characteristics 
 of primitive life (Kohler, Z. f. V. E., 1900, p. 369). The Karaya people 
 tilled the land in common (Ver5ft. K6nig. Mus., Bd. I. p. 28). Among 
 the Bororo, the work on the plantations was regulated from day to day by 
 the chief (Fric and Radin, J. A. I., xxxvi. 388). 
 
 * This is common among the North American Indians (Kohler, Z. f. V. B., 
 1897, p. 402). 
 
 ' e. g. in many African tribes land is only appropriated while in use. 
 On the other hand, land often becomes hereditary among the Foulah of 
 Futajallan, among the Mandingos and the Somali, but imcultivated land 
 falls back to the community (Post, A. J., ii. 169, 170). 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 327 
 
 But as tillage develops and the cultivated land acquires a value, 
 it tends to become permanent. The old commi:gial rights may 
 now be asserted by periodical redistributions.^ Or, lastly, the 
 redistribution may be given up, and the lots become family 
 property, but the eminent rights of the community are still 
 recognized — for instance, in customs regulating the methods of 
 cultivation or forbidding ahenation without its consent. These 
 rights wiU also be found surviving in the common pasture, and 
 with still greater persistence in the common woodland. 
 
 Thus private ownership arises in a very natural manner out 
 of de facto occupation. The process would have been better 
 understood and the field of controversy reduced if the original 
 system had not been interpreted by modern analogies. We are 
 not to think of the village in the beginnings of agriculture as 
 owning its land collectively like a modem corporation . We are 
 to think rather of all its members as exercising identical rights 
 upon it. Immemorially each man has hunted and each family 
 pitched its cabin where it pleased, and for the latter the right 
 of temporary possession has always been regarded. A similar 
 recognition is extended to the cultivated plot, and where many 
 want to cultivate near together, apportionment is made. There 
 is no difficulty, for there is plenty of land, and when all are 
 satisfied, " superest ager." The waste and the untilled pasture 
 remain common. It is only if population begins to press, or if 
 the village becomes a tax-paying unit in a kingdom, that artificial 
 means of securing fair apportionment suited to the size of the 
 family, the contribution of each to the tax, or the capacities of 
 
 In the Code of Hammurabi, it would seem that leaving the land un- 
 occupied for three years destroys the title to it as against another person 
 who has occupied and cultivated it (clause 30). Among the Khonds, 
 occupation seems little restricted yet it passes into ownership, for land 
 so acquired may become an object of sale (McPherson, Memorials of Service 
 in India, pp. 62, 63). Among the Navahos, we find a transition to private 
 property with the passage from the pastoral to the agricultural state. The 
 watering places are still theoretically common, but with private ownership 
 of land access to them is barred (Mindeleff, R. B. E., 1895-6, Part II. p. 485). 
 Among the Washamba, all uncultivated land remains common, but culti- 
 vated land had its owner (Steinmetz, p. 267). In the mediaeval manor the 
 pasture was common after the hay was cut, and the waste common at all 
 times. The ancient Indian village also had common pasture ground (Manu, 
 viii. 237). 
 
 ' As among the Yakuts (J. A. I., xxxi. 74) and some of the Oraons 
 (Howitt, J. R. A. S., 1899, p. 336). Elsewhere in India, though the lots 
 have become inalienable, the tradition of redistribution remains (Mayne, 
 p. 112). On the other hand, in the Russian Mir, the system of periodical 
 redistribution is, according to Kovalevsky, an innovation {Modem Customs 
 and Ancient Laws of Russia, p. 93, etc.). 
 
328 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the plough team, will be set on foot and will take the form of 
 periodical redistribution or of the intermixture of strips. But 
 the eminent ownership of the community wiU not be forgotten. 
 It will be expressed in the code of custom and the rules of tillage, 
 safeguarded by a manorial court, and in the reservation of the 
 right of the community to prevent alienation or to pronounce on 
 the admission of a new settler.^ 
 
 But meanwhile another tendency is at work. Land may be 
 said to belong not to the community but to the chief. How 
 far this is merely nominal and how far real is often difficult to 
 tell. To the white man the ownership of the chief is as convenient 
 as it is harmonious with its preconceived views, for the chief can 
 be got to seU, and the estabUshment of his title is then a matter 
 of practical importance. In effect, we must suppose the chief's 
 power to have varied from that of a representative figure-head 
 to that of administrator with restricted powers, and from this 
 upwards to the position of a feudal lord.^ Finally, the differen- 
 tiations characteristic of material civiUzation appear, and we 
 have a class of nobles owning the land and of peasant cultivators, 
 serfs or semi-free, cultivating it.* 
 
 This differentiation, which is of even more fundamental im- 
 
 ^ 6. g. in early mediaeval Germany (Schroder, Lehrbuch der Deutschen 
 Bechtsgeschichte, pp. 207, 208). 
 
 ^ Among the Warega, land is said to belong to the villagers in common, 
 represented by the chief (Delhain, p. 203). Among the Bahuana, Torday 
 and Joyce tell us that land belongs nominally to the chief, but really to the 
 community (/. A. I., xxxvi. 284). So among the Singpho (Wehrli, I. A. E., 
 xvi. 34). Among the Thlinkeets, the gentile land was vested in the chief 
 (Boaz, B. A., 1889, p. 832), and among the Tolowa, Powers (pp. 65, 66) tells 
 us that each chief inherits a portion of the coast on behalf of his band. 
 But the chief may be the authority to whom a would-be cultivator must 
 apply, e. g. among the Warundi (Buszt, p. 469) and the Bageshu (Roscoe, 
 J. A. I., xxxix. 193). Among the Yoruba, the tribal land is vested in 
 the chief, who allots it to the householders according to their requirements, 
 and it becomes hereditary and inalienable. Finally, the land may really 
 be the property of the king or nobles under him, and be let out to the 
 cultivators, for labour service or rent in kind or money — in fact, upon a 
 feudal tenure or a leasehold system. Something like this obtains among the 
 Somali (Paulitsohke, ii. 44) and the Maguindanaos (Ausland, 1891, p. 889). 
 
 Among early civilizations ancient Egypt supplies an illustration of the 
 cases in which all land belonged in theory to the king. In fact, it was owned 
 in severalty, and might be farmed under contracts to pay a proportion 
 of the harvest to the owner (Griffiths, Papyri, iii. 23, 156). The king 
 had practical expression in the imposts and the corv6e, and, on the other 
 side, the duty Of his representative, the nomarch, to feed the people in time 
 of scarcity. " I gave bread to all the hungry of the Cerastes Mountain," 
 says the nomarch Henku (5th Dynasty, Breasted, i. 126), and the boast is 
 frequently repeated. 
 
 ^ e.g. among the Igorottes (Petermann, Ergbd, 1882, p. 31) and the 
 Tscherkessen (Bodenstett, p. 204). 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 329 
 
 portance than the transition from communal to private ownership, 
 since it implies the formation of a class of landle^ dependents, 
 hardly appears in the lowest economic grades. We find traces 
 of it in the fishing tribes of the Pacific coast, where, for.instance, 
 among the Thlinkeets, certain clans held land of their own while 
 others had to resort to the tribal land or wait till the owners were 
 "through" with them for the season.^ Among the Carriers, 
 Chilcotin, and Western Shushwap, the ownership of the land was 
 confined to the nobles .^ We may compare the Guaycuru hunting 
 tribes, which compelled the Guana to till the fields for them.^ 
 With these exceptions we hear hardly anything of a landed 
 nobility till we come to the second and higher stages of agriculture. 
 Then, when we compare our figures we find a remarkable result. 
 The cases in which communal ownership is the preponderating 
 custom, individuals and families being occupiers if anything, 
 decline pretty continuously from the hunting tribes to the higher 
 agriculture.* But there is no corresponding rise in cases of 
 individual ownership, which remains nearly constant through the 
 agricultural stages. The deficiency is made up by the increase 
 in the cases of ownership by chief or nobles, and with this we see 
 that the way is prepared for the class distinctions of civilization.^ 
 The lesson is reinforced by the growing frequency of the instances 
 in which land is let for a consideration.^ 
 
 But while the communism of the village gradually wastes away, 
 there is also a communism on a smaller scale which forms the 
 economic basis of the joint family. The joint family consists of 
 a whole group of relations connected by father -right or mother- 
 right, as the case may be ; the property of this group is generally 
 administered by the head, but is owned and its produce shared 
 
 ^ Swanton, B. B. E., vol. xxvi. p. 425. 
 
 ^ Morice, Trs. Canadian Institute,, p. 28. Other families might hunt the 
 land by permission (id. Proc. Can. Inst. vii. 125). Among the Western 
 Shushwap the nobles collected rents from the commons and fined and drove 
 them off for trespass. Among the Eastern Shushwap land was tribal 
 property (Teit, Jesup Sxped., ii. 572, 573). 
 
 ' Serra. Biv. Trimensal, 2nd Serie, vii. 206 fi. 
 
 * The main exception is that, owing to the ambiguity of the Australian 
 evidence, there are more clear cases of conmion ownership among the Higher 
 than the Lower Hunters. 
 
 ' Simpler Peoples, Tp. 251. The development among the Pastoral peoples 
 is less regular, but among the Higher Pastoralists the ownership of 
 chief or nobles appears in a large proportion of the few oases which are 
 known. 
 
 ° For one or two cases among fishing tribes, see above, note 2. The 
 loaning of land in return for the first year's profits was common in the 
 Eastern Torres Straits, and occm'red occasionally among the less advanced 
 people of the Western islands (Haddon, Cambridge Expedition, vol. iv. 
 p. 147, and vol. vi. p. 165). 
 
330 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 by all in common.^ It is in strictness indivisible and inalienable. 
 It can neither be sold, given away nor bequeathed. But 
 within this communistic scheme we find private property 
 arising in a variety of forms in very different degrees. Thus, 
 individual members may acquire a peculium on certain con- 
 ditions. For example, the daughter, who is allowed to retain 
 the savings of her industry and take them away with her on 
 marriage as her dowry.* Again, the joint family may break up 
 into separate families ; alienation may be allowed under varjdng 
 restrictions ; * or, finally, the house-father may acquire so much 
 predominance that the common rights are merged in him.* 
 The communal system was from the first compatible with 
 
 "■ The position of the head of the family gives rise to much the same 
 questions as that of the chief in the tribe. How far is the ownership (o) 
 nominal, (6) effective in certain distinct rights of administration, (c) abso- 
 lute. As contrasted cases we may put side by side the Baquereue, where 
 the family chief is said to administer the common goods (Hurel, Anihropos, 
 vi. 285) ; and the Negritos of Zambales, where he can sell or otherwise 
 dispose of the family planting ground (Reed, p. 43). 
 
 ' This appears to be the only form of private property in the Russian 
 joint family down to the present day (Kovalevsky, Modern Customs, 
 p. 69). Among the Kurds of Eriwan, the wife's dowry is the only property 
 held distinct from that of the family (von Steinen, p. 227). 
 
 ' A strong case is the Hebrew Law of Jubilee by which all land reverted 
 to its original owners at the end of fifty years ; this in effect provided that 
 family property should not be permanently alienable. The proprietary 
 rights of the tribe are also maintained in the priestly code by the rule 
 prohibiting daughters who, failing sons, have inherited property, to marry 
 out of the tribe (Numbers xxxvi.). More commonly a right of re-purchase 
 remains where alienation has been allowed. The French right of retrait 
 lignager was not finally abolished till 1790 (Viollet, p. 563). 
 
 * In early Rome the family property was conjoint, but the sj'stem was 
 much modified by the power of the Roman paterfamilias and also by the 
 right of the heirs to demand partition at the death of the father. There was 
 also probably a wider primitive community of land as between possibly the 
 whole people or more probably the gens (Girard, p. 249). 
 
 For the varying positions of the father in the Indian household, see J. D. 
 Mayne, Hindu Law and Usage, p. 222 fi. Mayne makes the distinction 
 between the patriarchal and the joint family turn on the question 
 whether on the death of the eldest ascendant the family do or do not 
 remain together (p. 223). He points out that under the patriarchate all 
 acquired property fell to the father. In this stage the head of the house- 
 hold acquires private property indeed, but at the expense of all the rest. 
 
 In early Greece, land was the common property either of the community 
 or of the tribe or gens. Common ownership would seem to have survived 
 in the hills and woodland, and in respect to mineral rights. Private land 
 was at Sparta inalienable and therefore really the property of the family, 
 and in Attica alienable but subject to closely defined laws of inheritance, 
 and to supervision by the law as against waste. The division was accom- 
 plished by the middle of the seventh century in Attica. But it must be 
 remembered that there was everywhere in Greece a race of original 
 cultivators, who either became helots or more or less dependent on the new 
 lords (Wilamowitz-MOllendorf, 61, 62, 82). 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 331 
 
 inequality, for one family would be stronger and more numerous 
 than another, and as soon as accumulation began aipd the practice 
 of destroying the property of the dead gave way, inequalities 
 would be cumulative in their effect. Redistribution, or the 
 simple Uberahty of private manners,^ will merely be occasional 
 and clumsy brakes upon a prevaiUng tendency. The clamour for 
 y^s avoSatr/ids, of which We hear so often in Greek history, v/as 
 more an assertion of old quasi-communistic ideas than of revolu- 
 tionary innovation. The communal disposition of lands acquired 
 by conquest offered the Romans repeated opportunities of 
 counteracting the monopoly of ownership by the rich, and from 
 the Licinian Rogations to the Gracchan revolution, and from the 
 Gracchi to the settlement of the veterans after the civil war, was 
 the focal point of social convulsion and poUtical revolution. 
 Given private property and inheritance, there is no difficulty in 
 accounting for inequaUty . The difficulty which every civihzation 
 has had to face, and our own most of all, is that of stemming the 
 tide. But how the inequahty of shareholders in a village was 
 transformed into the relationship of lord and vassal is a more 
 difficult question, and the answer is probably different in different 
 cases. Political and fiscal causes co-operated with the indus- 
 trial factor. The rich man might become a chief, or the chief, 
 primarily indistinguishable in mode of Uf e from his followers as 
 we so often find him, might become a rich man. In the pastoral 
 stage in particular, flocks and herds might be accumulated to 
 great size, while a pest or a drought might reduce individuals to 
 the status of proletarians. When villages grew into kingdoms or 
 were subordinated to a conquering clan, governors were appointed 
 to be responsible for order and taxes, and these might either be the 
 old headmen, whose position would thus undergo a great change, 
 or followers of the conqueror, or other members of the ruhng 
 race. The new ruler would have lands apportioned him for 
 maintenance, and labour service secured to him that he might 
 be free to maintain his dignity and perform his pubhc functions. 
 By some such steps as these the Teutonic village seems to have 
 grown into the mediaeval manor, in which every man, lord and 
 vassal ahke, holds his property not absolutely but subject to the 
 performance of customary service. The commutation of personal 
 service for rent brought the mass of the English cultivators to 
 the most favourable position that they have ever enjoyed, but it 
 
 ^ Among the Rouooyeimes no one has any difficulty in finding sustenance 
 on the land of another family while his own clearing is getting ready 
 (Coudreau, op. cit. 241), and in British Guiana a village whose crops fail 
 lodges itself upon another (im Thurm, op. cit. p. 253). 
 
332 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 was a precarious and, as it proved, fleeting prosperity. For the 
 indefiiuteness of unwritten custom left them at the mercy of the 
 lord when it became his interest to enclose, and the transformation 
 to absolute ownership by the minority meant the total loss of 
 ownership by the greater number . The social question in England 
 which the Industrial Revolution must in any case have raised 
 in an acute form, was rendered almost desperate by the contem- 
 porary dispossession of the peasant cultivator, and the first half 
 of the nineteenth century found the mass of the EngKsh people 
 at the lowest depth of economic depression. 
 
 Meanwhile, land has long ceased to be the only important means 
 of production. From the beginnings of pasture, and with the 
 application of animal power in agriculture and transport, stock 
 became an important factor in wealth. The rise of industry, 
 commerce, and the consequent formation of towns established 
 classes of artisans and merchants, who gradually abandoned the 
 cultivation of land and lived by manufacture and exchange. 
 Capital lent itself more readily to absolute ownership, exchange, 
 and free bequest than land, and capital, which becomes more aiOd 
 more a mere paper lien on the industry of others, occupies the 
 larger share in the economic life of the advanced community. 
 It is in the accumulation and use of capital that absolute ownfer- 
 ship displays its full power, and that the contrasts of gigantic 
 accumulation and utter destitution are most dramatically dis- 
 played. Speaking very roughly, we may say thg,t'humamty has 
 hitherto known three stages of economic development. In the 
 first, the fruits of the earth are open to all to gather. There is 
 general poverty, but also general opportunity. In the second, 
 labour, like all social life, is more organized, men have their 
 status of master or slave, lord or vassal, superior or dependent. 
 There is disciphne but not freedom. In the third, while the 
 individual is free to make his own career within the Umits of the 
 social order, it falls out through the working of competition and 
 the cumulative factor of inheritance, that there are those who 
 have a lien on the fruits of earth in the industry of others, and 
 those — and they are the majority — who have none. The man 
 of property and the man of none are the contrasted figures of 
 modern civihzation, and their reconciliation a problem which 
 becomes more urgent as industrialism advances. 
 
 2. Private property, held in absolute ownership, produces a 
 basis for the free exchange of goods, and from the exchange of 
 goods arise commerce, the division of labour and free industrial 
 enterprise. In its early stages society seems to know exchange 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 333 
 
 only in the very rudimentary form of direct barter. A may 
 give his cattle for B's sheep, or his sword for BJs spear. Each 
 •object is handed over then and there, and the transaction is, so 
 to say, instantaneous. But if a regular trade is to develop, this 
 immediate and simultaneous completion of the exchange be- 
 comes impossible. It becomes necessary to rely on the promises 
 for the future of either one party or both, and thus exchange 
 generates contract. But the conception of a binding con- 
 tract is not reached at one stroke. To us the moral duty of 
 keeping faith may appear axiomatic, and may seem to provide 
 a very simple and obvious ethical basis for a legal obhgation. 
 But early law does not dig down to ethical foundations. In its 
 primitive form it is wont to recognize no contractual undertaking 
 at all as binding for the future .^ It knows only those which are 
 completed" immediately on both sides, like a sale or an exchange 
 of goods. It is a step onwards when a form is prescribed, the 
 fulfilment of which makes the contract binding. ^ But still it is 
 the legal form rather than the ethical element, the promise, 
 which has force. 
 
 " That which the law arms with its sanctions is not a promise, 
 but a promise accompanied with solemn ceremonial. Not only 
 are the formalities of equal importance with the promise itself, 
 but they are, if anything, of greater importance. . . . No 
 pledge is enforced if a single form be omitted or misplaced, but, 
 on the other hand, if the forms can be shown to have been 
 accurately proceeded with, it is of no avail to plead that the 
 promise was made under duress or deception. The transmuta- 
 tion of this ancient view into the familiar notion of a Contract 
 is plainly seen in the history of jurisprudence. First, one or 
 two steps in the ceremonial are dispensed with ; then the others 
 are simplified or permitted to be neglected on certain conditions ; 
 lastly, a few specific contracts are separated from the rest and 
 allowed to be entered into without form, the selected contracts 
 being those on which the activity and energy of social intercourse 
 depend. Slowly, but most distinctly, the mental engagement 
 isolates itself amid the technicalities, and gradually becomes the 
 sole ingredient on which the interest of the jurisconsult is con- 
 centrated. . . . Forms are thenceforward only retained so far as 
 
 ' See Schroder (p. 63) for the Primitive Germans " wie alle NaturvSlker." 
 Post, Orundriss, vol. ii. p. 617 seq. Girard, Manuel, p. 417, on early 
 Roman Law : " Nuda paotio obligationem non parit." 
 
 * For the form of the Roman Nexum, see Maine, Ancient Law, p. 320. 
 The oath or the ordeal are common forms ; for instances, see Post, loc.cit. A 
 more substantial guarantee is the requirement of a deposit as among the 
 Chinese {t6., p. 619). 
 
334 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 they are guarantees of authenticity and securities for caution 
 and deliberation." ^ 
 
 Once recognized as fully binding in morals and latr, the im- 
 portance of contract as an element in social life increases with 
 every step forward in civiUzation. At the outset its scope is 
 narrowly limited by the social structure. As long as the old 
 grouping remains by which a man has a fixed place as member 
 of a clan, a joint family, a village community, he is scarcely free 
 to enter into obligations upon his own account. He cannot 
 bind himself without binding others, and so obHgations must be 
 entered into, if at all, between communities rather than indi- 
 viduals. Hence the part played by voluntary contract in life is 
 insignificant. Again, in the earUer civihzations, rules of caste, 
 or the inherited obhgations of feudal tenure, fix each man's 
 place and function, and greatly curtail his opportunities for 
 entering into voluntary relations with other men. As these 
 barriers, one after another, break down, there arises a new 
 mobility in the social world. Instead of feUow-clansmen, or lord 
 and vassal, bound to each other by hereditary and unalterable 
 ties, we have merely feUow-citizens, who have no special ties but 
 those which they form for themselves, who come together for 
 mutual aid and, if not pleased with each other, can separate 
 again. The old sohd structure of society, in which each atom 
 was definitely bound to its neighbours, has deliquesced into a 
 mass of freely -moving molecules. The process is completed in 
 the modern world by the comparative ease with which the last 
 barrier — that of the state frontier — is overleapt. Capital 
 migrates with perfect freedom, human beings almost as easily in 
 proportion as ahen laws have ceased to be oppressive, and the 
 same broad civic rights are recognized in all the advanced 
 nations. In the new structure of society it is more and more 
 true that the whole world is open to the individual, though it is 
 also true that he is in a sense alone in its vastness. 
 
 3. Free contract and private property are the foundations of 
 civihzed economics, but they bring their own problems in their 
 
 1 Maine, Ancient Law, p. 313. 
 
 For stages in the development from the nexum to the consensual contract, 
 see Maine, op. cit., p. 338. Maine points out that the moral element first 
 enters decisively into the Real Contract where part performance or one-sided 
 performance imposes the duty of fulfilment. Several civilized peoples 
 recognize a right of one-sided retractation, at any rate within a certain 
 limit of time. Thus Manu, viii. sections 222, 223. According to Post 
 {loc. cit.) the law of Islam originally gave a right of retractation holding until 
 the parties had separated. The ancient Babylonian seller could re-purchase 
 by repayment with interest, and his family had a similar right (t6.). 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 335 
 
 train. At once the cause and effect of the breakdown of the 
 old social groupings, the accumulations of wealth which they 
 render possible bring about new divisions, new contrasts, new 
 antagonisms. On this side, in all the more virile races their 
 work has been combated stoutly, if not always wsely, by the best 
 citizens and often by the religious leaders. The old communal 
 rights are furbished up anew, as in the Sabbatical year and 
 the later year of Jubilee. The prophets thunder against those 
 who grind the face of the poor. Exactions threatening serious 
 diminution of the roll of citizens are met by the abohtion of 
 debt slavery, by a general canceUing of debts, perhaps by a 
 division of lands. In particular, usury is denounced as unnatural 
 by the philosopher or as wicked by the prophet. Rehgion con- 
 secrates poverty, or inspires attempts at a deliberate communism. 
 Yet, after all, antiquity has handed on the problem unsolved 
 to the modern world, and not only unsolved but replete with 
 difficulties more formidable in proportion as the emancipation 
 of the individual is more complete and the forces at the com- 
 mand of industrial, commercial or financial genius immeasur- 
 ably greater than at any previous epoch. The sense of these 
 difficulties has deeply affected modem legislation. There are 
 few countries in which contracts in industrial matters are left 
 . wholly unregulated. In England in particular, we have a vast 
 mass of industrial legislation, dating back at least to the Factory 
 Act of 1802, restricting in numerous directions the agreements 
 which may be made between employer and employed. In quite 
 a similar spirit agrarian legislation has often restricted freedom 
 of bargaining as between landlord and tenant. Yet the de- 
 fenders of such legislation are by no means compelled to dis- 
 parage freedom of contract. They may perfectly recognize that 
 for individuals to have the power of entering into obligations 
 without restraint arising from their birth or status is one of the 
 leading differentiae of the higher civilization. But they can 
 point out that in this relation freedom has a somewhat ambiguous 
 meaning. The starving man may be free by the law of the land, 
 but is not free by the law of the facts to reject the only bargain 
 which enables him to obtain food. A contract is, in fact, never 
 altogether free unless the parties to it are fairly on terms of 
 equaUty, and they are not on terms of equahty if the con- 
 sequences of rejecting the bargain will be vastly more serious to 
 the one than to the other. When economic conditions destroy 
 this balance of equahty it is held that the principle underlying 
 free contract is rather maintained than disturbed by state 
 regulations prohibiting contracts that are proved to be injurious 
 
336 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 to one of the parties. Thus, though — or let us rather say precisely 
 because — " contract " is the basis of the modem social order, the 
 character of contracts is a matter to which the state cannot and 
 does not remain indifferent. If this analysis is correct, modern 
 industrial legislation does not reject free contract as an exploded 
 principle, but is rather seeking to get beneath the surface of the 
 terms to the point where freedom is really to be found : and in 
 this effort the conception of free contract, it would appear, must 
 undergo a certain reconstruction . 
 
 Something similar seems to have occurred in the attitude of 
 legislation to the idea of private property. It is difficult to speak 
 with certainty on a question where all the principles involved 
 are matters of contention between rival parties, but, judging as 
 far as possible from the trend of actual legislation alone, certain 
 results emerge. In the first place, the modem state is committed 
 to a wider conception of its functions than that of maintaining 
 order or defending itself against aggression. In various direc- 
 tions it takes active measures for the promotion of common 
 objects which experience has shown to be unattainable by 
 individual effort. Of these objects some, Hke state education, 
 touch the interests of the poor more directly than those of the 
 rich, while others, like the provision for the maintenance of the 
 indigent, avowedly benefit the poor alone. Yet it has to be 
 recognized that if the cost of these objects were thrown by taxa- 
 tion on the poorer classes they would largely defeat their own 
 purpose, by intensifying the poverty which they are intended to 
 relieve. Modem legislation, therefore, cannot wholly escape the 
 criticism that it tends to throw upon the wealthy the cost of 
 measures which primarily benefit the poor. Now, to the strict 
 upholder of the absolute right of private property all such 
 legislation must appear iniquitous. To him the right of the 
 individual against the state stands on just the same footing as 
 his right against any other individual. The right of the state 
 to levy taxes for its own needs is, indeed, necessarily admitted, 
 but this taxation is regarded as a kind of exaction imposed 
 by the established authority and justified only by the needs 
 of social order and national defence. Any tampering with 
 the possessions of one class for the benefit principally of another 
 is mere spoliation. The defenders of the present trend of 
 economic legislation, if they take any higher ground than that 
 of temporary expediency, are forced in effect to question this 
 absoluteness of private rights. Without necessarily being com- 
 mitted to any sociaHstic scheme of economic organization, they 
 maintain that the rights of property rest upon the goodwill of 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 337 
 
 society, which provides and pays for the forces necessary to main- 
 tain them and which may modify and at times has modified 
 them in important particulars (e. g. in relation to inheritance and 
 bequest). They urge, further, on economic grounds that there 
 is a social element in value — the growth of society, its good 
 order, the industries and exchanges which it facihtates, actually 
 creating some kinds of wealth (e. g. much of the value of urban 
 sites and of municipal monopohes), and entering as a factor into 
 others. Even such a factor in production as good workmanship 
 is in part attributable to the social order. The numerous 
 inteUigent, highly skilled and steady workmen whom a modern 
 engineer can count upon finding ready to his hand put him into 
 a very different position to that of Watt or even Stephenson. The 
 existence of such a class is due to complex causes, but in large 
 measure it is attributable to the great social reforms of the inter- 
 vening period, and the wealth that the class of skilled artisans 
 create, whether it takes the form of profits to the employer or 
 wages for themselves, has its root in social conditions which 
 created them and were not created by them. To put it more 
 generally, the maintenance of good social order is the condition 
 of developed industry, and therefore of the wealth arising from it. 
 Now those who emphasize these social factors in value are led 
 to question the absoluteness of the rights of private property 
 when urged against the state, and to contend that they should 
 be viewed rather in relation to the social organization as a whole 
 and defined in accordance with its needs. In this organization 
 the individual has his place as a responsible agent, whose duty it 
 is to do useful work and whose right it is to receive such reward 
 as will call forth and serve to maintain his energies at their best. 
 Society on its side has the duty of maintaining and improving 
 the social order, and assuring to all its members the opportunity 
 of finding their places within that order. That it may perform 
 this duty, it has the corresponding right to a share in the wealth 
 which it helps to create, and it does not go beyond its share as 
 long as it leaves to energy, talent and initiative, devoted to useful 
 ends, fuU scope for occupation and the stimulus of adequate 
 reward. Such, in briefest outline, seems to be the principle 
 underlying much of modern legislation — a principle which, it 
 will be seen, implies a certain reconstruction of the conception of 
 property, just as we saw above that other legislative tendencies 
 compelled a reconstruction in the conception of contract. 
 
 4. With the growth of property and the development of trade 
 is closely bound up the question of the treatment of those who 
 
338 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 are submerged in the process. But this opens the wider ethical 
 question of the whole attitude of society to the helpless, the 
 suffering and the dependent. In this relation we shall have to 
 admit that the development of personal responsibility as shown 
 in the growth of private property and of contract has its hardening 
 side. The brightest aspect of primitive life is seen in its free- 
 dom of giving, its expansive and often chivalrous hospitality, 
 induced partly by the sense of a common necessity, but certainly 
 facilitated by communal living. In the whole department of 
 conduct which concerns the treatment of the helpless, whether 
 it be the aged or the infirm, the child or the stranger, the diver- 
 gence of the primitive from the civiUzed point of view both 
 for good and for evil is strongly marked. We have the key 
 to the difference if we keep always in mind, on the one hand, 
 that primitive ethics knows nothing of those rights inherent in 
 personality upon which the civihzed order is founded, but that, 
 on the other hand, through the very absence of individual re- 
 sponsibility the movements of pity have free play, while, through 
 the prevalence of family and village communism, they have a 
 simple and natural means ready to hand for the rehef of indigence. 
 Both points appear in the treatment of the stranger. As 
 such he is rightless. He belongs to no clan, and it is therefore 
 nobody's business to avenge him if robbed or slain. He must 
 find a protector if he would be safe. Yet if he once enters 
 into the bonds of hospitality he is sacred.^ Thus the stranger 
 found outside a Red Indian camp might be treated as an enemy ,^ 
 but once admitted as a guest he is sure of a hospitable recep- 
 tion. The communal living in the joint household accustomed 
 the Indian to the habit of readily sharing what he had with those 
 who needed it.* The Indian, says Morgan, " would surrender his 
 dinner to feed the hungry, vacate his bed to refresh the weary, and 
 
 ^ In a paper read before the Sociological Society, Dr. Westermarck has 
 advanced strong reasons for the suggestion that magical conceptions have 
 much to do with primitive hospitality. The guest is in a measure feared as 
 a mysterious stranger. Outside the house he can do no harm, but once in 
 contact with the property or the person of his host he may on magical prin- 
 ciples be most dangerous. Hence at once a reason for the distinction made 
 between his treatment inside and outside the dwelling-place, and for the 
 importance of the ceremonial of contact whereby he acquires the right to 
 hospitable entertainment. In the same way Dr. Westermarck refers the 
 divine protection of the beggar to a humble origin in the fear of the beggar's 
 malediction. At the same time such explanations, however true in them- 
 selves, do not settle the question how far such fears are the expression in a 
 form congruous to primitive thought of an ethical feeling that something is 
 due to the suffering and the helpless. 
 
 2 See Waitz, iii. 166. 
 
 ' Morgan, Housdife, p. 61. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 339 
 
 give up his apparel to clothe the naked." ^ To such men the cold 
 exclusiveness of the civilized man's house is equa^y astonishing 
 and repulsive. " You know our practice," said Canassatego, an 
 eighteenth-century Ononadaga chief, to a white man, in a 
 striking allocution which Morgan quotes. " If a white man . . . 
 enters one of our cabins we all treat him as I do you. We dry him 
 if he is wet, we warm him if he is cold, and give him meat and 
 drink that he may allay his hunger and thirst ; and we spread 
 soft furs for him to rest and sleep on. We demand nothing in 
 return. But if I go into a white man's house at Albany and 
 ask for victuals and drink, they say, ' Where is your money ? ' 
 And if I have none, they say, ' Get out, you Indian dog ! ' " ^ 
 Every one knows of the hospitality of the primitive Arab, 
 and how a sheikh would give away his last camel, or slay 
 his favourite horse, for a guest's benefit.^ Often the stranger 
 has a myBterious sanctity. The hospitable host, like Abraham, 
 may find himself entertaining angels unawares. The wanderer 
 comes, as in early Greece, from Zeus. " Do not treat strangers 
 shghtingly " is an Ainu saying, " for you never know whom you 
 are entertaining." * A custom which alone makes possible any 
 movement outside the boundaries of the tribe in the primitive 
 world may well acquire a religious sanction.* 
 
 Mother's love is the foundation of human social life, and we 
 are therefore prepared to find that affection and care for chil- 
 dren by one parent, if not by both, is traceable to the lowest 
 levels of humanity. But the legal position of the child is not 
 the same in primitive society as with us. The " right to live " 
 is a consequence of the ethics of personahty and is not recog- 
 nized by the savage, nor, if it were recognized, would infanticide, 
 being an action committed within the family circle, necessarily 
 attract the attention of any authority outside the family group. 
 To primitive man having a severe struggle for existence the 
 advent of a new mouth to feed is often a serious matter. Hence 
 infanticide is a not uncommon practice in the uncivihzed world, 
 and coincides with genuine and even devoted attachment to the 
 
 1 Morgan, League of the Iroquois, p. 328. Similarly, Catlin (vol. i. p. 230) 
 points out that the dog, though immensely valued, is sacrificed for a 
 guest, if there is no other way of providing for him. Coldan (in School- 
 craft-Drake, vol. i. p. 221) remarks that the Iroquois carried hospitality 
 beyond the bounds of " Christian civility " — a delicate way of referring 
 to wife-lending. 
 
 * Morgan, The Iroquois, p. 329. 
 
 ' See Palmer, Koran, Introduction, p. x. 
 
 * Batchelor, p. 114. 
 
 ' I have referred above (chap. vi. 236) to the extreme case of hospitality 
 to enemies among the Bengalese hill men. 
 
340 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 child if once allowed to live.^ If the father takes up the child,* 
 if the clan decides that it is to be preserved, even,^ it may be, 
 if it has once taken food, its life is secure. It will be carefully 
 tended, and often savage, hke civilized, parents will go without. 
 food rather than let the child go hungry. Even orphans are 
 among many people looked after.* The restriction of infanticide 
 to the weak and ill-formed marks the decay of the practice.^ 
 
 Lastly, in their treatment of the sick and aged, uncivihzed 
 peoples differ greatly. Many are said to take great care of 
 them. Others get a bad character from travellers. In many 
 instances the helpless are abandoned, and in some they are, 
 perhaps at their own request, put to a more merciful death.* 
 
 1 A number of savage and barbarous peoples not practising infanticide — 
 with special reference to female infanticide — are mentioned in Wester- 
 marok's Human Marriage, p. 311. 
 
 There is no doubt that some earlier writers immensely exaggerated the 
 practice. In the Simpler Peoples we did not seek to obtain negative 
 instances, which are generally difficult to establish, but confined ourselves 
 to enumerating the cases in which the practice is alleged, and reducing them 
 to a proportion of the whole number for whose marriage and famSy life 
 we had information. Except among the Hunters we found infanticide 
 alleged, roughly speaking, in one case in eighteen only. Among thirty- 
 nine Pastoral peoples there was only one case, a fact which should 
 be compared with the similar record of these peoples for cannibalism and 
 human sacrifice. Among the Lower Hunters the proportion rises nearly to 
 one in four, chiefly owing to the prevalence of the custom in Australia. 
 It is, however, quite intelligible that the practice should be commonest 
 where the struggle for life is most severe (p. 242). 
 
 ' Thus the Roman father was said tollere or auseipere liberos. So, too, the 
 German father, but here the right of putting the new-born child to death 
 belonged to other persons as well, especially the mother and grandmother. 
 In the Frisian laws it is allowed to the mother only (Schrader, p. 67). 
 
 ' Among the Creeks infanticide required the consent of both the clan 
 and the parents (Schoolcraft, vol. v. p. 272). At Sparta it was a tribal 
 matter. The elders of the phyle examined the child to decide if it were 
 well formed, and if not it was exposed on Moimt TaygetuB (Busolt, 
 p. 109). 
 
 ■* Among some South American Indians the chief is the guardian of 
 bastards and orphans (Schmidt, Z. f. V. 1898, p. 289). Occasional 
 notices of orphans suggest that the care which they receive is inadequate 
 (cf. Schoolcraft, vol. ii. p. 194, The Dakotas ; Waitz, vol. iii. p. 342, Indians 
 of Oregon). 
 
 ^ The opposite sentiment is expressed in a remarkable manner by a 
 Toda woman. "We never kill boys. As for girls, it is difierent; but 
 still we only kill the sturdy and strong ; it would be a sin to lajr hands 
 on the weakly and deformed " (Reclus, p. 198). Female infanticide has 
 greatly diminished among the Todas (Rivers, The Todas, p. 478, etc.). 
 
 ' The Andamanese are said to take the greatest care of the sick and help- 
 less (Man, J. A. I., 12, 82), and so are the Central Australians. Among 
 the North American Indians the aged are said to be generally respected 
 yet are often left behind in necessity or put to death (Waitz, vol. iii- 
 p. 115). That this is not quite so inhuman as appears to us is made 
 clear by the narrative of CatUn in the text. The Oregon Indians are 
 said to take good care of the aged, but the sick are often neglected (Waitz, 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 341 
 
 This is not altogether due to inhumanity. The savage, espe- 
 cially the nomad, cannot with the best will in the world pro- 
 vide for the aged as we could if we desired to do so. CatHn 
 saw an old man left behind with tent and fire, but no weapon, 
 while the tribe marched off. The old man himself bade them 
 leave him. " You should all go, where you can get meat. My 
 days are nearly all numbered, and I am a burden to my children. 
 I cannot go, and I wish to die. Keep your heart stout and 
 think not of me. I am no longer good for anything." With 
 these words the ceremony of abandonment was completed, and 
 it was certainly not wanting in dignity or pathos.^ 
 
 5. In the earlier civilizations the solidarity of the family, 
 cemented and extended as it often was by the development of 
 ancestor worship, secured good treatment of the infirm and aged 
 parent within the kindred. Towards the poor and helpless 
 generally the Oriental civilizations teach the beauty and virtue 
 of beneficence and consideration. This is strongly marked in 
 ancient Eg5rpt. The soul before the Judgment Seat winds up 
 its repudiation of sins by claiming positive merit. " I have 
 given bread to the hungry man, and water to the thirsty man, 
 and apparel to the naked man, and a boat to the shipwrecked 
 mariner." ^ The inscriptions on the tombs of kings and nobles 
 
 vol. iii. pp. 342-346, and Schoolcraft, vol. v. p. 654). Among the Winne- 
 bagoes the aged and infirm sometimes suSered in seasons of scarcity, 
 but they were helped by friends and relations, and the chief sometimes 
 requested the U.S. Government to give such persons an extra share of 
 the tribal annuity (Schoolcraft, vol. iv. p. 56). The Wintuns of Cali- 
 fornia are said to be rather neglectful than otherwise of the sick and 
 aged, and the mild statement is illustrated by the case of infirm people 
 crawling to the river-side and being allowed to fall in and drown (Powers, 
 p. 231). Among the Iroquois a reform is recorded by Morgan. The aged 
 were formerly exposed, but after the formation of the League and of 
 permanent vUIages were well cared for {League of the Iroquois, p. 171). 
 Among the Apaches and the Western Eskimo death is felt to be the 
 best lot for the aged. The Eskimo believes he will be bom again 
 young and vigorous (Reclus, pp. 103 and 132). The practice of leaving 
 the sick and aged to their fate or even putting them to death is widely 
 diffused in Africa, but there are exceptions, e. g. the Mandingoes, and 
 possibly the Kafirs (though this is denied by Waitz, vol. ii. p. 340). The 
 custom is said to be recently extinct in Southern Nubia (Post, Afrik. 
 Juris., vol. i. p. 298). 
 
 ^ CatUn, vol. i. p. 216. Whatever provision there may be for the 
 aged and infirm it is, as we might suppose, mainly a matter of the goodwill 
 of the family or clan. It is seldom in the savage world that we read of 
 any regular pubUo provision. The Creeks are an exception, who are 
 described as having public " hot houses " provided in which poor old men 
 and women suffering from want of clothes may sleep (Caleb Swan, in 
 Schoolcraft, vol. v. p. 265). 
 
 " Book of the Dead, chap, cxxv., Budge's Tr., vol. ii. p. 372. 
 
342 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 lay stress on their goodness to the poor. They claim to be 
 " the staff of support to the aged, the foster-father of the 
 children, the counsellor of the unfortunate, the refuge in which 
 those who suffer from the cold in Thebes may warm themselves, 
 the bread of the afflicted which never failed in the city of the 
 South." Ameny, a ruler of the nome of the Gazelle in the 
 days of the 12th Dynasty, gives himself the best of characters 
 as a good master and lord — 
 
 " I have caused no child of tender age to mourn ; I have 
 despoiled no widow ; I have driven away no tUler of the soil ; I 
 have taken no workmen away from their foreman for the public 
 works ; none have been unfortunate about me, nor starving in 
 my time. When years of scarcity arose, as I had cultivated all 
 the lands of the nome of the Gazelle to its northern and southern 
 boundaries, causing its inhabitants to live, and creating pro- 
 visions, none who were hungry were found there, for I gave to 
 the widow as well as to the woman who had a husband, and 
 I made no distinction between high and low in all that I gave. 
 If, on the contrary, there were high NUes, the possessors of the 
 land became rich in all things, for I did not raise the rate of 
 the tax upon the fields." ^ 
 
 To our ears it may seem that the gentleman protests too 
 much, and possibly he succeeds in giving us a more vivid 
 picture of what the feudal lords of Egypt did than of what they 
 refrained from doing, but at least he makes the ideal standard 
 of conduct for the Egyptian ruler clear enough. 
 
 HospitaHty is still recognized as a virtue. Sinuhit, who fled 
 to the Edomite desert, describes his life there — 
 
 " When a traveller went and returned from the interior, he 
 turned aside from his road to visit me, for I rendered services 
 to all the world. I gave water to the thirsty, I set on his journey 
 the traveller who had been hindered from passing by, I chastised 
 the brigand." ^ 
 
 On the other hand, in the Maxims of Ani of the New King- 
 dom we see the civihzed man's fear of the beggar growing up. 
 " Let not your hand be despoiled for the man whom you 
 do not know. He came to you for ybur ruin." And again, 
 " Let your eye be open in fear lest you become a beggar." ^ 
 
 ^ Maspero, p. 338. Erman, pp. 93, 94. The translation varies slightljj. 
 For similar claims to have fed the hungry, etc., cf. Breasted, Recordg, i. 
 126, 151, 162, 171, etc. It was clearly the recognized duty of the nomarch 
 (cf. p. 339, note 4). 
 
 * Sayce, Records of the Past, vol. ii. p. 23. 
 
 ^ Am^lineau, trans. §§ xviii. and xxi. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 343 
 
 Yet the Maxims preach hospitality with a touch of the later 
 familiar gnomic sentiment — the suggestion that* moderation in 
 prosperity is a kind of surety against the changes of fortune — 
 
 " Eat not bread whUe another standeth by, and thou placest 
 not thy hand on the bread for him. The one is rich, and the 
 other is poor, and bread remaineth with him who is open-handed. 
 He who was prosperous last year, even in this may be a vagrant."^ 
 
 We meet with fewer passages of this tendency in Babylonish 
 Uterature. But it appears from the Incantation Tables that 
 failure in duty to the helpless, and especially the dependent, 
 and churUshness in refusing a request, might bring a curse 
 upon a man. 2 
 
 Respect for the aged is a part of the comer-stone of Chinese 
 ethics, the duty of fihal obedience. But further, benevolence 
 generally, and the duty of the governor to the governed, are 
 important parts of the ethical teaching. " Benevolence," says 
 Mencius, " is the most honourable dignity conferred by Heaven," 
 and the classical writings are full of our duties to our neigh- 
 bours, and of the rulers to the mass of the people. " When 
 sovereigns appointed inspectors," says a passage in the Shoo- 
 King, " they . . . said to them, ' Do not give way to violence 
 or oppression ; and go on to show reverence for the weak and 
 find connections for destitute women.' "* Com was left, as 
 among the Hebrews, for the widows who came to glean. 
 
 " There shall be young grain unreaped 
 And here some sheaves ungathered. 
 There shall be handfuls left on the ground. 
 
 And here ears untouched 
 For the benefit of the widow." * 
 
 Public assistance for the aged and infirm was organized by 
 the Emperor Tai Tsung (a.d. 627-649). Foundling hospitals 
 were also estabHshed, and under the Ming Dynasty, Hung Wu 
 again took up the question of the aged and infirm. Almshouses 
 and granaries for the rehef of famine are also maintained.^ The 
 slow disintegration of the communal life has gradually forced 
 the higher authorities to deal with the problem of the indigent. 
 
 ' Griffith, World's Literature, 5341. To somewhat similar effect, though 
 in obscure language, Amdlineau, § xxvi. : " It is God who is the giver — 
 therefore have pity and feed the hungry." 
 
 * For the text, see below, Part II. chap. ii. 
 ' Shoo-King (Tr. Legge, Part V. xi. 3). 
 
 * She-King, vol. ii. part ii. book vi. ode 8. Legge's Prolegomena, p. 
 150. 
 
 ' Laffitte, Chinese Civilization, pp. 53, 58. 
 
344 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 In India, almsgiving was recognized as an act of merit from 
 the Vedic period onwards. 
 
 " The prosperity of the liberal man never decays ; while the 
 illiberal finds no comforter. He is the bountiful man who gives 
 to the lean beggar who comes to him craving for food. Success 
 attends that man in the sacrifice, and he secures for himself a 
 friend in the future. He who keeps his food to himiself has his 
 sin to himself." ^ 
 
 Similarly, the Upanishads teach that " there are three branches 
 of law. Sacrifice, study and charity are the first." 2 And again; 
 " The divine voice of thunder repeats the same. Da, Da, Da, 
 that is, Be subdued, Give, Be merciful. Therefore let that triad 
 be taught. Subduing, Giving and Mercy." ^ 
 
 In Manu the obligation of hospitahty is peremptory. 
 
 " A guest who is sent by the (setting) sun in the evening, must 
 not be driven away by a householder ; whether he have come at 
 (supper-time) or at an inopportune moment, he must not stay 
 in the house without entertainment. 
 
 " Let him not eat any (dainty) food which he does not offer 
 to his guest." * 
 
 But it is due in its fulness to caste-fellows alone. Towards 
 members of a lower caste it is optional.^ To share one's good 
 things is a matter of positive duty. To eat first without feeding 
 infants, the sick and others, will cause a man to be devoured by 
 dogs and vultures after death .^ But no great self-sacrifice is 
 expected. 
 
 " A householder must give (as much food) as he is able (to 
 spare) to those who do not cook for themselves, and to all beings 
 one must distribute (food) without detriment (to one's own 
 interest)." ' 
 
 The plucking of food by the wayside is allowed to the higher 
 castes.^ Finally, in one passage we trace a higher social con- 
 ception. The Sudra is naturally a slave, but even as a slave he 
 ought to have his due maintenance.® 
 
 1 Muir, Sanscrit Texts, vol. v. p. 431. 
 
 ' The Upanishads, Tr. M. Miiller, vol. i. p. 35. 
 
 3 Miiller, Upanishads, Part II. p. 190. * Manu, iii. 105, 106. 
 
 ^ Apastamba is more modern. " If a Sudra comes as a guest (to a 
 Brahmana), he shall give him some work to do. He may feed him after " 
 {Sacred Books, vol. ii. p. 110). 
 
 " Cf. Baudh., ii. 3, 5, 17. " He shall never eat without having given 
 away (some small portion of the food)." 
 
 ' Manu, iv. 32. « ib., viu. 341. • ib., x. 124, 125. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 345 
 
 Hebrew legislation dealt with the problem of poverty both 
 with a view to prevention and to cure. We know with what 
 wonderful power the prophets denounced the oppressors of 
 the poor and declaimed woe upon those who joined house to 
 house and field to field. The resistance to that tendency to 
 the depression of the poorer citizens, which accompanies economic 
 progress, was the main burden of social morahty as preached 
 by the prophets, and took practical shape in legislation in the 
 form of the limitation of debt slavery ; release of debts, accord- 
 ing to Deuteronomy in the seventh year,^ and according to the 
 later code in the fiftieth ; the prohibition of usury ; ^ and the 
 insistence on equal justice between the stranger and the father- 
 less. Deuteronomy adds that the debtor is to fetch his own 
 pledge from his house, to have his pledged garment restored to 
 him at nightfall, and that neither a millstone nor a widow's 
 raiment is to be taken. These were measures designed to 
 prevent Israehtes from falhng out of the class of free men. 
 There were, besides, the practical provisions for the fehef of the 
 poor. These were probably developed from common festivals 
 of the clan, where every one had a right to claim a portion.* 
 For this purpose the Book of the Covenant makes use of the 
 Sabbatical year, in which the land was to rest that the poor 
 might eat. But they would not eat very much from the fruits 
 of fallow land, and so Deuteronomy prescribes that a tithe of 
 every third year's produce shall be shared with the stranger, 
 the fatherless and the widow. It also insists that the gleanings 
 of the field and the vineyards be left to them.* The duty of 
 almsgiving was rigidly enforced. " He who gave less than a 
 tenth of his means was a man of evil eye." ^ There were collec- 
 tions in the synagogues for the poor and the strangers, and there 
 were elected almoners. Lastly, honour for the aged and regard 
 
 ' Deuteronomy xv. 1. Verse 8 says in rather futile fashion that this is 
 not to deter the Hebrew from lending to his brother, but it does not say 
 what is to compel him. Note that by verse 3 the law does not apply to 
 foreigners. 
 
 ' This appears already in the Book of the Covenant, Exod. xxii. 25, 
 and the next verse insists that the neighbour's raiment when taken as a 
 pledge is to be restored at sundown. Usury is uniformly allowed against 
 the foreigner (Deut. xxiii. 20). 
 
 ' Eobertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 250. 
 
 * Deuteronomy xiv. 28, and xxiv. 19-21. In the priestly code it would 
 seem, however, that the tithe goes to the Levites, and it is re-enacted that 
 the " Sabbath of the land . . . shall be food for thee . . . thy servant . . . 
 and thy stranger " (Lev. xxv. 6). 
 
 ' Maimonides, quoted by Loch, art. " Charity and Charities," Ency. 
 Brit., ed. x., p. 667. Loch adds that even the poor had to give alms, and 
 a refusal was punished with stripes by the Sanhedrim. 
 
346 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 for the afflicted are insisted upon as moral and religious 
 duties. 
 
 In the law of Islam also almsgiving is insisted upon as one of 
 the five practical duties of the creed. Usury is forbidden, and 
 pronounced by the Prophet as being as accursed as almsgiving 
 is blest. 
 
 " Those who devour usury shall not rise again, save as he riseth 
 whom Satan hath paralyzed with a touch ; and that is because 
 they say ' selling is only like usury,' but God has made selling 
 lawful and usury unlawful. God shall blot out usury, but 
 shall make almsgiving profitable, for God loves not any sinful 
 misbeliever." ^ 
 
 The spoils of the enemy were to be for the poor. 
 
 " What God gave as spoils to His Apostle of the people of the 
 cities is God's and the Apostle's, and for kinsfolk, orphans, and 
 the poor and the wayfarer, so that it should not be circulated 
 among the rich men of you." ^ 
 
 But after Mohammed's time a rate on property of about 
 one-fortieth of all that had been in the behever's possession 
 for a year, which had originally been a contribution to the 
 expenses of war against infidels, became -converted into a kind 
 of poor rate.* A plan of pensions for all Moslems was set on 
 foot by CaHph Omar. 
 
 6. I have referred briefly to the position of the beggar and 
 the suppUant in Homeric Greece. In Hesiod's time we find the 
 duty of Hberahty still insisted upon, but the attitude to the 
 beggar is already changing. Hesiod reprehends begging as a 
 disgrace, and says that once beggars may be helped, or twice, 
 and then they will be refused. He makes almsgiving a matter 
 of reciprocity. " Love him who loves thee, and cleave to him 
 who cleaveth to thee. To him who would have given give; 
 to him who would not have given give not." * During the 
 classical period some m.easure of the primitive communal 
 system still lingered. In Crete and in Sparta there was direct 
 maintenance for all citizens at the public tables. At Athens 
 the phratry retained much of its old vitaUty. Down to Solon's 
 time the property of the childless reverted to the clan, and even 
 after him the same thing happened to that of intestates. Out 
 of this stock the clan provided for orphans, and the nearest 
 agnatic relation had either to marry or dower the orphan girl. 
 
 1 Koran, i. {Sacred Books, vi.), p. 44. ' Koran, chap. lix. 
 
 ' Falmer, Introduction to the Koran, p. 13. * Loch, Sncy. Bni., p. 660. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 347 
 
 But the new state organization also assumed the duties of 
 maintaining needy citizens, in the first place, by {lublic granaries 
 and the frequent distribution of food to adult citizens on the 
 register; secondly, by pubUc reUef to the infirm with property 
 of not more than three mince ; and lastly, by payment for pubhc 
 services, which became more and more important as the institu- 
 tions of the country passed into the hands of large popular 
 bodies.^ Moreover, an indirect method of maintaining the roll 
 of citizens and preventing them from sinking into slavery 
 and being lost to the state was found in colonization, bands of 
 Athenian citizens being led out to a newly conquered territory 
 and settled in lots on the land. Solon's legislation against 
 debt slavery had already effectually blocked that broad path 
 of degradation in the ancient world. Apart from state aid 
 there was much private charity, and mutual help societies were 
 frequent. HospitaUty still ranked as an important virtue. In 
 some places there were brotherhoods of public charity with a 
 common chest, and there were resting-places and probably 
 hospital provision for travellers at the temples. ^ The temples 
 also were the centres of medical rehef. The sons of Asklepios 
 dwelt in their neighbourhood, and probably attended the poor 
 gratuitously, at least at Athens. Hippocrates lays dovm that 
 it should be a doctor's first duty on entering a town to attend 
 to the poor who are sick.* 
 
 In Rome, the economic tendency to the centrahzation of 
 capital and the consequent reduction of the poorer citizens to 
 destitution and dependence took a very aggravated form, ovnng 
 in part to the facihties offered by conquest and in part to the 
 cheapness and the abject position of the slave. The legislation 
 of the Gracchi, intended to counteract this evil, was probably 
 valuable so far as the division of the public lands was concerned, 
 but injurious in that it started the system of distributing com 
 to Roman citizens at about half the cost price, a system which 
 had an immense and unhealthy development. The Lex Octavia 
 restricted the right to citizens settled at Rome, and probably 
 later legislation introduced a property test, but the Lex Clodia 
 made the distribution gratuitous, and in the time of Aurelian 
 
 ^ Distribution of public money was opposed by Aristotle, who urged 
 that the object of statesmen should be to make the mass of citizens in- 
 dependent, and advised that public relief should take the form of starting 
 them in farms or in business (Aristotle, Politics, 1320a). 
 
 ' At Megara there were houses in the town for strangers, maintained at 
 the public cost, and in Crete strangers had a place at the public meals 
 (Loch, 662). 
 
 ' Loch, 662, 663. 
 
348 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 there were important additions, consisting probably of oil, and 
 perhaps of wine and clothes. The system spread to Constanti 
 nople, Alexandria and Antioch, and with the extending of civic 
 rights to the whole of the Empire must have tended to foster 
 a vast and idle city proletariat.^ 
 
 In other directions Roman charity had a more beneficent 
 turn. Hospitals with infirmaries for sick slaves attached are 
 mentioned in the first century A.D., while there was a chief 
 physician in each regio for the poor.^ Voluntary associations 
 for common purposes had a vigorous vitaHty. There were 
 trade guilds with a strongly-developed social life,^ with their 
 special rites and their own god. They held holidays in common 
 in which men and women both took part, and provided for the 
 burial of their members. In fact, most of the poor belonged 
 to funeral benefit societies.* The care of destitute children 
 was undertaken by the Emperors Nerva and Trajan,who lent 
 money at low interest to municipahties for their upbringing. 
 At Veleia three hundred children were thus assisted. But 
 the system, though much extended by the Antonines, fell into 
 disuse in the troubles of the third century. 
 
 7. The problem of poor rehef was now taken up by the Church. 
 This was in its primitive form a congregation in which the 
 
 1 Looh, 664, 665. 
 
 ' During the first century after Christ there were charitable organiza- 
 tions of many kinds in the Roman world. Money was given or bequeathed 
 to buy oil and meal, which was either given away or sold at moderate prices. 
 
 Poor parents received help in the bringing up of their children, until 
 the latter could reasonably fend for themselves. There were foundations 
 for the helpless aged, and the sick were cared for, not only by their own 
 community, but tln'ough private agencies. Medicines were distributed 
 free. Free burial places were provided by the community, or again from 
 private sources. 
 
 Rich burghers supported education, and in a.d. 100 the younger Pliny 
 gave a library and means to support it to Como, and provided a teacher 
 for the higher branches of education, so that would-be students there were 
 no longer forced to go to Milan (Plin., Epp. iv. 13). On great occasions 
 it was customary to make some public gift — ^buildings, foundations, gladia- 
 torial games, etc. (Friedlander, Darstellungen aus der Sittengeachichte Roma., 
 iii. 151). 
 
 ^ Social intercourse appears the most prominent side of the life of the 
 guilds. How far they were " friendly societies " in our sense is not quite 
 so clear, but the provision for burial was usual, and at lea^st in one case 
 other benefits were assiued. On these points, and on the irmnense develop- 
 ment of the " colleges," see Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus 
 AureUus, Book II. chap. iii. 
 
 * Friedlander, i. 146-152. The collegia passed under state supervision 
 and gradually developed into something of the nature of castes ; members 
 who fled were brought back and children were compelled to succeed their 
 parents in their turn. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 349 
 
 poorer members were relieved out of the offerings given at the 
 altar. As the Church became divided into parishes, the parish 
 became the area for relief, and in Rome, unde*r Gregory, the 
 deacons had the care of the poor, the widows and the orphans 
 in their districts, in each of which there was a hospital. Besides 
 this regular rehef , on the first of every month Gregory made a 
 distribution in kind to the poor. This was the model of mediaeval 
 distribution, the parishes maintaining their poor, while the 
 bishops and abbots set aside in addition a definite sum for their 
 rehef. Endowed charities were, in fact, springing up rapidly in 
 the fourth century, and the Theodosian code mentions institu- 
 tions for the receipt of strangers, for the poor and sick, as well as 
 orphanages and houses for children. The tithe became a legal 
 obhgation under Charlemagne, and out of it the priests had the 
 definite duty of supporting the poor. Almsgiving was a work 
 of merit from the first. " If there were no poor the greater 
 part of your sins would not be removed ; they are the healers 
 of your wounds," says St. Chrysostom. And not only was 
 almsgiving virtuous, but voluntary poverty was an ideal. It 
 did not escape the leaders of the Church that abuses were 
 incidental to such a principle, and St. Ambrose recognizes the 
 evils of pauperism and urges method in giving, though his rule 
 is httle more than a recommendation of impartiahty. On the 
 other hand, the dangers inherent in the conception were much 
 aggravated by its being linked with the system of indulgences.^ 
 The whole conception, however, was swept away by Protestant- 
 ism, which accordingly gave an impulse to the movement for 
 substituting pubhc for the ecclesiastical rehef of the poor. 
 Already from the growth of the towns new charitable agencies 
 had arisen. The guilds undertook to collect for the support of 
 their members, boroughs estabhshed hospitals and almshouses, 
 gave out-rehef to the registered poor and supported orphans.^ 
 In England the disappearance of serfdom and the new indepen- 
 dence of the working classes began to exercise the minds of the 
 rulers of the country from the middle of the fourteenth century. 
 The confusion between the vagrant and the independent work- 
 
 * According to Thomas Aquinas, he who does an act of charity merits 
 spiritual good through being in a state of charity, and its efieot in this 
 respect is tested by the recipient being moved to pray for the benefactor. 
 St. Thomas recognizes that the claims on our beneficence are relative, 
 depending on such considerations as relationship, but alms should consist 
 of all that is superfluous, the donor retaining what is necessary to him 
 in view of his needs, his family and his dignitas ; but his gift should only 
 meet the actual necessities of the recipient, and not be such as should lead 
 to excess or apathy (Loch, 675). 
 
 ^ We find this system £is early as the ninth century (Loch, p. 677). 
 
350 MORALS IN EVOLtJTION 
 
 man seeking the best market for his labour dates back to that 
 time, and inspires much of the severity with which the sturdy 
 and vahant beggar is treated in the series of laws from the 
 Edwards to EHzabeth. For, blended with just indignation at 
 the idler and impostor was the intelligible but sinister desire of 
 the governing classes to keep the newly enfranchised labourer in 
 a state of economic subjection. tFor this purpose it was not 
 merely 'necessary to fix wages, but also, as far as possible, to 
 prevent the workman from moving freely in search of a better 
 market.^ Hence the repressive side of the later mediaeval 
 legislation. On the other hand, as long as mediaeval charity 
 lasted much relief was given, though with little system, by the 
 monasteries, and from 1287 onwards the parish became the area 
 for a more or less compulse^ rate.^ The religious and economic 
 changes of the sixteenth century produced a new situation. 
 The suppression of the monasteries closed one source of poor 
 relief, while the conversion of arable land to pasture restricted 
 the l£y?our market. Mendicants — sturdy and vaUant beggars — 
 were treated with a severity which culminated in the statute of 
 Edward VI. offering them as temporary slaves to the first comer. 
 But meanwhile a more humane conception was making way. 
 Attempts were made to classify the poor and provide mainten- 
 ance for the "impotent, feeble and lame who are poor in very 
 deell," * while the able-bodied were to be sent to Bridewell for 
 correction. The movement culminated in the Act of 1601, 
 which definitely acknowledged the duty of society as an organ- 
 ized body to save its poorer members from actual destitution, 
 by appointing overseers in each parish with power to levy 
 rates for the support of the indigent. But in the actual working 
 of this just and beneficent principle great dangers were disclosed. 
 The standing difficulty of discriminating between those who 
 would and those who would not work, and the conflicts between 
 humane sentiment and desire for economy, led by different 
 roads to the degradation of large sections of the working class. 
 The economical motive stimulated each locahty to reduce the 
 number of mouths that it might have to feed, and so led speedily 
 to the Act of Settlement (1662), which enabled the overseers 
 to compel any immigrant into their parish to return to his 
 original abode, unless he could give security to the new parish 
 that he would not become chargeable to it. Thus, on the 
 one side,* the Poor Law threatened the working classes with a 
 new serfdom. On the other, it tended when laxly administered 
 
 1 See Fowle, Poor Law, p. 55. • Looh, p. 676. 
 
 ' From the Statute of 1651 (Fowle, p. 57). * See chap. vii. p. 308. 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 351 
 
 to general pauperization, and issued towards the close of the 
 eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century in a 
 system whereby regularly insufficient wages were regularly made 
 good at the expense of the ratepayers.^ 
 
 The worst features of the Act of Settlement were repealed in 
 1795, and the whole system of the Poor Law revolutionized in 
 1834. With the workings of''the new system thus constituted 
 and the problems to which it has given rise I must not here 
 attempt to deal. But the broad principles underlying the atti- 
 tude of the modern state towards the poor must be summarily 
 indicated. The fundamental principle of 1601 — that it is the 
 duty of the pubUc authority to see that no one actually perishes 
 for want of necessaries — seems to be accepted — ^if sometimes in 
 grudging terms — by modem civilized governments in general.^ 
 But starting from this point a considerable onward movement 
 can be traced. First, poverty and pauperism, though connected, 
 are distinct, and this vital distinction is recognized in practice. 
 In very varying forms, much of modern legislation has been 
 aimed at the alleviation of poverty and the raising of the mass 
 of the industrial classes into an economic position in which they 
 could fairly hope to provide the means of a civilized existence 
 for themselves, their families, and even the helpless ones who 
 belong to them. The methods used vary according to the spirit 
 of the age or the economic circumstances of each people. In 
 some countries great measures of agrarian reform accompanying 
 the emancipation of serfs have established a free peasantry upon 
 the soil. In our country, where the divorce of the labourer from 
 the land remains, much has been done by reducing or aboHshing 
 the taxes on the necessaries of life, by sanitary legislation, by 
 Factory Acts, and by the recognition of the right of combination. 
 Such legislation as this belongs to the organic life of the modem 
 state — it is among the processes of its healthy growth towards 
 a fuUer, completer existence. To such growth diseases are inci- 
 dent, and among them pauperism is one of the chief. In dealing 
 'With, this disease the effort of state-controUed and voluntary 
 agencies ahke is more and more directed to disentanghng causes 
 — to discovering what is due to lack of employment, what to 
 physical incapacity, what to faults of character. It may frankly 
 be admitted that we as j'-et have not much to boast of either in 
 
 ^ On the growth of the English Poor Law, see Looh, 676-680. 
 
 ' See for France, Sweden, Denmark, Prussia, Holland, Austria, and the 
 United States — ^Fowle, op. cit., pp. 6, 7. There is sometimes an attempt 
 to distinguish between the duty of the state and the rights of the recipient, 
 which ethically amounts to very little, though it might have legal 
 importance. 
 
352 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 our diagnosis of causes or in our capacity to find remedies for 
 each specific form of the disease. But it is something to have 
 recognized that to have the poor always with us is not a blessing, 
 and that the duty of the rich is not exhausted by the most 
 liberal giving of alms. Public and private charity have, in fact, 
 undergone a transmutation which reflects the general change 
 from the mediaeval to the modem order. Free bounty in alms 
 is the virtue appropriate to the lord deahng with humble de- 
 pendents, just as easy-going communism was natural to the 
 primitive clan. A reciprocal obhgation binding the individual 
 to work for his living and the state to see that no one of its 
 members fails to obtain the bare essentials of a civihzed exist- 
 ence is appropriate to a society resting on the recognition of 
 personal rights. To develop these two principles in their fuU 
 meaning, so to apply them in practice as to avoid any form of 
 compulsion which would interfere with the equally stringent 
 principle of personal freedom, to adapt them to varying circum- 
 stances in such wise as best to help him who is impoverished 
 through no fault of his own to regain his place in the ranks of 
 independent labour, while yet taking suitable care of those who 
 are mentally or morally incompetent to manage their own Uves 
 — ^these are problems which the future may solve. The most 
 that we can claim for ourselves is that we are beginning to state 
 them with precision. 
 
 The poet teUs us that with the advance of civihzation the in- 
 dividual withers, but the truer romance of historical prose tells 
 a different story. In early society the individual is nothing 
 apart from his community. The sphere of private property is 
 very small and the power of the individual to enter into new 
 relations by contract and so carve out a career is even less. 
 Land, the principal source of wealth, is communally owned and 
 there is little incentive to individual industry. On the other 
 hand, if there is no wealth, there is also no pauperism. In- 
 equahty grows as society advances, and in this advance, on its 
 economic side, private ownership and free contract play the 
 principal part. Yet both these factors are still greatly hampered 
 in the early and middle civihzations by feudal tenures and caste 
 restrictions. So far as these remain the structure of society is 
 still comparatively immobile. The position of the individual is 
 stiU determined more by inherited status than by his own deserts. 
 
 At a stiU higher stage these restrictions fall away. Men stand 
 fully free to enter into occupations of all kinds, to acquire wealth 
 in all forms, and to dispose of and (in many cases) bequeath it 
 
PROPERTY AND POVERTY 358 
 
 at their will. No divisions of class or even of nationality inter- 
 fere with their movements or prevent them fron:^, entering into 
 relations with other men in which they may find advantage. 
 But these general statements have to be taken with one limiting 
 condition. The liberties that men enjoy are secured only by the 
 social order maintained by the state, and the state in its turn 
 has to demand that every right must be defined in terms of the 
 common good, and neither private property nor free contract can 
 escape this general law. Thus the modem world rests in a fuller 
 sense than previous civilizations on the free individual, but the 
 individual owes his freedom to state law, and the obverse side 
 of the rights which he enjoys is the social duty which he owes. 
 Society has freed him from other ties, but not from the tie 
 which binds him to the social hfe. If the individual is one pole, 
 society as a whole is the opposite pole of the modern ethical 
 system. 
 
 Finally, customs admitting the acquisition and holding of 
 property have as their reverse side the necessity for deahng with 
 those who have and can acquire none. Here we have a quite 
 parallel evolution. In primitive society there is an easy com- 
 munism among the kinsfolk, often — but by no means always — 
 much consideration for children, the aged and the helpless, and 
 lavish hospitaUty for the stranger if the host chooses to receive 
 him. In the more advanced societies the duties of the govern- 
 ing classes are strongly insisted on by religion and social ethics. 
 Those whom the decay of primitive communal institutions has 
 left helpless and who have faUen outside the regular hnes of 
 the social structure are recommended to the charity of their 
 superiors. The lords of the land must be merciful and forbearing 
 to their dependants. The rich are taught to give freely out of 
 their abundance to the poor. At a higher stage, again, the 
 method of arbitrary doles to a dependent class gives way to 
 the conception of a reciprocal obUgation between the state and 
 its citizens, and contented acquiescence in perpetual poor relief 
 to the systematic attempt to get at the roots at once of poverty 
 and pauperism by organic reform in the economic structure of 
 society. 
 
SUMMARY 
 
 Wu have now considered in^outline, first, the main principles 
 underlying different forms of social organization ; secondly, the 
 manner in which the behaviour of individuals is regulated, 
 their duties enforced and their rights maintained ; and thirdly, 
 a number of the rules determining in the main relations of hfe 
 what those rights and duties are. We saw that primitive society 
 rested on ties spontaneously formed by blood-kinship, by inter- 
 marriage and perhaps by mere neighbourhood; that the social 
 structure is extended and in some respects also consohdated by 
 the rise of mihtary power and the separation of rulers and ruled ; 
 we saw that the principle of force, underlying government at 
 this stage, is transmuted and partially morahzed by ethical and 
 rehgious influence into a principle of authority, exacting obedi- 
 ence of its subjects as a right, but owing them consideration and 
 paternal government as a duty. We saw, finally, that in the 
 higher civihzations a new principle makes headway, whereby 
 the fabric of society comes to rest rather upon the goodwill of 
 the citizens and the social nature of man, while the claims of 
 government are based not on self -constituted authority backed 
 ultimately by the sword, but on the necessity of an ordered rule 
 in the interests not only of social co-operation, but of individual 
 freedom. 
 
 In the maintenance of rights and redress of wrongs, the move- 
 ment, broadly viewed, is parallel. In the beginning, self -redress 
 by the individual, by his kindred, or some other small group 
 is the predominating fact. Hence we ascend by many grada- 
 tions to the impartial justice of a pubhc tribunal, investigating 
 each case by rational process, distinguishing crimes from civil 
 wrongs and limiting the responsibihty for a wrong to the indi- 
 vidual perpetrator. Growing up, as a rule, under the shadow 
 of the principle of authority and acting in the interests of external 
 order rather than of personal rights, the law is administered 
 often with insufficient safeguards for the innocent and with cruel 
 severity to the criminal, and the next step is to remedy these de- 
 fects by changes aimed at reforming the criminal and cutting off 
 the sources of crime. At each step there is an advance in the 
 maintenance of order, and on reflection we recognize that the 
 
 354 
 
SUMMARY 355 
 
 better maintenance of order means greater security for individuals 
 in the enjoyment of their rights. Again, the elaboration of the 
 legal view of responsibihty isolates the individual from the 
 groups which in primitive society stand and fall together. But 
 it isolates from these only to bring him into close dependence 
 on a wider society — the state as a whole, to which he finds himself 
 bound by mutual obligations of duties and rights. 
 
 In the position of women and the structure of the family we 
 find a development which, if not parallel, is yet analogous. We 
 have seen the natural family beginning with a relatively loose 
 organization, and passing into a state in which close-knit rela- 
 tions were obtained at the expense of the wife, while the aim 
 of the higher civihzations appears to be to reconcile the intimacy 
 of the union with equal freedom for both parties. The move- 
 ment is, on the one hand, towards closer structure, on the other 
 to personal freedom, and the problem is, again, to reconcile the 
 claims of personahty and the duties of a common life, though 
 this common life is here that of two individuals rather than that 
 of all society. On the other hand, in the position of women, 
 economically and socially, apart from the question of marriage, 
 it is the idea of personahty that is mainly prominent. For in 
 the early stages there is httle respect for women, and, so far as 
 labour is divided, it is more often than not to their disadvantage. 
 Then in spite of the dependence of the wife there arises as a partial 
 compensation the view that woman has a sphere of her own, 
 in some ways higher than that of her lord. But when this view, 
 which carries in -it the seeds of a deeper respect for women than 
 the older world conceived, is pushed to its conclusion, it is seen 
 that, to realize what is in them, women, too, must have the open 
 field which men demand, and be free, if it be only to work out 
 and establish their diversity. 
 
 From sex we passed to other divisions of human beings which 
 affect the conception of moral obhgation. In the primitive 
 world every man is a member of a group to which his obligations 
 strictly so-called are limited, members of other groups being 
 indifferent or hostile. From this " group-morahty " arises, first, 
 the problem of intertribal, or, as they afterwards become, inter- 
 national relations. In the early stages these relations are fre- 
 quently hostile, and hostiUty is directed towards the individuals 
 of the opposing community, and not merely against the com- 
 munity as a corporate whole. A step onward is taken when the 
 personal character disappears from warfare and the result of 
 victory, even if pushed to the point of annexation, is not to 
 cancel the rights of the conquered or to punish them for attach- 
 
356 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ment to their own side. Lastly, in this fuller recognition of a 
 common humanity — for that is what it amounts to — we find the 
 beginning of a more far-reaching conception of a law, and there- 
 fore ultimate of a society of nations to which each independent 
 state owes allegiance. 
 
 Considered internally, the small primitive group was found 
 to be — apart from the distinction of sex — generally speaking, a 
 society of equals. Differences of class or caste, and the distinc- 
 tion of free man and serf or slave, arose in the earlier phases 
 of social growth. On this side personal rights are apt to suffer 
 deterioration in the earlier phases of social advance. The 
 growth of a large order and a firm authority is hostile at the 
 outset to the maintenance of individual freedom and social 
 equality. Ethical and rehgious progress tends to redress the 
 balance, and the claims of personality reassert themselves 
 piecemeal in the higher civihzations. But this wider recogni- 
 tion of personal rights imphes that the barriers which divide 
 classes and sections of the community are overcome, and a true 
 social unity achieved. 
 
 Turning from the rights of person to those of property and 
 contract, we have seen the simple quasi-communism of primitive 
 peoples give way to a system of free contract and individual 
 ownership, from which the hampering restrictions of caste and 
 feudal status gradually fall away. Once again individual energy 
 and initiative are set free from all restrictions, but once again 
 individual freedom was seen to raise questions of social control. 
 Finally, in the treatment of the poor we have traced an analogous 
 movement from the customs of hospitahty and free sharing 
 between neighbours through the paternal benevolence of a 
 superior caste to the recognition of a mutual obUgation as 
 between the individual and the state. 
 
 Thus, amid all the variety of social institutions and the ebb 
 and flow of historical change, it is possible in the end to detect 
 a double movement marking the transition from the lower to 
 the higher levels of civilized law and custom. On the one hand, 
 the social order is strengthened and extended. The blood feud 
 yields to the reign of law, personal chieftainship to a regular 
 government and an organized police. At the same time the 
 social organization grows in extent. Instead of small primitive 
 groups we have nation-states or continental empires, great areas 
 enjoying internal peace and owning a common law. On this 
 side the individual human being becomes more and more subject 
 to social constraint, and, as we have frequently seen, the changes 
 making for the tightening of the social fabric may diminish the 
 
SUMMARY 357 
 
 rights which the individual or large classes of individuals can 
 claim, so that fewer rights may be enjoyed, thbugh, with the 
 improvement of public order, those which remain are more 
 secure. In this relation liberty and order become opposed. 
 But the opposition is not essential. Prom the first the indi- 
 vidual relies on social forces to maintain him in his rights, and 
 in the higher form of social organization we have seen order 
 and liberty drawing together again, the underlying truth that 
 unites them being simply that the best ordered community 
 is that which gives most scope to its component members to 
 make the best of themselves, while the " best " in human nature , 
 is that which contributes to the harmony and onward movement * 
 of society. Thus the modern state comes to rest more and 
 more on the rights and duties, the obligations and responsi- 
 bihties that we include under the ethical and legal conception 
 of personality. The responsible human being, man or woman, 
 is the centre of modem ethics as of modem law, free so far as 
 law and custom are concerned to make his own life, bound 
 by no restrictions of status nor even of nationality or race, 
 answerable for his acts and for those of no other, at liberty 
 to make the best or the worst of himself, to accept or decline 
 relations with others. On the other hand, as this free individual 
 breaks the shell of the older groupings, he comes into direct 
 relations with the state as a whole which succeeds to many of 
 the rights and duties of the older groups. The social nature of 
 man is not diminished either on the side of its needs or its duties 
 by the fuller recognition of personal rights. The difference is 
 that, so far as rights and duties are conceived as attaching to 
 human beings as such, they become universahzed, and are there- 
 fore the care of society as a whole rather of any partial group 
 organization. The typical instance of this change is the rise of 
 pubhc courts enforcing a Jaw which is equally binding on all 
 members of' society. But, lastly, the universalism which the 
 idea of personahty holds within it cannot be satisfied with the 
 limits of the nation-state. In proportion as obhgations are 
 determined by human nature as such they overstep national 
 and racial as well as family and class limitations, and apply to 
 humanity as a whole. Hence, as has been seen in analyzing 
 the idea of internationalism, the double meaning of " humanity " 
 as an expression for a certain quahty that is in each man, and 
 as an "Expression for the whole race of men, is not a mere 
 ambiguity. The two meanings are intimately related, for 
 "humanity " as a whole is the society to which, by virtue of 
 the " humanity " within each of ub, we really belong, and 
 
358 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 these two meanings are the poles between which modem ethical 
 conceptions move. Thus, if we are to ^um up the whole process 
 sketched in this Part in a phrase, we may say that it is in 
 this double sense to realize humanity. 
 
 The controversies which have filled modem history attach 
 themselves in their ethical aspect sometimes to one side, some- 
 times to the other of this principle. Of many of these httle 
 has been said in this Part, because in outhne the facts are 
 weU known and a detailed discussion would be impossible within 
 the limits of a general sketch. It may, however, be pointed out 
 that the ethical questions which have agitated the modem world 
 from, say, the period of the Reformation to our own day have 
 turned either on the vindication of personal right or on the 
 extended conception of human brotherhood. On the one hand, 
 ethical progress has taken the form of a protest against the 
 principle of authority which at the outset of the period every- 
 where dominated the world, and, so far, has tended to curtail 
 the sphere of government in favour of individual liberty. This 
 is the history, for example, of the very gradual process whereby 
 first liberty of conscience and finally religious equality has been 
 established as a comer-stone of the modern state. TMs change 
 is sometimes represented as merely a consequence of religious 
 scepticism, the implication being that if the world held itself as 
 certain of fundamental truths as it did in the twelfth century it 
 would not hesitate to impose them on all its members by force 
 as it did then on the rare occasions which arose. But there is 
 a deeper principle involved, illustrating the many-sided meaning 
 of the idea of Personality. Far from implying an indifierence 
 to rehgion, the principle of rehgious equahty is a recognition of 
 the profound importance of intellectual sincerity, particularly in 
 relation to the deepest problems of hfe. From the moment that 
 honesty is recognized as a duty it becomes increasingly repugnant 
 to penahze the behefs to which it may lead. The heavier the 
 penalties the more exclusively they fall on the stoutest and best 
 natures — that is, precisely on those best quahfied under happier 
 circumstances to serve society ; and the only logical alternative 
 is to admit the necessity for divergencies in an imperfect world. 
 
 It is not to be supposed that this principle is free from logical 
 defects or practical difficulties. It is easy to show that there are 
 or may be opinions which in some relations must disquahfy the 
 holder. For example, a sincere conviction which would prevent 
 a man from conscientiously discharging the duties of a particular 
 office must disqualify him from holding the office. But the 
 principle of freedom in opinion would merely require that his 
 
SUMMARY 359 
 
 unorthodox or unpopular views should not disquaUfy him for 
 ^ other offices with which they are not concerned, in other words, 
 freedom is limited by responsibility. A man undertakes to fulfil 
 a certain social function, to administer, to teach, or to preach, 
 and it is expected that he wiU fulfil and not exceed that function, 
 and as long as he does so his thoughts are his own. There is 
 thus a certain logic below the apparent compromises of public 
 life which , by enabhng men of most diverse views to co-operate 
 without injury to their own self-respect, secures the best brains 
 and the highest characters for the pubhc service. 
 
 The modem state undoubtedly uses constraint, as every 
 organized society must do, but the grounds on which constraint 
 is justified in the modem world are distinctive and significant. 
 For constraint may be justified, and in the older conception Was 
 justified, on the ground that if a man will not do what he ought 
 he must be made to do it, and it may be apphed to speech and 
 writing on the ground that if it is wrong to do a thing it is equally 
 wrong to recommend it. But it is precisely in these two rela- 
 tions that compulsion most ofiends the modem idea of liberty, 
 / To force a person to act rightly for his own sake impHes an 
 ethical confusion, for it is only in so far as he acts freely that 
 his actions have ethical value. Conversely, to suppress free 
 speech is to bring force into the true spiritual world— the world 
 of ideas, where it is most urgent both from the personal and 
 ultimately from the pubhc point of view that there should be 
 freedom. On the other hand, when the freedom of one man is 
 used to molestation of another or the hindrance of what are 
 deemed his legitimate activities, constraint is required. And if 
 individual freedom may not be used to the prejudice of another 
 individual, neither can it claim the right to thwart the wiU of 
 society as a whole. Hence an important distinction which will 
 be found to underhe much of modem legislation. As long as 
 the general will can be carried out effectively without com- 
 peDing the reluctant minority to follow suit, the tendency is 
 to avoid compulsion. On the other hand, where certain con- 
 ditions are beheved to be essential to the common good, and 
 the recusance of a minority, perhaps of a few individuals, would 
 render them unattainable, compulsion is deemed legitimate. 
 In such cases it is felt that the general wiU, dealing with general 
 interests, has rights quite comparable in kind to those of the 
 individual will in relation to its individual interests, while to 
 enforcecompulsionis, after all, only in accord with the universally 
 admitted limit to liberty that it does not convey the right to 
 injure others. Further, compulsion is Umited to actions, since 
 
360 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 words alone cannot impede a resolute majority from doing what 
 they wish to do, unless, indeed, their convictions are a little 
 shaky, and in that case it may, perhaps, be all the better for 
 them to hear the other side. Again, in leaving expression free, 
 the law leaves to each man what is pecuharly his, the right 
 to think for himself and honestly express his convictions whether 
 he is allowed to ?ict by them orjiot. In all these ways the idea 
 of personality seems to have profoundly influenced the theory 
 and practice of legislation, tending not always to the curtail- 
 ment of social activity — for, as we shall see later, it has a counter 
 tendency in the enlargement which it gives to the conception 
 of the common good — but certainly to the material modification 
 of the character and aims of law. 
 
 Freedom of discussion practically implies the influence of 
 discussion upon government, and the doctrine of popular sove- 
 reignty with universal suffrage drew its strength first in the 
 modern world from the conception of the right of each individual 
 to have a voice in determining the laws under which he has to 
 live. The democratic movement was directed at the outset 
 against arbitrary power. Its first demand was for personal free- 
 dom, i. e. immunity from arbitrary treatment and security in 
 the possession of legal rights. The pohtical rights which came 
 next appeared naturally as an extension of this freedom and as 
 another check of governmental authority. But as soon as they 
 were adequately secured and the ultimate sovereignty of the 
 people was realized, the notion of a check on government became 
 inadequate. The people as a whole could not be engaged merely 
 in checking itself. In point of fact, whenever it was a question 
 of extending the franchise it was another side of the principle of 
 personaHty, the idea of equal rights, that came forward. But 
 this idea, while founded on personality, is meaningless apart 
 from the conception of something which all share ahke, and 
 equality in political rights, therefore, imphes a community in 
 which members have an equal right to take part in the functions 
 of government — that is to say, merely a more perfect or more 
 complete community than one in which certain members are 
 wholly or in part excluded from the common life. Pohtical 
 democracy, therefore, seems to range the whole distance be- 
 tween the two poles of the humanitarian idea, restirig on the 
 pinciple of personahty on the one hand and of the all-embracing 
 community on the other. 
 
 The family and the state are not the only communities which 
 men form. On the contrary, a leading characteristic of the 
 modem world is the ease with which people combine for pur- 
 
SUMMARY 361 
 
 poses of all kinds, from that of heanng each other's views on 
 Browning to that of regulating wages or promoting the passage 
 of a Bill in Parliament. The right of association is one which 
 often raises grave pohtical and social problems, and, strangely 
 enough, it can be brought into contact with both poles of our 
 "underlying principle," and in either case it may receive sup- 
 port or opposition according to the reading of the facts. Take 
 the case of trade unions. These were, as a matter of history, 
 legahzed in England under the influence of individuahstic ideas, 
 the ground taken being the right inherent in individuals to 
 associate together freely for the promoting of their several 
 interests. Yet the strength of a trade union lies entirely in 
 the Collective Bargain, and its moral force is derived wholly 
 from the conception of the workers in a given trade— ultimately, 
 perhaps, all the manual workers of the country — as forming a 
 community with certain objects in common. So far the trade 
 union finds support both in individualism and collectivism. Yet 
 from both ideas it is possible to derive arguments against the 
 right of combination. On individuahst grounds it may be con- 
 demned as impairing the rights of the non-unionist, on coUec- 
 tivist grounds as forming a state -within a state, and assuming 
 functions which only the government, representing employers as 
 well as employed, brain workers as weU as manual workers, can 
 fairly carry out. Hence, in point of fact, trade unionism has 
 always been opposed by the more extreme among Individualists 
 and Sociahsts, and has found support among the more moderate 
 of each party. The movements of opinion and of English legis- 
 lation on the subject from 1800 to the present day reflect with 
 tolerable accuracy the fluctuation of thought between these 
 poles, according as now one, now another, aspect of the problem 
 took the leading place in the public mind, the tendency being, 
 upon the whole, to recognize the necessity of voluntary com- 
 bination as a remedy for the economic weakness of the mass of 
 manual workers and to bring it by the definition of its rights 
 and responsibihties more closely into connection with the state 
 system. 
 
 What has been said of trade unions applies mutatis mutandis 
 to voluntary association in general. The state organization is 
 far from esJiausting the necessities of common action. It can 
 use its power of compulsory taxation to carry out certain objects 
 of common interest. But preciselj' because it uses compulsion, 
 it has to give fair consideration to all classes and all sections and 
 cannot -wisely proceed further than the general opinion of the 
 pommunity warrants. Voluntary associations, on the other hand. 
 
362 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 which exercise no compulsion on any one except on their own 
 members, who freely join and are free to leave them, may rightly 
 pursue a thousand and one laudable objects for which a com- 
 bined effort is necessary, but which, perhaps, appeal only to 
 a few. Thus the fuller development of the principle of com- 
 munity or association does not necessarily imply a continual 
 expansion in the sphere of state activity. On the contrary, the 
 activity of voluntary combination has developed and is developing 
 with at least equal rapidity. 
 
 Under the name of voluntary association we think naturally 
 of combinations dehberately formed for some definite purpose. 
 But there is also a form of common Hfe into which men fall, 
 if not hindered, by a kind of instinct, a life based on old tradi- 
 tions, and a certain community of character, language, custom, 
 and generally religion, all that goes to make up the impalpable 
 but very real bonds of nationality. Struggles for national free- 
 dom have made a large part of the modern movement, and 
 have generally been associated with ideas of personal hherty 
 and of popular sovereignty. Yet the connection of thought is 
 not always easy to make out. Where a race is definitely held in 
 subjection by an autocratic government which concedes to it 
 neither political nor equal civil rights, the case is indeed clear 
 enough. So far it does not differ from that of any disfran- 
 chised class. But further, though fully enfranchised, a nation- 
 ality may be incorporated against its will with a larger nation 
 in one pohtical community, and its separatist aspirations may 
 then be regarded as having no special sanction in the principle 
 of Liberty and as being opposed to the widening of human 
 brotherhood in that they tend to spht up society and perpetuate 
 divisions. As to the first point, the proof of the argument is 
 in practical experience. If it turns out possible to maintain the 
 undesired union without special restrictions on the pohtical and 
 personal rights of the recalcitrant people, well and good. But 
 the stronger the national feeling, the less likely is this to be the 
 case and the further are governments driven along the road of 
 coercion and into the forbidden ground of the modern spirit, 
 where men are made to suffer most in proportion to their nobility 
 and steadfastness of character. The heroes of nationalism have, 
 wherever their cause has flourished, connected it with that of 
 personal right, and put their opponents into the odious position 
 of punishing men for qualities which in a cool hour they must 
 themselves admire. From the social point of viev/, again, if 
 fewer differences existed the problems of social organization 
 would be much simpler, but the social life would also be poorer. 
 
SUMMARY 363 
 
 At this point divergences in the conception of a community 
 come to a head. If the best community is that jn which the 
 order deemed most suitable by the wisest heads is imposed on 
 all members without regard to their wishes, then differences 
 of nationality can expect httle consideration. But if the best- 
 ordered society is that which makes most room for the self- 
 development of many different types, the case is altered, and 
 just as there is free play for the individual so also is there room — 
 though to make it may involve great changes in the govern- 
 mental machinery — ^for those groupings of individuals which 
 spontaneously form and stubbornly maintain themselves against 
 legal pressure. Thus, from several points of view the re-grouping 
 of peoples according to national divisions, which has made up 
 so much of modem history, falls into its place as part^ of the 
 wider movement which has replaced the arbitrary government 
 of authority by the political state resting on the common good 
 and general assent of the great bulk of its citizens. 
 
 Probably in all the movements here mentioned the side which 
 has been most prominent in history has been the vindication of 
 individual or group rights as against governmental authority. 
 But it would be a mistake on that account to identify them with 
 any general tendency towards individuaUsm as against the claims 
 of the common hfe. On the contrary, at every step the fuller 
 recognition of rights implies a deepening sense of common 
 responsibiUty, since, as has been repeatedly asserted, the recog- 
 nition of a right implies its maintenance by society. From the 
 assumption of the duty of protecting life and limb onwards the 
 development of the modem state has witnessed an extension of 
 the sense of collective responsibility — a responsibihty which maj' 
 almost indifferently be stated in terms of the rights of individuals 
 or the duties of society. On whichever of the two principles, 
 in practice the modem state guarantees the bare necessaries of 
 life to all its members, and adds thereto in varying degree the 
 conditions of something more than a bare life. In a long series 
 of industrial statutes it has sought to ensure the safety and 
 health of the working class, and to protect its members from 
 fraud and oppression. It maintains a certain standard of sani- 
 tation in buildings, provides or encourages faciUties for trans- 
 port, and gives the rudiments of education without charge. 
 How much further the state machinery can be profitably used 
 in this connection is matter of controversy into which I do not 
 inquire here. But whether trust be put in the machinery of law 
 or the efforts of voluntary agency, the sphere of combined action 
 grows in proportion as the respect for human personality deepens. 
 
364 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The obligation to do what is in them to make life more human 
 will be felt by some as a debt which they owe to suffering human 
 beings, by others as something due to society. But in this 
 relation at least it is easy to recognize that it is the same principle 
 which is seen from two different sides, and that the conscious 
 efforts to better the life of humanity in which the whole tend- 
 ency of modem thought is summed up can work through no other 
 channel than the humanity which is alive in every man and 
 woman. 
 
PAET II 
 
 THE BASIS 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 
 
 1. The history of law and custom gives us one aspect of 
 ethical evolution. It sets forth the standard of conduct, or 
 rather the standards recognized by different societies at different 
 times. But behind the question of the moral standard is that of 
 the moral basis, the grounds on which moraUty rests, the spirit 
 in which it is conceived. For, besides the question what kind of 
 action is expected from us by our neighbours, our rulers, our 
 spiritual pastors and masters, moral philosophy has to recognize 
 the further question how it is that these expectations arise. On 
 what grounds do rules of action rest, what authority promulgates 
 them and by what sanction are they enforced ? If it happens to 
 be the interest of any individual to disobey them, what reason, 
 other than physical compulsion, can be assigned for adhering to 
 them ? What is the penalty of disobedience ? What, if wrong 
 is done, are the means of reconciliation ? In other words, 
 behind the question of the moral standard there is the philo- 
 sophical question of the nature of moral obligation, of moral 
 authority, of the moral sanction, or, to use one expression for 
 them all, there is the question of the basis of the moral order. 
 
 To understand how men have conceived this question, and 
 what sort of answers they attempted to propound for it, is the 
 task that remains for us. But to understand ethical evolution 
 on this side we have first to turn to departments of thought that 
 are not in their origin ethical. For men's views of what is 
 right are necessarily steeped in influences derived from their 
 whole outlook upon the world, the range of their mental capacity, 
 their conception of the creating, sustaining, and governing 
 causes of things, their theories of human life and society. We 
 cannot, therefore, thoroughly understand the history of ethics 
 without knowing something of the general development of 
 thought. At the same time we cannot here deal with this 
 
 365 
 
366 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 development in all its fulness. We must refer to it only so far 
 as it throws light upon our special question. We shall have, 
 that is, to take account of what men think and of how they 
 think upon certain fundamental questions that afEect practice. 
 
 It follows that we shall have to examine, however concisely, 
 some leading features of religious development. Indeed, accord- 
 ing to one usage of terms we should have to concern ourselves 
 with nothing else. For a man's rehgion is sometimes held to 
 include the sum and substance of his vital thought, the final 
 meaning for him of his total outlook upon the world, and if so it 
 clearly includes ethics as a part. In a historical study, however, 
 it is more convenient to consider rehgion as the body of belief 
 and practice relative to a spiritual order on which human beings 
 are dependent. The pivot of this order may be a personal being 
 or beings, or it may be some conception of the conditions govern- 
 ing the Hfe and destiny of man. It may be the life beyond the 
 grave and the means of securing happiness in that state which 
 inspires the religious interest, or it may be the spiritual influences 
 which shape the life of the individual and the race for good or ill. 
 The conception of the spiritual is of infinite variety, and rehgions 
 differ in accordance with the purity of its development, but in 
 one sense or other there is rehgion when man's life is held to be 
 subject to spiritual beings or spiritual principles, to which he 
 owes service, by which he is governed, with which he has in any 
 way to make his account. In this sense rehgion and ethics, 
 though intimately related, are not identical, nor is the rehgious 
 view of the governance of the world, though vastly important, 
 the only view with which we shall have to deal. We shall dis- 
 tinguish, though we shall not therefore separate, the rehgious, 
 the ethical, the scientific and other Unes of development, and 
 foUow each in turn so far as is necessary for our purpose. 
 
 2. The rehgious interpretation of life and the world must at 
 every stage use the materials of thought and experience that 
 it finds to hand. Itself an effort to get on terms with the world 
 surrounding human life, its tenets and practices are not directly 
 suggested by experience, but it necessarily makes use of experi- 
 ence and of such interpretations of experience, or such fancies 
 and transformations of experience as the thought of its adherents 
 are capable of forming. The rehgious interpretation of life, then, 
 is relative to the general level of thought, and to understand the 
 earlier phases of religion we can best begin by describing certain 
 modes of conception common to early thought which are not 
 themselves necessarily or invariably rehgious, but which supply 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 367 
 
 material and even formative conditions of early religion. We 
 may take, first, the theory of Spirits, to which the n^e Animism 
 has been given by anthropologists. The name and the defini- 
 tion are so far open to criticism that the theory of a single 
 Creator might be said to be covered by the general term. But 
 when we look a httle further into the matter we find that the 
 kind of spirits intended where the term Animism is used have 
 certain distinguishing characteristics. These characteristics are 
 not invariable. Sometimes one is absent, sometimes another. 
 Often our information is not sufficiently definite or complete to 
 show us precisely how the spirit is conceived, but the features 
 which we shall describe have a certain affinity to one another, 
 and wherever the presence of any one of them is clearly marked, 
 we may describe the behef as animistic. 
 
 (a) The qtiasi-material soul. — Whether the human soul was 
 or was not the original model on which the primitive conception 
 of the spirit was formed, it serves for us as the type to which 
 spirits of all kinds can be compared, and is the natural starting- 
 point, if not of history, at least of exposition. Now the behef 
 in the human soul is not, as such, animistic. In one sense 
 or another it may be called universal, for even an advanced 
 materiahst must admit a difference between the hving and 
 the dead body, and if soul is a mere expression for the fact of 
 vital function or, perhaps, of conscious life, can have no objec- 
 tion to admitting its existence and extinction. He might rank 
 himself, if he wished to use anthropological categories, with 
 the animatists, for he regards the body as animated. What 
 distinguishes the animistic view of the human soul is that it is 
 an entity, separable from the body in which it dwells, but itself 
 possessing many bodily characteristics, as of some subtle material 
 essence. Thus the spirit of man goes out in dreams, and appears 
 to other people. Sometimes it leaves him temporarily when he 
 sneezes, and hence it is well to pray for a blessing on him in such 
 a moment, as we do unto this day. It quits him in trances ; it 
 leaves him finally at death. Since the spirit is a mere attenuated 
 double of the man himseK, it appears also in his shadow,^ and 
 can be seen mocking him when he stands by the side of a pool. 
 
 ' For instances of the shadow or reflection as the soul, see Tylor, i. 430 ; 
 Golden Bough, 3rd ed. Part II. p. 77. With this idea we may connect the use 
 of a picture as a supplementary home or body for the soul of the deceased, 
 which so often plays a prominent part in the cult of the dead, e.g. in ancient 
 Egypt and in China (De Groot, i. 113). The distinction between regarding 
 the picture (1) as a receptacle for the dead man's soul, and (2) as the dead 
 man himself in a new form, is one which on animistic principles cannot be 
 drawn with any clearness or consistency. 
 
368 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 These different appearances of the double, or spirit, have 
 not escaped savage man, and have led him in many cases to 
 an almost bewildering multiplication of souls.^ With that 
 multiphcation we need not now concern ourselves, we attend 
 only to the fact of the soul's transmigrations. Tliis impalpable 
 entity is itself, it may be, transferred from one dwelUng-place 
 to another, leaving the outer seeming unaltered. The souls of 
 the dead may pass into tigers, as among the Malays, and often 
 also in India, and in that form they may take vengeance on 
 those who harm them in this life. And sometimes, if possible, 
 the tiger is not killed for fear of injuring a dead relative,* but is 
 greatly feared for his supernatural even more than his physical 
 prowess. The soul may wander away voluntarily in a dream, 
 and then sometimes may lose its way, or be prevented from 
 returning. It may be extracted by sorcery or carried off by 
 ghosts, whence come illnesses, madness, and death. It may be 
 trapped while on its journeys, but it may also be recovered for 
 a consideration by one who knows the proper charms to catch 
 a soul. It may even be swallowed inadvertently by a doctor. 
 If irretrievably lost it may be replaced— so loosely is it con- 
 nected with the real personahty of the man — by another soul 
 purchasable at a price.* Finally, at death it still hovers in the 
 neighbourhood, and may perchance be recalled if the mourners 
 raise their voices and entice it with good things.* 
 
 The spirit being thus separable from the body and yet so 
 intimately related, we have to inquire into the nature of the con- 
 nection. Is the spirit dependent on the body, or does the body 
 rather belong to the spirit, which enters it from without and 
 merely uses it for a convenient dwelling ? It would be hopeless 
 to expect a consistent answer to these questions from animism. 
 Its conceptions fluctuate between the two ideas .^ But this very 
 elasticity helps animism to deal with many of the facts. Disease, 
 for example, may be possession by a temporary demon.* The 
 
 ' For illustrations, see Tyler, Primitive Culture, i. 434. 
 
 ' Waitz, v. i. 166. 
 
 " For a summary of the evidence, see Golden Bough, 3rd ed. II. 30-77. 
 
 ' That thio is the meaning of ceremonial wailing for the dead in China 
 is shown by De Groot (vol. i. pp. 244, etc. ). De Groot compares the Roman 
 conclamatio, and corresponding customs in Picardy, California, the 
 Caribbean Islands, etc. Religion has here, as so often, merely stereotyped 
 and given inner meaning to a natural impulse. 
 
 * See Tylor, loc. cit. 
 
 ' With equal facility, in connection with the opposite pole of animism, 
 disease becomes a quasi-material object, magic stones or pointing sticks, 
 driven into a man by spirits, which can be extracted by a doctor, and 
 perhaps transferred to another person, or walled up in a tree (Golden 
 Bough, 2nd ed. iii. 29, etc. ; Tyior, ii. 148). 
 
THE EARLY PHASE8 OF THOUGHT 369 
 
 inspired soothsayer, the raving madman, are momentarily pos- 
 sessed by god or demon. The quick-witted pldlh, the impulsive 
 crime, are stimulated by Pallas Athene, or by the Erinnys,^ 
 which is impelling a man to his own destruction. Animism, in 
 short, has a ready explanation for all the cases in which we seem 
 to sufier or to act not wholly by and with our own will. But 
 what of our own spirits ? Are they dependent upon the body 
 or not ? Clearly not altogether so, or they would not wander 
 away in dreams, nor would the soul escape at death with the 
 last breath, nor live on while the body manifestly decays. Yet 
 animism is far from being satisfied that the soul can do without 
 some bodily support. Sometimes the corpse itself is necessary 
 to the soul's hfe, and is accordingly preserved with jealous care. 
 The corpse remains qua?i-animated. It can eat and drink. 
 Its mutilation injures the spirit. If unburied it suffers from 
 exposure and its spirit will cause a drought to protect it from the 
 rain.2 It is as far as possible protected and preserved that the 
 spirit may at the proper time rejoin it. But since in reahty the 
 corpse decays, what is the soul to do ? Apparently it needs a 
 body of one kind or another. The Australian ancestor of the 
 Alcheringa deposited his soul in a pebble or oblong piece of wood. 
 The Egyptian made likenesses of the deceased, statues and bas- 
 rehefs, which the soul could inhabit. The Chinese make a tablet 
 specially fitted for the dead man's habitation by the accurate 
 inscription of his name and all his titles. Among other peoples 
 quite a different view is taken of the soul's needs. Dimly con- 
 ceived as a thin aerial substance, it is thought to require that 
 the body, together with its food and raiment, should be reduced 
 to the same form. So the corpse is burnt, and with it all that 
 is devoted to the service of the dead. In all these cases, whether 
 with the aid of the corpse or without it, whether in the neighbour- 
 hood of the grave or in another world, or in both places at once, 
 the soul is held to maintain a semi -in dependent existence, its 
 happiness or misery being determined largely by the amount 
 of attention paid to it by its descendants upon earth. There 
 remains one other alternative frequently adopted and finally 
 becoming the basis of a great religious system — that it should find 
 itself a new home by passing into another being. It then belongs 
 for Ufe to the body which it inhabits, but it existed before the 
 body and wiU survive it. There is a limited or partial inter- 
 
 ' The Stt) which is responsible for an act of folly or crime is implanted 
 in the soul by the Fury which will avenge it (see, e.g. Odyssey, xv. 233). 
 Cf. Leist, pp. 320, 321 ; Tylor, ii. 126-131. 
 
 ' De Groot, i, 57, 342; iii. 918, etc. 
 BB 
 
370 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 dependence. This limited interdependence we may take as the 
 central idea around which animistic theories radiate. Soul and 
 body are two things, not one. But without soul, body decays, 
 and without some sort of body, real or fictitious, the soul appears 
 to be, at best, enfeebled and miserable. 
 
 Though the soul is so subtle and impalpable that it can transfer 
 itself without difficulty, or without betraying the change through 
 any physical or outward modifications, it is nevertheless capable 
 of being dealt with as we deal with visible and tangible objects. 
 It may be tied with cords, or driven away with weapons, or, 
 since, after all, it has a modicum of intelligence, frightened away 
 with shouts and threats. When an Australian war party loses 
 a man the spirit of the dead follows them back in the form of a 
 bird, and is frightened off when they get home. A part of the 
 ceremony of mourmng is to beat the air — not as a symbol of the 
 futility of human grief — but for the purposeful object of driving 
 the ghost away, and the funeral is not complete till the spirit is 
 frightened out of the camp and into the grave where it should 
 lie.^ Half the world away we find the Guaycurus of Paraguay 
 salljdng forth with clubs to repel the storm spirit,^ and we know 
 from Herodotus that the Caunians, being disgusted with their 
 gods, took bows and spears and drove them bodily out of the 
 land with execrations and insults. As late as the conquest by 
 the Spaniards, bad spirits were driven annually out of Cuzco, 
 in Peru, by armed warriors.^ Demons may be caught and 
 imprisoned, as among the hill tribes of Bengal,* or they may be 
 expelled by charms, as when the Uama's blood is sprinkled to 
 this day in Peru on a doorway to keep them out of the hut. The 
 soul may be put away for safety into a tree,^ as in the famous 
 case of the Golden Bough, or, as it leaves the dead man, it may 
 be induced to come back and re-incarnate itself in some child 
 of the family. When the West African negro wakes with a 
 headache or sickness he sends, Miss Kingsley tells us, for a doctor, 
 who, promptly diagnosing his case as a loss of soul, proceeds to 
 institute a search. In process of time the soul is duly caught, 
 by methods best known to the doctor, brought in a box to the 
 
 1 Spencer and Gillen, I. 493-506. 
 
 ' Payne, i. 390. Among the Haytians the gods would shamelessly qmt 
 the tribe in case of misfortune, and were therefore secured by cotton ropes 
 {ib., p. 319). " Payne, i. 391. * Beclus, Primitive Folk, 301-303. 
 
 ° De Groot (iv. 106) has a good story of a Chinese criminal who could 
 not be put to death because he had put his soul into a bottle. Three days 
 after being decapitated his trunk and head had re-united themselves. But 
 his mother, whom he had beaten, betrayed his secret, and on her advice the 
 vase was broken, and after this the criminal was successfully flogged to 
 death. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 371 
 
 sick man's bed, and duly blown into him, to his mental comfort, 
 and thereby, through the power of faith-healin%, possibly to his 
 physical restoration.^ 
 
 But the commonest evidence of the material character of the 
 spirit is its power of eating and drinking like an ordinary man. 
 The gods of the Babylonians came about the sacrifice hke flies ; 
 the ghosts in Hades lapped the blood which Odysseus brought 
 for them. The spirit of the place partakes of the drops of 
 wine which are poured out from a cup. The dead man is a 
 participant in the funeral feast. The only doubt here is whether 
 the ghost eats the food or the ghost of the food." Since the food 
 does not actually disappear, the savage mind is put to some 
 trouble on the point, and sometimes the difficulty seems to have 
 been the cause of scepticism. The question was put by a young 
 Zulu in this way : " When we ask, ' What do the other Amadhlozi 
 do, for in the morning we see all the meat ? ' the old men say, 
 ' The Amatongo Uck it,' and we are unable to contradict them 
 and are silent, for they are older than we are and tell us all things ; 
 we listen, for we are told all things, and assent without seeing 
 clearly whether they are true or not." ^ Such difficulties could 
 be resolved by the theory that it was the soul of the sacrifice 
 that went to the gods, as the Eijians hold, and so at a cannibal 
 feast among them there is a double advantage, for while the men 
 eat the body the gods eat the soul, and both are benefited ahke. 
 The dead wife of Periander told her husband that she was cold 
 because her clothes had not been burnt, and she was only warm 
 when he had made a holocaust of the wardrobes of the Corinthian 
 women. The dead man's horse is slain at his grave that the 
 ghost of the one may ride the ghost of the other. The wife is 
 sacrificed to a similar order of ideas, and sometimes, the principle 
 being logically carried through, the weapons and implements of 
 the deceased are broken before they are laid beside him. 
 
 The spirit being thus materiahzed appears to enjoy an in- 
 dependent existence of its own. Here we touch the central 
 contradiction of animism. The conception of the soul has its 
 justification either (a) in the facts of consciousness, or (6) in the 
 laws of the hving body, or in both combined. In either case it is 
 
 1 Miss Kingsley, West African Studies, p. 200. 
 
 ' Strictly speaking there is a third alternative — the corpse itself may eat 
 the food. This appears to have been the primitive Chinese conception, 
 which by the time of Confucius had yielded to the somewhat more refined 
 view that the food placed on the grave was destined for the soul. Hence 
 arose the custom of placing the offerings upon the tomb instead of within it 
 (De Groot, vol. ii. p. 384). 
 
 ' Tylor, ii. 387. 
 
372 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 contrasted with the notion of body as such, for consciousness has 
 no bodily attributes and the laws observable in bodies are not 
 bodies. Yet for animism the soul turns out to be another body — 
 a visible and material thing — only thinner and less palpable — 
 a mere " double " of the appearances which it should explain. 
 For the primitive mind cannot grasp an object of thought without 
 transforming it into an object of sense. It needs a principle, 
 connecting things that it can see or hear, and by a corSusion of 
 categories it makes of it merely another thing that it can see and 
 hear. 
 
 (b) The svb-human soul. — If the soul of man is materiahzed by 
 animism, the bodies of other beings are in return spiritualized. 
 A familiar and widespread, though probably not a universal 
 development of animism, is that which sees spirits everywhere, 
 not one spirit that underlies aU things, but separate spirits 
 underlying all manner of things as the efficient causes of their 
 qualities and actions.^ A stone, a tree, a blade of grass, the 
 wind, an animal, a human being, a mountain, a river, the 
 sea, the sky, the sun, the rain, an epidemic disease— any or 
 all of these may be conceived by the savage mind as the 
 dweUing-place or the manifestation, as the case may be, of 
 a spiritual agency which controls their behaviour ; and this 
 spiritual agency may be the object of fear or worship, of prayer 
 and supplication, possibly of cajolement or abuse, finally of 
 
 ^ While the beHef in the soul of man is probably universal, the question 
 how far the conception is extended to inanimate things by primitive races 
 is one to which it would be hazardous to give any general answer. If the 
 tendency to attribute all actions to a spirit were erected into an avowed 
 principle, and consistently applied, everything capable of being conceived 
 as a distinct object would become also the seat of a spirit. That this would 
 involve much duplication and, so to say, overlapping, would present no 
 difficulty to the animistic mode of thought, which does in fact frequently 
 conceive a greater object as animated by one spirit, while the lesser objects 
 which form its parts have each a spirit of its own. Thus, among the Chinese, 
 " one of man's chief gods is the Shen, pervadmg the Earth as a single 
 entity : and those which dwell in its several parts, its mountains, hills, 
 rivers, meres, rocks and stones, ax'e likewise his divinities " (De Groot, 
 vol. iv. p. 325). The conception, if we try to think it out, raises questions 
 of identity and of individuality which might puzzle us, but probably do 
 not puzzle primitive man. Be this as it may, the tendency to people things 
 with spirits in indiscriminate profusion is widespread if not universal in 
 the primitive world. For numerous instances see Frazer, Oolden Bough, 
 vol. iii. p. 43 seq. ; e. g. " The Mantras, an aboriginal race of the Malay 
 Peninsula, ' find or put a spirit everywhere, in the air they breathe, in the 
 land they cultivate, in the forests they inhabit, in the trees they cut down, 
 in the caves of the rooks. According to them, the demon is the cause of 
 everything that turns out ill. If they are sick, a demon is at the bottom of 
 it ; if an accident happens, it is still the spirit who is at work ; thereupon the 
 demon takes the name of the particular evil of which he is supposed to be 
 the cause ' " (Frazer, 2nd ed. iii. 48). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 373 
 
 actual physical violence. Naturally, not all spirits move men 
 alike. Harmless inanimate things are seldom at this stage the 
 objects of much sohcitude, unless by some accident of belief they 
 are associated with a powerful spirit for some special reason. 
 Thus, among the Tshi of the West African coast, everything 
 is supposed to be animated by indwelhng spirits, but little 
 attention is paid to the spirits of bushes, grasses, stones. More 
 dangerous ones, as the spirits of the rivers and lagoons, the sea, 
 the mountains, are the objects to which the Tshi cult devotes 
 attention.'^ Nevertheless, spirits may inhabit the most un- 
 promising exterior ; thus an essential part of AustraUan beKef 
 is the indweUing of spirits in certain objects, generally oblong 
 pebbles^ caUed " churinga." But these fall within the explana- 
 tion hinted above, for they were stones carried about by the men 
 of the Alcheringa, the ancestors of the " great long-ago," who 
 deposited their souls in them and left them by some tree or cave, 
 from whence at times they pass into the children of the present 
 generation. Aino spirits inhabit curiously peeled sticks. The 
 WaraUs worship a stone smeared with ghi, but " there is some- 
 thing more there than the stone . " * It is far more congenial to our 
 
 ^ Ellis, Yoruba-apeaking Peoples, p. 276. 
 
 ' Stone-worship must be ranked among the most paradoxical develop- 
 ments of animism — a stone being to our minds the very type of the in- 
 animate. Jevons {History of Religion, pp. 131—144) inclines to think that 
 it is in most cases derivative, the stone having been originally an altar, 
 but admits (p. 137) that the worship of remarkably shaped rocks would 
 belong to primitive animism. Sir A. Lyall [Asiatic Studies, First Series, 
 p. 12) ascribes the primitive worship of stones in India " to that simple 
 awe of the unusual which belongs to no particular religion." We have 
 here something simpler and more primitive than animism itself, to which 
 further reference will be made later. The next stage is that the stone is the 
 dwelling-place of a spirit. At a higher stage it is connected by a myth with 
 some "saint, demi-god, or full-blown deity." Finally, it may remain in 
 a spiritual religion as a mere symbol. Sir A. Lyall " knew a Hindu officer 
 of great shrewdness and very fair education, who devoted several hours 
 daily to the elaborate worship of five round pebbles, which he had appointed 
 to be his symbol of omnipotence. Although his general belief was in one 
 all-pervadiog Divinity, he must have something symbolic to handle and 
 address " (Asiatic Studies, First Series, p. 13). These would no doubt be 
 the regular five stones " supposed to be instinct with the divine essence " 
 of southern Brahmanism (Moore, Hist. Eel., p. 347). For a discussion 
 of the fetichistic and symbolic views of stone- worship, see also Tylor, 
 Primitive Culture (ed. 1903), vol. ii. p. 160. Whatever its character, stone- 
 worship as an element in early religion is widespread. De la Saussaye 
 (Manual of the Science of Religion, Eng. Trs. i. 85 ff.) finds it among the 
 South Sea Islanders, in Central Asia, among the Finns, Laps, Negroes, 
 ancient Peruvians, Hindoos, ancient Hebrews, ancient Arabs, Greeks, 
 Romans, in the Hebrides and in mediaeval Europe, and while recognizing 
 the blend, hard to distinguish, of the altar, the fetich and the symbol, is 
 inclined to conclude that the safest explanation of the cult is the Tacitean 
 " ratio in obscuro." 
 
 ' Wilson, J.B.A.S., 1843. 
 
374 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ways of thinking to worship the thunder god with the Hidatsa, to 
 beheve in sylvan deities with the Burmese, and to people caverns 
 and whirlpools with spirits like the Congolese. It is natural for 
 us to regard the human soul as the model on which the spirits of 
 animals, plants and inanimate objects are formed, and in a sense 
 it is so. For it is, of course, the experience of mental life within 
 the self that gives meaning to all ideas of a mental life without. 
 But we are hardly to suppose that the idea of the separate soul 
 in man is first formed and that by a reflective process a corre- 
 sponding double is attributed to material things by way of 
 explaining their notions. Such attribution is logic, though an 
 imperfect and uncritical logic, and logic plays but a secondary 
 part in primitive thinking. Probably the earlier stage is that 
 which merely treats inanimate things as though they were alive, 
 and plants and animals as though they were human, without 
 attributing to them a separable spirit. This is the stage called 
 Animatism^ — the theory that things are alive, or stiU more 
 strictly, the practice of treating them as alive — as distinguished 
 from the theory that they are the abode of spirits. The dis- 
 tinction is rather one of degree than of principle. Animism is 
 animatism made more concrete and definite. For the very 
 fact that " prayers " or incantations are addressed to a being 
 is proof that he is regarded as understanding them : that if 
 sacrifices are offered him he is held capable of receiving them 
 and enjoying them — in a word, that he is to that extent a living 
 being and manhke. 
 
 It is characteristic of early thought that fundamental dis- 
 tinctions like those of mind and matter are not yet clearly drawn. 
 Men, animals, plants and the inanimate world are therefore 
 much more nearly on a level than they are for us. It is this 
 which makes possible that mystic bond between a human being 
 or a group of human beings on the one side and a non-human 
 object on the other which, whatever its origin, is the essence of 
 totemism. It is the same condition of thought which disposes 
 men to approach nature in the same spirit and manner in which 
 they deal with one another. If original mazdaism sacrificed 
 butter to fire without conceiving it as anything but the material 
 fire that its worshippers saw, this only shows that the process of 
 distinction between a living thing that can be gratified by food, 
 and a fire that can only consume it, had not begun. Yet im- 
 plicitly the fire is already treated as Uving and understanding, 
 and this "implicit " animism would then be merely the lowest 
 stage of the development, and would grow into animism proper 
 
 1 A term due to Mr. K. K. Marett, of. The Threshold of Religion, ii. 14- 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OP THOUGHT 375 
 
 as soon as its implications became realized, so that in sacrificing 
 to fire men began avowedly to treat fire as a living thing.^ 
 
 Animism in the narrower sense can only be attributed to a 
 people when we have exphcit information as to their modes of 
 thought. But animatism can be readily inferred from their 
 cult. K they make offerings to the sun, a tree, or a stone, they 
 are treating sun, tree or stone hke inteUigent beings, whether 
 they regard them as possessing separable spirits or not. If 
 we allow ourselves to use animism in a generic sense to include 
 all beUefs and practices which treat the inanimate, the vegetable, 
 or the animal as if they were human, we shall find traces of 
 animism all over the world, and in its way of merging funda- 
 mentally different classes in one we shall recognize a principle 
 of the first importance in primitive cults. 
 
 To our minds worship can be paid only to a being higher than 
 ourselves, and the " spiritual " expresses that higher sphere of 
 being into which man enters by virtue of what is best in him 
 and what is most removed from the material and the animal. 
 Such conceptions as these underUe all the higher rehgions, but 
 they are wholly foreign to animism. Essentially the cult of 
 animism is not an adoration of a being higher than man, but 
 a mode of influencing beings conceived as possessing powers 
 which may be useful or harmful to the behever. And spirit, as 
 animism conceives it, though certainly implying enough of in- 
 telligence to comprehend the meaning of a promise or threat, is 
 far from implying a higher type of moral or mental power than 
 that of the human " worshipper." We are accustomed to think 
 of the rudest rehgions as anthropomorphic, and to say that man 
 first framed gods in his own image. But in truth the majority 
 of the beings worshipped by primitive man are not human, but 
 something less than human. The distinctly evil agencies are 
 more prominent than the good, for why should savage man 
 trouble himseK to please great spirits who are naturally benevo- 
 lent ? It is the bad spirit who wiU otherwise make himself 
 troublesome that the savage is anxious to conciUate with the 
 
 ' Of the early Roman cults Mr. Warde Fowler writes : " Vesta seems to 
 be the fire, Penates the store, or at least spirits indistinguishable from the 
 substance composing the store " {Religious Experience of the Roman People, 
 p. 116). Which precisely they were could only be told if we had contem- 
 porary literature or art to explain the precise manner in which the cult was 
 understood. On the other hand, that they were not personalities " perfectly 
 distinct from the object " in which they resided is quite clear (i6.). The 
 passage illustrates the relative sharpness of the upper limit of animism 
 (see below, p. 402) and the vagueness of the lower boundary where it passes 
 into animatism. 
 
376 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 best of his store.^ And the . intellectual level is as low as the 
 moral. The savage is confident in his power to deceive the spirit 
 whom he addresses by methods which could hardly take in the 
 savage man himself. The Naga propitiates a mahgnant deity by 
 setting out for him a small fowl in a large basket. The god is 
 deceived by the size of the basket, and distributes favours 
 accordingly.* The ghost of a mother who would carry ofi her 
 child is deceived in the Banks Islands by a piece of banana trunk 
 which is laid on her bosom in her grave.* Disease demons may 
 be diverted by similar methods. Thus, in an epidemic, the Dyaks 
 set up wooden images at the doors of their dwelhngs, that the 
 disease may carry them off instead of the living people.* When 
 the Kaffir is hunting an elephant, he begs the elephant not to 
 tread on him — surely as curious a confusion of ideas as is to be 
 found in primitive thought — for, on the one hand, the elephant's 
 soul is held to have intelligence enough to understand the petition, 
 and, on the other hand, it is supposed to be so stupid as to be 
 taken in by the request when the petitioner is all the while seeking 
 to take his life. The Saiinoyeds are more crafty, for they tell the 
 bear that it was the Russians who killed him ; and the North 
 American Indians spare the rattlesnake, risking the physical 
 evils which they know, in dread of the vengeance which the 
 rattlesnake's spirit would take on them, and which they do not 
 know and cannot measure.^ The crude conception of the spiritual 
 which these cases vividly illustrate goes far to determine both 
 the objects and the methods of animistic cults. Animal-gods and 
 man-gods belong to the animistic level of rehgion, because it is 
 only at this level that animals or men can be the objects of a cult 
 without being regarded as the representations or embodiments 
 of something far higher than themselves. Animism does indeed 
 regard them as embodiments of a spirit, but this spirit is not 
 essentially superior, either morally or intellectually, to the 
 animal or man in which it dwells. The Toda addresses a cow, 
 chosen by descent or by consecration to be the head of the herd, 
 
 1 For illustrations, see below, p. 425. 
 
 » Godden, J. A. I., xxvi. 187. 
 
 ' Qolden Bough, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 345, where numerous instances of the 
 same kind are given. The widespread substitution of models for real food, 
 implements, etc., in sacrifices to the dead is hardly to be regarded as a 
 deception — or, if so, rather as a form of self-deception — ^the model, pardon- 
 ably enough on animistic grounds, being held as good a vehicle for soul-food, 
 soul-money, etc., as a real loaf or a gold piece. 
 
 « ib., 348. 
 
 " Tylor, vol. i. p. 467 ; Schoolcraft- Drake, vol. i. p. 232. Similarly the 
 Western Eskimo, before setting to upon the stranded whale, would 
 receive him with divine honours, harangue and compliment him (R«clus, 
 p. 62). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 377 
 
 as being herself a goddess : " How fair was thy mother ! how 
 much milk she gave ! Be not less generous ! Henceforth thou 
 shalt be a divinity among us. . . . Bear a thousand calves ! " ^ 
 So sacred is this divinity that the chief milkman is himself a 
 man-god. Yet the animal which is worshipped is also unhesi- 
 tatingly turned to human uses. Often the god may, with due 
 observance of the proper solemnities, be killed and eaten by 
 his votaries. Thus, among the Austrahans, at the Intichiuma 
 ceremonies a man not only may, but must, eat his totem, or the 
 supply would fail.^ The Gilyaks of Eastern Siberia bring up a 
 bear cub with divine honours. Fish, brandy and other things 
 are offered to him in every house . People prostrate themselves 
 before him, and his entrance into a house confers a blessing, 
 but he is also teased and worried. After visiting every house in 
 the village, he is shot dead with arrows and eaten.^ In such 
 practices, illustrations of which might be indefinitely multiplied, 
 the savage is, in his way, getting the best of both worlds. He 
 needs the animal's flesh and is afraid of his spirit. Not only 
 may the particular bear which he has killed have its avenging 
 ghost, but all the bears may stand together in the blood feud 
 and take vengeance on the murderer of their kinsman. So he 
 pays honour to the individual bear slain, and through him to 
 his fellow-bears. He' comforts himself, in short, with a con- 
 ception of the bear spirit which is intelligent enough to under- 
 stand the show of honours and the words of cajolery, and stupid 
 enough to let these make up to it for the hard facts of being 
 killed and eaten.* 
 
 The worship of men might seem intrinsically higher than 
 that of animals. But in point of fact no distinction of principle 
 severs the cult of man-gods in many primitive religions from 
 
 » Reclus, p. 218. 
 
 ' Spencer and Gillen, vol. i. p. 168. When the Australian does not eat 
 the totem himself, it is by his permission that others do so. In fact, he is 
 held responsible for maintaining the supply of his totem for the benefit of 
 other totem-groups (Spencer and Gillen, vol. ii. p. 160). Strictly, the 
 totem should not be spoken of as a god, the conception being magical rather 
 than religious, but the point here is the ceremonial eating of that which is 
 ordinarily sacred. 
 
 ' Golden Bough, vol. ii. p. 380. For many other instances of killing and 
 eating the divine or sacred animal, see the same work, vol. ii. pp. 302, 366, 
 396, 435. 
 
 * The slain animal, if properly treated, may even invite others to come 
 and be killed. The Orinoco Indians, having killed an animal, pour a little 
 liquor into its mouth, " that the soul of the dead beast may inform its 
 fellows of the welcome it has met with, and that they, too, cheered by the 
 prospect of the same kind reception, may come with alacrity to be killed " 
 {Oolden Bough, vol. ii. p. 402). Many similar instances are given by Mr. 
 Fraier. 
 
378 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 that of animals as just described. The man-god of this stage 
 must not be confused with the anthropomorphic deity of poly- 
 theism and the cruder monotheism. This deity is a spirit 
 conceived as clad with human attributes. The man-god is an 
 ordinary human being conceived as the incarnation of a powerful 
 spirit or as possessed of magical powers. In the lowest grade 
 he is merely a sorcerer, whose power is due to his relations with 
 ghosts and other spirits. At a further stage of development 
 he has marvellous powers of his own whereby he controls rain 
 and sunshine, the winds and the crops.^ Owing to the occult 
 influence emanating from him, this mighty being becomes so 
 full of danger to his people that his movements and actions have 
 to be closely restricted. To drink of his cup or eat the remnants 
 of his food is fatal. His touch and his glance are deadly. His 
 misbehaviour may involve his whole people in ruin. In con- 
 sequence he is surrounded with all kinds of precautions, and he 
 ends by being a mere puppet in the hands of priests. Thus 
 the Egyptian Pharaoh, a typical man-god, is described by 
 Diodorus^ as hedged round both in his public and private life by 
 watchful sacerdotal control which minutely prescribed to him 
 the order of his actions. Similarly at Babylon, though the king 
 was not strictly a god, the whole country suffered for his faults 
 and he had to observe taboos — e. g. avoiding meat on the seventh 
 day — which apparently concerned no one else.* 
 
 Lastly, the man-god may be the incarnation of a spirit which 
 lives independently of him. Of such a type the most familiar 
 instance to us is the everlasting Buddha of the Thibetans. In 
 this idea of incarnation death and re-birth necessarily play an 
 important part. The gods themselves die in the philosophy of 
 animism, for death is only the migration of a spirit. Some- 
 times it is its migration to better quarters, and when this flesh 
 that is now the spirit's habitation becomes old and weak or is 
 doing its work ill, the worshippers of the god facihtate his migra- 
 tion by the destruction of his temporary tabernacle. The man- 
 god, in fact, may be killed and even eaten like any ordinary 
 human being.* 
 
 ^ For instances, see Golden Bough, 2nd ed. i. 139, etc. 
 
 " Diodorus, i. 70, 71. 
 
 ' Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, pp. 375-378. For many 
 similar instances, see Golden Bough, i. 313, 314. 
 
 * See Golden Bough, 2nd ed. vol. ii. p. 6, etc. A special case is the selec- 
 tion of a prisoner, criminal or slave, to act as the incarnation of a deity. He 
 then becomes a temporary man-god, receives honours and sacrifices, tuid is 
 finally slain and perhaps eaten. The idea is apparently to strengthen the 
 spirit — ^who is here some nature-god — by sacrifices, perhaps to bind him 
 more closely to his worshippers by the partaking of his flesh, and finally, by 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 379 
 
 This unceremonious treatment of the object of worship is 
 partly due to the conception that the body in which the spirit 
 is incarnate is not the spirit itself. But the condition under 
 which alone it can arise is that the object of a religious cult is 
 not yet an object of worship as we understand the term. The 
 spirit of the sacred animal does not rise above the animal. The 
 god in man has powers which ordinary men have not, but he is 
 not spiritually (as we use that term) a higher being. The spirits 
 of early religion may be abused or coerced if they do not do 
 their duty. The Greek youths whipped the statue of Pan if 
 he did not give them good hunting. The Chinese emperor was 
 supreme over all spirits except that of heaven, and regularly 
 promoted or degraded them in rank according to their perform- 
 ances.^ The Ainu abuse their household gods when a death 
 occurs, as is shown in a vivid description by Mr. Batchelor of 
 the scene in a house on the death of a child. 
 
 " One old man was calling on the goddess of Fire to help, and 
 threatening never to worship her again if she did not keep warmth 
 in the child's body. Another person was looking out of the east 
 window and accusing the goddess of Fire to the Creator, of not 
 attending to her duty. A third was in a towering rage, and, facing 
 the south-east corner of the hut, was telling the guardian gods 
 that they were an extremely bad lot, and deserved never to be 
 worshipped again." ^ 
 
 It is not necessary to multiply instances. The quasi-material 
 spirit of animistic worship, whether incarnate in stocks and 
 stones, in trees, animals or men, or roaming disembodied as a 
 ghost, demon, or genius, is not intrinsically a higher being 
 before whom man must prostrate himself, but more often, if 
 anything, a being of a lower order, and in any case one who is 
 to be managed as occasion serves, by prayer, entreaty, deception, 
 threats, or force appUed as we apply them to actual men and 
 animals, so that when one fails another is tried. 
 
 Such, then, is the character of the primitive conception of 
 spirit. In its most definite shape it is a double of the common 
 objects of perception, conceived on the one hand as a material 
 substance capable of exerting force and having force applied to 
 
 slaying him, to give him a new and more vigorous life. The subject is 
 exhaustively treated by Mr. Frazer. See the places quoted, and, in par- 
 ticular, vol. iii. p. 134, for the killing of the god in Mexico. 
 
 ' For examples, see Douglas, Society in China, pp. 5-7. The honours 
 paid to ancestors for the exploits of their descendants depend on the same 
 conception, since it is the business of an ancestral spirit to watch over his 
 family and guard its fortunes. 
 
 ^ Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, p. 217. 
 
380 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 it, and on the other hand as feeling and thinking like a rather 
 stupid man, and open, like him, to supplication, exhortation, or 
 intimidation — a standing contradiction in which the categories 
 of mental and material are hopelessly intertwined, in which mere 
 functions and qualities become substantial beings, and, finally, 
 by a crude induction, the same spiritual agency by which men 
 explain their own behaviour and that of their fellows is imputed 
 also to animals, plants, and inanimate nature — to the wind and 
 waves — the stocks and stones. In its less definite shapes these 
 contradictions do not appear. But that is not because they have 
 been faced and surmounted, but rather because the first step of 
 distinctly conceiving the elements which have to be reconciled 
 has not yet been taken. 
 
 3. One way of treating things in the primitive world, then, is 
 
 to act as if they were alive, and indeed in the end to regard them 
 
 as inhabited by spirits. Another way is to treat things as united 
 
 by certain occult connections — connections, that is, which are 
 
 neither apparent to the senses nor legitimately inferred from data 
 
 of sense, and yet present no problem to primitive man. Such 
 
 occult connections are the instruments of magic — not magic 
 
 itself, but, so to say, the materia magica. They do not involve 
 
 spirits, and in using them the magician is free from that particular 
 
 element of uncertainty which is derived from the caprice of any 
 
 voluntary agent.^ But it is a mistake to infer that thej' imply 
 
 any theory of mechanical causation or of the uniformity of 
 
 nature. Strictly, they imply no theory at all as operating in the 
 
 mind of primitive man, but only a certain way of forming ideas 
 
 or of guiding action in the service of practical needs. The 
 
 anthropologist can analyze out the principle implied — that is, he 
 
 can formulate a law of causation which, if true, would justify 
 
 the procedure, and which, being, in fact, false, renders it void. 
 
 This it is convenient to do for the better understanding of the 
 
 matter, and we shall immediately distinguish such laws. But 
 
 as " laws," it cannot be too clearly understood, these are the 
 
 work, not of the primitive magician, but of the anthropologist, 
 
 and they are of use only to exhibit the nature of the confusion 
 
 on which magic rests. 
 
 ^ The modem theory of law has been built up in opposition to one of 
 causation by arbitrary will. Hence it is natural for us to impute notions — 
 at least implicit notions — of law to any theory of practice which dispenses 
 with will. But in application to men who have no such history behind 
 them this is a misleading inference. The magical process has no automatic 
 certainty. This is proved by the constant piling of one process on to 
 another, and by the necessity for some special power inherited or acquired 
 in the magician for all important cases (see below, p. 398). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OP THOUGHT 381 
 
 This being understood, we may distinguish three main " prin- 
 ciples " or laws underlying magical processes. Y^e have, first, 
 what is now called Contagious Magic.^ 
 
 Its principle may be roughly formulated, " What is done to 
 my belongings is done to me " — or more precisely, if two things 
 are closely connected (as e. g. by being parts of one object) they 
 will, even when dissevered, remain so alHed, so much in " sym- 
 pathy," that to affect one of them is to affect the other." The 
 most familiar instance is the use of hair-clippings and nail-parings 
 to work evil on the man to whom they belonged. Another is the 
 practice of heating a weapon which has made a wound in order 
 that the wound may remain inflamed, or conversely, of keeping 
 the weapon clean that the wound may not fester. A third is to 
 operate on the food left by a man.* A fourth is to attack his 
 shadow. A fifth is to possess his name, for the true name is the 
 man. It is impossible to say how primitive man actually con- 
 ceives the coimection in these cases, for it is of the essence of the 
 matter that he has no clear conception at aU. But if we analyze 
 out the principle implied — that is to say, the principle which, if it 
 were true, would justify the procedure, and which, being in fact 
 false, makes the procedure void — it is this — that the continuous 
 identity which once connected the two things stiU in some sort 
 persists. The clipped hair was once part of the man and his 
 identity persists in it. The sword and the wound were two 
 aspects of the same fact and their union remains. If this were 
 true, sympathetic magic would be a genuine art, and because it 
 is not true, sympathetic magic is a spurious art. In this sense 
 the doctrine of a persistent unreal identity is the implied principle 
 of sympathetic magic. 
 
 A second form of magic rests on another distortion of the 
 principle of identity. If you cannot get hold of any belongings 
 of your enemy you can at least make a likeness of him. You 
 may destroy him, for instance, by melting or sticking pins into 
 a wax image of him. With very different intent, though by 
 essentially the same method, primitive people in many parts of 
 the world seek to make rain by squirting water, or to produce 
 sunshine by kindling fires, or fertility by a representation of the 
 
 ^ Oolden Bough, i. 52, etc. With regard to this name it must be borne 
 in mind that in the cases in question there is no present contact. There 
 has been contact or some such connection in the past, and in consequence 
 an occult sympathy remains. Contagion, in the more ordinary sense of 
 the propagation of a quality from one thing to another by contact or 
 proximity, appears in the third group of oases distinguished lower down. 
 
 ' See Qolden Bough, i. 9, 49. 
 
 ' Or an excrement (Spencer and Gillen, I. 547). 
 
382 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 processes of growth.^ Here the implied principle — understand- 
 ing the term once again as above — is that like things or like 
 processes are the same. In making rain on a small scale we are 
 setting up a process which extends further and has to do with 
 the production of rain generally, or, at any rate, on a greater 
 scale. In slaying one bear, again, or in honouring one bear, we 
 are slaying or honouring Bear — the bear that is in all bears; 
 we are incurring or averting a feud with bears in general. It 
 will help us to understand this sort of identification if we revert 
 for a moment to the creed of totemism, the idea at the base of 
 which is, as we have seen, that there is an occult connection 
 between an animal or plant and the human beings of a clan or 
 tribe, such that what they act or perform ceremonially the 
 totem will do likewise in real earnest. The totem is in some 
 sense — in what sense they certainly could not tell, and if we try 
 to define the conception we shall modify it by the very process 
 of making it definite — but it is in some sense incarnate in them. 
 The Bear is in all bears, all four-footed bears and all human 
 bears. But what is the Bear itself ? To the North American 
 Indian it is often a Big Brother of the bears ; another individual, 
 in short, and something on its way to becoming a god. But in 
 a lower stage the totem has no need of so much individuality, 
 for the savage has not got so far in the endeavour to think out 
 the problem of Identity in Difference. Every individual bear, 
 two-footed or four-footed, is alike the Bear, and what one does 
 or sufifers all do or suffer. Further, the identity may be fortified, 
 as it were, by introducing the other principle of connection. 
 For, since things that are once joined are always connected, an 
 exchange of blood makes two men brothers. Joining in the 
 same meal has a similar effect, and therefore what one suffers 
 the others, too, will feel, not through moral sympathy but through 
 a purely physical causation. Applying this to the totem, bow 
 can we identify ourselves with him better than by kilhng him ? 
 We eat the flesh of the bear and the Bear is within us. Yet we 
 have not injured the totem, for the Bear still lives — ^in other 
 bears and in us. The species survives, though one individual is 
 sacrificed. 
 
 These two forms of magic, distinguished as Contagious and 
 Homoeopathic, are grouped together as Sympathetic. That is, 
 they both depend on an occult Sympathy — in other words, a 
 very crudely conceived identity between things and processes 
 
 * Cf. the symbolic processes combined with invitations to the animal in 
 the totemio ceremonies whereby the Australians secure a full supply of the 
 Witohetty grub (Spencer and Gillen, I, pp. 172 seq. and 206). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OP THOUGHT 383 
 
 that are really distinct. The third set of magical ideas are 
 simpler, and turn on a primitive conception of tjjie qualities of 
 things. Powers and influences exist in things, and are the basis 
 of their qualities and behaviour. Like spirits, they are separable 
 from the things to which they belong. They can be withdrawn 
 by charms ; they can be transferred to other things. A barren 
 fruit-tree must be a male. A woman's petticoat placed upon it 
 transfers to it the feminine quahty, and it becomes fruitful. 
 Chinese people, when advancing in years, have their grave- 
 clothes prepared by young girls, because part of their capacity 
 to hve long must pass into the clothes and so put off the moment 
 when they will be required.^ Conversely, when the coflBn is 
 being nailed down the hammer is bound up in red cloth to 
 prevent bad influences passing into the hand.^ Now conceptions 
 of this sort seem, in the first place, to be merely generalizations, 
 which are too extensive and therefore faulty, from an ordinary 
 experience. Some quahties or characteristics of things are in a 
 sense transmissible. Death as such is not infectious, but small- 
 pox is. The touch of a pregnant woman will not impart her 
 fertility, but her warm hand wiU impart warmth. But there is 
 probably a little more in the matter than a too hasty generaHza- 
 tion. There is the conception of a quality as something quasi- 
 substantial, something, in short, bearing a family resemblance 
 to the spirit from which we have to distinguish it. When sins 
 are loaded upon a scapegoat and driven away into the wilder- 
 ness, when a toothache is nailed into a tree, when a disease is 
 extracted in the form of a magic stone, or passed into a third 
 person, when evil influences are brushed or whipped off a man — 
 in aU such cases the quahty is treated as something that you 
 can almost pick up and carry about. It is at least as substantial 
 as vapour, and in some cases it really becomes a spirit. When 
 the Melanesian regards a stone with little discs in it as "good 
 to bring in money," it is clearly because it has the character 
 of money stamped upon it. But this character they ascribe 
 themselves to an indweUing spirit which they conciliate — the 
 magical quahty passes into the spiritual.^ The third basis of 
 magic may, in fact, be regarded as a spirit that has become 
 attenuated into an "influence," or as an "influence " that has 
 not developed into a spirit. It thus forms a connecting link 
 between magic and animism . 
 
 4. The other two forms grouped under Sympathetic Magic in 
 the wider sense are not so closely connected -with animism. Yet 
 '■ De Groot, i. 60. ^ ib., p. 96. ' Oolden Bough, 2nd ed. i. 45. 
 
384 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 they belong in the main to the same mental level. We find in 
 the primitive mind when it begins to theorize two tendencies 
 which may be regarded as in a measure complementary. On 
 the one hand, it tends to take the characters and attributes of 
 things, processes that go on in things, thoughts about things 
 and the words in which thoughts are expressed, and to turn 
 them into objects, substantial as the things themselves, having, 
 in fact, a mode of existence very like the things. The categories 
 of substance and attribute are not yet distinguished. Of this 
 confusion personification is merely the extreme case, the living 
 person being simply the most concrete and many-sided of objects. 
 In this tendency, then, we have the basis of the spirits of anim- 
 ism and the occult essences and powers of magic. On the other 
 side, the primitive mind equally fails to keep different objects 
 distinct. One conception melts readily into another, just as in 
 primitive fancy a sorcerer turns into a dragon, a mouse, a stone, 
 and a butterfiy without the smallest difficulty. Hence similarity 
 is treated as if it were physical identity. The physical indi- 
 viduahty of things is not observed. The fact that a thing was 
 mine makes it appear as though there were something of me 
 in it, so that by burning it you make me smart. The borders 
 and limits of things are not marked out, but their influence and 
 their capacity to be influenced extends, as it were, in a misty 
 halo over everything connected with them in any fashion. If 
 the attributes of things are made too sohd and material in 
 primitive thought, things themselves are too fluid and undefined, 
 passing into each other by loose and easy identifications which 
 prevent all clear and crisp distinctions of thought. In a word, 
 primitive thought has not yet evolved those distinctions of 
 substance and attribute, quality and relation, cause and effect, 
 identity and difference, which are the common property of civil- 
 ized thought. These categories, which among us every child 
 soon comes to distinguish in practice,^ are for primitive thought 
 undistinguished, and this indistinctness is the intellectual basis 
 of animism and of magic . 
 
 This indistinctliess finds its general explanation in the stage of 
 psychological evolution attained by primitive man. The generic 
 function of mind in Hfe is to estabhsh articulate connections 
 between the scattered portions of experience, and so enable its 
 possessors to learn from the past how to provide for the future. 
 
 * I do not mean that the child or the average unthinking man is familiar 
 with these conceptions in the abstract, but that his experience is so organ- 
 ized under the influence of tradition, especially in the form of language, 
 as to fall with general, though not unvarying, correctness into the pigeon- 
 holes to which these terms correspond. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 386 
 
 By its success in performing that function the stage of growth 
 reached by the mind of any given being or groTjp of beings is 
 to be judged. The higher animals have apparently reached so 
 far that they can perceive the objects that surround them in 
 their temporal and spatial order, and use the result of this per- 
 ception in guiding their own actions so as to produce or avert 
 particular effects. If this is so, they certainly in a sense appre- 
 hend many of the attributes, actions and relations of things. 
 In some sense my dog, when he is thirsty, knows that there is 
 water in a jug, that I can pour it out for him, and that he can 
 get me to do so by attracting my attention and signifying his 
 wants. That is to say, his behaviour is adapted to the presence 
 around him of certain persons and things with given attributes, 
 related in a particular way, acting in a particular way. He 
 knows this after some fashion, but we do not take it to be pre- 
 cisely man's fashion. Where, then, do we suppose the difference 
 to he? The dog can in some way differentiate the "soHd" 
 jug from the "liquid" water, for we see that he treats them 
 differently. But we suppose it to be peculiar to the man that 
 he interests himself in the generic quahties in point of which 
 these things differ, and invents for them the names "soUd" 
 and " hquid." To discover and define these qualities the human 
 mind breaks up its experiences into their elements, and at the 
 same time and in the same process brings widely separated 
 experiences together. The " sohd," for instance, is something 
 common to the jug, the house, the road, and distinct from the 
 air and the water, distinct also from the shape and other quahties 
 of the jug. This joint movement of comparison and discrimi- 
 nation breaks up the perceptual world into its elements and 
 builds up out of them an order of ideas. Every such idea is 
 expressed in a general term or name, and as there is a name for 
 each thing, so there is a way of expressing each of its functions, 
 attributes, relations. Our everyday experience thus translated 
 into ideas falls into certain familiar categories — Things and 
 their Attributes, Persons and their Actions, Functions, Biela- 
 tions. Substances, Causes and Effects. But these categories do 
 not at once emerge into clear consciousness. The mind uses 
 them long before it is clearly aware of them. Or, more strictly, 
 it works by rules corresponding to these conceptions, sorting 
 experiences in a manner which accords with them, though it 
 knows them not. It recognizes actual substances (stones, hiUs, 
 men, horses) and their attributes or actions (hardness, height, 
 sagacity, swift movement) before it has ever heard of Sub- 
 stances or Attributes or Relations as general terms, and a clear- 
 cc 
 
386 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 headed man who is innocent either of grammar or logic may yet 
 move among the objects of experience without confounding any 
 of these categories. Thus, below the stage at which the mind 
 is clearly aware of the elementary conceptions under which 
 rational experience is ordered, there is a stage where it works 
 according to the rules to which these conceptions, when known, 
 are found to lead, though without consciousness of the rules 
 or the conceptions. This is the stage of "common sense." 
 But below " common sense," again, is a stage in which the rules 
 themselves are not yet efficient in their operation, at which the 
 mind is not only unconscious of the categories, but fails practi- 
 cally in sorting experiences so as to accord with them, in which 
 objects of thought belonging to different categories are not held 
 apart but pass into each other, what is now a substance becom- 
 ing at another moment a relation, while a relation or an attribute 
 becomes a substance, or one relation is confounded with another. 
 At this stage, though " general " ideas are already formed, they 
 are loose in meaning and wavering in application. And this is 
 the natural result of the methods by which they are formed. 
 Developed thought knows certain rigorous methods of induction 
 from experience, as weU as certain definite principles of the 
 analysis and synthesis of ideas whereby it forms new concep- 
 tions or checks those that it has formed. Primitive thought 
 knows nothing of such safeguards. In the lowest strata of 
 thought -operations we form ideas by casual association, drifting 
 where the current of mental tendency leads us, for the most 
 part, under the spell of the emotional or practical interest, 
 Instead of the rigorous analyses and constructions of the logical 
 mind we have the unregulated movement — the resultant expres- 
 sion, probably, of the unsifted mass of experience — carrying us 
 whithersoever it will. As to the test of experience, if used at 
 all, it is applied in the form in which any chance instance that 
 appears to confirm the mental prepossession is taken for proof, 
 and if an instance to the contrary is regarded at all it is merely 
 as the starting-point for some hypothesis to explain it away. 
 Indeed, the bare conception of truth or falsity scarcely exists. 
 The world of ideas is largely a world of make-beUeve. If the 
 child's doU or the savage's ghost cannot really eat the food 
 offered them, the human playmate or worshipper is quite con- 
 tent to eat them himself "for" the other. The ideas make 
 their junction, as it were, in their own world, and out of this 
 the child savage derives the mental comfort he requires. As to 
 stern truth, she moves in a cold, hard world best left untrodden. 
 In a word, confusion of categories, crude induction, uncritical 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 387 
 
 reasoning, and childish make-believe go to determine the char- 
 acter of the general ideas formed in the lower stages of human 
 thought, and these conditions account for animism and magic. 
 
 6. The Supernormal and Mysterious. 
 
 For us the distinction of the natural and supernatural is 
 familiar from boyhood. There is an ordinary course of things 
 constituting the normal life of man and the regular process of 
 the world. Above and beyond it is God in his heaven, perhaps 
 sustaining it aU, certainly capable of intervening and altering 
 it as he chooses. Philosophy and science struggle back from 
 this dualism towards the idea of a single order, but for early 
 thought the clear division of two orders had not arisen. There 
 was no supernatural properly so called, because there was as 
 yet no estabUshed order of nature. In the notion of the spirit 
 as such there was nothing supernatural. It was rather the 
 simplest way of formulating the facts of life and death, sleep 
 and dreams, disease and recovery. Nor were the " occult " con- 
 nections of magic anything out of the way. On the contrary, 
 they formed themselves spontaneously on the line of least 
 mental resistance. To make rain by squirting water was not 
 necessarily to call supernatural powers into play, so as to con- 
 nect things that were very remote, for the things did not seem 
 remote but almost the same. Nevertheless, for primitive as for 
 all men, there is a deep distinction between the known and the 
 unknown, and of the unknown there is that which impresses 
 primitive man as abnormal, strange and awesome, gets itself a 
 name, and figures in the account of any natural event that is 
 striking or terrifying, any power, personal or impersonal, that is 
 extraordinary, any art that is secret. This power may attach 
 to the skUled magician, and explain why his arts succeed while 
 others who may use the same materia magica fail. Thus, the 
 Melanesian wizard has mana, by which he affects things at a 
 distance. The chief's supremacy in the same region is due to 
 his mana. He may be elected because he has mana attributed 
 to him, and he succeeds to his office because mana is conferred 
 on him by the imposition of hands. Mana once acquired is a 
 very useful possession. Its owner may pass it on to another. 
 He may throw it into a material object, which becomes then a 
 source of danger. He may use it, and does habitually use it, 
 to secure his property. By this simple means, for example, he 
 solves the problem of closing a public right of way and annexing 
 it himself. If the taboo is broken the evil consequences are 
 averted by a present to the man who put it on — the human 
 
388 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 spirit, after all, controlling the magic influences. Spirits, too, 
 may have mana. Indeed a regular source from which it is derived 
 is a ghost or other spirit ,i and the spirit with mana is super- 
 normal in power and mysterious and fearsome in action. Thus 
 the spirit that has mana is the object of something like a rehgious 
 emotion, which does not pertain to spirit as such, and the man 
 who can put mana into famihar processes and make them preter- 
 natural successfully is a wizard. Now conceptions analogous to 
 mana are widespread. Thus among the Sioux peoples every- 
 thing mysterious or powerful is Wakan.* The Omaha call the 
 Christian God Wakanda,* the sun was worshipped as Wakanda, 
 the Thunder-being invoked as Wakanda. The sacred pole was 
 "like Wakanda,"* Wakanda hated the murderer, and even 
 those who ate with him,* and the issue of blood pertained to 
 Wakanda.^ So, again, among the Iowa, the Sun and Wind and 
 Thunder-being are Wakantas,' and among the Dakota and 
 Assiniboin aU life and everything that has power is Wakan.' 
 The corresponding terms among the Algonquin were Oki and 
 Manitou, and among the Iroquois Oki and Orenda.* In Negro 
 Africa we find among the Abatua an impersonal evil influence, 
 Likuadu.i" A man has Likundu as elsewhere he may have the 
 evil eye. Among the Bambala, if a man is fortunate in his 
 enterprises, if many of his enemies die or are ruined without 
 apparent natural cause, he has a powerful Likundu, a quality 
 of which no material trace can be found at his death .^^ To the 
 Pygmy a mysterious death, a strange sound by night, and even 
 an accidental injury, are aU "oudah."^^ Terms such as these 
 range in meaning from the profoundest mysteries of life and 
 death to the trivialities of personal luck or ill fortune. They 
 give a name and a local habitation in the world to the unintelli- 
 gible, the unpredictable, and more particularly to the dreadful 
 
 1 Codrington, p. 118. Conversely, in the Solomon Islands, only those 
 who possess mana become worshipped as ghosts (p. 125). 
 
 ^ Dorsey, A Study of Siouan OuMa (B. B. E., xi. 366). 
 
 ' ib. The application seems to have been made first by the missionaries. 
 
 * ib., pp. 376, 382, 412. 
 
 ^ Dorsey, Omaha Sociology, B. B. E., iii. 369. 
 
 ' Omaha Sociology, p. 267, quoted in Marett's Threshold of Beligion, p. 29. 
 
 ' ib., p. 423, 424. » *., p. 432. 
 
 " Brinton, Mystery of the New World, p. 45 ; Hewitt, Anwr. Anth., 1902 
 p. 37 ; Marett, p. 130. 
 
 ^'' Monographies Ethmographiques, ed. J. Halkin, i. 101. 
 
 " The imputation may be dangerous (Van Overbergh, Mono. Ethnogr., 
 . 262). The author thinks the power may be represented by certain 
 kinds of pebbles. If so, it resembles the Likundu of the Mangbetu, which 
 is strictly a pebble " dans la vessie " {ib., iv. 366). 
 
 " Marett, Threshold of Bdigion, p. 100. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 389 
 
 and mysterious.^ The mystery may be magically conceived — 
 mana, for instance, is very like one of the half -material qualities 
 of magic — or it may be merely named and felt without being 
 further defined. But in any case here is an expression for 
 the emotions of awe and wonder that in all stages contribute to 
 the make-up of the rehgious consciousness. The recognition of 
 mystery is not religion, but it is contributory to religion. 
 
 6. Myths, Culture Heroes, and Creators. 
 
 Story-teUing is an art which primitive man enjoys as much 
 as his civiUzed feUows, and has had its share in peopUng the 
 world with spirits and heroes. We cannot expect to trace the 
 origin of every mjrfch in detail, for we cannot set bounds to human 
 fancy. We can only see in general how the tales of a people 
 reflect the general character of their ideas, and how, accordingly, 
 primitive myths are full of magic and animism and mana, and 
 aU the elements of primitive thinking. In particular, we can see 
 that an early method of explaining facts of nature or customs 
 of man is that of teUing a story about them and how they were 
 set going in the past, by some personage of the by-gone times. 
 This myth-making is in fuU vigour among the rude tribes of 
 Central AustraUa. Why has the Echidna spines upon its body ? 
 Because in the Alcheiinga there Hved an Echidna man who for 
 an outrage on sacred ground was pierced with spears. This was 
 the destruction of the man himself and of his totem kindred, 
 who have never since been re-incarnated in man but only in 
 Echidnas with spears sticking out of them.^ It is characteristic 
 of these tales that what happens once happens always. The 
 feature which an animal acquires it hands on for ever to its 
 whole species. In fact, the " principle " of tale-teUing as the 
 explanation of natural processes seems to be once again that 
 slippery identification of one and all which we found under- 
 lying imitative magic and totemism. If so, the primitive myth, 
 so far as it serves a purpose in primitive rehgion, stiU rests on 
 confusions analogous to those already examined. It also im- 
 plies that capacity for freely imaging persons, situations and 
 actions on the analogy of experience which all races and all 
 levels of culture share ahke. By virtue of his myth-making, 
 the savage can people the world, not merely with spirits and 
 powers, but with persons, heroes or monsters with a definite 
 character and a history, \^'ith wives and children, loves and hates, 
 
 ' Marott, op. eit. ; ep. his first essay entitled " Pre-Bnimistie Religion." 
 * Spencer and GilleB, I. 398. 
 
390 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 wars and schemes of policy, aU in a world of their own upon the 
 mountains, beneath the earth, or in the sky. 
 
 Where the mythical being comes into relation with the origin 
 and life of nature or with the customs and destinies of man he 
 may be said to belong to religion, and in quite the lowest levels 
 we find, in fact, creation myths connecting the origin of the 
 world with mythical beings of the " Great Long- Ago." For 
 example, the Central Austrahans held that in the Alcheringa 
 two beings arose out of nothing in the western sky and carved 
 men out of imperfectly shaped creatures, between animals and 
 men.^ According to the Kaitish tribe a spirit-being named 
 Atnatu arose in the sky before the Alcheringa. He made him- 
 self and has another sky and sun which are not ours. The 
 stars are his lubras. He had sons and daughters in the sky, 
 but they gave him no Churinga, so he threw them down to 
 earth. He is angry if the buU-roarer is not sounded at the 
 initiation ceremonies, and once dragged a number of boys up 
 into the sky and ate one — but the flesh was not good.* 
 
 Culture and creation myths are common throughout CaU- 
 fomia. In the North we have culture heroes. In the Centre 
 (which includes some of the lowest tribes) we have myths of 
 the creation of the world and mankind, and it is said that a 
 "lofty conception" of the Creator is sometimes found, though 
 marred by the figure of the tricksy Coyote, who half assists and 
 half thwarts him.' Among the Columbian peoples we find 
 " transformers," who are responsible for the existing order of 
 things, e. g. among the Nootka, two beings descended from 
 heaven and transformed semi -human beings into men.* Among 
 the Bella Coola, four deities help the raven to liberate the sun. 
 One of them made man, gave him the arts, and still adds to his 
 favours.^ All the Coast Salish beUeve that the Great Trans- 
 former will some day descend from heaven again and punish 
 the bad.' In South America, the Paressi hold that the first 
 
 1 Spencer and Gillen, p. 388. " ib., ii. 498. 
 
 ' Kroeber, "Religion of the Indians of California" (Univ. of GaliJ. 
 Pub. Tr.), p. 343. In the northern half the creator is anthropomorphic, 
 or if not is imaged in the Coyote. In the southern half the creators are 
 animals with the eagle as chief. In southern California there are no crea- 
 tion-myths, but tales of early wanderings and the founding of institutions. 
 Professor Kroeber's account does not altogether agree with that of Powers, 
 who writes that, except for a few tribes in the North, " I am thoroughly 
 convinced that the Califomian Indians had no conception whatever of a 
 supreme being." Their real belief was in the Coyote, while the Great 
 Man or Old Man above was a mere modern graft acquired from the whites 
 {Tribes of California, p. 413). 
 
 ' Boas, B. A., 1890, p. 595. 
 
 ' t6., 1891, p. 420. • ib., 1890, pp. 578, 880. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 391 
 
 woman lived in a kind of chaos. Living things sprang from 
 her, and then man, and finally — last word ofc creation — the 
 Paressi.^ 
 
 7. These creation myths, running down as they do to the lower 
 strata of culture, raise at once the question whether the creators 
 should not be regarded as supreme gods, and whether such a 
 belief is an integral part of savage rehgions. Now the existence 
 of Great and Gtood Spirits is certainly reported among many 
 primitive peoples, but three questions have to be settled before 
 we can determine their place in primitive religion : viz. (1) how 
 far are these reports trustworthy, (2) how far, when the Good 
 Spirit really exists, is it an importation from Christianity or some 
 other civilized religion, (3) how far is the Good Spirit, when 
 recognized, an object of worship, and therefore an integral part 
 of religion ? 
 
 The savage races among whom Great Spirits are principally 
 found or supposed to be found are the Red Indians and the 
 AustraUans. Especial stress has been laid by some writers on 
 the case of the Austrahans on account of their extremely low 
 grade of development. But recent research seems to have estab- 
 lished definitely that at least among a large proportion of the 
 tribes there is nothing comparable to the worship of a divine 
 creator and sustainer of all things. With regard to the natives 
 of Central and Northern Australia, Messrs. Spencer and Gillen 
 have now shown that while the Alcheringa ancestors had super- 
 human powers, there is no instance of any being regarded as a 
 deity. There is no idea of appeahng to them for protection nor 
 of propitiating them, except in the case of a mythic creature 
 called WoUunqua among the Warramunga tribe, who is distinctly 
 regarded, not as human, but as a snake. Further, the natives 
 from Lake Ejre to the far north and east to the Gulf of Car- 
 pentaria " have no idea whatever of the existence of any supreme 
 being who is pleased if they follow a certain line of what we 
 call moral conduct, and displeased if they do not do so." ^ 
 Among the tribes of South-Eastern Australia religious ideas as 
 well as social customs are somewhat more advanced. But here 
 again, what has sometimes been taken for a supreme god appears, 
 when the evidence is put together, rather as a " venerable, 
 kindly headman of a tribe, full of knowledge and tribal wisdom, 
 and all-powerful in magic, of which he is the source, with virtues, 
 
 ' Von der Steinen, UrUer den Natur-Volkern Central-Braziliens, p. 437. 
 Creation myths are found in poople so primitive as the Semang and Sakai 
 but the theistic element is thought to be borrowed (Martin, p. 935). 
 
 ' Spencer and Gillen, II. p. 491. 
 
392 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 failings, and passions such as the aborigines regard them." ^ 
 Once a chief on earth, he or his spirit has now ascended with 
 his people to the sky and rules them there, retaining some 
 measure of interest in the doings of the tribe on earth. He is, 
 in fact, a spirit like the other spirits of men, but greater and 
 more powerful.^ 
 
 The other chief group of primitive people who have been 
 held to beheve in a divine creator are the North American 
 Indians. But in this case also investigation has rendered it 
 probable that the Great Spirit is either (1) a misunderstanding, 
 or (2) borrowed from the whites, or (3) an anthropomorphic 
 nature-god. The Algonquin term for spirit, manitu, had a 
 general application, and was partly misunderstood by mission^ 
 aries and partly used by them as a stepping-stone to the idea 
 of God.8 
 
 The Sioux Wakan and the Iroquois Orenda have given rise 
 to misapprehensions. None of them, as we have seen above, 
 were personal terms. A god might be Wakanda, but Wakanda 
 was not a god.* Creation myths, however, are frequent. The 
 Sioux story of the creation of man may be taken as a 
 sample — 
 
 " Before the creation of man, the Great Spirit " (whose bird- 
 like tracks are yet to be seen) " used to slay the buffaloes and 
 eat them on the ledge of the Red Rocks. . . One day when a large 
 snake had crawled into the nest of the bird to eat his eggs, one 
 of the eggs hatched out in a clap of thunder, and the Great Spirit 
 catching hold of a piece of the pipe-stone to throw at the snake 
 moulded it into a man. This man's feet grew fast in the ground, 
 where he stood for many ages like a great tree, and therefore he 
 grew very old : he was older than a hundred men at the present 
 day ; and at last another tree grew up by the side of him, when 
 a large snake ate them off both at the roots, and they wandered 
 off together; from these have sprung all the people that now 
 inhabit the earth." ^ 
 
 1 Howitt, Native Tribes of South-Eastem Australia, p. 600. 
 
 ' Mr. Howitt does not regard such a cult as equivalent to ancestor 
 worship. The term " father " used in addressing such beings expresses 
 properly a tribal, not an individual relation, and towards old men is used 
 as a term of respect (ib., p. 607). 
 
 » Tylor, J. A. I., xxi. 284^288. Good and bad spirits are often found 
 among the South American Indians also, but accompanied with stories of 
 the deluge, the creation of Eve, etc., which betray their origin. 
 
 * See especially Dorsey, Siouan Cults, p. 365, etc. Two Omahas indeed 
 said that their ancestors worshipped a supreme Wakanda, but did not 
 know how or where. Cf. Brinton, Myths, p. 48. 
 
 * Catlin, North American Indians, ii. 168. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 393 
 
 Here the Great Spirit is conceived in bird form and the whole 
 story is in the crudest style of myth-making. Jn other cases 
 the Great Spirit is merely the sun or spirit of the sun — as the 
 following hymn shows — 
 
 " At the place of light, 
 At the end of the sky, 
 I (the Great Spirit), 
 Come and hang. Bright Sign. 
 
 I am the living body of the Great Spirit above, 
 (The Great Spirit, the Everlasting Spirit above). 
 
 I illumine earth, 
 
 I illumine heaven." i 
 
 Many of the expressions in the hymn, taken singly, would 
 appear to describe a supreme spiritual being comparable to the 
 God of civilized religion, but, as the context shows, they are, in 
 fact, appUed to the sun. So easy is it for one form of rehgion 
 to use for its purpose the terms and expressions famUiar to 
 another of quite different rank. Mere indistinctness simulates 
 unity in a misleading way. The Indian spirits are so little indi- 
 viduaUzed that they aU seemed one to the inquirer. The marked 
 individualities of Polytheism were not yet attained — still less 
 were they overcome and merged in the unity of a single divine 
 nature.* 
 
 Lastly, where great and good spirits are recognized in savage 
 religion we constantly find that they are in practice neglected 
 for the active, present, and possibly dangerous spirits of the 
 immediate surroundings of man. The evidence on this point 
 comes from all parts of the world. The good spirits, the Algon- 
 quin held, could only do good. It was the bad ones that needed 
 
 1 Schoolcraft, i. 398. 
 
 ' Cf. De la Saussaye, Manual of Religion, vol. i. p. 273. A race may 
 recognize one god because it has not imagination enough to differentiate 
 distinct objects and functions, or because it has attained a measure of 
 insight into the unity which runs through all differences and joins divers 
 parts into one framework. The results would agree on one point, but they 
 would belong to wholly different mental grades. Some such misconception 
 perhaps influences Australian travellers, the vague statement of the natives 
 that some mystical being made " everything " being taken with the fulness 
 of connotation which the word possesses for the civilized mind. The 
 Australian means rather, " all the things you see about you " — ^things 
 generally, without any precise limit. His " everything " is a mere vague 
 generality, and the creator of it far below the distinctly individualized 
 deity of Polytheism with a definite province marked out for him (see 
 Spencer and GUlen, vol. ii. p. 492). 
 
394 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 propitiation.^ The Dakotahs knew little about what the Great 
 Spirit would do. All the fear they had was of the spirits of the 
 departed.^ The Caribs recognized a higher spirit, but paid him 
 no honours.' Of a supreme spiritual creator, distinct from a 
 natural object such as the sun, who is also the central object 
 
 ' Schoolcraft- Drake, i. 152. ' Schoolcraft, ii. 195. 
 
 ' Waitz, vol. iii. p. 385; De la Saussaye, vol. i. p. 262 (Negroes). 
 Among the Ojibways there was said to have been a Great Spirit, but he 
 was indifferent, while there was a bad spirit and innumerable subject spirits, 
 and especial awe of the thunder. Among the Haida, Harrison {J. A. I., 
 xxi. 15-17) finds a good and bad spirit of Light and Darkness, but the 
 minor deities are more important. Among the Western D6n6 in general 
 there was no supreme being (Hill- Tout, Brit. N. America, p. 166); apart 
 from some vague idea of a being in the sky who caused rain and whom 
 they did not worship, but had to appease ( Morice, Proc. Can. Inat., vii. 157). 
 Shamanism and totemism were the working beliefs (Hill-Tout, 177, 178). 
 The Blaokfeet recognized the " Old Man " as chief god, but did penances 
 to please the sun (Grinnell, p. 258). Among the Nootka the chief may 
 pray to the deity, ordinarily they address themselves to the sun and moon 
 (Boas, B. A., 1890, p. 595). The Tsimahian may pray to heaven, bvxt 
 ordinarily address a Neqnoq, which means anything mysterious from the 
 will of heaven to the whistle used in the dances (Boas, B. A., 1899, p. 846). 
 The Eastern D6n6 dimly recognize the Great Spirit, but he has no influ- 
 ence on conduct, while numerous minor spirits are propitiated (Ross, Sm. 
 Rep., 1866, p. 306). The Cahfornians recognize an Old Man above, but 
 the coyote is the most useful and practical deity (Powers, op. cit., p. 413). 
 The Good Spirit of the Tehuelches is careless, and perhaps of Chriatian 
 origin. The evil spirits are propitiated or warded off by shamans (Musters, 
 At Home with the Patagonians, pp. 179, 180). The Araucanians are said 
 by D'Orbigny {Voyage, i. 37) to recognize a creator without worship- 
 ping him, but according to Latoham {J. A. I., xxxix. 346) the Thunder- 
 God is their chief deity. The Puelehes (D'Orbigny, ii. 270) think the 
 Good Spirit needs no prayers, but an evil one who sends disease and death 
 can be evoked by shamans. The Chiriguanos have a good as well as a 
 bad spirit, but no cult (Thouar, Explorations, pp. 47, 209). The Uaupes 
 have no definite idea of God, but propitiate a devil (Wallace, Amazon, 
 p. 482 seq.). In British Guiana the supposed supreme gods are rather 
 the tribal ancestors. Good spirits are disregarded, and the object of 
 ceremonies is to avert the attention of evil ones (im Thurm, British 
 Ouiana, pp. 366 -368). The Aucas are said to recognize a good creator, who 
 is bound to give them all they want. The medicine women are creations 
 of an evil spirit (D'Orbigny, II. 289). Among the Indian hill tribes the 
 Angami Nagas have a vague belief in a supreme being, but look on him 
 as too great and good to injure them (Godden, J. A. I., xxvii. p. 30). 
 The Kukis, according to Dalton, recognize a suprenve God who is man s 
 judge, but he mentions sacrifices to the evil spirit that causes diseases 
 {Ethn. of Bengal, p. 45). The Kasias have a name for the supreme being, 
 but their cult is concerned with spirits {ib., p. 57). To the Munda Kol 
 (Sellinghaus, Z. E., iii. 326 seq.) attributes " childish monotheism and a 
 developed belief in witchcraft and bad spirits." The Oraons have a supreme 
 god who is not worshipped (Dalton, 247 seq.). Among the Sakai, Seraang 
 and Jakun, the working cult is shamanism, some greater spirits being 
 vaguely known (Skeat, J. A. I., xxxii. 138). The Thado clans believe 
 in a creator who takes little interest in them, the cult of lake, wood and 
 river spirits being the more important (J. Shakespear, J. A. I., xxxix. 376). 
 Tk» Singphos admit & chief spirit who existed before th» oarth, but 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 395 
 
 of worship, I have found no recorded case in the uncivilized 
 world. • 
 
 animism, shamanism, and ancestor worship constitute the body of their 
 cults (Wehrli, I. A. E., xvi. 49). 
 
 In Africa, the idea of a supreme spirit of the sky, wielding the thunder 
 and giving rain, prevails all over Congoland, and is vaguely held even by 
 the Pygmies (Johnston, O. Orenfell and the Congo, pp. 632 seq.). This 
 deity is more or less anthropomorphic and more a creator than an ancestor, 
 however indifferent now to humanity. Certainly in the belief of many 
 Congolese he is too far off to care for man, whom he created but left to 
 the control of minor spirits (p. 636). The attributes ascribed to him by 
 the Baila are interesting : " The one who throws down for himself the 
 imbula first. The one who institutes customs, who gives gifts and rots 
 them; who rots the masako; the creator, the sender of so much water 
 that there is no place left dry, the giver of thunder and much rain, the one 
 who does what no other can do ; that all things are his and he can do as 
 he wishes." The Mayombe recognize the existence and power of Zambi, 
 but do not invoke him because he represents fatality (Overbergh, 
 Monogr., ii. 291); possibly Zambi is Wakanda again, of. p. 388). Among 
 the Basonge there is an anthropomorphic god, who is all powerful, but 
 as he lives in the earth it is useless to implore him {ib., Monogr., iii. 392). 
 The Mangbetu have a vague belief in a supreme being, but no name for 
 him except Kilimia, which = everything they do not understand. The 
 thunder, however, is Eliluma speaking in anger, which suggests partial 
 personification (ib., Mongr., iv. 375). Among the Melanesians, Quat 
 did not create the world, but formed its present conditions (somewhat 
 as the Columbian transformers). He is rather a hero of tales than a lord 
 of spirits, playful and full of magic power (Codrington, pp. 152, 157, 
 158). 
 
 Traces of a cult in connection with a high god appear, however, in 
 certain instances. In Australia, among the Euahlayi, Mrs. Parker states 
 that prayers for souls might be addressed to Baiame, and that orphans 
 could pray to him for rain (p. 8). In N.-W. Central Queensland, magi- 
 cians obtain power from Mulkari, a beneficent being who is the cause of 
 whatever is unaccountable (and thus looks a little like Wakanda) (W. E. 
 Roth, p. 153). The Herbert River Kohin is a warrior, and we might 
 regard him as a demon, but the natives look on him as a father and he 
 punishes breaches of custom (Howitt, pp. 498, 499). Summing up on 
 the " tribal all-father," who, under the name of Daramulun, Baiame, etc., 
 extends over the S.-E. of Australia, Howitt writes : " There is no worship 
 of Daramulim, but the dances roimd the figure of clay and the invocating 
 of his name by the medicine men certainly might have led up to it " (p. 507). 
 On the Pacific slope, the Kootenay are said by Chamberlain (B. A., 1802) 
 to worship the sun or heaven, while the Coast Salish worship the sun 
 and the Great Wanderer, the Kwakiutl the sun, the Thlinkeet the sun, 
 mountains, thunder, the killer and the seal (Boas, B. A., 1891). None 
 of these seem to be supreme beings, though Chamberlain finds the idea of 
 an over-ruling spirit in the sun-worship of the Kootenay. The Thompson 
 Indians believe in transformers, especially the Old Coyote, but it is not 
 clear whether they are addressed in prayer (Teit, Jeaup Expedition, 
 1900, p. 337). 
 
 Among the Indian hill peoples the Garo recognize and have a priest- 
 hood of a supreme god (Dalton, p. 59). The Katodis, a nomadic tribe 
 or caste, are said to pray to a supreme being for bodily needs. He sends 
 rain, but as they do not know whether he creates life, his position cannot 
 be very well defined (J. Wilson, J. B. A. S., vii. 26). The Punans (a 
 very primitive people) pray to Bati Penialong, who is the chief god of the 
 
396 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 On a review of the evidence (the heads of which are given in 
 note 3, p. 394, and which it must be confessed, is often vague, 
 baffling, and even contradictory) the most reasonable con- 
 clusions are as follows : (1) The conception of a creator has 
 arisen apart from civilized influences among some peoples even 
 of very low culture. (2) High gods, as a supreme sun or sky 
 god, or a culture hero such as Baiame, are more common, and 
 are also found in low grades. (3) A supreme god is very rarely 
 the object of a cult, but " high gods " are frequently the origin- 
 ators of custom and concerned in its maintenance, are sometimes 
 gods of the dead, and are occasionally addressed in prayer. To 
 this extent we must quahfy the generahzation that magic, and 
 some form of animism, animatism, or the cult of the dead form 
 the working creed of the simpler peoples. 
 
 8. We have now before us in outhne the principal elements 
 in primitive thought — what may be called the materia magica 
 and the materia divina, the separable quasi -material spirit, the 
 undififerentiated " life " of persons, animals and things, the sur- 
 viving spirit, the occult sympathies, transferable quahties and 
 
 more advanced Keuyahs. He is " probably conceived anthropomorphi- 
 cally," but with less distinct human qualities than among the settled 
 peoples. Among the Kenyahs, Hose and McDougall think that Bati 
 Penialong was originally a war god and has come to be a chief among 
 gods {Pagan Tribes of Borneo, ii. 13, 186 seq.). In E. Africa the Nandi 
 pray and sacrifice to the sun, whom they hold to be the creator of 
 man and beast (HoUis, p. 40). 
 
 Here and there the dead are associated with a spirit who may perhaps 
 be thought of as a high god. Among the Myooolon of Queensland, the 
 dead climb eventually to the sky, where they are looked after by a spirit 
 (E. Palmer, J. A. I., xiii. 291). Among the Gournditeh Mara, according 
 to Stable, in the place to which a good departed might go there was a 
 man who took care of the world (Kamilaroi and Kumai, Appendix F). 
 Among the Larrakeah, Foelsche describes a very good man living in the 
 sky, who made all things excepting the black fellows, while another good 
 man lives in the earth and made the first black, and is said to judge 
 them. On the Namoi and Barwin Rivers, one account is that the good or, 
 perhaps, all the dead go to Baian^e, others say that they become birds 
 (Ridley, J. A. I., ii. 269). Among the Yuin, the soul, or shadow, goes to 
 Daramulun (Howitt, p. 495). The Ngarigo thought that the dead were 
 taken care of by Daramulun (Howitt, p. 437). In the Maryborough 
 tribes a being called Birral directs the good among the dead, including 
 good hunters and warriors, to the island where they are to dwell, but 
 little seems to be known of this spirit (Howitt, p. 498). In N. America 
 the Pawnees were created by Ti-ra-wa and will live with him after death 
 (Grinnell, Paumee Stories, 354). In Brazil, among the Jumanas, there is 
 a good spirit who eats with the soul after death and takes it to himself 
 (von Martins, p. 485). In New Guinea, among the Northern Massim, 
 the dead go to an underground place presided over by Topilita, a man 
 with huge flapping ears, who first sent men with their totem animals into 
 the upper world. He lives like an ordinary chief, but has magic powers 
 and can cause earthquakes (Seligmann, Melaneaiana of New Guinea, 733). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 397 
 
 influences by which the changes of the world and the chances 
 of life are affected, the Mysterious that surround^ man and with 
 which any notable fact or object may be invested, and finally, 
 the imagery with which the play of fancy may populate the 
 world. None of these things are by themselves a rehgion, or 
 a magic, or a philosophy. They are the elements or material 
 out of which early man forms a rehgious cult or a magic art. 
 How does he do this ? To answer this question we must first 
 define religion and magic. 
 
 We may remark first, that, however distinct in idea, animism 
 and magic find, especially in primitive times, many points of 
 contact. Totemism is one instance, for, as has been pointed 
 out, the bond of union which makes the totem one with its 
 human worshippers, or rather fellows and alUes, is of magical 
 character, while the totem itseK is often a spirit or perhaps even 
 a god. Again, the magic power may come from and be con- 
 trolled by a man. Thus the whole object of Melanesian cults is 
 to obtain and use mana. A dangerous magical influence, again, 
 may emanate directly from a deity. Thus, when Uzzah touches 
 the Ark he is immediately struck dead, not because he did 
 anything wrong, for his intention was absolutely innocent, but 
 because Yahveh " broke forth " upon him. The Ark, being the 
 habitation of Yahveh, was intrinsically dangerous, just like a 
 highly electrified body.^ Animism creates spirits of the dead, 
 but the operation of these spirits and of death in general is 
 conceived in terms of magic. The mourner who may be haunted 
 by the dead is infected by their danger and has to seclude himself, 
 and this, rather than the desire of supplying the deceased with 
 comforts, is on some occasions probably the true explanation of 
 the destruction of the dead man's property and of the mourning 
 imposed upon his widow. Again, a magic infiuence may become 
 a spirit. The curse which the evil-doer brings upon himself may 
 be conceived magically, or it may pass into a spirit which haunts 
 the man ; or finally, by a union of both ideas, it may be an evil 
 which the spirit inflicts upon the man.^ 
 
 But this only shows that the material of magic and animism 
 can be combined or interwoven. What is magic in itself, and 
 what is religion ? Magic is not the belief in occult influences, 
 homoeopathic actions and so forth, it is an art whereby men 
 seek to attain ends by the use of occult influences. When these 
 
 * This magical conception seems at least to underlie the anthropo- 
 morphic CKscount in 2 Sam. vi. 7 seq. 
 
 " See some remarks by the present writer in Sociological Papers, vol. ii. 
 p. 172. 
 
398 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 influences are thought of as mysterious or act in a supernormal 
 way, it is itself an occult art, the peculiar property of a magician, 
 or a god, or a ghost. Thus, the magical art that the common 
 man may use rests on connections which present no difficulty 
 to the savage mind though much to a mind infected by common- 
 sense distinctions. The magic of magicians or spirits rests on 
 similar influences raised to a higher power by mana or wakanda."^ 
 Magic as such has nothing to do with religion except (1) that it 
 moves in a supersensible world ; (2) that it is an effort to get on 
 terms with the world, and as such provides an outlet for emotion 
 and a confidence in success which are of real psychological 
 efficiency. Generally, magic is the control of occult forces for 
 human ends, the occult being, as defined above, that which is 
 neither apparent to the senses nor legitimately inferred from the 
 sensible. These forces may include spirits, ghosts, demons, even 
 deities, but the test of magic always is that the spirit is subservient, 
 not the magician. Moreover, the means which render the spirit 
 subservient are themselves non-spiritual — spells, incantations, 
 the use of sacred names, homoeopathy or infection. We should 
 not, therefore, be wrong if we supplemented the definition by 
 introducing the contrast with the spiritual, and described magic 
 as the use of non-spiritual occult forces for human ends, under- 
 standing that one of the appHcations of these forces might be 
 to control spiritual beings. We may add that as resting on the 
 occult in the sense defined, as wrapping itself in mystery rather 
 than seeking its explication, magic is not akin but opposed to 
 science.^ 
 
 ReHgion is also an effort on the part of man to get on terms 
 with the world, but its path lies through the conception of man 
 as a spiritual being, member of a spiritual order, which gives 
 meaning to his life, direction to his conduct, fortitude and 
 consolation in the life-tragedy. Generally, religion is the service 
 of the spiritual order, and its development consists in the pro- 
 gressive apprehension of the spiritual, an apprehension which is 
 never merely intellectual, but which is permanently based on 
 an emotional and practical response. In its essence the spiritual 
 is the impulse to harmony which, as contrasted with inanimate 
 
 * I follow Dr. Jevons, therefore, in holding that magic essentially 
 implies a magician {Sociological Review, 1908, p. 112. Cf. Wundt, 
 Volktrpsychologie, Book IV. pp. 262-285). 
 
 ' When a Melanesian tests the reputed mana of a stone by examining 
 whether it makes the plants grow (Codrington, p. 119), he is, so far, intro- 
 ducing the common-sense touchstone of experience which is the rudiment 
 of science, but in the same degree he is rising above the magical plane of 
 thought. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 399 
 
 matter makes for life, as contrasted with the inertia of the vital 
 mechanism impels to fuller realization and the development of 
 higher faculties, as contrasted with the dumb-driven impulse 
 inspires the articulate creative purpose, as contrasted with the in- 
 different self-centred individual reveals comprehensive unity of 
 aim and regenerates the Ufe of the part with the consciousness of 
 the whole. The conception grows by antithesis to the mechanical. 
 But in its first phases this antithesis is not formed. Inanimate 
 things, animals, and human beings are not clearly differentiated, 
 and while the spirit begins to be thought of as that which gives 
 Ufe, it is conceived as that half-material entity which has been 
 caUed the double. It is a step in advance when the spiritual 
 being is endowed with a distinct and concrete personality, for 
 personality is a feature of the life of spirit. It is a higher stage 
 again when God is defined as a spirit pure and simple, when Grod, 
 in fact, becomes the incarnation of all that is understood of the 
 spiritual order, or when, as in non-theistic forms of religion, 
 the spiritual order is conceived as that which guides and gives 
 meaning to the life of man. 
 
 In this development the driving forces are in a sense the 
 same throughout, except that man's conception of the spiritual 
 becomes clearer and his emotional response changes its char- 
 acter accordingly. If we ask how the development begins, we 
 cannot obtain a certain answer because we do not know the 
 character of really primitive behef, and we can reply only by 
 comparing what is actually known or probably reported of very 
 simple folk, and by considering the results in the hght of human 
 nature and the ways of uncritical thought. We have found 
 many elements contributory to religion, none of which is in itself 
 a religion. For reUgion, resting in services, must be taken at 
 this early stage to imply a cult, but the sense of mystery is not 
 a cult, the behef in a double or in the spirit of a rock is not a 
 cult, the fear of the dead is not a cult, a tale of creation even 
 by an anthropomorphic being is not a cult. All these, however, 
 are materials from which a cult may arise, and in particular 
 their combination might give rise to a true religion. It is quite 
 possible that in different parts of the earth they came together 
 in different ways, and there may have been instances in which 
 the vague Wakanda took spiritual form and so constituted a 
 single high God, a spirit viewed with awe, giving rise to worship, 
 before minor spirits were formed. But the evidence as a whole 
 suggests a different direction for the normal line of movement, 
 and brings us by a roundabout road very near to an old-fashioned 
 theory. Among the lowest savages we find a fear of the dead 
 
400 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 expressed in the abandonment of the corpse and place of death 
 and the destruction of the personal belongings. In this fear 
 there is no element of reUgion, though it may very readily (with 
 or without the aid of dream forms) engender a behef in a sur- 
 viving spirit. But sometimes, as among the Veddas, we find 
 this avoidance quaUfied by offerings of rice and milk to the 
 yaka or spirits of the dead, and among the Yaka we find one 
 Kande Yaka, the spirit of a great hunter who died long ago, 
 who is invoked at the offerings of the dead and to whom, some 
 say, spirits have to apply for leave to obtain offerings and help 
 their relatives. Primarily an assistant in hunting, he becomes 
 lord of the dead, and he was, our authors think, a real man 
 whose cult, on account of his qualities, continued longer than 
 usual .^ If Kande Yaka were but associated with certain 
 tribal customs, he would become a Baiame and a culture 
 hero. 
 
 Now the dead are feared but they are also revered and loved, 
 feared as associated with the final terror, loved because death 
 obhterates faults, and memory is a regret.^ As the kindlier 
 feehng predominates and subdues fear to awe, emotion prompts 
 the well-known acts of affection and homage, the gift of food 
 and raiment, the adornment and decency of bestowal which we, 
 no less than the savage, feel the necessary due. We would still 
 give our tribute to the dead though we know it to be useless, 
 because the giving is the natural discharge of the emotion which 
 dominates us. Early man, beginning with the emotion and 
 proceeding to the gift or the service, presently asks himself for 
 a reason for what he is doing, and answers himself that the 
 dead are there and are gratified. Here is the emotional basis 
 of a behef which the uncritical judgment readily accepts, and 
 the cult acquires a definite meaning and purpose. Considering 
 the ubiquity of the forms of burial practice, shading from fear 
 and avoidance into reverent attention and service, we may 
 reasonably suppose this to be the normal form of that which 
 may fairly be called rehgious behef and practice in early society. 
 At the same time, the fear and regard for natural objects, 
 prompting men to treat them as alive and so to think that they 
 are aUve, may develop side by side and emerge into the behef of 
 spiritual beings whose good-wiU must be gained if man is to be 
 safe. These are the two forms of true cult that we find prevalent 
 
 1 Seligmann, The Veddas, pp. 122, 125, 127, 131, 141. 
 
 ^ These emotional suggestions are overlooked by Durkheim when he 
 finds nothing " sacred " in the double in the mere fact that it is disin- 
 camated (Formes Mmentaires delavie religieuse, p. 87, etc.). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 401 
 
 among the simplest peoples.^ In either case we inquirers ex- 
 press the matter logically as a behef in spirits, on which certain 
 practices are based, around which certain emotions cluster. 
 But psychology suggests that, to picture the historical develop- 
 ment aright, we should reverse the order — that there was first 
 the emotion, love and awe, fear or gratitude, or the suppUcatory 
 tension of hope and anxiety; that these expressed themselves 
 in such acts as we perform when so moved towards human 
 beings, and that these acts, operating in the mental twilight of 
 indistinct categories, engendered the notion of spirit as that 
 which is human and non-human, animate yet inanimate, intelli- 
 gent yet insensate, vitaUzing body but itself body. This spirit, 
 moreover, is the culmination of the first stage of development, 
 other forms of early belief only escaping similar contradictions 
 because they lack definiteness of conception altogether. Anim- 
 ism, on this view, is justly regarded as the first definite form of 
 religion, animism meaning the cult of spirits without the appre- 
 hension of spirituality, and being regarded as the outcome of 
 an earUer stage in which elements and forms of reUgion are 
 active but not rehgion itself. Within animism it is probable 
 that the cult of the dead normally occupied the first place in 
 time as it retains a foremost position in importance. On the 
 other hand, animism is not the begiiming but the end of a stage 
 in development, and it is not the theory of spirits which gives 
 
 ' Whether totemism should be included in this stage of religious develop- 
 ment is a question partly of fact, partly of definition, and in both relations 
 difficult to determine. Professor Durkheim, defining religion by reference 
 to the sacred, does not separate it generally from magic. For whatever 
 is mysterious, be it spiritual or not, may be the object of observances to 
 mark it off from the common, i. e. the profane. Now totemism rests on 
 an identification of persons with animals or other non-human things 
 which is essentially of magic character, and many of its observances seem 
 to be true magic — e. g. methods of securing a supply of the totem object 
 for food. To Professor Durkheim it is a religion because the object is 
 sacred. For our definition it would not be a religion because the object 
 is not a spirit nor the observance a cult. But Professor Durkheim would 
 maintain that the totem is the symbol of the unity of a social group, and 
 this is, for him, the real basis of its sanctity. This, he might say, is on 
 our definition an essentially spiritual principle, and on this ground we 
 should admit totemism as a religion even for us. On the other side, it 
 may be urged that the feature of totemism is that the social unity is 
 not Spiritually but magically conceived. It is rather a body of magical 
 practice containing certain ethical or even religious elements — " materia 
 divina " — than itself a reUgion. 
 
 We speak, of course, of totemism in an elementary form. The totem 
 animal may become an object of reverence or worship, as in some North 
 American cases. But then we are at once in full blown animatism, if not 
 animism in the stricter sense. The development, however, serves to show 
 how the magic identification of the human and non-human may servp 
 as one path to the belief in spirits of the inanimate world. 
 DD 
 
402 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 rise to a cult, but more truly the cult, itself engendered by 
 emotion, Avhich creates the theory. 
 
 9. Religion makes its first step in advance when it recognizes 
 gods who stand above the animate spirit. The difference be- 
 tween a spirit and a god is easier to feel than to define, but we 
 may perhaps say that a god is a spirit endowed with a distinct 
 personality and the object of a cult,^ as exercising certain super- 
 human functions in nature or human life. Thus, the ordinary 
 dead are not gods, for though they have quasi-magical powers 
 they are not superhuman ; rather they are dependent on men 
 for food and offerings. They have no personahty other than 
 that which they really possessed in lite, and this tends to fade 
 away into the spirit shadowland ; they perform no function other 
 than that of helping their relations, which any man might do. 
 A distinguished ancestor, a hero raised above the ruck, on the 
 contrary, is on the way to be a god. Baiame and Daramulun, 
 whether heroes or incarnations of the bull-roarer, are of tliis class. 
 They look after the dead, they instituted custom and are con- 
 cerned for its maintenance, and when they are also prayed to 
 they must be held to have become gods. One avenue to the 
 divine, then, is through the hero cult. Another is through the 
 nature spirit. Here we get the clue if we turn back in mind to 
 the ambiguities which we find at a stratum of thought which 
 is a Uttle bit above the lowest, between the indwelling spirit 
 and a spirit which directs or governs an object in which it dwells 
 no longer. Often these are ambiguities which, from the nature 
 of the case, it is not possible for the civihzed investigator to re- 
 solve. The spirit which dwells in an object but which can leave 
 it and enter another, may clearly pass by easy transitions into 
 a spirit which does not necessarily dwell in any object at all, 
 but haunts it, or even, ceasing to haunt it, retains control over 
 it. On the West Coast of Africa, Captain ElUs associates the 
 transition with the rise of images. The Tshi, for the most part, 
 recognize indwelling spirits, but when they make an image of 
 the spirit, which must in the early stages be made of a fragment 
 of the thing in which the spirit dwells, the tie between spirit 
 and thing is weakened. In fact, it is clear that, to dwell both 
 in the image and in the thing, the spirit must be in both places 
 at once. In reahty he becomes most identified with his place 
 of worship, and so becomes the tutelary deity of the village in 
 which his shrine is placed, and this is, says Captain EUis, the 
 
 ' Or at least one of a class which in the same society are the object of 
 cults. We shotild not deny the title to Olorun (see below, p. 403) because 
 J he is not himself worshipped. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 403 
 
 highest stage reached among the Tshi, where most of the gods 
 worshipped are the simply indwelling spirits of pit)minent natural 
 objects in the neighbourhood. The ghost-gods, who were origin- 
 ally human spirits, have a separate origin but similar history. 
 The skull is brought into the temple, and so imparts a guardian 
 ghost. Many such ghosts, again, become tutelary deities and 
 are often blended with nature deities.^ 
 
 But the neighbouring and more advanced Yoruba-speaking 
 peoples have greater gods than these. They have replaced the 
 local gods to a large extent by the gods of the whole people, and 
 these are the gods who personify or direct the great natural forces. 
 They are distinctly separate from the natural objects which they, 
 or some of them, represent ; and here we sometimes seem to see 
 the transition going on before our eyes. Thus the great god, 
 Olorun, is described as the Deified Firmament or Personal Sky. 
 He is an old god, and he is too distant and lazy to interfere in the 
 world's affairs, and for this reason he has dropped out of worship. 
 It is to be observed that this sphere is strictly limited ; he only 
 controls the sky. " A man," runs one of their proverbs, "cannot 
 cause rain to fall, and Olorun cannot give you a child." Olorun 
 made Obatala, who is also the god of the sky and of the earth as 
 well ; but he is an anthropomorphic god ; he made the first man 
 and woman, he creates each new-born child ; he causes deformi- 
 ties as a punishment for neglect, and he has an oracle by which 
 the guilt of accused people is decided. Similarly, a minor 
 god, Olokun, is not the Sea regarded as a living being, but an 
 anthropomorphic deity who controls the sea.^ 
 
 The greater gods, then, are conceived as human, and as being 
 distinct from that" which they control and out of which the con- 
 ception of them is evolved. As Sir J. Frazer points out, when the 
 tree ceases to be the body of the tree-spirit, and becomes simply 
 its abode, the tree becomes " merely a lifeless inert mass," while 
 the spirit tends to assume the body of a man, and ceasing " to be 
 a tree-soul, becomes a forest-god." ^ And just as spirits dwelling 
 in trees are replaced by a god on whom the life of trees depends, 
 so the spirits who dwell in water give place to a lord of the sea, 
 and the divine sky to a god who directs rain and snow, thunder 
 and lightning, a king who reigns over skyland. Thus, in Greek 
 reUgion, the worship of Ouranos dies away and yields to that of 
 Zsus.* A place is, indeed, found for the discarded Ouranos in 
 
 ' A. B. Ellis, The Yoruba-speaking Peoples, pp. 276-284. 
 
 " »6., 34-70. ' Frazer, i. 188. Numerous illustrations are subjoined. 
 
 ' I am assiuning the truth of the common view that Zeus himself was 
 originally the sky, though from Mr. Famell's account {Cults of the Oreek 
 States, vol. i. chap, iv.) this would seem not quite so clear. In Arcadia 
 
404 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the theogonies which now become a feature of rehgious Ufe. 
 For the anthropomorphism of which the rudiments have already 
 been noted in savage mj^h-making now receives a great ex- 
 tension. The genealogies, the births and marriages of the gods, 
 their loves and hates, their deeds of prowess, are drawn out with 
 exuberant fancy. Often, as we know, the gods retain traces of 
 their lowly origin ; they are associated with the animals or spots 
 or other natural objects from which they were originally derived. 
 Hence the hawk-headed or ibis-headed gods of Egypt, hence the 
 animals sacred to gods, the clean and the unclean ; hence many 
 a practice explained mythically, but in its origin simply a piece 
 of magic or animism .^ But thoiigh the gods retain traces, more 
 or less marked as the case may be, of their not too honourable 
 descent, they become, as the religious life advances, more and 
 more distinctively human, and in becoming human they also 
 become superhuman. They are endowed at least with larger 
 powers, with longer life, or with immortality, and in many cases 
 also with physical, mental, and moral attributes of which more 
 will be said later. 
 
 This beginning of idealism must be regarded as the final con- 
 dition which the spirit must fulfil in order to become a god. The 
 
 he was the thunder, i. e. the thunder itself was the god (p. 45). At Olympia 
 Zeis KaraiBdrns, Zeus as descending in the thunder, is worshipped (p. 46). 
 But in iEschylus Karai^axTis is the epithet, not of Zeus himself, but of the 
 thunder (see e. g. Prometheus Vinctus), and the thunder is not Zeus, but his 
 " sleepless dart." Observe the three stages here. In the first Zeus is the 
 thunder. In the third he is a personal god who wields it. In the second 
 he is in an ambiguous condition, descending in the thunder, yet seemingly 
 more than the thunder itself — the descent is one of his epithets, or, as 
 Oriental thought might conceive it, one of his incarnations. The thunder 
 itself is also animated in iEschylvis, " sleepless " and " breathing flame," 
 but we are to take this as conscious poetry, not as simple animism. What- 
 ever the truth as to the original nature of Zeus, this development may stand 
 as typical of the transition from animism to Polytheism. 
 
 In Latin the use of Jupiter for the sky persists in literature of the classical 
 period {sub Jove frigido). But in fact it seems very doubtful whether the 
 native Roman religion ever rose above the conception of spirits presid- 
 ing over places, persons, and especially functions (Wissowa, Religion 
 und Kultus der Romer, especially pp. 20-28, and Saussaye, Lmrhueh der 
 Religionsgeschichie, vol. ii. p. 203, " Die rOmische Religion steckte 
 noeh tief in Animismus "). The anthropomorphic impulse came from the 
 Greeks. 
 
 1 Sir J. Frazer even says {Oolden Botigh, vol. ii. p. 167) that " we may con- 
 jecture that whenever a god is described as the eater of a particular animal, 
 the animal in question was originally nothing but the god himself." In 
 any case the association till recently so unintelligible of an anthropomorphic 
 god with animals, plants, stones, and generally with quasi-fetich objects and 
 savage rites, is now explained as referable, with very high probability, to a 
 form of religious conservatism — an old rite being maintained in association 
 with the worship of a new god. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 405 
 
 gods of PoljHiheism are great gods, and often have troops of spirits 
 in subservience to them . The typical relation indeed is , as Comte 
 long ago pointed out, comparable to that between a species and 
 an individual. The spirit of a tree strictly regarded is Hmited to 
 that tree and functions only in this spot. A tree-god controls all 
 trees. Similarly all the great gods control either large provinces 
 of nature — sea, earth, sky (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades), or are pro- 
 tectors of the people, national gods (Yahveh, Ashur, Athene), 
 or preside over one or more of the main human functions (Ares, 
 Aphrodite). Thus in the conceptions underlying them there are 
 beginnings of a higher unity, an approach to order in the reMgious 
 basis of life, which is carried further as by the anthropomorphiz- 
 ing genealogies and hierarchies the many gods are brought into 
 subjection to one father and ruler of aU.^ 
 
 The gods, then, as opposed to the spirits, are clearly distinct 
 from the natural objects which they govern, or the functions 
 which they direct. They are anthropomorphic, and so tend to 
 be connected by family and pohtical relationships. They control 
 the great powers of nature and the main functions of Hfe. And 
 while human they are also superhuman, and at their best lend 
 themselves to ideal forms of beauty and of ethical thought. 
 
 10. If Animism is the typical religion of savagery, the cult of 
 the greater gods has its central point in the earher civiHzations. 
 Yet to describe the religion of these civihzations would not be to 
 describe polytheism. We have defined polytheism by marking 
 it out sharply from animism on the one side, and (by implication) 
 from monotheism on the other. But in the concrete develop- 
 ment of reUgious history these demarcations are precisely what 
 we do not find. The religion of the early civilizations is a mass 
 of conceptions in which, around the figures of the greater gods, 
 a surge of primitive animistic and magic practices rises and falls, 
 
 ' Inasmuch as the gods have personalities which have hardened into con- 
 crete individuals sharply opposed to one another, it might seem rather that 
 polytheism has carried us farther away than animism from the xinity of 
 nature, and that where (as in the indigenous Chinese religion) we have one 
 supreme spirit of the sky and one of the earth, we are nearer to unity. But 
 that is misleading. Such unity as we find in animism is the unity of a hlvi, 
 the unity which precedes differentiation. The Chinese religion — an ex- 
 ceptional survival of animism in a high but very conservative civilization — 
 no doubt arrives at a systematization in which something like the hierarchy 
 of Polytheism is reproduced ; but, if I understand it aright, in a much less 
 articulate fashion. What, e. g. is the relation between the earth spirit and 
 the Countless spirits of hills, groves, rivers, etc., upon the earth ? To this 
 polytheism would have a definite answer. They would be subjects, or 
 daughters, of the earth-mother. 
 
406 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 while here and there, through the obscurity, there dimly looms 
 the outline of a higher principle. 
 
 Thus, to confine ourselves to the two most ancient civihzations, 
 we have in Babylonia and Egypt, amid much that is obscure, 
 fairly typical examples of the stage of polytheism in which the 
 animistic foundation is plainly visible, in which magic still plays 
 an important part, in which the conception of godhead retains 
 plentiful traces of its lowly origin, while, on the other hand, there 
 are the beginnings evident of the stage of thought which was 
 destined to supersede polytheism. These religions, in fact, have 
 their centre of gravity in the polytheistic phase, while they put 
 out ramifications into the phases below and above. 
 
 " The greater gods of the Egyptian pantheon are, as they stand 
 in the historical period, impersonations of the greater forces 
 that surrounded the Egyptian and controlled his life — thie sky, 
 the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile." ^ In its early phases the 
 religious development seems to have proceeded independently 
 but on parallel lines in the partially independent nomes or dis- 
 tricts into which Egypt was divided. Each of these originally 
 had its chief god, who very often personified the same natural 
 attributes under a different name. In particular, "wherever 
 there is some important change in the river (Nile), there they 
 (these incarnations of the river) are more especially installed 
 and worshipped." ^ 
 
 The result of this multiplicity, as the different cults came into 
 relation to each other, was a mythology of luxuriant confusions 
 and inconsistencies, which led the Egyptian priesthood to at- 
 tempt a remarkable solution. To this we shall have to refer a 
 little later. But let us first notice that these greater gods are 
 in all probabiUty not the primary deities of the Egyptian rehgion, 
 which has its roots rather in primitive animism. The associa- 
 tion of many of the Egyptian gods with a special sacred animal 
 has from the days of the Greek travellers down to the present 
 generation been a puzzle of the greatest difficulty. Further 
 research into the earliest Egyptian monuments coincides mth 
 the results drawn from comparative religion in making it prob- 
 able that the animal is not the secondary figure in the cult, but, 
 at least in point of time, the primary. The Egyptians had an 
 animistic religion before they worshipped the greater gods Osiris 
 and Ptah. The hawk-headed figure of Horus represents pic- 
 torially a combination between the worship of the sun-god and 
 
 1 Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, 85-86. Isis of Buto denoted the 
 black vegetable mould of the valley {ib., 99). 
 » Maspero, 99. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 407 
 
 the earlier worship of the hawk itself. The worship of Sekhet 
 in the form of a cat-headed or lion-headed wom^, again, blends 
 an anthropomorphic cult with the more primitive adoration 
 of the cat tribe. Like other people in the animistic stage, in 
 short, the early Egyptians worshipped animals and other natural 
 objects, while the later Egyptians tended to conceive of the 
 deities as anthropomorphic, superhuman spirits, and the his- 
 torical Egyptian religion or mythology was a compromise or 
 blending of the lower and the higher. Even the greater gods 
 retained many traces of their animistic origin. The Egyptian 
 deities, though great spirits, are by no means necessarily eman- 
 cipated from either the weaknesses or the wickednesses of man.^ 
 They have their wives — not only goddesses, but harems of mortal 
 women, priestesses of the temples. Not only do they marrjr 
 and are given in marriage, but they die like men and require 
 burial. Like men they have a composite nature, consisting of 
 soul and body. The soul might be an insect, a bird, a shadow, 
 or a double — Ka — and this latter was not essentially different 
 from the Ka of man. Gods, in fact, were virtually conceived as 
 men in their essential nature, having bones, flesh and blood, and 
 a mysterious fluid, Sa, the source of vigour, with which they 
 could impregnate man.^ The dead god, like the dead man, re- 
 quired food and a house — his temple. Lideed, he could do with 
 many temples, dividing his double among them in accordance 
 with the accommodating looseness of texture which that entity 
 everywhere enjoys. He might be incorporated in a statue or 
 in a sacred animal.* Some gods remained the same after 
 death, as Osiris ; others changed their names and perhaps their 
 character. Maspero writes — 
 
 " Their doubles, like those of men, both dreaded and regretted 
 the light. All sentiment was extinguished by the hunger from 
 which they suffered, and gods who were noted for their com- 
 passionate kindness when alive, because pitiless and ferocious 
 tyrants in the tomb. When once men were bidden to the pre- 
 sence of Sokar.'s, Khontamentit, or even of Osiris, ' mortals come 
 terrifying their hearts with fear of the god, and none dareth to 
 look him in the face either among gods or men ; for him the great 
 are as the small. He spareth not those who love him ; he beareth 
 away the child from its mother, and the old man who walketh 
 on his way; full of fear, all creatures make supplication before 
 him, but he turneth not his face towards them.' Only by the 
 unfailing payment of tribute, and by feeding him as though he 
 
 ' Maspero, p. 126. «*., 108-110. ' i*., 116-119. 
 
408 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 were a simple human double, could living or dead escape the 
 consequences of his furious temper." . . . 
 
 All offerings to the dead were presented to him — 
 
 " He was humbly prayed to transmit them to such or such a 
 double, whose name and parentage were pointed out to him. 
 He took possession of them, kept part for his own use, and of his 
 bounty gave the remainder to its destined recipient." ^ 
 
 In Egypt, as among other primitive peoples, " men did not 
 die. They were assassinated." The murderer might belong 
 to their world and be recognized as another man, an animal, 
 an inanimate object. Or he might be a spirit, a god, demon, or 
 disembodied soul.^ At least in the earher period some of the 
 gods were cannibals. Sahu, i. e. Orion, is represented on the 
 pyramid of Unas in the sixth dynasty as a hunter. He hunted 
 the gods, killed and devoured them, and by so doing, in ac- 
 cordance with true cannibal theory, assimilated their virtues,^ 
 But what is even more remarkable, a man might do the same 
 thing, and, by so doing, obtain control over the divinity. 
 King Unas, in his address to the deities of the dead, boasts that 
 the gods have been lassoed for Unas by one power, brought 
 towards him by another. " Shosmu has cut them up for Unas 
 and had the pieces cooked in broihng cauldrons. It is Unas who 
 devours their magical virtues and eats their souls, and the great 
 ones among them are for Unas' feast in the morning, the middle 
 ones among them, male and female, are for his roast meat, the 
 small ones for his evening meal. The old ones, male and female, 
 are for his furnace." Again, "the inhabitants of the sky are 
 made his servants, and the Hmbs of their womenkind are thrown 
 into the cauldrons. Unas has taken the hearts of the gods, has 
 devoured the red crown, has eaten the white. His victuals are 
 those whose magic virtues are nourished on hearts, he has eaten the 
 wisdom of every god." * It is to us a little bizarre for a man to re- 
 commend himself to the heavenly host on the ground that he has 
 eaten them, but the animistic view of nature, with its spirits, that 
 are at once immaterial and material, that can live by perishing, 
 that may nourish man yet exist apart from him, which are more 
 powerful than he and yet controllable by him, solves all these 
 contradictions. Unas controls the gods because he has possessed 
 himself of their virtues by eating them. Isis obtained control 
 over Re in his decrepit old age by stealing his name, by the know- 
 
 1 Maspero, 117-118. i* ib.. 111. 
 
 ^ Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, 97, 98. 
 * Maspero, Recueil de Travaux, p. 59 ff. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 409 
 
 ledge of which she had over him a magical control. In the same 
 way men could control. the gods by magical incantations, the 
 use of wax effigies, etc.^ This is in line with the lowest ideas of 
 witchcraft. Side by side with it we find the typical conceptions 
 of anthropomorphic reUgion, e. g. sacrifice as a contract between 
 deity and worshipper. The god himself prescribes the details, 
 and of course undertakes to fulfil his side of the bargain. He 
 abolishes human sacrifice, declaring that he will be satisfied with 
 an animal. But he is still a stickler for form. Any error of 
 detail would void the contract, and this is all to the good of the 
 priestly order. 
 
 But if on its lower side the Egyptian religion is thus rooted in 
 animism and magic, if the gods figure almost as demons who 
 destroy men, and are responsible for such deaths as cannot be 
 assigned to obvious physical causes, if they have human con- 
 cubines and can be controlled by magic — on its other side the 
 esoteric philosophy of the priests tends to transcend polytheism , 
 and to conceive the ultimate unity of the Divine. The very 
 multiplicity of gods — especially of gods with similar functions 
 and difiering only in name— was a stimulus to thought, and 
 called for some theory to explain so bewildering a confusion. 
 As the unity of Eg3rptian culture grew, the separate nome-gods 
 were necessarily united in one pantheon. In each nome a local 
 trinity or triad was found, the nome-god being associated some- 
 times with wife and son, sometimes with two goddesses, " who 
 were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national 
 custom."^ Whether defiberately introduced for the purpose 
 or not, the system of triads had the effect of reconciling the 
 supremacy of the old nome-gods in each locality with a recog- 
 nition of gods originating in other parts. The god who was 
 supreme in one nome would enter the triad of another nome in 
 a subordinate position. 
 
 " Hathor, supreme at Denderah, shrank into insignificance 
 before her husband, Haroeris, at Edfu. ... On the other hand, 
 Haroeris, when at Denderah . . . was nothing more than the 
 almost useless consort of the lady Hathor."^ 
 
 A still more elaborate system of Enneads, or groups of nine 
 gods and goddesses, arose in the Old Kingdom. The earliest 
 recorded is the Ennead of Hefiopohs, the best known is that of 
 Memphis, the centre of which was Ptah. In the Ennead, Atum 
 (one of the names of the sun god) is the creator of things, but 
 
 ' Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, 212, 214. 
 
 ^ ib., 104. ' *., 106. 
 
410 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the members of Atum are made up of the Ennead, and the heart 
 and tongue of the Ennead is Ptah. 
 
 " When the eyes see, the ears hear, and the nose breathes they 
 transmit to the heart. It is he (the heart) who brings forth every 
 issue, and it is the tongue which transmits the thought of the 
 heart. He fashioned all gods, even Atum and his Ennead. . . . 
 It was he who made the kas and [created] the qualities (i. e. of 
 the sun god) ; who made all food, all offerings by his word ; who 
 made that which is loved and that which is hated. It was he 
 who gave life to the peaceful and death to the guilty. ... He 
 fashioned the gods, he made the cities. . . . Then the gods 
 entered into their bodies of every wood and every stone and 
 every metal. Everything grew upon its trees whence they 
 came forth." ^ 
 
 This is neither pure Pantheism nor Monotheism, but it is the 
 germ of either or both. One god is not set up to the exclusion of 
 others as in Monotheism, nor is all the universe merged in a 
 divine spirit as in Pantheism. Rather nine great gods are some- 
 how merged in one which is the central principle among them, 
 and this principle is the heart, which figures the mind or soul in 
 the concrete terms of early thought. The unity is not that of 
 a profound mysticism which has seen through differences to a 
 deeper identity, nor yet is it the purely childish blurring of 
 differences that we find in magic. It is something on the way 
 from the lower to the higher stage of thought, and it would 
 doubtless have proceeded further and faster in Egypt but for 
 the multipUcity of local centres, each jealous for the sole deity 
 of its own domain. 
 
 " The feudal spirit, always alert and jealous, prevented the 
 higher dogma, which was dimly apprehended in the temples, 
 from triumphing over local religions and extending over the 
 whole land. Egypt had as many ' sole ' deities as she had large 
 cities or even important temples. She never accepted the idea 
 of the sole god ' beside whom there is no other.' " * 
 
 The monotheistic tendency nevertheless developed in later 
 periods, mainly in the form of an elevation of the sun god to a 
 supreme position. Thus, in the Instruction for King Mery-ke-re 
 of the Middle Kingdom we read — 
 
 " God made heaven and earth at their (men's ) desire; 
 They are his own images proceeding from his flesh." 
 
 1 Breasted, Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt, 
 pp. 43-i6. 
 
 ' Maspero, Davm of Civilization, p. 152. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 411 
 
 He " knows every man." He may hide himself for a genera- 
 tion, but his authority is always there.^ • 
 
 The expansion of Egypt under the New Kingdom would make 
 men think of the power of the greater gods in terms of the whole 
 world rather than of Egypt alone, and so it is perhaps that a more 
 definite monotheism makes its appearance.^ In a hymn of 
 Amenhotep III.'s reign {circ. 1400 B.C.) the sun god is he — 
 
 " Wlio determines his own birth . . . 
 Illuminating the Two Lands (Egypt) with his disk. 
 The primordial being who himself made himself . . . 
 Sole lord taking captive all lands every day." ^ 
 
 Amenhotep IV. about 1375 B.C. made an extraordinary attempt 
 to estabhsh the worship of the sun god under the name of Aton 
 to the exclusion of every other. No other gods or images of 
 gods or formulas swearing by gods were tolerated. Even in the 
 charms for the dead Osiris might not be named.* This was 
 certainly monolatry and it would seem also true monotheism, 
 for Aton is addressed as creator and father of all — 
 
 " sole god whose powers no other possesseth. 
 Thou didst create the earth according to thy heart 
 While thou wast alone . . . 
 The foreign countries Syria and Kush, 
 The Land of Egypt, . . . 
 god who himself fashioned himself . . . 
 Thou art the mother and the father of all that thou hast made."^ 
 
 Amenhotep IV. was in advance of his age and his reforms 
 were swept away. For people found that "if men prayed to a 
 god for succour, he came not ... if men besought a goddess 
 likewise, she came not at all." ^ Yet under other names, mainly 
 as Amon-Re, the supremacy of the sun god and the monotheistic 
 tendency survived and, as we shall see further, takes a more 
 distinctly ethical turn, as in the hymn to Amen Re — 
 
 " Hearing the complaint of him who is oppressed, 
 Kindly of heart when called upon, 
 
 He delivereth the timid from him who is of a fro ward heart. 
 He judgeth the cause of the weak and the oppressed. . . . 
 One and only one, maker of all that are. 
 From whose eyes mankind issued, 
 
 ' Gardiner, Journal of Egyptian Archosology, January 1914, pp. 33, 34. 
 Mr. Gardiner speaks of the lines qxioted as perhaps the earliest monotheistic 
 passage in Egyptian literature. 
 
 ' 1&. Breasted lays great stress on this political factor (op. tit. pp. 47, 
 315, etc.). 
 
 = Cf. p. 317. •■ p. 340. * Op. eit., pp. 326-330, etc. • p. 345. 
 
412 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 By whose mouth the gods were created, 
 
 Who makest the herbage, and makest to live the cattle, goats , 
 
 swine and sheep, etc., etc. . . . 
 Sole king is he even in the midst of the gods ; 
 Many are his names, none knoweth their number." ^ 
 
 This is not monotheism. It reminds us rather of the psalm 
 that begins, " God sat among the congregation of gods," in which 
 Jehovah appears as the chief figure of a Pantheon. It reminds 
 us still more forcibly of the Vedic hymns in which each god in 
 turn is extolled as the one and only god. 
 
 Still later we find the pantheistic strain — 
 
 " Thy form is the Nile, the first born, older than all the gods; 
 thou art the great waters, thou art the sky, thou art the earth, 
 thou art the nether world, thou art the water, thou art the air 
 that is between them. Men rejoice because of thee, (for) thou 
 ceasest not to care for all that is." ^ 
 
 Egyptian reUgion rose to an esoteric doctrine which was far 
 above the crude animism from which it started, and tended 
 alternately towards monotheism and pantheism without reaching 
 either or even deciding definitely on its true road. For it at no 
 time embodied either the spiritual message of an apostle or the 
 reasoned system of a thinker. Yet in its dim prevision of real 
 unity underlying differences of form and tradition and its ever 
 closer association of religion with ethics it reached the highest 
 point short of those " discoveries " in the region of spiritual 
 truth which have laid the basis of the world rehgions. 
 
 11. In Babylon, as in Egypt, primitive animism and the 
 magic which is correlative to it, underhe throughout the wor- 
 ship of the greater gods. In its progress to a higher stage the 
 Babylonian rehgion, it would seem, worked by differentiation. 
 The more important natural forces became gods, the inferior 
 ones were, as a general rule, relegated to the secondary position 
 of mere spirits.* But at Babylon these inferior gods became 
 in large measure demons, often malevolent demons,* and the 
 Babylonian magic, which was so important a feature in the life 
 of the people, had special reference to these demons. They could 
 
 1 Griffith, World's Literature, 5312, etc. 
 
 ' From a hymn of the Persian period, late in fifth century B.C. (Breasted, 
 p. 361). 
 
 ' Jastrow, Religion of Babylon and Assyria, p. 49. 
 
 * As an illustration, Nun-gal was, by origin, probably a lower god of 
 Sippar. He disappears as a god, and his name becomes a collective 
 designation for a powerful group q.£ 4ei».ons (i6., 168). 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 413 
 
 be dealt with in one of two different ways, for the bewitched man 
 might either appeal to a sorcerer, who could conlwol the spirit 
 directly, by potions, tying knots which would strangle him, 
 burning images, and so on, or to an exorcist, who would apply 
 to the gods for their help against the demon, and if properly 
 treated would dehver the victim out of their hand. Here is a 
 description of the Storm Demons of Eridu — 
 
 " Seven are they, they are seven. 
 In the subterranean deep they are seven. 
 Perched (?) in the sky they are seven, 
 In a section of the subterranean deep they'were reared. 
 They are neither male nor are they female. 
 They are destructive whirlwinds. 
 They have no wife nor do they beget offspring. 
 Compassion and mercy they do not know. 
 Prayer and supplication they do not hear, 
 Horses bred on the mountains are they. 
 Hostile to Ea are they. 
 Powerful ones among the gods are they. 
 To work mischief in the street they settle themselves in the 
 
 highway, 
 Evil are they, they are evU, 
 Seven are they, they are seven, seven, and again seven are 
 
 they." 1 
 
 Next hear how the demons took possession of a man and how 
 they were driven out — 
 
 " They have used all kinds of charms, 
 to entwine me as with ropes, etc. . . . 
 But I, by command of Marduk, the lord of charms, 
 by Marduk, the master of bewitchment, 
 both the male and female witch, 
 as with ropes I will entwine, 
 as in a cage I wUl catch, 
 as with cords I will tie, 
 as in a net I will overpower, 
 as in a sling I will twist, 
 as a fabric I wiU tear, 
 with dirty water as from a well I will fill, 
 as a wall throw them down." 
 
 This is declaimed by the exorciser and accompanied by 
 symbohc actions. ^ 
 
 Often the gods are described in terms of the crudest animism . 
 When Ut-Napishtim sacrifices after the flood, " The gods inhaled 
 
 1 Jaetrow, 264. ' ib., 272. 
 
414 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the odour, the gods inhaled the sweet odour, the gods gathered 
 like flies around the sacrifice." ^ The finest hymns and prayers 
 are associated with incantation rituals. The efiicacy of prayer 
 depends on its being uttered by the right person and in the right 
 manner, for the approved form of words is of magical efficacy.^ 
 The gods are of limited power. They are taken captive, and 
 released by Marduk, " who showed mercy towards the captured 
 gods, removed the yoke from the gods who were hostile to him." * 
 They sanction the Flood and then bitterly regret, but cannot 
 undo what they have done. The gods wept with Ishtar, " the 
 gods in their depression sat down to weep." * Bel alone was 
 ruthless. He bitterly resented the preservation of Ut-Napishtim 
 — " What person has escaped (?) ? No one was to survive the 
 destruction." The good Ea expostulates with him. , 
 
 " Punish the sinner for his sins, 
 Punish the evil-doer for his evil deeds. 
 But be merciful so as not to root out completely. 
 Be considerate not to destroy everything. 
 Instead of bringing in a deluge, 
 Let lions come and diminish mankind. . . . 
 Let tigers, famine, pestilence, come and waste the land." * 
 
 Thus adjured, Bel came to his senses, took Ut-Napishtim by 
 the hand and was reconciled. 
 
 Thus, as is natural on anthropomorphic principle, there are 
 among gods, as among men, good and bad, kindly rulers and 
 headstrong tyrants. We have seen Ea interceding for mankind. 
 He is the water-god, the giver of fertiUty ; he teaches the arts 
 of civilization, and his cult is favourable to human feehng. He 
 tends to be the god of mankind generally, as dissociated from 
 any particular spot. Marduk, again, is a magnified king, the 
 protector of the weak, he releases the imprisoned, and punishes 
 the evil-doer. But Shamash in the Assyrian cult is the centre 
 of a higher conception than any other deity.* While Ashur and 
 Ishtar are partial to Assyria, the favours of Shamash are be- 
 stowed on the kings for righteousness, and it is in the presence 
 of Shamash that Tiglath-Pileser sets his captives free. The 
 following hymn to Shamash will illustrate his character — 
 
 " The law of mankind dost thou direct. 
 Eternally just in the heavens art thou. 
 Of faithful judgment towards all the world art thou." ' 
 
 1 Jastrow, 603. ' ib., 353. ' ib., 438. * ib., 502. * ib., 504. 
 
 ' With the exception, perhaps, of Sin. See the hjrmn to Sin quoted in 
 Jastrow, p. 303. 
 ' Jastrow, 300. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES OF THOUGHT 415 
 
 Yet in this hymn, which is a prayer for the king's life, the 
 later lines are a distinct echo of the incantation fbrmulae — 
 
 " Cleanse him like a vessel . . . 
 Illumine him like a vessel of . . . 
 Like the copper of a polished tablet let him be bright. 
 Release him from the ban." 
 
 With this may be compared Nebuchadrezzar's hymn to 
 Marduk on his accession — 
 
 " 0, Eternal ruler ! Lord of the Universe ! . . . 
 It is thou who hast created me, 
 
 And thou hast entrusted to me sovereignty over mankind. 
 According to thy mercy, O Lord, which thou bestowest upon 
 
 aU, 
 Cause me to love thy supreme rule. 
 Implant the fear of thy divinity in my heart." ^ 
 
 In such a conception of prayer there was surely the poten- 
 tiality of a high development of ethical religion. Yet worship 
 fails to differentiate itself whoUy from magical incantation,^ and 
 though there are good gods who love justice, they are not fused 
 into the unity of one real creator of things. In spite of some 
 occasional expressions,^ the better opinion appears to be that 
 there was no real monotheistic tendency among the Babylonians. 
 
 12. In the reUgion, or rather the reHgions, of the Greeks, 
 again, as in the hght of modern research and the comparative 
 method we are coming gradually to understand the subject 
 anew, we see three distinct stages of thought intertwined. At 
 the base we have the demons of animism and the magical rites 
 of " riddance." We have the Keres, not awful mysterious fates 
 as they already appear at times to be in Homer, but flitting 
 mischievous demons bringing all manner of ills, driven away with 
 sticks or purged with strong scents and holy plants Uke rue and 
 buckthorn.* We have the conception of a quasi-physical pollu- 
 tion arising now from breach of ceremonial, now from an outrage 
 on the most sacred human relations, and extending to physical 
 objects ^ as well as to man. We have the living, self -avenging 
 curse, the thin ghost squealing like a bat, and crowding to 
 " drink the life-blood in the trench Ulysses made," the animal 
 god, the bogy, the monster brood. Above these fearsome shapes 
 
 ' Jastrow, 296. » ib., 296 soq., 314. 
 
 ^ See, e. g. the hymn to Sin, referred to above, and of. Jastrow, 319. 
 ■* Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 168. 
 ' e. g. the pollution of the earth by blood. 
 
416 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 we have the more gracious, strong, beautiful, and finally ideal 
 human forms of the Olympian gods — essentially mere men and 
 women in the first instance, as every reader of Homer knows, but 
 built on a greater scale ; turbulent, laughter-loving, now tender 
 and friendly, now unreasonably resentful ; joining in the fights of 
 mortal men, and capable of being wounded by them, prosecuting 
 the blood feud, as Poseidon against Odysseus, with no more 
 regard to the inherent justice of the case than the human avenger 
 would show ; placated by sacrifice and trusted to perform their 
 part in the implied sacrificial compact ; united, finally, in intricate 
 theogonies, and so affording a crude basis for the framework of 
 things and the process of creation. But the Olympian gods, 
 though human in their essence, were superhuman in the types 
 of their might, majesty, and beauty. They have incarnated 
 for all subsequent time the ideal types of finite humanity, the 
 satisfaction of a mind reposing on the work that it has done and 
 knowing that it is good, not troubled as yet with the infinite 
 beyond and the poverty of man's power to cope with it. They 
 are " the happy ones," glorified children of a time — ^not as an 
 older generation supposed when the world was young, for the 
 world in Homer's day was already- old, but when for a while it 
 seemed to be renewing its youth under fortunate conditions, 
 beneath a sunny sky. But the Greek mind outgrew anthropo- 
 morphism and the higher development took two directions. On 
 the more purely 'religious side in connection with the Orphic 
 mysteries it followed a line not unlike and greatly infiuenced by 
 the esoteric doctrine of the Egyptian priests. The movement 
 was in part an advance, in part a reversion to older methods. 
 The initiated felt dimly for a higher religious conception by the 
 method of mystical identifications, first between the gods in 
 their various forms — 
 
 " One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos, 
 Yea in all things One God, his name why speak I asunder ? " ^ 
 
 Secondly between the god and the worshipper — 
 
 " I also avow me that I am of your blessed race," 
 
 says the initiated, and the reply is — 
 
 " Happy and Blessed one ; thou shalt be god instead of mortal." ^ 
 
 Similarly in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the soul which 
 passes the tests becomes itself Osiris. But as the Book of tie 
 Dead is essentially a provision of magical formulas, whereby 
 
 ' Harrison, p. 656. ' From an Orphic hymn, translated, ib., 586. 
 
THE EARLY PHASES Ot THOUGHT ill 
 
 admittance to the realms of bligs is to be enforced, so it would 
 seem that the Orphic ritual is at bottom a ritual of magic .^ It is 
 the performance of ceremonial acts of occult efficacy upon which 
 the soul is to rely. Here, as so often in mysticism, the spiritual 
 consciousness overleaps itself and falls back intellectually on 
 primitive confusions, morally on the purges and quasi-physical 
 disinfectants of savage rehgion. It is much if purity of thought 
 is insisted on as a condition and the worshipper is told that " he 
 who enters the incense-laden shrine must be pure, and purity is 
 to be of holy heart." * 
 
 A truer spirituahty is to be found in the reasoned theism of 
 the philosophers and the philosophic poets of Greece, whom the 
 mob of educated and uneducated ahke took for atheists, who 
 were aware that the gods of the popular rehgion were beings 
 made by man in his own image, that ethical purity must be 
 attained by ethical and not by magic methods, and who first 
 taught the world, what it has too often forgotten, that goodness 
 and God are identical. These are the essential doctrines of a 
 spiritual rehgion ; they carry us outside the region of Polytheism, 
 and their consideration must be deferred to a later place. For 
 pol3rtheism proper is outgrown when the stage of philosophic 
 reflection is reached. Its anthropomorphic deities belong to 
 the phase of thought which intervenes between the primitive 
 confusion of categories and the philosophic movement which 
 estabhshes the leading conceptions found in experience as clear- 
 cut, independent objects of thought. It is the stage of the 
 plastic imagination in which the mind is fully capable of forming 
 for itself a concrete imagery of things unseen with all the articu- 
 lateness and vividness of so many objects of perception. Its 
 fictitious personalities are no longer mere pallid doubles of this 
 or that function. They are many-sided beings with distinctly 
 conceived attributes and a regular hfe history. If their origin 
 is traceable to animistic confusions, if their birth is in some 
 primitive personification of a function or an attribute, their 
 adult hfe is passed on a higher plane. Their world is articulate 
 in the sense that its parts are not only distinct but interconnected. 
 The gods are related by ties of blood and pohtical subordination, 
 and in so far as each is responsible for some great department 
 of nature or human hfe, the theogonies which form an integral 
 part of polytheism may be said to form a first attempt, not 
 perhaps at a theory of the universe, but at an imaginative picture 
 
 ' See Harrison, pp. 587-589. 
 
 ' ib., 479. "Oo-io, rendered as holy, means the righteousness which the 
 gods ordain, and is not confined to matters of ceremoniaL 
 E E 
 
418 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of the agencies by which its framework is maintained. The 
 thought of the polytheistic stage is wider in its reach, just as it 
 is more distinct in its representation, than that of animism. Its 
 departmental gods represent a wider grouping of phenomena 
 in proportion as a god of vegetation has a wider scope than the 
 spirit of this particular plant. The endeavour to connect the 
 several gods represent an attempt at a still wider interconnection 
 of the parts of human experience. But all these endeavours go 
 on in the form of concrete imagery and without any critical test 
 of truth or any reflective examination of the conceptions used. 
 The world of ideas is now a picture with many clearly drawn 
 figures in which the several categories are no longer hopelessly 
 interchanged and confused, but the thoughts imbedded in this 
 picture are not yet separated out and held before the' mind as 
 objects of critical examination. It is a world whose parts ex- 
 hibit some order and interconnection, wherein a wider grouping 
 of the phenomena of the perceptual world is mirrored, but this 
 order is built up by imagination with the aid of fanciful analogies 
 and ill-understood myths, adding little to the rational insight 
 into the actual scheme of things. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 
 
 1. In the world of thought dominated by Magic, by Animism, 
 or by Polytheism, what account do men render to themselves of 
 the basis of conduct ? What reasons do they give for the rules 
 which they acknowledge, and what do they suppose to be their 
 meaning and end ? How does the violation of rule affect them, 
 and how do they act when such violation has occurred ? To 
 these questions no single and simple answer can be given. 
 
 No doubt, as was said at the outset, custom is binding upon 
 primitive man, and binding upon him in truth because it is 
 custom. But while this is the real moral force which the on- 
 looker recognizes as the essential point, primitive races have 
 often a definite conception of their own as to the reasons of 
 their obeying custom. Not infrequently its breach will bring 
 misfortune upon the wrong-doer, on some one connected with 
 him, or on the community. Thus the Aleuts hold that the 
 whale avoids dissolute tribes, on which account whalers must 
 avoid women during the fishing season. But the whalers may 
 have to suffer for the sins of others as well as their own, for the 
 whale would punish them if their wives were unfaithful during 
 their absence, or if their sisters were unchaste before marriage.^ 
 Similarly, the Austrahans hold that certain breaches of custom 
 cause the Erkincha disease and other penalties. ^ Among the 
 Eastern Eskimo, though abortion and infanticide are common, 
 an opinion is growing against them on the ground that they 
 bring misfortune in the village where the child's waihng is 
 heard .^ 
 
 The process whereby breach of custom thus brings about its 
 
 ' Eeclus, p. 52; ib., p. 67. Among the Konyaga loose behaviour is 
 considered to be punished by difficult confinements. 
 
 ' Spencer and Gillen, vol. i. pp. 168, 411, 471 ; cf. Howitt, Organization 
 of the Australian Tribes, p. 104, and Tribes of S.-E. Australia, p. 296. 
 
 ' Reclus, p. 34. According to Westermarok (p. 61) unchastity on the part 
 of a girl is considered by the natives of Loango to bring ruin on a country, 
 and some of the Dyaks think that a pregnant unmarried woman is offensive 
 to the superior powers (ib., 63). Among the Atkha Aleuts purification 
 Was required for sexual immorality (Yakof, U.S., 10th Censxis, vol. viii. p. 12). 
 
 419 
 
420 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 own penalty is not always easy to trace. The cases in which we 
 have full information, however, fall into two principal classes. In 
 the first, the connection is " direct," i. e. an evil influence is set 
 up by the misdeed which, like any physical cause, produces 
 disease or whatever the bad result may be : these cases are in 
 line with primitive magic. They involve what we have called the 
 materia magica, and so, thoiigh no magician and no magic art 
 is necessarily involved, the sanction may conveniently be called 
 magical. In other instances the trespass is held to offend a 
 certain spirit, or possibly to put the evil-doer or his friends into 
 the power of the evil spirit. This conception belongs to the 
 department of animism, and here the sanction may be called 
 religious. Finally, the two conceptions can be blended, magical 
 and reUgious elements being entangled together. 
 
 To begin with magic influences. When the Dakota violates 
 a female captive or breaks the rule of continence upon the 
 war-path, he not only displeases the spirits of the deceased, 
 but also the " war -medicine," and on both grounds brings down 
 misfortunes on his party .^ Taboos on intercourse have been 
 frequently mentioned as forming a large portion of primitive life, 
 and as influencing the marriage laws all over the world, and the 
 taboo acts like a magical quality. For instance, the Australian 
 native must not eat food killed by certain relations, nor generally 
 food into which such persons " project their smell." Here the 
 taboo is a quaHty which affects the food, and would directly 
 injure the eater.^ We have seen that over a considerable part 
 of the savage world taboo is the method of protecting property, 
 e. g. in Rotuma the natives are honest, but their honesty arises 
 from the fear that if one touches the food of another the owner 
 might kill him by its means.' In the Melanesian practice * the 
 owner of the property controls the taboo. We are expressly 
 
 1 Schoolcraft, vol. iv. p. 63. According to Sohoolcraft-Drake (vol. i. 
 p. 188) the Wiimebagos attribute their respect for women in war to the direct 
 command of the Great Spirit. Here the sanction is purely religious, but 
 we have seen that the conception of the Great Spirit among the Red Indians 
 is the centre of manifold confusion. 
 
 ^ Spencer and Gillen, vol. i. p. 469. 
 
 ' Gardiner, J. A. I., vol. xxvii. p. 409. We have referred above to the 
 imprecations pronounced over the boundary-stones by the Babylonians. 
 The imprecations would make the stone itself avenge any disturbance of 
 it (Maspero, p. 762). Similarly the stones set up by Laban and Jacob 
 are witnesses to the division of the land (Gen. xxxi. 45-52). At a later 
 stage the stone has become inanimate, but a curse on any one who shall 
 move it is pronounced by the whole people (Deut. xxvii.). The curse is 
 still the punishment, though its operation is perhaps theological rather than 
 magical. 
 
 * Referred to above. Part I. chap. viii. ; Part 11. chap. i. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EAELY THOUGHT 421 
 
 told that it has no authority from a spirit.^ The infectiousness 
 of the taboo is, as we have seen, an important element in early- 
 criminal law, the offender who has broken the taboo transferring 
 its dangerous character to himself, and so not only incurring a 
 curse, but also involving himself in the penalty of exclusion from 
 the community.^ Thus the breaking of taboo carries its own 
 punishment. The process works automatically and without 
 need of the intervention of a spirit. In a quite similar way we 
 have seen that some forms of oath and ordeal provide automatic 
 punishments of perjury. A fetish object is laid on the stomach 
 in Great Bassam, a stone is powdered and drunk in water in 
 Ashanti. The operation in both cases is magical.^ Often in 
 early society the laws are protected by a curse pronounced by 
 the people as a whole or by a priest as their representative on any 
 one who shall break them. Thus, we have the well-known hst 
 of curses in the Book of Deuteronomy, and a quite analogous 
 set of inscriptions recording the curses pronounced against 
 offenders in the early Greek states.* In the same way, paternal 
 authority is fortified by the power of the parental curse and 
 blessing. This action is automatic, and though we may say that 
 it incorporates an ethical idea it fails to work in strict accordance 
 with ethical conditions. The operation of the magical agency is, 
 if the term may be coined, paramoral — working by the side of 
 the ethical principle, but not always on the same lines. The 
 point is well illustrated in the story of the sons of Isaac. Jacob 
 secures by fraud the blessing intended for Esau, and once given, 
 the blessing cannot be withdrawn. It is quite comparable to a 
 piece of goods made over once for all and not to be resumed. 
 The most Esau can hope is that the store may not be exhausted — 
 " Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me ? " " Hast thou but 
 one blessing, my father ? " * Yet if the blessing were the true 
 expression of the father's loving gratitude won by good service, 
 Jacob should rather have had a curse for his deceit. 
 
 2. Grotesque as the magical doctrine of punishment appears 
 when stated in set terms or illustrated in concrete practice, 
 
 * Codrington, J. A. I., vol. x. p. 279. Compare the iise of stones by 
 Eskimo (Reolus, p. 110, and of. Tylor on the mending of hedges by a 
 cotton thread among the Kunama, Contemp. Review, 1873, p. 704). 
 
 ' See Jevons, Introduction to the History of Religion, pp. 70-87. 
 » Post, A. J., ii. 107, 108. 
 
 * Deut. xxvii. 15 et seq. Cf. Harrison, p. 142, for selections from the 
 " Dirse of Teos." " Whosoever maketh baneful drugs against the Teans, 
 . . . may he perish, both he and his offspring," etc. 
 
 = Gen. xxvii. 36-38. 
 
422 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 puerile as the whole machinery of magic stones, avenging beans, 
 and death-dealing gibberish looks when viewed from behind the 
 scenes, yet the conception of an inherent retribution following 
 as an automatic consequence of the wrong act lies close to 
 the permanent moral consciousness of mankind, closer than the 
 alternative theory of punishment db extra inflicted by a vengeful 
 spirit or a just god. For here as elsewhere, the magical doctrine 
 merely crystallizes a diffused psychological state into a material 
 object or a physical occurrence. We can aU put ourselves 
 without the slightest difficulty into the mental attitude of the 
 savage who breaks a taboo. We have many things that are 
 taboo to us and we know what it is to handle them. Whatever 
 we beheve or disbelieve in rehgion or in morals, there remain for 
 all of us certain things to do which affects us with a greater or 
 less degree of mental discomfort, varying from uneasiness to 
 acute remorse or the extreme of cold self-horror. These are 
 in strictness feehngs attendant or consequent upon the action. 
 Externalize them, turn what we feel about the act into some 
 physical attribute of the thing or person with which the act is 
 concerned, some noxious emanation, some death-deahng " smell," 
 and the feeling becomes a taboo. Once again, take away the 
 taboo and at first sight the basis of the feehng seems to be re- 
 moved, and moral obligation to disappear. But then comes a 
 rational consideration of the whole circumstances of the case — 
 the dehberate view of the total effect of the bad act on our own 
 character, on the lives and happiness of others, on the social 
 order, on everything that we hold in affection and esteem. On 
 this view we can see that our horror has its legitimate function, 
 that it has grown up as an integral part of the conditions which 
 constitute us fit members of a human society, so that before we 
 can reason out all that a bad act impHes we have a feeling about 
 it in which those consequences are in a manner represented. 
 Now this feehng is the great permanent fact of the moral con- 
 sciousness persisting through all stages of development. The 
 conceptions to which it gives rise vary greatly, and their varia- 
 tions affect and are affected by the whole scope and character 
 of practical morality, so that their history is the history of moral 
 development. The simplest of all ways of conceiving the facts 
 is that of attributing malefic quality to the bad act itself — ^the 
 act, or some person or thing affected by it, taking on itself by 
 the primitive mental process of assimilation the quahty of the 
 mental feehng which arises in us when the act is contemplated 
 in our minds. So near, indeed, is this to the permanent tenden- 
 cies of the moral consciousness that language to this day speaks 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 423 
 
 of the act as noble, base, or horrible, as if these were quahties 
 attaching to a physical event, and not expressions for feehngs 
 which the physical event excites and psychological and social 
 consequences that follow from it. 
 
 We may even go a step further, and say that in considerable 
 measure wrong-doing is still conceived rather magically than 
 ethically. Take, for example, the case of sexual intercourse. It 
 is hardly too much to say that for the average moral consciousness 
 this is still held to be sanctified by marriage as by the removal 
 of a taboo, so that neither the production of children without 
 means to maintain them, nor the indulgence of physical passion 
 without psychical love, is strongly condemned when covered by 
 the ceremony. On the other hand, the woman who breaks the 
 taboo uncovered by the ceremony is stamped once for all with the 
 scarlet letter, without regard to the question whether she was 
 the experienced temptress or one whose fault was merely to have 
 loved and trusted too much. She is marked, tabooed. Though 
 condemned most loudly by the self-styled " morahst," the con- 
 demnation of her, in nine cases out of ten, is not reaUy moral — 
 that is to say, based on a rational view of her character and its 
 potentiahties for good and evil, but magical, based on a supposed 
 bad quality, acquired once for all by the breach of a taboo, in 
 view of which she is a piece of damaged goods in the social 
 market. And, like all magical qualities, the taboo is eminently 
 infectious, and all respectable women are seen gathering their 
 skirts about them to avoid that contact with the offender which 
 would communicate the stain to themselves. 
 
 On the other hand, a man may be said to incur a magical 
 rather than an ethical condemnation in cases of cowardice and 
 perhaps of certain kinds of dishonesty. The " prison-taint " 
 hangs in a measure about one who has ever been convicted and 
 degrades him below much greater criminals who have kept 
 within the law. In aU these matters the function of the ethical 
 thinker is to plead for that rational consideration of character 
 and conduct, that (myyvwt^y) , which is the truest safeguard against 
 Pharisaism, and which, making us aware of the extreme faUibiUty 
 of our judgments upon other people, bids us confine such judg- 
 ments to the minimum point requisite for regulating our deahngs 
 with prudence and justice. We must so far " judge " a convicted 
 cheat as to beware of trusting him for the future, but as to the 
 intrinsic worth of his character when all is summed up, and how 
 it compares with that of many who need no repentance — of this, 
 omniscience alone can judge. " Judge not " is a standing protest 
 against magical condemnations. 
 
424 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 3. Close as the magical judgment stands to the permanent 
 conditions of the moral consciousness it is not the only form in 
 which the primitive mind conceives the sanction of conduct. 
 
 As the behef in spirits generally accompanies that in the 
 efficacy of magic, so the magical conception of punishment very 
 readily yields to or blends with the conception of spiritual 
 intervention. Thus, the oath often takes the form of invoking 
 the vengeance of a spirit.^ In the case of the North American 
 Indians we have seen that the spirit and the " war-medicine " 
 worked together to secure self-restraint. The Dakotas attribute 
 bad luck in hunting to an offence committed by some of the 
 hunter's family against the spirits of the dead. The taboo on an 
 offender may be due to the fact that the spirits are wroth with 
 him. Thus, a murderer may be avoided because he is pursued 
 by the ghost of his victim and, again, the avenger of blood who 
 fails to do his duty may himself be pursued by the indignant 
 spirit of his slain relative. We are not, indeed, to suppose that 
 the ordinary spirit of animism has a detached or impartial 
 interest in human conduct ; on the contrary, animism is for the 
 most part non-moral, and a good deal of it is immoral. There 
 is no reason why the spirit of a river should be any more con- 
 cerned with morality than the river itself, while, on the contrary, 
 there is some reason why the spirit of a disease should be more 
 immoral than the disease itself, for, abstracted from the spirit 
 which guides or animates it, smallpox is not a being which bears 
 ill-will to men, but the spirit of smallpox is a monster going about 
 seeking whom it may devour, and perhaps demanding sacrifices 
 to appease it. Hence, savage animism tends often to what, 
 from our point of view, are cruelties and immoralities which 
 would otherwise not occur. The spirits of men, however, may 
 be naturally expected to look upon conduct just as men them- 
 selves do, and consequently will applaud the good and reprobate 
 the evil in the same way. Here is a possible means of connecting 
 rehgion with morality which is not left altogether unused in the 
 savage world. Thus, the Manes become the natural guardians 
 of morahty in the family ; the son who kills his father is naturally 
 punished by the ghost just as he would be by the living man had 
 his blow not been fatal.^ It is but a shght extension of this idea 
 that the spirit of the father should avenge other crimes, or that 
 the spirits of remoter ancestors should participate in the ven- 
 
 ^ Post, Afrikanische Juriaprudenz, ii. 127. 
 
 * See Leist, p. 314, who quotes Iliad, xxi. 412; Odyssey, xi. 280. The 
 only doubt in such passages is whether it is the purse or the ghost of the 
 parent which operates. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 425 
 
 geance, so that the boy who strikes his father or mother "is 
 devoted " to the Divi 'parentum,^ or that a similar fate should 
 punish other crimes in a family such as incest or cruelty to a 
 mother.^ Again, when customs have been first instituted by 
 an ancestor or a predecessor of an heroic age his spirit continues 
 to take an interest in their observance, and he is angry with and 
 perhaps punishes those who disregard them. As far down in 
 the scale as the natives of South-Eastern AustraHa we find spirits 
 of this kind. The tribes north of the Herbert River recognize a 
 being caUed Kohin, who once came down to earth, but now has 
 his home in the Milky Way, though he roams about by night on 
 earth, killi ng those whom he meets. He is offended by breaches 
 of the marriage taboos, by the eating of forbidden food, or by 
 neglect to wear mourning for the prescribed period, and sooner 
 or later the offending native dies.* 
 
 4. The spirit of animism, however, is not as such a moral being 
 whom wickedness offends : he is concerned only with the conduct 
 which affects himself, and so animistic rehgion often presents 
 itself in the mass as wholly non-moral.* The savage prays in the 
 
 ' Law of Servius TuUius (Bruns, p. 14). 
 
 ^ Leist, p. 820, quoting Iliad, ix. 454, and Odyssey, ii. 134. 
 
 ' Generally speaking, in South-East Australia " a belief exists in an 
 anthropomorphic supernatural being who lives in the sky, and who is 
 supposed to have some kind of influence on the morals of the natives " 
 (Howitt, p. 500). 
 
 Mr. Howitt adds that " no such belief seems to obtain in the remainder 
 of Australia " ; and Messrs. Spencer and Gillen declare still more definitely 
 that the Central Australian natives " have no idea whatever of the existence 
 of any supreme being who is pleased if they follow a certain line of what 
 we call moral conduct, and displeased if they do not do so. They have 
 not the vaguest idea of a personal individual other than an actual living 
 member of the tribe who approves or disapproves of their conduct, so far 
 as anything like what we call morality is concerned " (Spencer and Gillen, 
 vol. ii. p. 491). 
 
 The only possible exception is in the case of the Kaitish tribe, who 
 recognize a superior being called Atnatu, who is displeased it the bull-roarer 
 is not sounded in the initiation ceremony. 
 
 • Thus, Captain Ellis denies broadly that there is any connection between 
 religion and morals in any of the three peoples of whom he writes (the 
 Tshi, the Ewe, and the Yoruba), because, he says, the savage only revenges 
 what aSects himself (Yoniba,'p. 293). Other instances that I have found 
 scattered among the accounts of a large number of peoples are the follow- 
 ing. In Africa, among the Baaonge the ghost of a father appears to his 
 son in a dream and chides him for bad conduct (Overbergh, Mon., iii. 
 325). Among the Koita of New Guinea the ghost would punish any neglect 
 of funeral rites and any infringement of tribal custom (Seligmann, 
 p. 191), while, among the Roro tribes, the ghosts bring good luck, but if 
 annoyed by too much quarrelling among the women, may spoil the hunting 
 (Seligmann, p. 310). The Fuegians are said to believe in a spirit in the form 
 of a big blacjk man, who sends stonns when they do wrong (Garson, J. A. I. 
 
426 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 simplest and most direct manner for the fulfilment of his desires, 
 without the smallest regard to what we should consider moral 
 obligations. The warrior does not even stop to explain the 
 justice of his cause to the deity as more civilized men are wont 
 to do. " Great Quahootze," prays a Nootka Indian in preparing 
 for war, " let me live, not be sick ; find the enemy, not fear him ; 
 find him asleep and kiU a great many of him." ^ 
 
 The spirit is moved by the same considerations which move 
 the savage himself. An offering pleases him and he will pay for 
 it. He may be expected to stand by his friends hke a primitive 
 man, and hate his enemies, according to the same model. For 
 the rest, his character is drawn from the object which he animates, 
 or the process which he personifies, or the function over which 
 he presides. Thus, if he is a disease spirit he is evil, and the very 
 living worship of evil spirits together with the comparative neglect 
 of those which enjoy a good character is in itself a strong mark 
 
 XV. 145). Where higher gods come into play, the ethical influence is 
 more often noted. Thus, among the Coast Salish, the Great Transformer 
 will some time descend from heaven again and punish the bad (Boas, 
 B.^A., 1890, p. 580). The Comanches, according to Schoolcraft (ii. 225), 
 believe that the Great Spirit punishes them for lying and other offences. 
 Among the Winnibagoes respect for women in war is said to be enjoined 
 by the Great Spirit (Schoolcraft, iv. 53). Among the Tsimshian, though 
 we do not hear of future retribution, heaven hates murderers, adulterers, 
 and foolish talkers, while it loves those who pity the poor and do not try 
 to become rich by selling dear (Boas, B. A., 1889, p. 846). 
 
 Among the Blackfeet, the sun is all-beneficent, and good to those who do 
 right. Penances are done in the medicine lodge to please him, and a 
 woman, anxious for a sick child, builds a lodge to the sun and vows she has 
 not committed adultery (Grinnell, Blackfeet Lodge Tales, 258, 264). Among 
 the Paharias, he who obeys God's commands must neither injure, abuse, 
 beat, nor kill any one ; nor rob, nor steal, nor waste food and clothes ; nor 
 quarrel; but he will praise God morning and evening, and women must 
 do this too. Such a man is bom again as a chief, while others become 
 animals (Dalton, p. 265 seq. — some doubt as to authenticity). Among 
 the Kayans, Hose and McDougall state that fear of the toh serves as a 
 constant check on the breach of customs, while the part which the major 
 spirits, or gods, play, remains extremely vague. On the whole, the gods 
 make for morality but, " except so far as conduct is accurately prescribed 
 by custom and tradition, their influence seems to be negligible " (ii. 204). 
 Among the simple Punans, " religious beliefs probably influence their con- 
 duct less strongly than do those of the Kayans " (i6., p. 187). The Karaya 
 are said to have no morals in their religion (Ehrenreich, op. cit., 34). 
 In British Guiana, im Thurm denies any connection of morality with anim- 
 ism {op. cit., p. 342). The Gonds are said to have no moral deity (Forsyth, 
 Highlands of Central India, 145). The Batak religion is said to be wholly 
 non-moral (Muller, op. cit., p. 13). Compare Tylor (Contemporary Seview, 
 April 1873, p. 710) on the Papuans and Caribs. Speaking generally, 
 Professor Tylor considers that savage animism is almost devoid of the 
 ethical element {Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 360). 
 
 ^ Tylor, vol. ii. p. 366, where a niunber of similar prayers for direct 
 piaterial advaptages are given. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 427 
 
 of the low ethical standard of animism. As an ancestor who 
 cares for the family welfare, as protector of a speftial place or a 
 class of people, or as the avenger who may be called upon in the 
 formula of an oath, a spirit may resent injuries or insults affecting 
 his authority. It is only in this indirect manner that the lower 
 animism provides a sanction of conduct. 
 
 A step forward is taken when spirits arise which are them- 
 selves personifications of the moral order, or of some portions 
 thereof. We can conceive such impersonations arising either 
 on the basis of animistic or of magical conceptions. What is 
 essential is that they should embody a certain disinterestedness 
 which transforms their action from the sphere of mere resent- 
 ment to that of justice. Thus, as long as the father's spirit is 
 merely acting in revenge of a personal injury, it is not really a 
 moral agency, but if it is held to supervise the family laws 
 without reference to its own interests, it begins to be a disinter- 
 ested judge. Similarly, there is nothing moral in the action of a 
 curse as such, but if the curse, having materialized into a quasi- 
 spirit, is set in motion by certain specified breaches of morahty, 
 and by those only, it has acquired a more judicial character. 
 We seem to see a transition of this kind going on the case of 
 the Erinys. At first probably a " dark-flitting " curse which 
 can be set in motion, for example, by the angry parent, or the 
 despised suppliant, it is already in Homer a spirit dwelling in 
 Hades, and a hard-smiting goddess who avenges wrongs. At 
 times it seems to come without regard to any other considera- 
 tions at the bidding of those who have the right to call on it. 
 Thus, for his unwitting sin against his mother, OEdipus suffers 
 " all that the Erinyes of a mother accomplish." ^ The father of 
 Phoenix, though he certainly had httle right on his side, called 
 on the hateful Erinyes, and his curse was aceompUshed.^ Iris 
 reminds Poseidon that the Erinyes always wait upon an elder.^ 
 At times, too, the Erinyes seem to be carrying out a vicarious 
 punishment with a certain bUnd and mechanical fatahty, as when 
 the Harpies carry off the daughters of Pandareos, notwithstand- 
 ing all the goddesses had done for them, and give them to the 
 hateful Erinyes to haunt them on account, apparently, of their 
 father's crime.* At other times the Erinyes are rather the 
 avengers of certain wrongs, of the despised beggar,^ and of the 
 broken oath — for which " beneath the earth they punish men." 
 Here they are really protectors of certain branches of the moral 
 law. Thus, what is at one point merely a curse embodying the 
 
 1 Odyssey, xi. 280. ' Iliad, ix. 454. ' ib., xv. 204, 
 
 * O^ssey, XX. 60-78. ' ib., xvii. 475, 
 
428 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 resentment of an injured party, becomes at another a spirit 
 dwelling in Hades, flitting in the dark and smiting hard when 
 set in motion by those who have the- power to do so, and in yet 
 others a spirit watching over certain branches of moraUty. In 
 the first case, where the curse is a mere instrument of revengeful 
 feehng, there is nothing specifically moral. In the last, where 
 the curse falls impartially on any breaker of given laws, the 
 moral element is clear. Between the two, the curse that can 
 be set in motion by definite authorities under definite conditions 
 seems, at least in the case of the Erinyes, to be the link.^ 
 
 The Erinys is still the avenger of wrongs done to individuals 
 and of special cases of wrong-doing,^ but in the goddess Themis 
 the Greeks of the Homeric age had a more generaUzed con- 
 ception of a patron of justice. Themis is distinctly a goddess, 
 she receives the gods at their gathering for the banquet on 
 Olympus,* but she has a double relation to human justice — ^in 
 the first place, a general oversight ; and in the second place, a 
 special regard for the divine traditions which are ever growing 
 up through the decisions of oracles, the Upa koI ocria, and to her 
 sphere belong those customary rights which, in early society, 
 men who are unprotected by belonging to a family have no 
 human means of enforcing, and thus in particular the stranger 
 and the beggar and the suppHant are under her care.* 
 
 While the Erinyes and Themis are strictly independent beings, 
 their functions become closely associated with the gods,^ and 
 especially with Zeus, the chief god of Olympus. Zeus acts in 
 accordance with Themis. In the Iliad he already punishes un- 
 just decisions with storms,^ and in his capacity of Zeus Xenios 
 is the special protector of the stranger and supphant. In each 
 several capacity he appears under the appropriate name — 
 
 As Zeus Timoros, he is the god of retribution ; as Zeus Hikesios, 
 the god to whom the suppUant flies ; as Zeus Apotropaios, he is 
 the averter of ill; as Zeus Horkios, the god of the oath, who 
 
 1 I am indebted to Mr. A. Sidgwiok for a valuable note in which the 
 above passages, with others, are collated. 
 
 ' In later thought, as in the well-known fragment of Heraclitus, the 
 Erinyes appear as guardians of " law in the universe." They " preserve 
 the stars from wrong." On the whole subject, see Miss Harrison's work, 
 pp. 213-239, and Leist, pp. 320, 321. 
 
 » Leist, p. 207 ; Iliad, xv. 87. 
 
 ♦ Leist, p. 211. 
 
 ' In the case of Phoenix, mentioned above, though the prayer is addressed 
 to the Erinyes, the cvirse is carried out by Zeus of the underworld and 
 Persephone. Both Erinyes and gods attend on the beggar (Odyeaey, 
 xvii. 476). 
 
 » Iliad, xvi. 385, quoted by Leist, p. 209. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 429 
 
 punishes perjury, and by whom the Athenian judges swear .^ 
 The different epithets are themselves half person^^cations, and 
 Zeus is in a sense a different being in each capacity, just as in 
 the mediaeval world Our Lady of Embrun was and was not the 
 same being as Our Lady of Paris. The function wavers between 
 being a god itself and being only the attribute of a god. But in 
 the most logical anthropomorphism, Zeus is one god who super- 
 vises the moral order generally, and whose punishments are 
 carried out by the Erinyes. The spirit of animism serves the 
 gods of the higher stage. 
 
 The greatest of the sons of Zeus had also a large part to play 
 in the ethics of Greece, and particularly in the side of ethics that 
 touches law, statecraft, and inter-state relations. The special 
 connection of Apollo with the iroXts dates from an early stage of 
 his career.^ Participation in his sacra is at Athens a test of 
 civic status, and he is especially associated with the admission 
 as matter of law of a justifiable homicide that needs no more than 
 ceremonial purification.* Though not ashamed to be a slave- 
 owner himself, he assisted in the emancipation of slaves. His 
 
 ^ On the moral functions of Zeiis, see Famell, vol. i. p. 64 ff. We get a 
 similar development in the Roman religion. Here the tendency to deify 
 abstractions, actions, or functions is early and persistent. Thus Satvimus 
 suggests no personality, but rather a sphere of operations (whether we 
 take the name as referring to sowing or seed maturing in the soil), in which 
 a certain numen is helpful " (Warde Fowler, Boman Beligious Experience, 
 p. 118). It is probable that many of the more specialized function-gods 
 (Sondergotter) are of later origin, but if this is so it illustrates the persistence 
 of the tendency in the more formal stages of a relatively organized religion 
 (ib., pp. 168—164). Now gods of harvest functions have no peculiar moral 
 interest, but we also have Spes, Concordia, Pudicitia, Pietas, etc., who 
 foster the appropriate qualities. These are mere spiritualized abstractions, 
 and bear the same relation to Hope, Concord, Modesty, and Piety that the 
 spirit of an object does to the object itself. But we also find that the 
 function-spirit is associated with one of the greater gods as his epithet : 
 for instance, we have Fides associated closely with Jupiter. Fides is the 
 spirit who protects the oath ; Jupiter as Deus Fidius is the god who pro- 
 tects the oath. PubUc acts of the nation are sworn by Jupiter Lapis, in 
 which there is probably the blending of a god with a fetish. While Faith 
 is an attribute of Jupiter, Faith has also her own cult and temple close to 
 the Temple of Jupiter. In the same way Victoria is worshipped as well as 
 Jupiter Victor, and Libertas along with Jupiter Liber. As the tendency 
 to personify abstractions persisted in Rome, some of these epithet-gods may 
 even be later in time than the gods themselves, but be that as it may, they 
 illustrate the same ambiguity between the god and the function which we 
 find in the Greek religion. See Wissowa, Religion der Bomer, especially 
 pp. 22, 47, 48, 103 S. 
 
 2 Famell, vol. iv. p. 161. 
 
 ' Whether religion took the lead in this reform, as Dr. Famell is in- 
 clined to think (pp. 177, 306), or whether we should say rather that a higher 
 and more human religion provided means of wiping away a stain which 
 lower magico-religious ideas first imputed, is a question which cannot in 
 this special case be definitely resolved. 
 
430 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 oracle, without having any idealistic message for Greece, teaches 
 the current morality at its best, dwelling on moderation and 
 restraint, insisting on the inward side of conduct, denouncing 
 perjury and breach of trust .^ But beyond aU this Delphi became 
 something of a spiritual centre for all Greece, and it was a genial 
 centre, making not only for national harmony and inter -state 
 justice and good faith, but for higher civiUzation and artistic and 
 intellectual development. As the guardian of the ttoXk Apollo 
 was the patron of colonies, and Greek expansion was guided, 
 if not stimulated and promoted, from the spiritual capital.^ His 
 worship made for the recognition of the common Hellenic bond, 
 and is associated with the development of the method of settling 
 inter-state disputes by arbitration which was the needed correc- 
 tive to the separation of the Greek states and is the model of 
 our nascent international justice. The Delphic rehgion failed 
 by the very fieTpiorris, which was its chief virtue, to raise the 
 whole rehgion of Greece to a higher plane, but it gave the sanction 
 of the religious tradition to the workaday morahty of the private 
 citizen, the jurist, and the statesman, and that — ^unhke so many 
 reUgions — without let or hindrance but with actual sympathy 
 and happiness to the thinker and creator. 
 
 5. In the conception of a supreme god, the protector of the 
 whole or of the most essential part of the moral order, we have 
 come to the threshold of a spiritual rehgion, but we have not 
 yet arrived at the conception of a moral order of the universe, 
 nor at the principle that God is good of necessity because he is 
 God. The immoraUties attributed to the gods of polytheism 
 are notorious, and though it is fair to urge that they belong to 
 the world of primitive conceptions wherein the gods had their 
 birth, still, the very fact that they are retained militates, as the 
 Greek philosophers knew, against a spiritual rehgion. The gods 
 themselves suffered punishment for their wrong-doing. Apollo 
 was compelled to become the slave of a mortal, and a regular 
 penalty of eight years passed without nectar or ambrosia lay 
 upon the Olympians who swore falsely by the Styx. If the 
 gods are interested in sin, they are appeasable by sacrifice, and 
 for occult reasons which the polytheist never made clear to him- 
 self, but which were associated with his conception of vicarious 
 responsibihty, the gods themselves put the impulse to sin into 
 
 1 Famell, IV. 211. For the betrayal of the suppliant, of. the well-known 
 story of Glauous (Herodt., VI. chap. 86). Perhaps more remarkable for a 
 richly endowed oracle is the doctrine of the widow's mite (Farnell, 210) 
 aind the depreciation of magical purification {ib., 212). 
 
 2 ib., 200. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 431 
 
 men's miads. The Ate, which compels a man to foUy or crimSj 
 is a curse implanted in his mind by that same Ejinys who will 
 avenge the deed, and punish him for following the impulse 
 implanted by herself .^ 
 
 6. Meanwhile, the connection of religion with morals develops 
 on another line ; the misfortunes which follow vrrong-doing may 
 not be manifested in this life, but whether conceived as the 
 automatic consequences of the act, or as due to the wrath of 
 the spirits, they may fall upon the soul in its Ufe beyond the 
 grave. In an elementary form the conception of retribution in 
 a future life appears within the savage world, and though in 
 many cases it is probably imported from civilized religions, 
 there is no reason to doubt that there are uncivilized peoples 
 among whom it has grown up spontaneously. The normal 
 theory of animism, however, conceives the soul as continuing to 
 live a hfe comparable to that which it enjoyed upon this earth, 
 and dependent upon similar conditions. Its well-being depends, 
 not upon its own actions in this hfe, but upon its receiving 
 proper care from relations and descendants after death. It 
 must be suitably buried, properly housed, and duly fed. And 
 this remains the dominant conception upon which notions of duty 
 to the dead depend, even when other elements enter in. These 
 elements appear in different forms which are by no means whoUy 
 ethical in character. Sometimes the future life is itself a privilege 
 of caste, as among the Tongans.^ Sometimes the fate of the 
 dead depends on the manner of death. ^ Among the Nairs the 
 childless woman vidll suffer in the future, a conception which 
 perhaps connects itself rather with the necessity of the support 
 of the dead soul by children than with retribution proper.* 
 
 ^ Odyssey, xv. 233, cited by Leist, p. 321. Compare Iliad, xix. 87, where 
 Agamemnon excuses his folly (4yu S' ovk atriSs eifii) because " Zeus and 
 Fate and dark-flitting Erinys " put a wild infatuation into his mind. 
 The infatuation (&rn) three lines lower is herself a goddess and daughter 
 of Zeus, " who moves through the heads of men injuring them " — a capital 
 instance of the interchange between magically conceived quality and spirit. 
 At a later date, especially in .^Ischylus, there is an attempt to elaborate the 
 theory of Ate upon the principle of vicarious justice. A father brings down 
 a curse which besets the children and the children's children, all of whom 
 add to the guilt until the accumulated iniquity is washed out by a tre- 
 mendous catastrophe. In Herodotus we have a similar order of ideas, 
 but with a special stress on the overweening presumption of the individual 
 which awakens the jealousy of God and brings down punishment. 
 
 ^ Tylor, vol. ii. p. 22. Sometimes the dead retain in a future life the 
 social position they held in this : e. g. among the Yoruba (Ellis, p. 127). 
 
 ' Thus, among the Mioronesians, those who die in peace reach Paradise 
 while others fall into hell (Waitz, vol. v., ii. p. 142). 
 
 * Reolus, p. 159. 
 
432 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Among the Western Eskimo the soul has choice of two abodes, 
 one above and one at the bottom of the sea, which is preferred 
 as less inclement. Here dwell heroic whalers, men who have 
 committed suicide rather than burden their famOies, and well- 
 tattooed women who have died in childbirth ; others get there 
 only by crossing a narrow bridge, or by other dangerous and 
 hurtful paths.^ The Ainu hold that while all spirits go to Hades, 
 the good pass on to the place of God, and the wicked to the wet 
 underground world, a message from the Creator being sent 
 through the fire-goddess to direct where the soul is to go.^ Often 
 the warriors retain their supremacy in the world to come : the 
 primitive Norseman continued to fight and to feast in Walhalla, 
 and similarly the Tupinambas of Brazil think that those who 
 have lived weU — i. e. those who have well avenged themselves 
 and eaten many enemies — will live in beautiful gardens, while 
 cowards will be tormented.' Generally speaking, the savage 
 view of the future life, in proportion as it deserts the strict theory 
 of the continuance of the present mode of life, is ill defined and 
 extremely confused. The soul haunts the grave, and requires 
 supplies, and yet it goes to another world, or is reincarnated in 
 another human being or an animal. How far it is reaUy the 
 merits of the deceased that determine his fate and how he is 
 judged, or by what method his sins are weighed against his 
 virtues, it is generally very difiBcult to determine.* The evidence 
 
 ' Reclus, p. 103. Among the Central Eskimo those who have been 
 kind to the poor and hungry, and have been happy on this earth, those who 
 have been killed by accident, suicide or violence, and women who have 
 died in childbu'th, get to heaven; while murderers, the unkind, other 
 offenders, and those who die of disease go to Sedna's house and cannot 
 leave it (Boas, B. B. E., 1885, p. 590). Among the Behring Straits 
 Eskimo, those who die naturally go to the underworld, but thieves, 
 sorcerers, witches, are in some way imcomfortable after death (Nelson, 
 B. B. E., xviii. 423). 
 
 2 Batchelor, The Ainu of Japan, p. 236. 
 
 ' Tylor, vol. ii. p. 86. Other instances of savage belief in retribution 
 are quoted by Tylor, p. 93. 
 
 * Among a large number of ethnographical papers chosen for ac- 
 counts of secular custom I have found the following references to Future 
 Betribution — 
 
 In North America the Creeks are said to believe in future retribution 
 (Bartram, Trans. Am. Ethn. Society, 1853, p. 27); so did the Natchez (Le 
 IPetit, in the Jesuit Belations, vol. Ixviii. p. 129). 
 
 Among the Haidah, murderers, thieves, those who disobeyed the shaman, 
 were tormented in the cloud region, or if especially bad were turned into 
 bears (Harrison, J. A. I., xxi. p. 19). 
 
 Among the Western Deni, while the soul generally lived miserably on 
 dry toads (Hill-Tout, Ethnology of North America, 178), it would seem that 
 virtuous people might get a new birth (Morice, Proceedings of the Canadian 
 Institute, vol. vii. p. 161). 
 
 Among the Nooika the world of souls is in the earth, but chiefs and 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 433 
 
 taken as a whole indicates that a notion of future retribution 
 arises occasionally in animistic religion in qualiUcation of the 
 
 good men who always pray to the sun and moon, go to heaven (Boas, 
 1890, p. 597). 
 
 The Loucheux are said to believe in future retribution (Hardisty, 
 Smithsonian Reports, 1866, p. 318). 
 
 But of the Eastern Dini it is said that their dim conception of the Great 
 Spirit has no influence on conduct because there is no future retribution 
 (Ross, ib., p. 306). 
 
 The LUlooet thought that the soul of a man who had not supplicated the 
 chief, or danced properly, would be lost (Teit, Jesup Expedition, p. 277). 
 Among the Ojibways there was a happy place for the good departed, while 
 cowards wandered in the darkness (P. Jones, History of the Ojibway 
 /ndiaTis, p. 102). Among the Omaha, the spirit survives. According to two 
 natives, the old men used to say the good men go to the good spirit and the 
 bad to the bad one. The whole conception seems very vague (Dorsey, 
 Siouan CiUts, pp. 419-420). 
 
 The Assiniboins are said to beUeve that, when they get South, the good 
 and brave find women and buffaloes, while the wicked and cowardly are 
 confined to an island without pleasures {op. cit., 484-485). 
 
 The Mandana also hold that the existence of the dead in the South 
 depends on the nature of their life in this world, but here there is some 
 evidence of white influence (p. 512), while the Hidatsa have the bridge 
 story (p. 513). 
 
 The Paressi believe in future retribution, but probably under Christian 
 influence (Von der Steinen, p. 435). 
 
 Among the Caribs, in the seventeenth century, it was thought that the 
 dead would go to the Fortunate Islands, but cowards to a barren island, 
 where they would be slaves (De Roohefort, p. 43). 
 
 The Padam Abora hold some sort of retribution, probably under Hindu 
 influence (Dalton, 22). 
 
 The Bailagas believe in retribution, and enumerate the possible sins of 
 the deceased in order to avert it (J. F. Metz, p. 82). 
 
 They also let loose a calf at the funeral to bear the sins (Metz, and Rivers, 
 The Todas, p. 377). A calf also figures in the Toda ceremony, possibly 
 with the same significance. The Toda dead have to cross a bridge and the 
 bad fall into a kind of purgatory, which, however, does not seem to have 
 much influence on the people (Rivers, p. 399). 
 
 The Sonthals hold by retribution (E. G. Man, Sonthalia, p. 142). 
 
 The Sakai and Jakun build a house for the soul, and the Semang place 
 food and drink on the grave. But it also seems that the souls have to cross 
 a bridge, where the wicked fall into a boiling lake. We may here assume 
 an external influence grafted on a primitive continuance theory (W. W. 
 Skeat, J. A. I., xxxii. 135, 138, and see below). 
 
 Among the Singpho, good spirits live in the sky, while bad ones become 
 /tigers and insects. In the plain the Buddhistic myth of the bridge across 
 boiling water appears (Wehrli, I. A. E., xvi. 52). 
 
 The Baiahs of Palawan are said to believe in future judgment and 
 retribution, but this may be due to Christian influence, as their burial 
 ceremony suggests continuance (Venturillo, I. A. E., xviii. 140). 
 
 Among the Chenshu, the Atkoor soul goes to God or becomes an evil 
 spirit. The Nundials, on the other hand, are said to know nothing of God 
 or the soul (Newbold, J. R. A. S., viii. 277). 
 
 Among the Larrakiah, Foelsche says that a man in the ground, who made 
 the first blacks, registers deeds in a book and requites them, but this notion 
 must obviously be imported {J. A. I., xxiv. 192). 
 
 In West Victoria the double survives, and the fire is kept up for its 
 F F 
 
434 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 continuance theory, but that it is not the prevailing belief at this 
 stage. Where found it is partial — certain special quahties or 
 
 comfort for three days. The good goes to a happy land and those that 
 are bad to evil spirits below the earth ; but this belief may be due to white 
 influence (Dawson, Aust. Aborig., 51). 
 
 Among the Gournditch Mara of this region, however. Stable {Kam. and 
 Kur., p. 278) also mentions future retribution, and states that it preceded 
 white influence. 
 
 Among the Evahlayi, there are three deadly sins which keep the spirit 
 constantly moving in the lower world, where all is dark but for big fires. 
 These are unprovoked murder, lying to the elders, or stealing women within 
 the prohibited class (Mrs. K. L. Parker, op. cit., p. 78). At the death of a 
 man — ^riot of a woman — there was a prayer to Baiamee to let the dead enter 
 heaven because he had kept the Boorah laws. 
 
 In the Banks Islands, food is shared with the dead (Codrington, p. 271), 
 but here ghosts of bad character are kept out of the land of the dead, 
 e. g. a murderer by the ghost of the slain, and such ghosts, fearing to go to 
 the bad place, turn back to earth, eat men's souls, and are wretched. 
 
 In Pentecost Island a murdered man tells other ghosts, who refuse to 
 receive the ghost of the murderer (Codrington, p. 288). 
 
 The Basonge soul (Overbergh, Monog. iii. 324) goes to God and lives 
 in a village within the earth. But he only keeps souls who have slandered 
 their village, and others are re-born after a few months. 
 
 There are here about a score of instances which are probably free from 
 white influence. But in nearly all it will be seen the belief is very partial — 
 sonxe particular offence or fashion being singled out — ^and very vague. 
 
 I noted also the following cases of continuance apparently without 
 retribution, without including several in which continuance appears to be 
 implied by the funeral customs but is not explicitly ascribed as a belief. 
 
 Continuance Theory — 
 
 Upon the Pacific Coast the KwaJciuU hold that the dead continue like 
 the living (Boas, B.A., 1889, p. 847. 
 
 Among the Tavmahian the dead go to a place similar to that of the living 
 (ibid.). - 
 
 The ThUnkeet think that those who die a violent death go to heaven, 
 and those who die naturally to a country beyond the earth (ibid., 843). 
 According to Swanton, an unavenged man could not get up to the higher 
 regions ; and bad persons are said to go to the Ravens' home. But this is 
 possibly due to white influence (R. B. E., xxvi. 461). 
 
 Among the Eskimo of Labrador a future life depends partly on conduct 
 but mainly on the manner of death (Turner, iJ. B. E., xi. 192). 
 
 On the Thompson River some souls are turned back by guardians from 
 the Sunset Land, but for what reason I do not know (Teit and Boas, 
 Jesup Expedition, 1900, p. 342). 
 
 Among the Hidatsa the soul goes to a place for the dead, where it receives 
 the same regard for his qualities as here (Washington Matthews, Ethnology 
 and Philology of the Hidatsa Indiana, p. 49). 
 
 Among the Delaware the soul went South to a happy land, and on return 
 was born again (Brinton, The Lenni Lena/pe and thei/r Religion, p. 69). 
 
 Among the Iroquoia how far future punishments were recognized is 
 uncertain, but the journey to the South world certainly required supplies, 
 whence the burial property of /the dead (Morgan, League of the Iroquois), 
 pp. 168, 174). 
 
 The Shuehwap believed in a happy land for the dead (Teit, Jeswp 
 Expedition, 600). 
 
 The Dakoiaa, according to Schoolcraft (vol. ii. p. 197), have no ideas 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 435 
 
 acts being selected for reward or punishment — vague and un- 
 systematic . At this stage, in short, the behef is iS a rudimentary 
 
 of future retribution. According to Riggs [Contributions to Ethnology, 1893, 
 p. 213), the soul continues but its destiny is obscure. 
 
 Among the Blackfeet the souls go ofi among the sandhills, where they 
 can be seen in the distance. They live for ever and their occupation is to 
 fight with the Crees (Wilson, B. A., 1887, p. 187). They are also said to 
 prowl about the lodges, seeking to do injury (Grinnell, Blackfeet Lodge 
 Tales, p. 273). 
 
 Among the Kootenay the dead are said to go to the sun (Chamberlain, 
 B. A., 1892, p. 559). 
 
 Among the Cfreenland Eskimo there are two regions for the dead but no 
 clear retribution. The mode of death and the treatment of the body 
 aSect the destination (Nansen, Eskimo Life, pp. 234-237). 
 
 Among the Hoopa in California, shamans and singers at the dance go to 
 the sky ; all others, without regard to good and evil, go to the underworld 
 (Goddard, Univ. Calif. Pub. I. p. 74). Ejoeber {Religion of the Indians in 
 California, iv. p. 346) says that no ideas of future rewards and punish- 
 ments based on conduct in this life have yet been found in this region. 
 The dead go below the world, or cross the ocean and are occupied in dances. 
 Powers, however, found traces of retribution among the Wintun and the 
 Yurok {Tribes of California, pp. 58, 240). These may very well be importa- 
 tions from the white man. 
 
 The Comanches beUeve that the dead go to a happy land (Ten Kate, 
 Revue d'Eth., vol. iv. p. 134). 
 
 Among the Similkameem the spirits of the dead were vindictive and had 
 to be appeased by feasts, but the soul might pass into an animal (Mrs. 
 Allison, J. A. I., xxi. 310, 313). 
 
 Among the Shingu spirits retain the characteristics of this life. There 
 is no true retribution (Von der Steinen, p. 349). 
 
 The Karaya dead re-visit the village. There is no belief in retribution 
 (Ehrenreich, VerOff Kon. Mus., Band I. p. 34). 
 
 In British Guiana there is both an idea of transmigration and of a country 
 beyond the sky, but no future retribution (im Thurm, Among the Indians 
 of Quiana, pp. 349, 359). 
 
 Among the Quaycurus souls of chiefs and of medicine men go to the moon. 
 Those of common people roam about the plain (Von Martins, i. 233). 
 
 The Oes appear to hold a continuance theory, as they dig up the dead 
 man after a year, tell him all that has happened, and re-bury him (Von 
 Martins, p. 291). 
 
 The Araucanian dead re-visit the earth as spirits (Latcham, J. A. I., 
 xxxix. 345). 
 
 Among the Avx,as the future life is across the sea in a rich land (D'Orbigny, 
 Voyages, ii. 258). 
 
 Among the Mataccos the spirits of the dead go to an underworld, but 
 if not buried, wander unrecognized (Pelleschi, Eight Months on the Gran 
 Ghaco, p. 87). 
 
 Among the Chahkata arms and clothes are placed in the grave, but the 
 chiefs deny survival and say that the custom is a mark of afiection and 
 reluctance to use the dead man's things (Dalton, p. 19). 
 
 The Miris provide the dead with all the necessaries for a journey 
 (Dalton, p. 29 seq.). 
 
 Among the Gonds the spirit of the head of the house haunts it until laid 
 after a year or two, and meantime is worshipped (Crooke, II. p. 435). 
 
 Among the Oraons men who are killed by tigers become tigers, otherwise 
 there is said to be no survival ; yet rice is put in the mouth of the corpse 
 
436 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 state. In the higher stages of polytheism, on the other hand, 
 the theory of the future life is often, though not always, more 
 
 and a coin is given to it, and we are told they believe in ghosts (Calton, 
 p. 247 seq.). 
 
 Among the Bheels food for his journey is placed by the corpse and 
 afterwards thrown into the water by the side of which he is burnt (Crooke, 
 n. p. 50). 
 
 The views of the Kvhu are very uncertain. Van Dongen could find no 
 trace of religious belief among the Ridan Kubu. In another tribe they 
 say they go back whence they came. The Djambi Kubu are said to have 
 no cult and no future life. The Lekho Kubu worship ancestors, but future 
 life has no more moral implications than things that depend on chance 
 (Hagen, op. cit., pp. 143-145). 
 
 The Korwa recognize no retribution (Crooke, North- West Provinces, III. 
 332). 
 
 The Orang Bukit are said to have no belief in persistence after death 
 (Knocker, J. A. I., xxxvii. 293). 
 
 The Bataka practise temporary burial for a period during which the 
 ghost floats about the earth. No future retribution (Miiller, Batak 
 Sammlung,-p^. 12, 13). 
 
 The Sdkai. The Krau Sakai bury utensils with the dead but believe in 
 retribution. The Bra Sakai also leave utensils with the dead but deny 
 any future life and have no retribution. The Central Sakai leave the body 
 in a hut, where it should be taken by a tiger (Wilkinson, Papers on 
 Malay Subjects — " The Aboriginal Tribes," p. 46). 
 
 Among the Punans the dead cross a' river and there is no future retribu- 
 tion (Hose and MoDougall, ii. chap. xix.). 
 
 The T^aroMdo not know where the soul goes (Wilson, /.iJ. A. iS., 1843,p.20). 
 
 The Katodis burn the dead and know nothing of a future life (Wilson, 
 J. B. A. S., 1843, pp. 7, 26). 
 
 Among the AtistraUans on the Swan Biver the soul feels chilled, and so 
 fires are lighted after the burial. If a man is killed with a spear- thrust, the 
 soul remains on the point, which is burnt that it may depart (Salvado, 
 J. A. I., vii. 289). 
 
 In N.-W. Queensland there is no future retribution (W. E. Both, 
 op. cit., p. 161). 
 
 In Victoria the ghost would haunt the relatives if not avenged (Brough 
 Smyth, Natives of Victoria, I. 107). 
 
 In New South Wales the ghost haunts the grave and the camp is deserted 
 after death (Frazer, op. cit., p. 83). 
 
 The dead Narrinyeri warriors go to the stars, yet may also walk the earth 
 and injure their enemies (Taplin, in Woods' Native Tribes, p. 17). 
 
 Those of Encounter Bay have a future life with Nurrunduri, a tribal 
 hero, but recognize no retribution (Meyer, in Woods, p. 206). 
 
 At Port Lincoln the soul goes to an island but needs no food. There is 
 probably no original idea of future retribution. They seem to think that 
 misfortune in this life may follow misconduct (Schiirmann, in Woods' 
 Native Tribes, p. 235). 
 
 In Queensland (J. D. Lang, Queensland, pp. 274-279) asserts a dim idea 
 of a future life, but no judgment and, in fact, no religion. 
 
 The Mycoolon and allied tribes have a place for the dead in the sky, 
 where they are looked after by a spirit (Palmer, J. A. I., xiii. 291). 
 
 Among the Kamilaroi and allied tribes, according to Ridley [J. A. I., ii. 
 269), some say that the good go to Baiamee, while the bad perish; others 
 that all alike go to him ; and yet others that the dead becomes a bird. 
 
 The tribes about Lake Eyre (Howitt, J. A. I., xx. 89) say that the spirit 
 goes to the sky, but that the Mura Mura punishes ofiences during lifetime. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 437 
 
 precise. Among the Greeks, one view was that the heroes passed 
 to the Elysian fields, while at any rate the worst criminals were 
 
 Howitt (pp. 432-434) mentions numerous South Australian tribes in 
 which the dead appear as ghosts or go to the sky, but I do not see any case 
 of retribution among them. 
 
 In the Western Torres Straits the soul wanders near the body at first, 
 then goes to a Western island, but returns at nights (Cambridge Expedition, 
 vol. V. p. 355). 
 
 In the Eastern Torres Straits ghosts finally went under the sea and hence 
 to a distant land (op. cit., vol. vi. p. 252). 
 
 Among the Batua the dead may appear, and are then appeased with a 
 hut and food. They may also pass into the beasts (Hutereau, Congo 
 Beige, p. 6). 
 
 'Ihe Azande bury amulets with the dead to help him to avenge himself 
 (ib., p. 22). 
 
 The Banza negroes and the Bantu of the Congo hold by transmigration 
 (Johnston, ii. 362). 
 
 The Bayaka have an imperishable soul — doshi. A man slain in battle 
 sends his doshi to avenge him. Big animals also have doshi (op. cit., 
 p. 641). 
 
 Among the Bahuana the doshi lingers in the air after death, visiting 
 friends and haunting enemies, and persecuting relatives if the burial is 
 not proper (Torday and Joyce, J. A. I., xxxvi. 291). 
 
 The BangaJa connect the dead with the living by a tube (p. 649) and the 
 Mangbetu build a hut and bring food, which gives " pleasure " to the dead. 
 Similar customs are found in many other Congolese tribes (pp. 650-652). 
 Van Overbergh (Mon., iv.) says that the Mangbetu place food in a hut 
 for the dead, away in the bush, so that he may go there. They comfort 
 a smoker by putting a pipe in his tomb. The future life depends not on 
 merit but on rank (pp. 359, 377). 
 
 The Ababua corpse takes the nutritive part from the food set for it 
 (Halkin, Monographie Ethnographique, i. 95). 
 
 The Bangala (Van Overbergh, Mono. Ethn., i. 271) think that ghosts 
 may return and kill people or enter eggs. Their view of future life seems 
 uncertain, but there is certainly no retribution, and it would appear 
 to depend on the status here. One account says that the soul goes to 
 Djakombu (pp. 271-278). 
 
 Among the Mayomhe (Van Overbergh, ii. 305) views of the future life 
 seem to differ. Probably the ghost remains in the forests. Gifts of food 
 are continued only while they are remembered (p. 289). 
 
 Among the Nandi (HoUis, p. 41) the shadow goes underground and enjoys 
 the same fortimes as in this life. There is no retribution. 
 
 Among the Masai the ordinary soul perishes with the body, but that of 
 a rich man or medicine man turns into a snake, and looks after his children, 
 while some people are so important that their souls go to heaven (Hollis, 
 pp. 307-308). 
 
 Among the Melanesians the soul continues after death (Codrington, 
 p. 207), but in what way it is difficult to find. In some islands its abode 
 is above, in others below the ground. 
 
 In British New Guinea the Koita soul goes to a mountain and lives just as 
 on the earth, both as to rank, character, etc. Their life seems to be about 
 as long as that of their memory on earth (Seligmann, op. cit., p. 190). 
 
 Among the Rora the dead go to a place in the bush where food abounds, 
 but on the way an evil spirit, like fire, intercepts them and asks if their 
 nose and ears are pierced, in which case he directs them on. 
 
 Among the Southern Massim, the shadow spirits go to a world 
 which is just Uke this but inverts day and night. They are received by 
 
438 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 cast into Tartarus. The Egyptian soul underwent a regular 
 trial before Osiris, and the Mexicans had a Book of the Dead, 
 similar to that of the Egyptians, giving a full account of the 
 dangers through which the soul must pass, and in particular of 
 its trial before the Judgment-seat of Tezcathpoca.^ Thus the 
 highest polytheism shows a tendency to the development and 
 systematization of the vague ideas of retribution floating here 
 and there through early rehgious beUefs, into an elaborate 
 doctrine of future judgment. The development, however, is 
 very irregular. We find nothing of it, for example, in the 
 Babylonish religion, nor, tiU monotheism was weU estabhshed, 
 in that of the Hebrews ; its place in the regular Greek cults is 
 secondary, particularly in the earUer period, and it is only in 
 connection with the Orphic mysteries that it comes to occupy a 
 central position. In India, as we shall see, the rival doctrine of 
 transmigration tends to take its place, though the two theories 
 are also combined. 
 
 7. But the imperfect morahty of the doctrine of future retribu- 
 tion is most apparent when we turn to the methods by which sin 
 is purged away and future happiness is secured. This introduces 
 us to a group of ethical problems which at every stage are treated 
 in close connection with the prevailing conception of the ethical 
 basis. These problems centre upon the relation of the imperfect 
 human being to the moral law. By what internal merit or 
 external grace preventing him does a man come to reject evil and 
 choose good ? How does he grow in grace ? When he has done 
 wrong what means of reconciliation are open to him ? These 
 are questions of what might be called moral dynamics, of the 
 forces which the prevalent ideal of conduct can bring to bear 
 on the individual. As such their character must clearly be 
 determined primarily by the nature of the grounds on which 
 morahty is conceived to rest. At a later stage these questions 
 are clearly recognized as questions of moral psychology. We 
 
 a being who lives there with wife and children, and who assigns them their 
 gardens (Seligmann, p. 655). 
 
 The Tube Tube, after burial, go to a hill on another island, where they 
 live like men (p. 657). 
 
 These two sets of instances, taken as they are at random from authorities 
 selected for other reasons, fall in with the view that, apart from civilized 
 influence, the theory of retribution is the rarer among simple peoples, which 
 is also vague and very partial. 
 
 ^ Payne, vol. ii. p. 406. In Yucatan also there was a distinction between 
 the Happy Land, where the good men and virgins went, and the evil lot 
 which befell the wicked after death (Waitz, vol. iv. p. 311). 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 439 
 
 have now to see how they are treated in the lower strata of 
 ethical thought. . 
 
 In the early stages of moral development men have, broadly 
 speaking, two methods of deaUng with their sins, one affiliating 
 itself to the magical, the other to the reUgious conception of 
 wrong-doing, while as before the two are not infrequently blended 
 into one. Under the magical conception sins, if we may so call 
 them, are, like other evils, things that can byappropriate methods 
 be purged out of a man or a place or a community. They may 
 be transferred to a scapegoat, taken from those who have com- 
 mitted them, put into the animal or man who is to bear them, 
 and driven away into the wilderness or destroyed. They may 
 be got rid of by a solemn formula in which the wrong-doer 
 repudiates them, swears them off, while magical ceremonies are 
 at the same time performed to complete their destruction. On 
 the other hand, where the wrong-doer is held to offend some 
 spirit, the curative process would naturally consist in either 
 quelling, subduing, driving away that spirit, or in appeasing and 
 reconciling it. The former process will closely connect itself 
 with magical arts, the latter leads on to the sacrifices which form 
 the central feature of the cult of the gods. 
 
 The expulsion of evils by transferring them to a man or an 
 animal is frequently performed on behalf of the whole com- 
 munity; it is familiar to us from the scapegoat to whom the 
 sins of the Children of Israel were transferred on the Day of 
 Atonement. Laden with these sins, the beast was driven away 
 into the wilderness and the people were free. Among the 
 aborigines of China the ills and disasters of the people during 
 the past year are represented by stones and bits of iron which 
 are placed in a jar and blown up.^ It is not necessarily sin or 
 wrong-doing that is thus destroyed. Some Chinese tribes pro- 
 tect themselves from pestilences by selecting a man to attract 
 all the evil influences into him by certain rites, after which he 
 is driven away from the village.^ Ghosts may be driven off 
 like other evil influences.* Thus the homicide, even the suc- 
 cessful warrior, must be washed to rid himself of the ghost of 
 the slain, and the same process may be applied to the weapons 
 Used to commit the deed. The puriflcation by which the ghost 
 or evil influence is expelled lends itself in our minds to an ethical 
 interpretation, but we see from the fact of its appUcation to 
 
 1 Frazer, 2nd ed., vol. iii. p. 106. ' ib., p. 104. 
 
 ' i6., vol. i. p. 334 S., quotes the practice of the Basutos, etc., and 
 refers to the driving away of the ghost by the Arunta alluded to above, and 
 to the taboos placed in various parts of the world upon those who have slain 
 a man. 
 
440 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 actions which the savage regards as not only innocent but laud- 
 able, that it is rather the supposed physical influence, whether 
 ghostly or magical, that is dreaded and that the purifying rites 
 have to remove.^ The slayer of his own kindred who has com- 
 mitted a moral offence will also undoubtedly have to undergo 
 purification. But in this respect he is merely on the level with 
 the lauded slayer of an enemy. Both alike may be haunted; 
 that the one is haunted for an act held immoral is an accident ; 
 he is not haunted because the act is immoral, nor is the act 
 immoral because he is haunted. He is haunted because he has 
 angered a spirit, a thing which another man may do in the course 
 of his duty to his friends or his community.* All that we can 
 say at this stage is that immoral actions are among those which 
 incur the wrath of spirits or the breaking of a taboo, but sohttle 
 is the moral conception differentiated from the general vague 
 mass of doubt and fear with which primitive man views the 
 effect of his conduct upon the influences that surround him, that 
 the righteous and the unrighteous, the good and the bad, in so 
 far as they bring tho'se influences into play are all lumped to- 
 gether under the one designation of that which is tabooed or set 
 apart from ordinary use and from contact with humanity. To 
 us the holy and the unclean stand at opposite poles of thought, 
 but in the primitive world they are not yet distinct. The 
 Polynesian "taboo," the Latin " sacer," the Greek "hagios," 
 are simply the things set apart for the gods or the spirits, or 
 separated from the use of man, because filled with dangerous 
 influences. If we translate " sacer " by our word " sacred," we 
 must say the parricide is sacred. Of course, he was not sacred, 
 but he was set apart for the vengeance of the family god. Simi- 
 larly the city of the idolaters devoted to destruction by the 
 Hebrew invaders is not sacred in our sense, nor were their posses- 
 sions too holy to touch as we conceive holiness. Rather were 
 they unclean and accursed. They were like the holy things only 
 
 1 After visiting a grave among the Ainu, Mr. Batchelor was beaten and 
 bmshed down with magic wands to drive away evil influences and diseases 
 (op. cit., p. 221). Similar ideas underlie primitive mourning generally. 
 
 " Compare Frazer, vol. i. p. 340 il. Any alarming incident that causes 
 danger may require purification to avert it. Thios in North Aracan, 
 on the occasion of a death by accident, or through an animal, or in 
 childbirth, the whole village is tabooed, while the homicide, or man 
 wounded by a wild beast, must abstain from flesh for several months 
 (St. John, J. A. I., 2seq.). Among the Ngurla, people who have been 
 absent when a relative dies must not speak on their return to camp till 
 they have stood the spear- throwing ordeal (Curr, AtiMralian Bace, i. 
 289). Howitt (p. 452) reports a similar practice among the Wiimbaio. 
 For dangers attaching to homicide, incest, etc., see above. Part i. chap. iii. 
 pp. 88-91. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 441 
 
 in this, that they were set apart for Jehovah to do what he would 
 with them.i , 
 
 The purification of the community from all ills, physical and 
 moral, is often an annual affair, and since it is necessary that 
 all transgressions which involve the possibility of calamity must 
 be known in order to be got rid of, it is sometimes preceded 
 by an annual confession of sins.^ The Creek Indians, for ex- 
 ample, held a ceremony called the " Busk " every summer, in 
 the course of which " all the men who were not known to have 
 violated the law of the first-fruit offerings and that of marriage 
 during the year " were summoned to hold a solemn fast. All 
 impure people were kept apart, also fasting, and after other 
 ceremonies a new fire was kindled which was held to atone for 
 aU great crimes except murder.^ 
 
 8. But the simplest method for ridding oneself of sins is 
 merely to deny or repudiate them in the prope^ form which 
 the tradition of the priest assures the sufferer to be efficient in 
 ridding him of the load of guilt. This method of purification 
 was highly developed in Babylonia, and also plays an important 
 part in the Egyptian conceptions of the future judgment. In 
 Babylon there seems to have been no question of reward or 
 punishment in a future life, but there was a very strong con- 
 viction that a god or demon might be given an opening for 
 attack upon a man by any of his sins of commission or omission. 
 Hence the so-called penitential psalms of the Babylonians and 
 the incantation texts which throw so strong a light upon their 
 ethical ideas. It has been rightly pointed out that the peni- 
 tential psalms have many of the characteristics of magical 
 formulae. " The lapse " in them " from the ethical strain to the 
 incantation refrain is as sudden as it is common." There is no 
 
 ^ Compare Frazer, vol. i. p. 343, etc. 
 
 ' The tribes of Guatemala are said to have made confession of sins 
 (Waitz, vol. iv. p. 265) in time of calamity. In Yucatan there was a 
 private confession followed by a kind of baptism, the purpose of which 
 was to remove evil spirits (ib., pp. 306, 307). The Iroquois practised a 
 public confession at their religious festivals, but Morgan considers that 
 they had perhaps learnt this from the Jesuits [The Leagiie of the Iroquois, 
 p. 170). The conception was further developed in Mexico, where confession 
 was demanded once in a lifetime, and penances were imposed including 
 blood-letting and fasting, the sacrifice of a slave, and benevolence to the 
 sick and needy ; from our point of view a curious confusion of barbarous 
 and moral methods of winning divine favour. These penances might avert 
 punishment (Waitz, vol. iv. p. 129). 
 
 * Frazer, vol. ii. p. 330, etc. Among the Central Eskimo, the Angakoq 
 visits a sick man and requires confession, e. g. if he has worked or eaten when 
 forbidden, and if so atonement is required, as exchange of wives or the 
 adoption of a child (Boas, R. B. E., vi. 592). 
 
442 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 question in them of retribution proper nor of genuine contrition. 
 The psalm is an enumeration of possible causes of suffering. 
 The mere mention of the right cause goes a long way to relieve 
 it, especially if the priest calls upon the right spirit. Hence 
 the length of the list of sins, which is due to the desire to make 
 it exhaustive. " Speaking the right words, and pronouncing 
 the right name constituted, together with the correct ceremony 
 and the bringing of the right sacrifice, the conditions upon which 
 depends the success of the priest in the incantation ritual." * 
 Here is an illustration — 
 
 " that the wrath of my lord's heart return to its former 
 condition, 
 that the god who is imknown be pacified, 
 that the goddess unknown be pacified. 
 O that the god known or unknown be pacified, 
 
 that the goddess known or unknown be pacified. . . . 
 The sin I have committed, I know not. . . . 
 
 The sin I have committed, change to mercy, 
 
 The wrong I have done, may the wind carry off, 
 
 Tear asunder my many transgressions as a garment, 
 
 My god, my sins are seven times seven, forgive me my sins." * 
 
 It is in keeping with the same line of thought that the in- 
 cantation texts appear as a list of aU possible sins, by which 
 the patient who is suffering from misfortune, from fever or from 
 the headache demon, who seems to have been particularly active 
 in the Babylonian swamps, might have been placed under the 
 ban. The reciter of the incantation calls on the great gods, 
 "lords of redemption, on behalf of so-and-so, who is sick, wretched, 
 or in trouble, has offended his gods, spoken evil, despised father 
 or mother," and so forth,* and he demands on the chair, by the 
 bellows, by the writing-table, by the hahdom of his lord and lady, 
 that the ban be taken off. He calls on the gods of the master 
 of the house, the god of the sinner, or the great gods " as many as 
 are present," the " pan of coals — thou child of Ea," to come and 
 extinguish the sins, transgressions and bonds of so-and-so, and 
 banish his curse. The oddly placed invocation to the coal- 
 scuttle is a reference to the ritual where the sin or curse was 
 burnt up.* In another process the table of sins is thrown into 
 the water.* 
 
 1 Jastrow, Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 292. • ib., 320. 
 ' For the list of offences, see below. 
 
 * From the Inciantatioii Table Surpu (burning) (Ziminem, Beitrdge, 
 pp. 3-9). 
 
 6 ib.. Table IV. p. 23. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 443 
 
 These incantation tablets of the Babylonians help us to 
 understand the famous 125th chapter of the Egyptian Booh of the 
 Dead, by far the oldest representation of a Day of Judgment. 
 If we look at this account carefully we shall see that here again 
 it is not really a confession of sins, nor a plea for forgiveness, nor 
 even in reahty a self -justification that is in question. The dead 
 man enumerates all possible sins that occur to the Egyptian mind 
 as hkely to anger the gods, and he rejects them in the appropriate 
 language. Whether he was really and truly guilty of them 
 seems to have been a secondary matter. The point is that he 
 rids himself of them by repudiating them in the proper formulae. 
 In fact, the introduction to the confession explains that this 
 " shaU be said " when the deceased " cometh forth into the hall 
 of Double Maati, so that he may be separated from every sin 
 which he hath done." The first thing that the deceased says to 
 Osiris is, " I know thee, and I know thy name, and I know the 
 names of the two-and-forty gods . . . who hve as wardens of 
 siimers and who feed upon their blood." Knowing the names 
 of these cannibal spirits he has magic power over them, and he 
 addresses each one in turn, repudiating the sins which put him 
 in the power of each spirit. " Hail thou, whose strides are long, 
 who comest forth from Annu, I have not done iniquity. Hail 
 thou, who art embraced by flames, who comest forth from Kher- 
 aha, I have not robbed with violence," ^ and so on through a 
 hst of forty-two gods and forty -two sins. The confession con- 
 cluded, he again protests that he knows the names of the gods, 
 he has " heard that mighty word which the spiritual bodies 
 {v. I. the Ass) spake unto the cat," he has purified his breast, his 
 hinder parts and his iimer parts, and he opens the doors by telhng 
 their names. ^ At every turn magical lore holds the master- 
 
 * For the full list of sins, see below. 
 
 ' Budge, Book of the Dead, vol. ii. pp. 355-377. In Egypt we can parti- 
 ally trace the development by which the future life and the rule of the gods 
 in general booame associated with morality. The oldest tombs contain 
 provision for the continuance of life, and this principle maintains itself 
 against the doctrine of retribution to the end. With it as equally non- 
 moral we may rank the mass of magical prescriptions which make up the 
 bulk of the Book of the Dead. Now, in the Pyramid texts which are our 
 main sources for the ideas of the Old Kingdom, rites and formulae predomin- 
 ate and ethical considerations " play a very unimportant part " (Gardiner, 
 Enc. of Ethics, art. " Ethics and Morality — Egyptian," p. 476). Indeed, the 
 kings boast of violence and adultery (Breasted, op. cit., p. 177). On the 
 other hand, as Mr. Gardiner points out, the morality of kings is not always 
 exactly that of lower people and the funeral stelse of the officials always 
 record their good deeds. " I gave bread to all the hungry ... I clothed 
 him who was naked ... I never oppressed any one in possession of his 
 property (27th century B.C.), and again : " Never did I say aught evil to 
 a powerful one against anybody. I desired that it might be well with me 
 
444 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 key, and the repudiation of sins is itself a magical formula for 
 destroying them.^ 
 
 Where the religious element predominates wrong-doing is 
 held to be an offence against a spirit. We have seen that it is 
 still possible that the means of expiation should closely resemble 
 those of magic. The spirit may be merely driven away, or 
 frightened off, or got rid of by deception. But the commoner 
 case, particularly as the spirit develops into a god, is to appease 
 him by sacrifice. Just as the sacrifice may be offered to secure 
 a boon, so it may be used to avert wrath, and as primitive 
 sacrifice is held by many modern authorities to be primarily a 
 means of communication between the worshipper and the deity, 
 the piacular form would tend to grow as magical behefs gave 
 way to the divine governance of the world, and calamities were 
 held to be the direct expression of divine wrath. At this point 
 the value of the sacrifice became the essential feature, and men 
 gave to the gods what they held most dear to themselves ; hence 
 costly hecatombs and human sacrifice.^ The eminently un- 
 
 in the Great God's presence " (Breasted, pp. 168, 170, etc.). The founda- 
 tion of these addresses was the desire to obtain mortuary offerings. But 
 during the period of the Pyramid builders the notion of a judgment arising 
 apparently from the myth of the trial of Osiris was beginning to make itseS 
 felt, and Mr. Breasted shows that a reference to the " justification " of a 
 mortal was introduced in the later part of that period (p. 177). Between 
 this time and the Middle Kingdom, or about 2000 B.C., the connection of 
 Osiris with the dead was progressively strengthened and from this time 
 every dead person is spoken of as " justified " (p. 256). Finally; we have 
 the full judgment scenes (in which, however, the magical element is strongly 
 maintained ), dating in our earliest copies from the 18th Dynasty, though, 
 of course, much older in its composition. 
 
 "^ This interpretation of the Negative Confession is supported by the 
 authority of Mr. Griffith {Stories of the High Priests of Memphis, p. 46). 
 It was impossible, as Mr. Griffith points out, for a man to be innocent of 
 all the sins, so exhaustively enumerated, but " by denial of sin in correct 
 terms, and by magic adjuration of the heart not to betray him in the scales, 
 the deceased outwitted the gods," and so the worst culprit could escape 
 punishment. Thus, on the one hand, the idea of punishment developed 
 until it seemed that no salvation was possible for any one ; on the other, 
 " purely mechanical means were provided, which, as it would seem, the 
 greatest sinner could embrace with full assurance of bliss." 
 
 In a description of the Last Judgment found in the Tcde of Khammas, 
 dating from the first century after Christ, the evil deeds of a man are 
 weighed against his good deeds. Here the magical element has receded in 
 favour of the moral. 
 
 ^ See Robertson Smith, Religion of the Semites, p. 394, etc. Of course, 
 this is not the sole origin of human sacrifice, which is common enough from 
 barbaric times in association with the cult of the dead, but in earlier 
 civilizations it had a special tendency to crop out anew in connection with 
 national calamities ; e. g. among the Jews and occasionally at Rome. " A 
 most unroman practice," says Livy. Human sacrifice occurred in Greece 
 " sporadically throughout the historic period, but the balance of the 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 445 
 
 spiritual conception of atoning for sin by these means is one 
 of the points seized upon by the advance guard of spiritual 
 religion. The Jahveh of the Prophets desired mercy and not 
 sacrifice, and the cultivated Roman saw the folly and the moral 
 levity of the belief that the guilt of blood could be washed away 
 by water.i 
 
 Upon the whole, then, in the earlier stages of moral develop- 
 ment the mode of deaUng with guilt consists either in putting 
 it away or repudiating it by a magical process, or in appeasing 
 or conciliating the gods whom it has offended. Neither of these 
 methods can be regarded as ethical in themselves. They may 
 incidentally involve elements of retributive justice, as where a 
 penance is imposed as part of the means of purification, or a 
 costly sacrifice is enjoined as necessary to buy off punishment. 
 They may also, where confession is exacted, have recuperative 
 moral effect. It is permissible to think that these ethical 
 elements have not been without their influence in determining 
 the form which expiation takes, and particularly in a rehgion 
 like that of Mexico, where civiUzed elements rub shoulders with 
 the most unspeakable barbarities, we seem to find the moral 
 element coming into prominence. But speaking generally and 
 looking at the principle of the thing, we find the ethical element 
 but Uttle developed on this side. The removal of sin belongs 
 either to the region of magical mechanism or of spiritual 
 commerce. 
 
 9. In the variety of customs and behefs at which we have 
 glanced we seem to recognize two fairly distinct stages of ethical 
 development. In the lower, the force behind custom — apart, of 
 course, from the physical restraints imposed by society itself — is 
 
 evidence is strong against the belief that it was a real feattire of the Attic 
 ThargeUa in the Periolean age. Though occasionally suggested it was 
 clearly repugnant to the general feeling in the fifth and fourth centuries 
 (Famell, iv. 208 and 275 seq.). 
 * Professor Tylor (vol. ii. p. 439) quotes Ovid — 
 
 " Ah, nimium faciles qui tristia crimina csedis 
 Fluminea tolli posse putetis aqua." 
 
 In somewhat similar strain Horace — 
 
 " Immunis aram si tetigit manus 
 Non sumptuosa blandior hostia 
 MolUvit aversos Penates 
 Farre pio et saliente mica." 
 
 Still more remarkable the epigrams ascribed to Delphi : " Lustration 
 is an easy matter for the good, but an evil man the whole of ocean cannot 
 cleanse with its streams " (Famell, p. 212, and cf. the doctrine of the 
 widow's mite, ib., 210). 
 
446 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the fear of magical influences or of revengeful spirits. Neither 
 of these is of essentially ethical character. The vengeance of a 
 ghost is very different from the judgment of a god. It does not 
 consider the rights and wrongs of the case, but acts, like the 
 vengeance of the savage himself, on the principle of retahation. 
 The magical taboo may be held to embody what we call moral 
 feelings, but it implies no clear recognition of the distinctive 
 nature of morality. It does not necessarily apply to all wrong 
 actions,! while it does apply to many acts that are innocent or 
 are even deemed laudable,^ as well as to numerous acts of no 
 moral significance, and in all cases its action as conceived by the 
 savage is what we should call mechanical rather than ethical. 
 Thus the conceptions which serve as a basis for ethical conduct 
 are themselves devoid of ethical character, and the means taken 
 for averting the consequences of guilt, as purifications, incanta- 
 tions, and the appeasement of offended spirits, are of the same 
 nature. A step in advance is taken when spiritual agencies 
 arisfe who take interest in certain moral acts as such, protecting 
 the helpless and supphant because they are helpless or suppliant, 
 and punishing the murderer because he is a murderer. In this 
 way certain departments of action are marked out in which a 
 distinctly reHgious sanction is found for certain rules of conduct, 
 and this idea is generalized in proportion as the avenging deities 
 become the ministers or possibly the attributes of some, or, it 
 may be, of one of the greater gods, who thus comes to be an up- 
 holder of the moral order as a whole. Such a god wiU be a judge 
 of men who rewards or punishes in accordance with an impartial 
 law. As a judge he differs materially from a vengeful spirit. 
 Unfortunately, the conception of judgment is too often associated 
 with means of appeasing the divine wrath in which very primitive 
 and non-moral conceptions are wont to survive. If the belief 
 in a future Judgment represents the ethical conception of retri- 
 bution, means of securing a favourable judgment will very prob- 
 ably be supplied by a special apphcation of primitive magic. 
 Bearing these limitations in mind, we may, nevertheless, recognize 
 at this second stage a distinctly ethical element in the divinely 
 
 ^ e. g. Theft and adultery. Theft may, indeed, violate a taboo, but 
 this is a penalty imposed by the self-interest of the owner. 
 
 '^ e. g. Involuntary homicide or the lawful slaying of an enemy. Here 
 the distinction comes to a head. While the moral consciousness would 
 allow contact with the dead to pollute only so far as guilt is marked, the 
 genuine magical or animistic point of view is that the guilt (of homicide) 
 pollutes only so far as dangerous coiltaot with the dead is involved. The 
 failure to differentiate the holy and unclean which has been noted above 
 may be taken as tsrpical of magical and animistic thought. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 447 
 
 appointed sanctions on which the social order rests. Morality 
 is based on a partially morahzed religion. 
 
 We may fruitfully compare this advance with the development 
 which we found in studying primitive justice. We there had 
 evidence of a stage at which acts infringing the rights of others 
 beyond a very narrow circle are not, strictly speaking, regarded 
 as inherently wrong, but rather as legitimate occasions for 
 vengeance to be inflicted by the sufferer and his kinsfolk if strong 
 enough to do so. It is not my right to my property which is 
 sacred at this stage, but rather my right to the protection of my 
 kindred. The personal rights and duties which constitute the 
 elements of social order are not yet regarded as valuable in them- 
 selves and deserving of the general support of impartial persons. 
 The main categorical imperative is " Stand by thy Idn." Doubt- 
 less the organization of the blood feud tends on the whole to the 
 maintenance of a certain order, and thus indirectly the elements 
 of social order are protected by this same " imperative." But 
 this does not amount to a direct recognition of the primary 
 rights of person and property. Putting these facts together and 
 taking them in connection with what we now see of the basis of 
 morahty, we may infer that moral feeling is not at this stage 
 disengaged on the one hand from the sentiments making for the 
 solidarity of a little group, nor on the other from a prudential 
 dread of human vengeance or of mysterious forces in which there 
 is nothing peculiarly moral. Nor, conversely, do the mass of 
 feehngs which surround and sanctify custom directly support 
 those rights and duties in which, to our tHnking, the elements 
 of the moral order consist, but rather that mutual aid among 
 kinsfolk by which, as chance directs, the moral order may be 
 supported or may be overridden. Above the stage of the blood 
 feud we saw the rise of pubhc justice and the growing predomin- 
 ance of the view that breaches of the social order are wrongs to 
 be punished rather than personal injuries to be avenged. We 
 saw how society became directly interested in maintaining the 
 elements of social peace, and safeguarding the primary rights of 
 person and property for members of its body, so that as far as 
 the social tie extends the simple social obUgations are recognized 
 as binding. 1 We seem to see here the emergence of a more 
 
 ' In a sense the wider society thus attains the " solidarity " which the 
 primary group reached at a lower stage. But to represent the whole pro- 
 cess as a simple widening of group morality by an extension of the social 
 unit would not do justice to the change involved. Within the enlarged 
 family or any group of similar dimensions every relation is personal, and 
 the dependence of each on the protection of the whole is direct and present 
 
448 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 distinctly ethical consciousness which corresponds with, and in 
 fact often finds embodiment in, the higher and clearer conceptions 
 of distinct superhuman personalities who judge impartially 
 between good and evil. In this conception, however crudely 
 and indistinctly worked out, the " ethical basis " is no longer 
 wholly " unethical." Not indeed in the form of a coherent ideal, 
 or a reasoned truth, but as a working rule ordained by a just God 
 the ethical begins to make itself felt as a distinct element of the 
 human consciousness. This emergence constitutes the first step 
 onwards in ethical evolution. 
 
 The same development may be described from a converse 
 point of view by altering the question, and instead of inquiring 
 into the basis of early moraUty, asking what is the ethical char- 
 acter of early religion. The reply will be that in the first stage 
 we find that spirits, as such, are not concerned with morality, 
 though some spirits by their position may be affected by certain 
 kinds of conduct which they may resent. In the second stage 
 we find spirits^ whose essential function is to preside over certain 
 branches of the law, and as development proceeds they become 
 servants of gods, who supervise morals generally. Yet even at 
 this stage, gods are not always, or necessarily, perfect beings; 
 if there are some who represent physical and moral ideals, there 
 are others who exhibit not only the evil passions of contemporary 
 men, but sometimes also the darkest practices of primitive 
 humanity which their own worshippers have outgrown. Some 
 gods are good, but goodness is not yet the essential attribute of 
 God. 
 
 to the mind. When several such groups form one society, the first result 
 is the practice of collective self-redress. When this is overcome it is by the 
 institution of an impersonal justice, that is precisely one which disregards 
 personal ties, and the wider society so establ^hed has a unity which differs 
 from group solidarity because it ceases to be directly and obviously true 
 that its members stand and fall together. Within it great diverjgences of 
 interest appear, both between individuals and groups, and the unity which 
 imposes restraints upon these interests is one that has to overcome the 
 solidarity of the group. It is not till the impersonal justice which is the 
 basis of this order has been established that we can say with certainty that 
 the ethical judgment has achieved distinctness from the impulses and 
 feelings which brought it to birth, and begun the work of framing an order 
 in which feeling is to be subordinate. Of course, as long as any of the 
 unreal distinctions of group morality remain this order is not complete, but 
 it is not till impartial justice passes the limits of the primary group that 
 it can be said with certainty to have begun. 
 
 1 In themselves these spirits, whether idealized ghosts or personified 
 functions like Fides, are rather a special development of animism than 
 members of the circle of the gods. But though not at first identical with 
 the gods, they are a collateral product of growing religious thought, and in 
 fact tend, as we have seen, to fuse with them. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 449 
 
 10. In these early stages the ethical consciousness is still 
 struggUng for distinct recognition. It is far a*, yet from the 
 position in which it can dominate the customary code or infuse 
 its own ideal into the mass of social tradition. The morals of 
 early society are therefore still governed by the conditions under 
 which social life has arisen — that is to say, in particular by the 
 principles of group-morality, in which the elements of hatred 
 and revenge, of self-assertion and domination — ^in a word, of all 
 the quaUties that make for success in strife, are at least as 
 prominent as the principles of love, sympathy, forgiveness, 
 harmonious co-operation, which make directly for the peaceable 
 hfe of an ordered society. Early society, we might say, is 
 founded on the two complementary principles of attraction and 
 repulsion, and both are represented in its codes. True, early 
 societies differ greatly in character, and we have noted instances 
 in which, whether owing to fortunate surroundings or to a happy 
 strain of moral inheritance, a simple, primitive life is lived in 
 almost idyUic peace and harmony. But these are rare, and 
 such a character is hardly at this stage to be found among the 
 peoples which make the deepest mark upon the world. The 
 condition of a low general culture favours rather the tribes 
 which allow a large sphere of operation to the military instincts. 
 Especially in the races which are starting on a great career of 
 influence in the civihzed world the blend of miUtant and domestic 
 virtues is conspicuous, and the type that results, famiUar to us 
 from the annals of early Greece and Rome, from Hebrew history, 
 and the accounts of primitive German life, is in many respects 
 admirable. The closely knit patriarchal family, the loyalty to 
 the chief, the mutual help of the kinsfolk, the respect for woman 
 quaUfying the inferiority of her legal status, the sanctity of the 
 oath, the open-handed hospitaUty, the regard for the suppliant 
 and the stranger — these are among the virtues of primitive 
 society to which its descendants sometimes look back with regret 
 for their relative decHne under the softening influences of culture. 
 The other side of the account is the comparative moral isolation 
 of each society, the ferocity often shown to enemies, the dis- 
 regard of human rights where not protected by equal membership 
 of the social group, the permission of piracy and slave-dealing, 
 the frequent appearance of barbarous religious rites. 
 
 1 1 . In the early Oriental ci vihzations there is a certain blunting 
 of the edges of the barbarian ideals. Though war and conquest, 
 slave-dealing and the imposition of tribute, play a large part in 
 national life and political history, private ethics are more con- 
 
 G G 
 
450 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 cerned with quiet industrial life and the arts of peace. Pohtical 
 freedom is gone : the personal power of the chief or the great 
 warrior counts for less ; the family pride of powerful groups of 
 kinsfolk is lowered. The ethical codes reflect a softening of 
 manners along with a certain loss of the elements of chivalrous 
 ideahsm which mark the best of the barbarian world, and which 
 are not yet replaced by the ideahsm of rehgion or of humanity. 
 It happens that both from ancient Babylonia and Egypt we have 
 remarkably full statements of what were doubtless recognized 
 as the principal moral obUgations in the documents already 
 mentioned — the Babylonian Incantation tablets and the Egyptian 
 Booh of the Dead. 
 
 In the second of the Shurpu Incantation Tablets,'^ already 
 referred to, the exorcist asks on behalf of his victim — 
 
 " Has he offended his god . . . offended his goddess ? 
 Has he uttered calamitous things ? 
 Has he said evil things ? 
 Has he said impure things ? 
 Has he allowed unjust things to be said ? 
 Has he made a judge take a bribe ? 
 Has he oppressed weakness ? 
 Has he divided father and son ? 
 Has he divided son and father ? 
 Has he divided mother and daughter ? 
 Has he divided daughter and mother ? " 
 
 And so for several pairs of relations. 
 
 " Has he not set the captive free ? . . . loosed the bonds of the 
 
 fettered ? 
 Denied a prisoner the light of day ? 
 Said of a captive ' Seize him ' ... of one who is bound, ' Bind 
 
 him ' 1 
 Is there any sia against a god . . . any trespass against a 
 
 goddess ? 
 Any violence towards his forbears . . . any hatred towards his 
 
 elder brother ? 
 Has he scorned father and mother . . . affronted his elder 
 
 sister ? 
 Has he given in small things . . . denied in great thiags ? 
 Has he said ' yes ' for ' no ' ? 
 
 1 Zimmem (Delitzsch u. Haupt, Bibliothek.), Beitrdge zur Kenntwiss 
 der Bahylonischen Religion, 1901, p. 3, Tables II., III., VIII. Owing to 
 their magical character, as explained above, the tablets are full of repeti- 
 tions, sometimes with slight differences of phraseology, but the list given in 
 the text covers, I believe, all the distinct causes of offence enumerated. I 
 have let a few repetitions stand by way of Ulustratiou. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 451 
 
 ' No ' for ' yes ' ? 
 
 Has he used false weights ? 
 
 Has he taken bad money . . . not taken good money ? 
 
 Disinherited a legitimate son . . . put in an illegitimate son ? 
 
 Made false boundaries . . . not allowed true boundaries. 
 
 Displaced boundary, landmark, limit ? 
 
 Has he set foot in his neighbour's house ? 
 
 Approached his neighbour's wife, 
 
 Shed his neighbour's blood. 
 
 Stolen his neighbour's dress ? 
 
 Has he not let a man go out of his power ? 
 
 Driven a respectable man out of his family, 
 
 Divided a united kindred. 
 
 Raised himself against his superior ? 
 . Was he sincere with his lips . . . false in his heart, 
 
 Saying ' yes ' with his lips . . . ' no ' with his heart ? 
 
 Is it for all unrighteousness that he meditated. 
 
 To persecute the righteous, to repudiate. 
 
 To annihilate, to drive away, to destroy. 
 
 To raise up — to stir up violence. 
 
 To outrage, to rob, to procure robbery. 
 
 To engage in evil ? 
 
 Is his mouth loose and obscene, 
 
 (Are) his lips deceitful and refractory ? 
 
 Has he committed an impurity . . . taught indecent things ? 
 
 Has he engaged in magic and witchcraft ? 
 
 Has he made a promise with heart and lips, but not kept it, 
 
 Through a present dishonoured the name of his god, 
 
 Consecrated and vowed something, but kept it back, 
 
 Presented something . . . but eaten it ? 
 
 Has he angered his god and goddess against him ? " 
 " Whether he has pointed to a figure with his finger ? 
 
 Whether through the figure of his father or mother ... he is 
 cursed. 
 
 Through the figure of his elder brother or elder sister . . . he is 
 cursed, etc." 
 " Whether he has wrought wickedness to his town, 
 
 Spread a report about his town. 
 
 Maligned the fair name of his town ? 
 
 Whether he has approached an accursed one, 
 
 Whether an accursed one has approached him, 
 
 Whether he has slept in an accursed one's bed. 
 
 Sat on the accursed one's chair . . . 
 
 He demands, he demands " — 
 
 The list may be completed from the remaining tables. Thus 
 Table III. mentions — 
 
452 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " A curse through pointing with the finger at fire. 
 Through taking fire and swearing by god, 
 Through demanding due instead of giving it, 
 Through sitting faciag the sun, 
 Through tearing up plants from the field. 
 Through bow, brazen dagger, or spear, 
 Through slaying young game, 
 
 Through stealing up to a companion and slaying him. 
 Through being besought for a day about a gutter and refusing 
 Through being besought for a day about a cistern and refusing, 
 Through taking a bucket and swearing by god. 
 Through asking any one about hunting, in the stable, 
 Through swearing by god with unwashed hands upheld. 
 Through stopping a neighbour's canal. 
 Instead of being compliant to an opponent, remaining inimical 
 
 to him. 
 Through producing a weapon in an assembly. 
 Through interceding for a sinner." 
 
 Further, in Table IV. we find a curse through 
 
 " Abandoning instead of protecting manservant, maidservant, 
 master or mistress. 
 Abandoning instead of protecting woman, wife or son." 
 
 The list of possible ofiEences would doubtless tend to grow as 
 fresh possibilities of offences occurred, while people were afraid of 
 leaving out anything for fear of losing the magical effect. As 
 to the contents of the code, it wiU be seen that the simple ethical 
 duties, respect for life, property, and sex, all figure; that great, 
 stress is laid upon the family tie and upon disturbances of the 
 peace among relations and friends, that violence is deprecated, 
 and that at least in one place, if not forgiveness of enemies, at 
 any rate reconciliation with enemies seems to be recommended. 
 Finally, the duties to prisoners and captives, the obhgation to 
 protect the slave and the dependent are freely recognized. In 
 mentioning these points, however, we have indicated the highest 
 limit which the code touches. 
 
 With the Babylonian tablets we may compare the well-known 
 chap. cxxv. of the Book of the Dead} There are two Confessions. 
 The first runs as follows — 
 
 ^ Translations of this chapter vary greatly. In the text I have followed 
 that of Mr. LI. Griffith, World's Literature, p. 5320. The variants in 
 brackets are from Mr. Gardiner's article in the Enc. Religion and Ethics. 
 The concluding address to the gods is from Dr. Budge's translation in the 
 Book of the Dead. In view of the variations of reading the details cannot 
 be pressed. Yet in spite of the imethical treatment it is difficult to suppose 
 that any ofiences considered deadly would be omitted. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 453 
 
 " I have not done injury to men. 
 
 I have not oppressed those beneath me (brought* misery upon 
 my fellows). 
 
 I have not acted perversely [prevaricated ?] instead of straight- 
 forwardly (wrought injuries in the place of right). 
 
 I have not known vanity (known what is not) . 
 
 I have not been a doer of mischief. 
 
 (I have not made the beginning of every day laborious in the 
 sight of him who worked for me.) 
 
 (My name has not approached the ship of him who is first.) 
 
 (I have not slighted (?) God.) 
 
 (I have not impoverished the poor.) 
 
 I have not done what the gods abominate. 
 
 I have not turned the servant against his master (traduced 
 the slave to him who is set over him). 
 
 I have not caused hunger. 
 
 I have not caused weeping. 
 
 I have not murdered. 
 
 I have not commanded murder. 
 
 I have not caused suffering to men (made every one suffer). 
 
 I have not cut short the rations of the temple. 
 
 I have not diminished the offerings of the gods. 
 
 I have not taken the provisions of the blessed dead. 
 
 I have not committed fornication, nor impurity in what was 
 sacred to the god of my city. (In the service of the god 
 of my city.) 
 
 I have not added to, nor diminished the measures of grain. 
 
 I have not diminished the palm measure. 
 
 I have not falsified the cubit of land (added to nor filched away). 
 
 I have not added to the weights of the balance. 
 
 I have not nullified the plummet of the scales. 
 
 I have not taken mUk from the mouth of babes. 
 
 I have not driven cattle from their herbage. 
 
 I have not trapped birds, the bones of the gods. 
 
 I have not caught fish in their pools (?). 
 
 I have not stopped water in its season. 
 
 I have not dammed running water. 
 
 I have not quenched fire when burning. (In its [appointed] 
 
 time.) 
 I have not disturbed the cycle of gods, when at their choice 
 meats (neglected the feast days in respect of their sacri- 
 ficial joints). 
 
 I have not driven off the cattle of the sacred estate. 
 
 I have not stopped a god in his comings forth. 
 
 (I am pure. I am pure. I am pure.)" ^ 
 
 1 Griffith, World's Literature, 5320. 
 
454 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 After an adjuration to the gods, the Second Confession 
 follows — 
 
 " I have not done injustice (wickedness). 
 I have not robbed. 
 
 I have not coveted (?) (been grasping ?). 
 I have not stolen. 
 I have not slain men. 
 I have not diminished the corn measure. 
 I have not acted crookedly. 
 I have not stolen the property of the gods. 
 I have not spoken falsehood. 
 I have not taken food away. 
 
 I have not been lazy (?) (I have not been resentful ?). 
 I have not trespassed (been neglectful). 
 I have not slain a sacred animal. 
 I have not been niggardly in grain (robbed the loaves). 
 I have not stolen. 
 
 I have not been a pilferer (an eavesdropper). 
 My mouth hath not run on (have not been a gossip). 
 I have not been a tale-bearer (made mischief) in business not 
 
 mine own. 
 I have not committed adultery with another man's wife. 
 I have not been impure. 
 I have not made disturbance. 
 I have not transgressed (laid schemes). 
 My mouth has not been hot. 
 I have not been deaf to the words of truth. 
 I have not made confusion. 
 I have not caused weeping. 
 I am not given to unnatural lust. (I have not . . . the 
 
 copulator who was copulating.) 
 I have not borne a grudge (made suppressions). 
 I have not quarrelled (reviled). 
 
 I am not of aggressive hand (have not been violent). 
 I am not of inconstant mind (hasty). 
 I have not spoiled the colour of him who washes his god (?) 
 
 (neglected the nature of the god's satisfaction). 
 My voice has not been too voluble in my speech. 
 I have not deceived nor done ill (done harm to the doer of 
 
 evil). 
 I have not cursed the king. 
 I have not waded over the water. 
 My voice is not loud (haughty). 
 I have not cursed God. 
 
 I have not made bubbles (?) (been puffed up). 
 I have not made (unjust) preferences (comparisons with myself). 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 455 
 
 I have not acted the rich man except in my own things (made 
 
 a show with possessions not my own). , 
 I have not offended the god of my city (thought scorn of)." ^ 
 
 Then follows a further adjuration.^ 
 
 " Homage to you, O ye gods who dwell in your Hall of double 
 Maati, I, even I, know you, and I know your names ... I have 
 not cursed God, and let not evil hap come upon me through the 
 king who dwelleth in my day *. . . I have performed the com- 
 mandments of men (as well as) the things whereat are gratified 
 the gods ... I have given bread to the hungry man, and water 
 to the thirsty man, and apparel to the naked man, and a boat 
 to the (shipwrecked) mariner. I have made holy offerings to 
 the gods, and sepulchral meals to the khus. Be ye then my 
 deliverers." 
 
 Not only are homicide, violence, many forms of dishonesty 
 and sexual impurity* here repudiated, but, what is perhaps most 
 remarkable, there appears a strong implied condemnation of 
 any conduct causing suffering to others,* a recognition of duty 
 to dependents, and a claim to the merit of positive beneficence. 
 There is also a noteworthy repudiation of undue self-seeking, and 
 in one place something like an insistence on forgiveness. 
 
 The skeleton of this Negative Confession is filled in for us 
 by such morahstic writings as the Precepts of Ptah-Hotep, the 
 Instructions for King Mery-ke-re, and the tale of the Eloquent 
 Peasant, etc., dating from the Middle Kingdom, and the Maxims 
 of Ani belonging to the new Kingdom. Pull of platitudes as these 
 seem to the modem reader wherever their meaning is not obscure, 
 they appear to have had a long popularity in ancient Egypt, 
 and they are of historic interest as perhaps the earliest examples 
 of secular ethics, the morals of worldly wisdom with little or 
 no reference to reUgious sanctions ; indeed, occasionally with 
 a certain suggestion in them that this life is all we have and 
 
 • Griffith, World's Literature, 5321. 
 ' Budge, Booh of the Dead, ii. 371. 
 
 ' Or, " I have had no fault towards the king of my time " (Gardiner). 
 
 * The references to impurity are not free from ambiguity. Professoi 
 Flinders Petrie (Religion and Conscience, p. 134) regards the repudiation in 
 the First Confession (which he considers to be the oldest) as dealing only 
 with a violation of the sacred precinct, while in the Second Confession he 
 distinguishes three repudiations of adultery (19), of impurity (20), and 
 unnatittal lust (27). Max MiiUer, however {Liebespoesie, p. 17), understands 
 the reference to impurity as a repudiation of the use of love philters. On 
 the whole, it seems unlikely that fornication as such is one of the forty- two 
 sins (cf. Gardiner, Enc. Ethics, p. 482). 
 
 ' The references to animals are obscure and can hardly be pressed. They 
 seem to have magical or religious rather than a humanitarian purport. 
 
456 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 we had best make the most of it. The tendency of both Ptah- 
 Hotep and Ani is to recommend a certain mildness and modera- 
 tion of temper, restraint in language and in social intercourse, 
 prudence and energy in the conduct of one's own affairs, a 
 strenuous minding of one's own business and avoidance of gossip, 
 a prudent bending to superiors and an equally wise moderation 
 in dealing with those of lower estate, a generally diffused good- 
 nature and reasonableness — all as means whereby man prospers 
 in this world and, perhaps, in the Valley of the Dead as well. 
 " It is the modest (i) that obtain wealth ; never did the greedy 
 (?) arrive at their aim," says the optimistic Ptah-Hotep. " Make 
 not terror among men.^ God punisheth the like . . . Never 
 did violence among men succeed." ^ Again, " Beware of any 
 covetous aim. That is as the painful disease of coUc. He 
 who entereth on it is not successful. It embroileth fathers 
 and mothers with the mother's brothers, it separateth wife and 
 husband ... A man liveth long whose rule is justice." * In the 
 same spirit the pupil is to keep from relations with the women 
 in the house which he enters, but be kind to a woman if he has 
 made her ashamed. He should avoid scandal and gossip.* He 
 should prefer gentle to violent methods. " Greater is the prayer 
 to a kindly person than force."* He should avoid presumption, 
 " Raise not thy heart lest it be cast down." ® If successful he 
 should avoid niggardliness. If a chief or great officer, he should 
 do justice, and be considerate and attentive to suitors. If an 
 inferior, " Bend thy back to thy chief, thy superior of the king's 
 house, on whose property thy house dependeth . ^ . it is iU to be 
 at variance with the chief. One ILveth only while he is gracious." ' 
 But to friends, " Let thy face be shining the time that thou 
 hast . . . The remembrance of a man is of his kindliness in the 
 years after the staff (of power ?)." * Or as Ani puts it, " Eat 
 not bread while another standeth by . . . The one is rich and the 
 other poor, and bread remaineth to him who is open-handed. 
 He who was prosperous last year even in this may be a vagrant."' 
 
 1 This is taken by Mr. Griffith ( World's Literature, 5332) as referring to 
 the occupations of brigandage and pillage. It is rather a faint condem- 
 nation. Others understand it as a coimsel against associating with the 
 slave of another. 
 
 2 Ptah-Hotep, sec. 6. Tr. Griffith, World's Literature, 5332. 
 ' ib., sec. 19. 
 
 * Minders Petrie, Religion and Conscience, 117 = Ani, sec. 16. 
 
 ^ ib., 155 = Ptah-Hotep, sec. 20. 
 
 " *., 143 = Ptah-Hotep, sec. 25. 
 
 ' ib., 150, 154 = Ptah-Hotep, 30, 31. 
 
 « ib., 141, 143 = Ptah-Hotep, 34. 
 
 = ib., 154 = Ani, 41 ; Griffith, World's Literature, 5341. 
 
ETHICAL CONCEPTIONS IN EARLY THOUGHT 457 
 
 By attending to Ani's maxims you will reach an honoured old age, 
 and be ready for death however suddenly it comes.^ 
 
 There is much of kindliness, much of social good-nature, much 
 of prudent moderation, something of self-rehance and dignity, 
 but " there is hardly a single splendid feeling ; there is not one 
 burst of magnanimous sacrifice ; there is not one heartfelt self- 
 depreciation in any point of aU that worldly wisdom." ^ 
 
 A somewhat hi^er note is struck in such literary pieces of the 
 Middle Kingdom as the " Eloquent Peasant." This is in 
 effect a bitter satire on the indifference of official justice and a 
 sustained plea for redress running the whole gamut from lauda- 
 tion of the judge as the implement of eternal justice to the 
 threat of suicide and appeal to the lord of the dead if retribution 
 is withheld. 
 
 " Do justice for the sake of the lord of justice . . . for justice 
 (or righteousness, right, truth ^) is for eternity. It descends with 
 him that doeth it into the grave . . . His name is not effaced on 
 earth, he is remembered because of good. Such is the exact 
 summation of the divine word." * 
 
 The peasant has been compared to a Hebrew prophet, and 
 in the passion of his denunciation he is their forerunner. But it 
 is hardly correct to speak of him as a pleader for social justice. 
 It is judicial indifference that he is satirizing, not the subtler 
 and more far-reaching forms of social wrong.^ He reflects the 
 same feehng for legal uprightness which invented or cherished the 
 tradition of a judge of the Old Kingdom who always gave deci- 
 sions against any member of his own family for fear of seeming 
 partiaUty, and the higher view of the Middle Kingdom which 
 rebuked such discrimination : " Now this is more than justice." * 
 We see, however, in these writings a more genuine association of 
 religion with ethics than that of the Hall of Osiris, and we find 
 traces of the same advance in the Instructions for King Mery- 
 ke-re which have already been quoted for their incipient mono- 
 theism. " How hath he (Re) slain the froward of heart ? Even 
 as a man smiteth his son for his brother's sake. For God knows 
 
 ' Flinders Petrie, 129 = Ani, 15. 
 
 ' ib., 162. 
 
 ' Gardiner's rendering is Wahrheit {Die Klage des Bauem, p. 14). 
 
 * Breasted, p. 224; Gardiner, loc. cit. 
 
 ' The complaints of Ipnever (Gardiner, Admonitions of an Egyptian 
 Sage ; Breasted, p. 204, etc. ) may refer to a real state of social anarchy but 
 are rather like the grumbling of some one who has had misfortunes against 
 the nouveaux riches. The burden of the complaint is that he who was 
 a serf now has serfs, while the well-to-do man is hungry. 
 
 ' Breasted, 242. 
 
458 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 every name." " More acceptable is the nature of one just of 
 heart than the ox of him who doeth iniquity " ^ — a really notable 
 anticipation of " I will have mercy and not sacrifice." So, too, 
 earher in the document we read : "Do justice that thou mayst 
 endure upon earth. Calm the weeper. Oppress not the widow." 
 But a terrible bathos follows : " Slaughter not, for it does 
 not profit thee," or, perhaps, "unless it profit thee." Such a 
 transition warns us against large conclusions from exceptional 
 traces of idealism. On the whole, as the Egyptian religion was 
 pre-spiritual, so Egyptian morality was that of common-sense 
 moderation. Ideahsm exists only in a few germs. 
 
 The chivalry of barbarism is gone, and the ideaHsms of reUgion 
 and of humanity have not yet come. To the rise of such idealism 
 we must now turn. 
 
 * Gardiner, Jowrn. Eg. Arch., Jan. 1914, p. 34. 
 
CHAPTER in 
 
 THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 
 
 1. The growth of reflection has in many races and under 
 divers conditions of culture carried mankind beyond the stage 
 of Polytheism. The awakening reason demands a theory of the 
 universe and ceases to he satisfied with the patchwork schemes 
 of mythology. The moral self coming to partial consciousness 
 of its nature and scope demands a higher rule of Ufe and a 
 deeper understanding of its relation to cosmic forces. Instead 
 of inventing stories about the beginning of things and the origin 
 of laws, the mind begins to search for the general truths under- 
 lying or permeating experience and giving unity and meaning 
 to human purposes. The forward step achieved by thought in 
 this movement may be described by saying that the imagery 
 of its earHer stage is replaced by defined and reasoned con- 
 ceptions formed by the analysis and reconstruction of primi- 
 tive ideas. Though first applied with positive success in the 
 special sciences, and particularly in the sciences of number 
 and quantity, the ambition of conceptual thought is always to 
 frame a theory of the universe and an ideal of life and character. 
 And fail as it may in its attempts at final truth, a deeper rehgion 
 and a higher ethics are the outcome of each new effort. 
 
 The fines on which these efforts proceed are very various. 
 We have already seen the beginnings of a tendency to trace 
 the scheme of things to a single principle, or at any rate to a 
 first cause, in the attempts of polytheism to treat the many gods 
 as different incarnations or emanations of one and the same 
 Being. But this tendency does not always lead to monotheism. 
 On the contrary, great reUgious systems have arisen in which, 
 as in Brahmanism, the movement is rather towards pantheism 
 than to monotheism, and the unity of God is an uncertain con- 
 ception waveringly held and admitting of compromise with the 
 polytheistic traditions . There are refigions Uke Buddhism , again , 
 in which the whole theological aspect of rehgion is secondary, and 
 the central conception is that of a necessary law of cosmic hfe 
 by which human life in particular is determined and to which 
 human beings must adjust themselves. Or finally, as in Taoism, 
 ^ 459 
 
460 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the supreme principle of things may be left undefined as some- 
 thing that we experience in ourselves if we throw ourselves 
 upon it, but which we know rather by following or living in it 
 than by any process of ratiocination. This mystical interpreta- 
 tion is not confined to Taoism, but in one form or another lies 
 near at hand to all spiritual religions, and expresses one mode 
 of the rehgious consciousness, its aspiration to reach the heart of 
 things and its confidence that it has done so and found rest 
 there. 
 
 Widely as these forms of rehgion differ from monotheism, 
 they may for certain purposes be grouped along with it. All 
 are or are on the way to become spiritual rehgions, resting on 
 and involving a certain ethical ideahsm, and that power of 
 handling conceptions which we take to imply a distinct stage 
 onward in the growth of thought. For in the spiritual religions 
 there is an endeavour to render an articulate account of the 
 universe, of the world process as a whole, of man's place therein 
 and the duties which it imposes on him. But this attempt 
 cannot even be entered upon seriously until certain fundamental 
 conceptions are formed with tolerable distinctness. The con- 
 trasts of the permanent and the changing, of substance and 
 attributes, of cause and accident, of reahty and appearance, 
 of the eternal and the transitory, of the universal and the 
 individual, of divine and human personality — such antitheses 
 present themselves with greater or less articulateness in all 
 attempts to think out the problem of the universe. What is 
 common to all products of this stage of thought, and what 
 differentiates them from the work of lower stages, is that in 
 these the fundamental conceptions involved in any attempt to 
 render the whole scheme of things in systematic fashion have 
 definitely been brought into consciousness. The rehgions of 
 this stage are all conceptual religions rising above mere imagery, 
 and handUng, as distinct objects of thought, categories which at 
 a lower stage are still wrapped up in the experiences in which 
 they are given to the senses.^ 
 
 ' The emergence of these fundamental conceptions into clear conscious- 
 ness is to be regarded as the result of a long process of development. In 
 chap. i. we traced the growth of the mind to the point at which concrete 
 images or picture ideas could be distinctly formed and held apart. But 
 such ideas are not yet fitted for systematic thinking. They have to be 
 further broken up and re-combined, so as, in the first place, to become 
 exact, and applied always with the same meaning (as " universal " instead 
 of "general"). Next, the elements that lie within an idea or go to 
 constitute its character must be distinguishable, so that the differences 
 which constitute a specific development of a general rule, or the blended 
 identities and differences which constitute co-ordinate genera can be 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 461 
 
 They are also spiritual religions, having at their best certain 
 ethical conceptions in common. We have seen that the 
 characteristic of the lowest religions is that their " spirits " are 
 "unspiritual." They are not even differentiated from matter. 
 They blur and confound the distinction of good and evil, holy 
 and unclean, intelUgent purpose and mechanical action. In the 
 stage now reached these confusions are in large measure over- 
 come. The spiritual draws itself together and is presented in 
 antithesis to the sensual and the earthly as the source of all 
 light within man and without. The spiritual is opposed to the 
 sensible world, the spirit in man to his grosser elements, as the 
 underlying spring of what is good and wise and beautiful, and 
 as the bond that connects him with the sources of all that he 
 finds of goodness and wisdom and beauty in the order of things. 
 Finally, with this conception of spirituaUty a distinct set of 
 ethical conceptions is connected. The individual must enter 
 into relations with the universal spirit, and to do so he must 
 put ofi his individuality. He must subdue the senses, and not 
 only the senses, but all things that make for his own self-asser- 
 tion and hinder his perfect communion with the spiritual world. 
 Pride must give place to humility, resentment to forgiveness, 
 the narrow love of kinship to universal benevolence, family 
 life to the selfless impersonal brotherhood of monasticism. 
 For the spirit is not yet of this world. The first step towards 
 realizing it is to conceive it by contrast to common workaday 
 experiences. To understand how it may transform experience, 
 to bring it back to earth without losing its warmth and glow 
 upon the downward journey, is the unfulfilled task of a higher 
 mode of thought. 
 
 2. The spiritual religions have their home in the East. Pro- 
 bably the earliest in point of time — though dates are very 
 uncertain — is the imperfectly spiritualized system of the 
 Brahmans. It is impossible, however, even to touch upon 
 Brahmanism without saying one word upon the preceding stages 
 
 assigned. When this is done the idea is transformed into the concept, and 
 the loose thought-transitions by which images suggest one another are 
 superseded by systematic meditation, reasoning and discussion, whereby 
 concepts are analyzed or combined and consequences logically inferred 
 from premises. Fallacious and genuine methods are distinguished, and 
 thus the old confusion of idea and fact which made the world of make- 
 believe is in principle overcome. On the other hand, in the early stages, 
 the methods of testing the original value of the conceptions employed by 
 a scientific analysis of experience is little understood, and there is accord- 
 ingly a tendency to construct thought-fabrics which nowhere touch solid 
 earth. 
 
462 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of Hindu thought. The earliest phase of Hindu culture known 
 to us, that of the Vedas, resembles in essentials the culture of 
 the Homeric age, and, generally speaking, it has all the charac- 
 teristics of a barbaric society, which is destined to develop into 
 something higher. Family life is in the patriarchal stage ; the 
 father is master of wife, children and slaves. There is no caste 
 as yet,^ but there is a strong distinction between the fair- 
 skinned conquering Aryans and the subject dark-skinned Dasyus. 
 The gods of the Vedas are great gods, controlhng the forces of 
 nature, who may rank with any of the leading deities of Poly- 
 theism. Indra is a man of war like Jahveh or Ashur. He is 
 the special protector of the Arya — " wielding the thunderbolt, and 
 confident in his prowess he strode onwards, shattering the cities 
 of the Dasyus . . . chastising the lawless he subjected the 
 black skin to Manu " (the white Aryan).^ Neither the power 
 nor the moral attributes of the deity are conceived with more 
 consistency or clearness than in other polytheistic schemes. 
 Indra is said to have created or lighted up Ushas. But in 
 other hymns he crushes her chariot with his thunderbolt, and 
 this smiting of " a woman who was bent on evil " — elsewhere 
 the recipient of prayer — is extolled as a "deed of might and 
 manliness."^ Even in the Mahabharata and the Puranas, 
 " Indra, Varuna and other gods " are represented "as leading 
 a sensual and immoral life," and "the Apsarases or celestial 
 nymphs are expressly declared to be courtesans . . . and are 
 represented as being sent by the gods from time to time to 
 seduce austere sages into unchastity."* S'rl is described as 
 issuing forth from Prajapati. " Beholding her thus standing 
 resplendent and trembling, the gods were covetous of her and 
 proposed to Prajapati that they should be allowed to kill her 
 and appropriate her gifts " — a genuine magical conception of 
 the transference of powers. " He rephed that she was a female 
 and that males did not generally kill females. They should, 
 therefore, take from her her gifts without depriving her of hfe."' 
 The chivalry of the gods did not go beyond respect for life, it 
 appears. The gods, it is true, release from sin, but sin appears 
 to be conceived as a quasi-magical bond, and the sin of the 
 father is regularly visited on the children.® Virtues, however, 
 
 • See above. Parti, chap. vii. ^ Muir, Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 113. 
 ' ib., vol. V. p. 192. 
 
 • ib., pp. 323, 324 ; of. also p. 115. ^ *., p. 349. 
 
 ^ See Max MuUer, Big Veda, i. 244, 245, etc. : " Absolve us from the 
 sins of our fathers and from those which we have committed with our 
 own bodies. Release Vasishtha, O king, like a thief who has feasted on 
 stolen cattle ; release him like a calf from the rope." Cf . also Big Veda, 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 463 
 
 recommend men to the gods, and especially liberality conduces 
 to prosperity. " He is the bountiful man who gives to the lean 
 beggar who comes to him craving food. Success attends that 
 man in the sacrifice and he secures for himself a friend in the 
 future."^ The conception of the divine power fluctuates no 
 less than in other polytheistic religions. On the one side, it 
 tends towards monotheism in the form of attributing supreme 
 position to whichever deity is the immediate object of worship — 
 Indra, Varuna, or another. At times with less of naivete and 
 more of dehberate pantheistic feeling, we find it laid down that 
 one god is or includes all the rest. " Aditi is the sky, Aditi is 
 the air, Aditi is the mother and father and son, Aditi is all the 
 gods and the five classes of men. Aditi is whatever has been 
 bom, Aditi is whatever shall be bom."^ We even get a distinct 
 attempt at a true speculative account of the begiiming of things. 
 
 " There was then neither nonentity nor entity ; there was no 
 atmosphere, nor sky above. What enveloped (all) ? Where, iii 
 the receptacle of what (was it contained) ? Was it water, the pro- 
 found abyss ? Death was not then, nor immortality ; there was 
 no distinction of day or night. That One breathed calmly, self- 
 supported ; there was nothing different from, or above, it. In the 
 beginning, darkness existed, enveloped in darkness. All this 
 was undistinguishable water. . . . From what this creation 
 arose, and whether (any one) made it or not, — he who in the 
 
 vii. 86, quoted in Muir, p. 66, where the poet naively explains, " It was 
 not our will, Varuna, but some seduction which led us astray- — wine, 
 anger, dice, or thoughtlessness. The stronger perverts the weaker. Even 
 sleep occasions sin." 
 
 ' Rig Veda, x. 117, quoted in Muir, pp. 431, 432. The notion of future 
 reward appears in the Veda alongside of a more primitive view. He who 
 cooks the vishtarin oblation " goes to the gods, and lives in blessedness 
 with the Gajidharvas, the quafiers of soma. Yama does not steal away the 
 generative power of those who cook the vishtarin oblation" {ib., p. 308). 
 Here the question of oblations is most prominent. Elsewhere we read of 
 heroic deeds, austerities and sage meditations, as contributing to bliss. 
 
 " Let him (the deceased) depart to those for whom the honied beverage 
 flows. Let him depart to those who, through rigorous abstraction, are 
 invincible, who, through tapas, have gone to Heaven; to those who have 
 performed great tapas. Let him depart to the combatants in battles, to 
 the heroes who have there sacrificed their lives, or to those who have 
 bestowed thousands of largesses. Let him depart, Yama, to those austere 
 ancient Fathers who have practised and promoted sacred rites " (Muir, 
 Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 310). 
 
 Lastly, in Rig Veda, iv. 5. 6, there is a reference to some sort of punish- 
 ment. " This deep abyss has been produced (for those who), being sinners 
 false, untrue, go about like women without brothers, like wicked females 
 hostile to their husbands " (Muir, Sanskrit Texts, v. 312). 
 
 * Muir, v. 351, 354. 
 
464 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 highest heaven is its ruler, he verily knows, (or even) he does not 
 know. . . . That One which lay void, and vjrapped in nothing- 
 ness, was developed by the power of fervour." ^ 
 
 On the other side, the divine power is animistically or magically 
 conceived. The gods are held to be nourished by food, to be 
 produced from other beings, to sacrifice and to be sacrificed. In 
 one hymn Visvakarman is said to sacrifice himself or to himself, 
 and he offers up heaven and earth. In another, it appears 
 that the gods sacrificed to the supreme god or that they offered 
 him up.2 Sacrifice is still a magic process from which the 
 gods derive strength. Its materials and implements themselves 
 become deities and so, too, do prayers and hymns, the Vedas 
 themselves, and the priests who control these powers.* The 
 Brahmanic sage ranks with the gods.* 
 
 3. Before tracing the outcome of the Vedic reUgion in India 
 we must glance at the parallel development in ancient Iran. 
 Springing from the same stock as the Aryan invaders of India 
 and worshipping the same gods, the ancient Persians developed 
 a form of rehgion which is in one respect unique. The duahsm 
 of gods and demons, a frequent incidental feature of polytheism, 
 became the central fact of their creed. Originally, it would seem, 
 one of the great gods of the common ancestors of the Persian and 
 Indian peoples, Ahuramazda gradually assumed a position of 
 predominance over the rest. He is already in the time of Darius 
 the greatest of all gods, " who made this earth, who made that 
 heaven, who made man, who made Darius king."^ But this 
 supremacy was not unquestioned. The demons did not disappear 
 or become subordinate as in other religions, but maintained a 
 perpetual conflict with Ahuramazda and his host, and obtained 
 for themselves a leader, the evil spirit Angra Mainya, or, to give 
 him the name better known to us, Ahriman. The world of 
 spirits is divided into two hostile hosts, who balance one another. 
 Ahriman is the precise counterpart of Ahura, the DaSvas or 
 
 1 Rig Veda, x. 129, in Muir, vol. v. pp. 356, 357. 
 
 ' Muir, vol. V. p. 372. 
 
 ^ ib., V. 411, 142. It seems out of place to regard the deification of 
 the power of prayer under the name of the Brahmanaspati as imparting a 
 new and more ethical element into religion. Such personifications belong 
 rather to the lower magico-animistic stratum in polytheism (see Muir, 
 V. 272). 
 
 * Manu, xiii. 49. Of. ix. 317, and xi. 35, etc. 
 
 * Zend Aveeta, i., Introduction, p. 61, by Darmesteter, in Sacred Boohs 
 of the East, vol. iv. On the relation of primitive Mazdaism to Vedism, 
 the precise nature of which is uncertain, see ib., lii. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 465 
 
 demons are opposed to the Amesha Spentas,^ or good spirits, 
 who assist Ahura. Human hfe is in a sense the arena of the 
 conflict, since it is the forces that are held to work for man's 
 good that are conceived as being ranged under Ahuramazda, and 
 the contrary that fight under the banner of Ahriman. Yet the 
 battle is not essentially a moral conflict between good and evil. 
 It jages throughout physical nature, and is fought in large 
 measure by magical weapons. Animals play a large part in the 
 fight — dogs, otters and hedgehogs on the side of Ahura ; snakes, 
 tortoises, frogs and ants on that of the demons. The dis- 
 tinction apparently depended on nothing so rational as the 
 utiUty of the animals, but rather, we may conjecture, on the 
 nature and rank of the god whom they incarnated in an earher 
 stage of the creed. To injure one of Ahura's animal supporters 
 was as deadly a crime ^ as to kUl one of Ahriman 's animals was 
 meritorious. Man also plays his part. His prayers and sacrifices 
 assist the gods in their struggle.* Conversely, any deviation 
 from the rules of ceremonial functions brings evil upon the 
 land. In particular, any behaviour which spreads the death in- 
 fection, e. g. carrying a corpse by oneself, which renders a man 
 peculiarly liable to be seized by the death spirit, or polluting 
 
 ^ These, however, appear to belong to later developments of the religion 
 and are probably importations, perhaps Platonic in origin (ih., p. Ivi. and 
 Ixi.). The original religion had a group of nature gods surrounding Ahura 
 Mazda (p. Ixi.). 
 
 ' This has nothing to do with hmnanity towards animals, but is con- 
 cerned purely with the mischievous effects supposed to ensue. Thus " He 
 who kills a water-dog (otter) brings about a drought that dries up pas- 
 tures." Sweetness and fatness will not come back to the land till he is 
 smitten to death, and " the holy soul of the dog has been offered up a 
 sacrifice." The murderer receives twice ten thousand stripes, and offers a 
 great number of gifts to priests ; among them, " he shall godly and piously 
 give in marriage to a godly man, a virgin maid whom no man has known 
 to redeem his own soul," a sister or daughter of his (Zend Avesta, i. ; 
 Sacred Books, vol. iv. p. 168 ff.). 
 
 The penalty of killing a shepherd's dog was, at least nominally, eight 
 hundred stripes. The murder of a " water-dog " was avenged by ten 
 thousand stripes (ib., Introduction, p. 84). Darmesteter thinks that 
 these penalties must have had a money compensation (ih., pp. 85, 86). 
 
 ' The gods also sacrifice to one another. Not only as an act of worship 
 and recognition, as e.g. Ahura sacrifices to the ancient gods (Duncker, Hist. 
 Antiq., vol. v. p. 136), but also to one another to add to their strength. 
 Thus Tistrya, worsted by Apaosha, cries to Ahura : Oh, Ahura Mazda ! 
 . . . men do not worship me with a sacrifice ... If men had worshipped 
 me with sacrifice ... I should have taken to me the strength of ten 
 horses, ten bulls, ten mountains, ten rivers. Ahura offers him a sacri- 
 fice; he brings him thereby the strength of ten horses, ten camels, ten 
 bulls, ten mountains, ten rivers; Tistrya runs back to the battle-field 
 and Apaosha flies before him (Zend Avesta, ii. ; Sacred Books, xxiii. 
 99 ff.). 
 HH 
 
466 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the sacred element of fire by burning a corpse, are unpardon- 
 able sins.^ They involve the community in danger, they 
 hamper the gods in their conflict with the demons, and they 
 afflict the offender with a taboo of deadly import. 
 
 But Ahuramazda is the lord of the moral as well as the 
 physical world, and there are breaches of morahty which incur 
 divine wrath no less than magical impurities. Prominent 
 among these are falsehood and breach of faith. " The ruffian 
 who.Ues unto Mithra brings death to the whole country."^ To 
 ride, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth were, as 
 Herodotus tells us, the three lessons learnt by every Persian 
 youth. This is borne out by the emphasis laid on truthfulness 
 and the honourable observance of obligations. The principle 
 holds equally, whether the other party to the bargain be be- 
 lievers or unbeHevers, feUow-countrymen or foreigners. " Break 
 not the contract, Spitama, neither the one that thou hast 
 entered into with one of the unfaithful, nor the one that thou 
 hast entered into with one of the faithful. ... For Mithra 
 stands for both the faithful and the unfaithful." * 
 
 Scarcely less prominent is the duty of succouring the faith- 
 ful with alms. Zarathustra's ideal, according to Mr. Mills, was 
 to establish a kingdom under God, " whose first care was to re- 
 lieve suffering and shelter the honest and industrious poor."* 
 However this may be, the duty of almsgiving is prominent. To 
 refuse alms when entreated by the faithful is one of the offences 
 
 ^ Some specimens are worth giving. " Two hundred stripes are awarded 
 if one tills land in which a corpse has been buried within the year, if a 
 woman just delivered of child drinks water. . . . Four hundred stripes if 
 one, being in a state of uncleanness, touches water or trees. . . . Five hun- 
 dred stripes for killing a whelp, six hundred for killing a stray dog, seven 
 hundred for a house dog, eight hundred for a shepherd's dog, one thousand 
 stripes for killing a VanghSpara dog, ten thousand stripes for killing a 
 water-dog. Capital punishment is expressly pronounced only against the 
 false cleanser and the carrier-alone." Repentance and confession with the 
 recital of an appropriate formula might save the offender in the next world 
 but not in this {Zend Avesta, Introd., p. 84). 
 
 2 ib., ii. 120. 
 
 ' ib., loc. cit. Lower down the comparative sacredness of different con- 
 tracts is expressed numerically in the form " Mithra is 20-fold between two 
 friends," etc., i. e. (apparently) 20 times more binding than between two 
 persons not connected by any special tie. A list of ten cases is given, the 
 sequence of which is curious enough. " Mithra," it appears, is 50-fold 
 between wife and husband, but 90-fold between two brothers. He is, 
 however, 1000-fold between two nations, and, finally, 10,000-fold when 
 connected with the law of Mazda (ib., vol. ii. pp. 149, 150). Accord- 
 ing to Mr. L. H. MUls {ib., vol. iii.. Introduction, p. xxi.), a mere raid for 
 rapine (as opposed to desolation inflicted in regular warfare) was regarded 
 as a terrible thing. 
 
 * Op. cit., p. xxii. Darmesteter (see vol. iv. p. Ixvii) also places the 
 " ethics of labour " among the original features of Mazdaism. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 467 
 
 which added to the progeny of the Drug demon.^ Hospitality 
 is rewarded in the next hfe, and niggardliness punished. There is 
 a reward for him who wields the power Ahura gave him to 
 relieve the poor.^ The moral code as a whole may be fairly 
 represented by two passages. The first gives injunctions to the 
 faithful. 
 
 " So be ye discreet from your obedience, most correctly faithful 
 in your speech, most saintly from your sanctity, best ordered in 
 your exercise of power, least straitened by oppressions, heart- 
 easy with rejoicings, most merciful of givers, most helpful to the 
 poor, fulfilling most the ritual." * . . . 
 
 The second withholds a blessing and pronounces a curse on 
 the wicked. 
 
 " Let not our waters be for the man of ill-intent, of evil speech, 
 or deeds, or conscience; let them not be for the offender of a 
 friend, nor for an insulter of a Magian, nor for one who harms the 
 workmen, nor for one who hates his kindred. And let not our 
 good waters (which are not only good), but best, and Mazda-made, 
 help on the man who strives to mar our settlements, which are not 
 to be corrupted, nor let him who would mar our bodies, (our) 
 uncorrupted (selves), nor the thief, nor bludgeon-bearing ruffian 
 who would slaughter the disciples, nor a sorcerer, nor a burier of 
 dead bodies, nor the jealous, nor the niggard, nor the godless 
 heretic who slays disciples, nor the evQ tyrant among men. 
 Agaiast these may our waters come as torments." * 
 
 In sexual matters the magical and the ethical appear to be 
 blended. The courtesan is harmed as one whose look dries up 
 more than one-third of the mighty floods : " Such creatures 
 ought to be killed more than gHding snakes, than howhng 
 wolves." ^ The Sodomite is a Daeva, a worshipper of Daevas, 
 and in his whole being a Daeva. The first comer might kiU him 
 without trial, and to do so was a means of redeeming an ordinary 
 capital crime.* To touch a woman during the menses is an 
 offence punishable with stripes.'' Abortion practised by an 
 
 1 Zend Avesta, i. 201. » ib., vol. ii. p. 23. ' ib., iii. 368. 
 
 ' ib., 318. The principle of group-morality — ^here represented by the re- 
 ligious bond — comes out quaintly in the provision that a would-be doctor is 
 to practise first on Daeva worshippers. If three of them die under his knife, 
 he is never to operate on Mazdaists, under the same penalty as for wilful 
 murder. If three recover, he can practise on Mazdaists {ib. i., 85). 
 Sometimes the blessings of the creed are jealously reserved, as in the 
 following :" Mazda ! Shall the thieving nomad share the good creed . . ." 
 (»6., iii. 46). But elsewhere there is evidence of a more catholic spirit 
 and even of the conversion of a neighboiuing tribe. 
 
 ' *., i. 205. « ib., i. 104. ' ib., p. 188. 
 
468 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 unmarried girl brings the guilt of wiKul murder both on her and 
 her lover .^ Probably the fear of bringing a curse of barrenness on 
 the land is the dominating motive in these ordinances. The " first 
 waihnig " of the goddess Ashi is over the courtesan who destroys 
 her fruit; the second is over the courtesan who passes off a 
 strange child as her husband's ; the third over " the worst deed 
 that men and tyrants do, namely, when they deprive maids that 
 have been barren for a long time of marrying and bringing 
 forth children." ^ The procreation of legitimate children is the 
 common point of interest in the three cases, and it is quite in 
 accordance with the general tendency of the teaching of the 
 Avesta that this should be a primary consideration, and that 
 everything hostile, or, on magical grounds, conceived to be 
 hostile to it, should be a deadly offence. The intermixture of 
 magical and ethical ideas is well seen in the hst of evils created 
 by Angra Mainyu in all the lands which Ahuramazda made. 
 They comprise — 
 
 The serpent in the river, winter, the locust, plunder and sin, the 
 corn-carrying ants, the sin of unbelief, the stained mosquito, the 
 Pairika Knathaiti (idolatry), the sin of pride, the unnatural sin, 
 the burying of the dead, the evil work of witchcraft, the sin of 
 utter unbelief, the cooking of corpses, abnormal issues in women, 
 and barbarian oppression.* 
 
 The tendency of the moral element to predominate, however, 
 appears in the account of the circumstances giving value to 
 prayer. Recitations of the praise of HoHness is of different 
 value on differen^ccasions. For instance, if uttered when eat- 
 ing the gifts of Havratat and Ameretat, it is worth ten others. 
 If when drinking Haoma (the Indian Soma), it is worth a 
 hundred. The conception here is primarily magical — the 
 quaUty of the Haoma intensifying the value of the praise, and 
 the fact of eating or drinking increasing its effect on the wor- 
 shipper. But when, finally, the question is asked : " What 
 ... is worth all that is between the earth, and the heavens, 
 and this earth, and that luminous space, and all the good things 
 made by Mazda, that are the offspring of the good principle in 
 greatness, goodness, and fairness ? " Ahura Mazda answered : 
 " It is that one, Holy Zarathustra, that a man deUvers to re- 
 nounce evil thoughts, evil works, and evil deeds." * Thus in the 
 end the ethical conception of worship is made to predominate. 
 
 Ethical also in essence is the vivid picture of future 
 retribution.* 
 
 1 Zend Avesta, p. 178. " ib., vol. ii. p. 281 ff. » ib., i. i B. 
 
 * ib., ii. 313. 5 ib. ii., 315. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 469 
 
 " At the end of the third night, when the dawn appears, it 
 seems to the soul of the faithful one as if it were |jrought amidst 
 plants and scents ; it seems as if a wind were blowing from the 
 region of the south, from the regions of the south a sweet- 
 scented wind, sweeter-scented than any other wind in the world. 
 
 " And it seems to the soul of the faithful one as if he were 
 inhaling that wind with the nostrils, and he thinks : ' Whence 
 does that wind blow, the sweetest-scented wind I ever inhaled 
 with my nostrils ? ' 
 
 " And it seems to him as if his own conscience were advancing 
 to him in that wind, in the shape of a maiden fair, bright, white- 
 armed, strong, tall-formed, high-standing, thick-breasted, beauti- 
 ful of body, noble, of a glorious seed, of the size of a maid in her 
 fifteenth year, as fair as the fairest things in the world. 
 
 " And the soul of the faithful one addresses her, asking : 
 'What maid art thou, who art the fairest maid I have ever 
 seen ? ' 
 
 " And she, being his own conscience, answers him : ' thou 
 youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds, of good 
 religion, I am thine own conscience ! ' 
 
 " ' Everybody did love thee for that greatness, goodness, 
 fairness, sweet-scentedness, victorious strength and freedom from 
 sorrow, in which thou dost appear to me ; 
 
 " ' And so thou, O youth of good thoughts,' etc., ' didst love me 
 for that greatness,' etc., ' in which I appear to thee. 
 
 " ' When thou wouldst see a man making derision and deeds of 
 idolatry, or rejecting (the poor) and shutting his door, then thou 
 wouldst sit singing the Gathas and worshipping the good waters 
 and Atar, the son of Ahura Mazda, and rejoicing the faithful that 
 would come from near or from afar. "^ 
 
 " ' I was lovely, and thou madest me still lovelier ; I was fair, 
 and thou madest me still fairer ; I was desirable, and thou madest 
 me still more desirable; I was sitting in a forward place, and 
 thou madest me sit in the foremost place, through this good 
 thought, through this good speech, through this good deed of 
 thine; and so henceforth men worship me for my having long 
 sacrificed unto and conversed with Ahura Mazda.' " 
 
 In the same third night the conscience of the wicked appears 
 to him in the form of a " profligate woman, naked, decayed, 
 gaping, bandy-legged, lean-hpped, and unhmitedly spotted, so 
 that spot was joined to spot, hke the most hideous noxious 
 creature, most filthy, and most stinking." ^ 
 
 The creed of Zoroaster is not monotheism, though it had 
 monotheistic tendencies, which developed in proportion as stress 
 
 1 Zend Avesta, ii. 319, note. 
 
470 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 was laid on the final victory of Aliuramazda and the destruc- 
 tion of Angra Mainya. But neither was it ordinary polytheism. 
 It was a unique expression of the dualism of nature which few 
 other creeds, if any, have ever attempted to face. As such it 
 left a legacy in the conception of the devil to later reUgions. It 
 is deeply immersed in magical ideas, which makes its code with 
 its grotesque offerings and horrible punishments perhaps the 
 most extraordinary document in the whole history of Ethics. 
 Yet amid this it had also firmly seized certain moral truths — 
 hardly yet the deeper truths of the spiritual reHgions, but the 
 truths consonant to the character of an early civiHzation — ^the 
 purity of the home life, truthfulness, good faith, neighbourly 
 help and hospitality. It conceived that man's duty is to master 
 the earth, to tend the kine, to be fruitful and multiply, and that 
 this was to lend power to the good spirit and aid its ultimate 
 triumph over the demonic forces of Death and the desert. For 
 those who forwarded the work there was a rich reward laid up 
 hereafter — and for the evil that appaUing meeting with their 
 own conscience which was the opening of hell. 
 
 4. A far greater advance on the primitive Indo-Persian 
 religion was made in India itseM. Here, long before the age 
 of Buddha, at a date quite unknown to us, the Vedic religion 
 was developed into a metaphysical system, probably the first 
 metaphysical rehgion of history. Not only had the gods been 
 traced to emanations from a single principle — ^this would not 
 in itself, perhaps, have brought the Brahman further than the 
 esoteric wisdom of Egypt — but, what is for ethical purposes more 
 important, this supreme principle was identified with the true 
 self or personaUty of man, an identification which makes the 
 spirituaUty of the Divine for the first time its essential feature. 
 
 " The intelligent, whose body is spirit, . . . He is myself, 
 within the heart ; smaller than a com of rice, smaller than a com 
 of barley, smaller than a mustard-seed, smaller than a canary- 
 seed or the kernel of a canary-seed. He also is myself within the 
 heart, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than 
 heaven, greater than all these worlds. He from whom all works, 
 all desires, all sweet colours and tastes proceed, who embraces all 
 this, who never speaks, and who is never surprised, he, myself 
 within the heart, is that Brahman. . . . When I shall have de- 
 parted from hence, I shall obtain him (that Self). He who has 
 this faith has no doubt." ^ 
 
 1 Upanishads, i. 48. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 471 
 
 We have here the first principle of aU mysticism, that God 
 and the self are one. But we have also somethijjg greater than 
 mysticism, the discovery that the true self is something distinct 
 from and opposed to the material body and the hf e of the senses, 
 something that can be smaller than a grain of mustard-seed 
 because not an object in space at aU, yet greater than the uni- 
 verse because embracing all things. Matter is not spirit, nor 
 do images and conceptions drawn from matter serve to define 
 the Spirit, which is known rather by its opposition to them, 
 as the self which we find when we get beneath the bodily shell 
 and think away the objects of sensuous knowledge. Indeed, 
 the only doubt is whether the self as that which knows can also 
 be known. 
 
 " How should he (the Self) know Him by whom he knows all 
 this 1 That self is to be described by No, No ! He is incompre- 
 hensible, for he cannot be comprehended ; he is imperishable, for 
 he cannot perish ; he is unattached, for he does not attach him- 
 self ; unfettered, he does not suffer, he does not f aU. How, O 
 beloved, should he know the Knower ? " ^ 
 
 But this sceptical movement does not prevent the triumphant 
 identification of the self with the universal Spirit. The self is 
 the true totahty of things, and he who has achieved this wisdom, 
 attaining to self-knowledge and self-mastery, attains also to a 
 lordship of all things. 
 
 " Now follows the explanation of the Infinite as the 'I.' 'I am 
 below; I am above, I am behind, before, right and left — I am 
 aU this.' Next follows the explanation of the Infinite as the 
 Self. ' SeK is below, above, behind, before, right and left — Self 
 is all this.' ' He who sees, perceives, and understands this, loves 
 the Self, delights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the 
 Self — ^he becomes a Svarag (an autocrat or self -ruler) ; he is lord 
 and master in all the worlds. But those who think differently 
 from this, live in perishable worlds, and have other beings for 
 their rulers." ^ 
 
 Inner knowledge is the centre of mysticism; through this 
 knowledge man achieves self-mastery, and self-mastery is 
 world-mastery; for the true self, illusions thrown off, is the 
 reality of all that is. How then do men attain knowledge ? 
 Neither work, nor prayer, nor much learning, nor penance, are 
 
 1 Vpanlahads, ii. 185. Cf. XJpanishads, p. 112, where the duality 
 (of subject and object) involved in knowledge is insisted on, and the 
 difSculty is raised how the self which is the knower can also be the known. 
 
 » *., i. 123, 124. 
 
472 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 sufficient. But these, it would appear, form a ladder whereby 
 men escape from the impurity of sensual existence, and reach the 
 clearer air of self-mastery. ' ' By truthfulness in deed , by penance 
 right knowledge and abstinence must that seK be gained." ^ The 
 rules of morahty and rehgious ceremonial are presupposed. 
 
 " There are three branches of the law — sacrifice, study and 
 charity are the first; austerity the second; and to dwell as a 
 Brahmakarin in the house of a tutor, always mortifying the 
 body ... is the third." « 
 
 The Brahmanic Code ^ is naturally more expUcit on this point 
 than the mystical books. And not only does it make conduct 
 the foundation of the spiritual hfe, but we find it advancing 
 to the ethical view that good conduct is truly good only when 
 preferred for its own sake, independently of the conception of 
 reward or punishment. " The sages, who saw that the sacred 
 law is thus grounded on the rule of conduct, have taken good 
 conduct to be the most excellent root of all austerity," * and "to 
 act solely from a desire for rewards is not laudable, yet an 
 exemption from that desire is not (to be found) in this (world), 
 for on (that) desire is grounded the study of the Veda and the 
 performance of the actions prescribed by the Veda."^ This 
 is perhaps a little halting, but in the concluding book of the 
 code we find a more emphatic sentence. " Acts which secure 
 (the fulfilment of) wishes in this world or in the next are called 
 pravritta (such as cause a continuation of mundane existence) ; 
 but acts performed without any desire (for a reward) preceded 
 by (the acquisition) of (true) knowledge, are declared to be 
 nivritta (such as cause the cessation of mundane existence) ".* 
 Abandonment of all earthly affections is the final condition of 
 supreme fehcity. " If a man, though well enlightened, is still 
 pierced by passion and darkness and attached to his children, 
 
 * Upaniehads, ii. 39. Sometimes the Brahmanist thinker seems to be 
 stumbing on the brink of the theory of Election, as : " That self cannot 
 be gained by the Veda, nor by Txnderstanding, nor by much learning. He 
 whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained" (i6., ii. 11). For 
 abstinence as a condition, cf. i. 130. 
 
 ^ ib., i. 35. 
 
 ' In citing Manu as evidence for Brahmanic teaching, we must bear in 
 mind that the code as we have it is a growth of many centuries incor- 
 porating elements of variovis origin. To attempt to disentangle the sources 
 of different sections, or to determine their chronological sequence, would, 
 however, lead to a special inquiry far beyond the scope of this work. For 
 our purposes we must be content to take the code with all its inconsis- 
 tencies at its face value, as representing the ideas at work in the Brahmanic 
 world over a long period, 
 
 * Manu, i. 110. ' ih., ii. 2. • ib., xii. 89. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 473 
 
 wife and house, then perfect Yoga is never accompHshed." ^ On 
 the other hand, perfect knowledge raises man abova the capacity 
 for sin. Indra said ..." he who knows me thus, by no deed of 
 his is his life harmed, not by the murder of his mother, not by 
 the murder "of his father, not by theft, not by the killing of a 
 Brahman. If he is going to commit a sin, the bloom does not 
 depart from his face." ^ 
 
 Two notes are sounded here that echo through the whole 
 history of mystical reUgion. All ordinary human ties are 
 broken by a spiritual principle which puts everything belonging 
 to this world into a secondary place. And in close conjunction 
 with this feature we have the elevation of an inward state of 
 mind as the highest goal, supreme above aU conduct — the one 
 element in conduct of vital importance being in fact merely the 
 self -repression required in order that this inward state may come 
 into being. Both these features belong to the first clear appre- 
 hension of the spiritual element in man, and its sharp opposition 
 to the sensual. In this early stage it cannot be apprehended 
 that the truly spiritual is something that forms and inspires the 
 world of perception, that fashions lowly efforts to great ends 
 and transfigures humble daUy life with the light and glow of 
 self-sacrifice and love. Become for the first time conscious of 
 itself, the spirit wants a dramatic display of its independence. 
 It must show its utter contempt for the material world, and in 
 this unfortunately it includes those very human relations which 
 are the true sphere of its activity. It knows self-control to be 
 the foundation of its existence, and it makes the practice of 
 self-control the one supreme and aU -embracing end of conduct. 
 These are common, and on the whole distinctive, features of the 
 first stage of spiritual rehgion. True, the ascetic tendency and 
 the cult of pain are deeply rooted in human nature, and play 
 an important part even in savage Hfe. Painful initiations as 
 tests of virility are one of the commonest of savage institutions. 
 Down to the lowest grades men honour those who can endure. 
 But it is with the rise of spiritual reUgion that asceticism takes 
 rank as the supreme law of salvation. 
 
 Asceticism links itself naturally to the conception of penance, 
 and here again we come in Brahmanism upon the beginnings 
 of a spiritual theory of man's regeneration. We have seen that 
 the Babylonian who sought to avoid the consequences of his 
 sins had no better method than to resort to an incantation, 
 which was in the first place a form of repudiation, and in the 
 second place a ceremonial purification, in which the sins were 
 » Vpamshada, u. 326. « ib., i. 283. 
 
474 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 washed or scoured or thrown away or burnt out of him by one 
 of the processes of sympathetic magic. We have also seen 
 reasons for thinking that in the Egyptian Judgment of the 
 Dead, at least in its old form, the negative confession had a 
 similar significance. In the Brahman's Code we find a distinct 
 advance towards an ethical conception of repentance. 
 
 " By confession, by repentance, by austerity and by reciting 
 (the Veda) a sinner is freed from guUt, and in case no other course 
 is possible, by liberality. In proportion as a man who has done 
 wrong, himself confesses it, even so far he is freed from guilt, as 
 a snake from its slough. In proportion as his heart loathes his 
 evil deed, even so far is his body freed from that guilt." ^ 
 
 Higher and lower elements contend in this passage. At 
 times we seem near to the ethical view of purification through 
 the acknowledgment of guilt and the ready acceptance of in- 
 evitable suffering, as the way and means towards a true change 
 of heart. At other times we relapse into the magical conception 
 of the potency of a formula, and learn that " even he who has 
 stolen gold instantly becomes free from guilt if he once mutters " 
 a certain hymn.^ The old magic crops up by the side of the 
 higher spiritualism, and the veil of mystical imagination drawn 
 over all forbids that clear, remorseless scrutiny by which alone 
 the doctrine of the spirit can be kept pure. Apart from the 
 medicinal effect of repentance, confession, and forgiveness, the 
 Brahmanistic religion took a stringent view of the consequences 
 of guilt. If a man did not suffer for guilt in this fife, it came 
 upon him in the next. After passing through hell, he was re- 
 incarnated in some loathsome animal form. If the punishment 
 did not fall upon the sinner, it might, by the principle of 
 vicarious justice, fall upon his sons or his descendants or his 
 ancestors. Manu says, " If (the punishment falls) not on (the 
 offender) himself, (it falls) on his sons ; if not on the sons, (at 
 least) on his grandsons " ; but there is a saving clause which 
 shows that vicarious justice no longer wholly satisfies. " But 
 an iniquity (once) committed never fails to produce fruit to him 
 who wrought it." * 
 
 The doctrine of transmigration is interwoven with the most 
 serious aberration in the Brahmanic ethics, since it offered, as 
 we have seen,* a theoretical justification for the deepening 
 divisions of caste.* We also saw, it is true, that these divisions 
 
 1 Manu, xi. 228, 229, 230. » ib., xi. 251 ; cf. 249, 250, 252. 
 
 ' i6.,iv. 173. * Part I. chap. vii. 
 
 ° The Sudra, and still more the outcast Kandala, was justly despised and 
 kept apart from the Brahman because he was the incarnation of a soul 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 475 
 
 were the subject of much questioning among thinkers. But it 
 was not the function of Brahmanism to ameUor*te social life. 
 Life in human society was a life of error in which the true 
 Brahman remained only to fulfil his duty to his ancestors bj' 
 begetting a son to continue their cult. IBs true life was in the 
 forest, conquering the senses and coming to the knowledge of 
 his spiritual self. Yet with this contempt for worldly values 
 Brahmanism is able to make some advance towards those ethical 
 positions which characterize the higher spiritual religions. 
 
 The Brahman is to avoid causing pain even within his rights. 
 "Let him not be uselessly active with his hands and feet, or 
 with his eyes, nor crooked (in his ways), nor talk idly, nor 
 injure others by deeds or even think of it." ^ Consideration for 
 all hfe, animal as well as human, is in more than one place 
 urged, though the rule is not consistently carried through. 
 "For that twice-born man, by whom not the smallest danger 
 even is caused to created beings, there will be no danger from 
 any (quarter) after he is freed from his body." ^ Malice is con- 
 demned, " neither a man who (Uves) unrighteously, nor he who 
 (acquires) wealth (by telhng) falsehoods, nor he who always 
 deUghts in doing injury, ever attain happiness in this world."* 
 If the eating of meat except in sacrifice * is forbidden, this is 
 perhaps an outcome of primitive ideas which at times verge 
 upon zoolatry. But a more rational conception of the general 
 sanctity of hfe is impUed in the rule, " Let him never seek to 
 destroy an animal without a (lawful) reason ' ' ; and in some places 
 a true consideration for animals is blended with rules traceable 
 to principles of magic. " Let him not travel with untrained 
 beasts of burden, nor with (animals) that are tormented by 
 hunger or disease, or whose horns, eyes, and hoofs have been 
 injured, or whose tails have been disfigured. Let him always 
 travel with beasts which are weU broken in, swift, endowed with 
 lucky marks, and perfect in form and colour, without urging them 
 too much with the goad."^ As to enemies, the Brahmanistic 
 Code does not go so far as Lao Tse in bidding us to recompense 
 evil with good,* but it preaches rather the ignoring of an enemy : 
 
 suffering for its misdeeds in some prior existence. Far from bringing 
 relief to the despised and oppressed, Brahmanism stamped caste divisions 
 with the seal of religion, and if it did not invent them, at least gave them 
 the iron fixity which holds Indian society bound and fettered to this day. 
 
 • Manu, iv. 177. " *., vi. 40. » *., iv. 170. 
 
 * *., v. 31. - = *., iv. 67, 68. 
 
 ' Yet in the Mahabharata we read the Buddhist verse, " Let a man over- 
 come anger by kindness, evil by good ; let him conquer the stingy by a 
 gift, the liar by truth " (Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 130 note). 
 
476 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " Let him not show particular attention to an enemy, the 
 friend of an enemy, to a wicked man, to a thief, or to the wife 
 of another man."^ If these words hardly suggest that it is 
 forgiveness that is in question, but rather the avoidance of 
 strife, on the other hand we read further on that forgiveness 
 and liberality are means to purification. "The learned are 
 purified by a forgiving disposition ; those who have committed 
 forbidden actions by liberaUty."* Yet the following clause 
 seems to be the Mosaic law at a httle higher remove. " Making 
 over (the merit of his own) good actions to his friends, and (the 
 guilt of) his evil deeds to his enemies, he attains the eternal 
 Brahman by the practice of meditation." * Lastly, forgiveness 
 is a maxim of kingcraft. " A king who desires his own welfare 
 must always forgive litigants, infants, aged and sick men, who 
 inveigh against him. He who being abused by men in pain 
 pardons (them), will in reward of that (act) be exalted in heaven ; 
 but he who, (proud) of his kingly state, forgives them not, will 
 for that (reason) sink into hell." * 
 
 For the rest, the Brahmanic teaching, as we have seen, 
 adheres to the Oriental view of women .^ It lays down certain 
 rules of humanity and chivalry in warfare.* In private inter- 
 course it teaches the duty of truthfulness combined with courtesy. 
 It insists much upon the avoidance of low occupations and mean 
 methods of gain,' and even preaches holding aloof from a king 
 who is not of a true kingly caste.* 
 
 1 Manu, iv. 133. ' ib., v. 107. 
 
 " ib., vi. 79. ♦ ib., viii. 312, 313. 
 
 ^ See above, Part I. chap. v. * Part I. chap. vi. 
 
 ' Betting and gambling are declared equivalent to " open theft" (Manu, 
 ix. 222). 
 
 * " Let him not accept presents from a king who is not descended from 
 the Kshatriya race, nor from butchers, oil-manufactin:ers, and publicans, nor 
 from those who subsist by the gain of prostitutes. One oil-press is as (bad) 
 as ten slaughter-houses, one tavern as (bad) as ten oil-presses, one brothel 
 as (bad as) ten taverns, one king as (bad as) ten brothels. A king is 
 declared to be equal (in wickedness) to a butcher who keeps a hundred 
 thousand slaughter-houses ; to accept presents from him is a terrible (crime). 
 He who accepts presents from an avaricious king, who acts contrary to the 
 Institutes (of the sacred law), will go in succession to the following twenty- 
 one hells " (Manu, iv. 84, etc.). Some conception of the spirit of the 
 Brahmanic Code, and of the very diverse elements entering into it, may 
 be obtained by comparing the lists of principal and minor ofiences. The 
 following are mortal sins : " Killing a Brahmana, drinking (the spirituous 
 liquor called) Sura, stealing (the gold of a Brahmana), adultery with a 
 Guru's wife, and associating with such (offenders) . . . Slaying a friend . . . 
 stealing men . . . carnal intercourse with sisters by the same mother, with 
 (unmarried) maidens, with females of the lowest castes, with the wives of 
 a friend, or of a son." . . . On the other hand : " Adultery, selling one- 
 self, allowing one's younger brother to marry first, . , . giving a daughter 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 477 
 
 The Brahmanic Code is not the work of reformers or of laen 
 inspired with a social or humane ideal. It is the code of a 
 society in which barbaric elements survive, but which has made 
 great advances in civOization, and of a priesthood which has 
 grasped certain sides of spiritual truth, but has neither disen- 
 cumbered itself of primitive ways of thought, nor advanced to 
 the point at which the ethical and spiritual unite. Its spiritual 
 interpretation of the divine unity was such as readily to make 
 terms with polytheism. For though all the gods and all human 
 beings too were emanations from the one spirit, it does not 
 follow that the many gods lose their reahty. On the contrary, 
 the way is prepared for the series of emanations — Vishnu, an 
 emanation from Brahma ; Krishna, an emanation of Vishnu ; and 
 Krishna himself impersonated in many successive incarnations — 
 a system which retains many of the essentials of polytheism, 
 under the shell of metaphysical theory. What was worse was 
 that its mysticism could make terms with magic; it could 
 find spiritual efficacy in a formula, and conceive austerity as 
 conferring, not an ethical self -conquest, but miraculous powers. 
 MnaUy, at its best, the Brahmanic view of hfe is pessimistic and 
 its highest ideal is the sage who, having performed his duties, 
 has emancipated himself from human relations and entered into 
 the spiritual kingdom of the god within his breast. It contains 
 no message of comfort for the sufferer, of love, of forgiveness, of 
 humility. StiU less does it proclaim an ideal of social justice. 
 It leaves us with the picture of the emaciated hermit dreaming, 
 in the trance of semi-starvation, of himself as one with the 
 centre of things, a God self-created by his own afflicted brain. 
 
 5. The relation of Buddhism to Brahmanism has sometimes 
 been compared to that of Protestantism to the CathoHc Church. 
 It is, at any rate, only by appreciating the central doctrines of 
 Brahmanism that we can begin to understand Buddha's attitude. 
 The Brahman held life to be on the whole an evil, from which 
 it was the object of the higher knowledge to dehver its possessor. 
 Every Brahmanic system had its own theory of the method of 
 escape from the chain of existences. Buddha^ had a new theory, 
 and one which, with the same elehient of pessimism at its root, 
 
 to . . . (either brother) . . . defiling a damsel, usury, . . . selling a tank, 
 a garden, one's wife, or child, . . . living as a Vratya, casting oS a relative, 
 . . . superintending mines, . . . subsisting on (the earnings of) one's wife 
 ■ . . cutting down green tre^ for firewood, doing acts for one's own 
 advantage only, . . . slaying women, Sudras, Vaisyas, or Kshatriyas, and 
 atheism are aU minoi ofiences causing loss of caste. 
 
478 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 was in closer touch alike with average human nature and with 
 the highe'r ethical consciousness of mankind. Buddha's great 
 discovery was the want of permanence in the whole world of 
 phenomena, the whole world of change. Whatever has a 
 beginning must also have an end. And so there appeared the 
 possibility of an ultimate cessation from the wheel of suffering, 
 an ultimate disentanglement from the chain of earthly existences. 
 Transmigration is, in a modified form, a central doctrine still, 
 but it is not strictly a transmigration of the soul, for the soul, 
 according to the strict Buddhist, is a figment. The constitutive 
 elements of the human being come together at birth, and are 
 dissolved at death. If the good and evil he does live after him, 
 it must be very strictly maintained that it is the good and evil 
 only that live and not he himself. In other words, every cause 
 has its effect. Whatever good I do has a permanent, so to say, 
 spiritual efficacy, and equally whatever evil I do. But the 
 effect is shown in a peculiar way. My personahty does not 
 survive, but my good and my evil works survive, and they deter- 
 mine the fate of another being, which comes into existence, as 
 it were, to carry on my moral destiny. This is the difiScult 
 and much misunderstood doctrine of Karma, a doctrine which a 
 modern metaphysician might phrase somewhat after this fashion : 
 that it destroys the substantiality of the soul while leaving its 
 causality ; the stream of moral consequences becomes a stream of 
 mere causation from which the personahty of the moral subject 
 is removed. But, further. Karma has, as it were, one central 
 cause — Desire, the will to live, self-assertion. It is on account 
 of this desire that I maintain my individuahty, that I remain shut 
 up within my selfish interests, that I maintain myself as a dis- 
 tinct being from the universe at large ; and because this desire 
 is, Karma is, and the results of my personal character are 
 perpetuated. If I would seek emancipation from the chain of 
 earthly existences I must put an end to Karma, and to put an 
 end to Karma I must put an end to desire ; and to put an end 
 to desire I must train myself in the doctrines of the Buddha 
 which teach me the unreaUty and the valuelessness of all earthly 
 things, and raise me to that emancipation from self, from worldly 
 interests, from all care for the things of this transitory being, 
 which is for the Buddhist the dream of bhss. I must, in short, 
 attain to the extinction of individuahty — ^that is, to use a technical 
 and deeply misunderstood term, to Nirvana, for Nirvana is not, 
 as is often thought, utter extinction ; on the contrary, it is a 
 real state of real people in this earthly existence, it is the state 
 of the Arahat, a state reached by those who have trodden the 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 479 
 
 path marked out for them to the end and gained the summit of 
 the ascent. Nirvana means extinction, but it dges not mean 
 extinction of hfe, but extinction of those desires and lusts which 
 war, not, as in Christianity, against the soul, but rather for 
 the perpetuation of individuality, which form a barrier between 
 the world and me, which make me, in short, an individual, and 
 prevent me from reaching that state of blissful contemplation, 
 of perfect benevolence, and total selflessness which alone can 
 prevent the law of Karma from bringing another being into 
 existence in my place, when my earthly career is ended. We 
 now have before us the " four noble truths " in which the doctrine 
 of Buddha is summed up. The first is the truth about suffering. 
 AU transient existence involves suffering ; birth and death, 
 growth and decay, the frustration of desire, the longing that can- 
 not be satisfied, all that belongs to our existence as individuals — 
 all are full of suffering. There maybe joy too, but pain cometh 
 at the end, and the word is written large over the final balance- 
 ment of accounts. The second truth is the truth about the cause 
 of suffering, which is the craving for the satisfaction of desire, 
 the craving that maintains hfe and causes its renewal. The third 
 truth is that suffering is brought to an end by the conquest of 
 this craving. And the fourth truth is that the path leading to 
 the cessation of suffering is the " noble eight-fold path," by 
 which the craving of desire is laid to rest.'^ The eight-fold path, 
 therefore, contains in httle both the ethics and the practical 
 rehgion of Buddhism, which is on the one hand opposed to the 
 sensuahty of this Hfe, and on the other to the ascetic extremes 
 of Brahmanism. 
 
 " What is that middle path, Bhikkus, avoiding these two 
 extremes discovered by the Tathagata ? Verily ! it is this noble 
 eight-fold path ; that is to say — 
 " Right views ; 
 
 Right aspirations ; 
 
 Right speech ; 
 
 Right conduct ; 
 
 Right livelihood ; 
 
 Right effort ; 
 
 Right mindfulness ; and 
 
 Right contemplation." ^ 
 
 The pursuit of the eight-fold noble path Hberated the follower 
 of Buddha from the ten following fetters in succession, namely : 
 1. Delusion of self. 2. Doubt. 3. Dependence on works. 
 
 1 Buddhist SiUtas, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xi. pp. 148, 149. 
 » Op. cit., pp. 146, 147. 
 
480 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 4. Sensuality. 5. Hatred. 6. Love of life on earth. 7. Desire 
 for life in Heaven. 8. Pride. 9. Self -righteousness. 10. Ignor- 
 ance. It is not tUl the first five fetters are destroyed that the 
 Buddhist becomes an Arahat, and it is not until the remaining 
 five are abolished that he has finally put an end to delusion and 
 sorrow.^ It was not impossible for a layman, living the ordinary 
 life of a householder, to enter upon the path and even to attain 
 to Nirvana, but though not impossible, it was extremely difficult. 
 
 " Full of hindrances is household life, a path defiled by passion ; 
 free as the air is the life of him who has renounced all worldly 
 things. How difficult is it for the man who dwells at home to live 
 the higher life in all its fulness, in all its purity, in all its bright 
 perfection ! Let me then cut off my hair and beard, let me clothe 
 myself in the orange-coloured robes, and let me go forth from a 
 household life into the homeless state." ^ 
 
 Hence the order of mendicants, or Bhikkhus, an order of celi- 
 bates who were to attain to Nirvana, or to tread the path to 
 Nirvana, as each individual's capacity would aUow him, and to 
 reach it, not by exaggerated abstinence, or extreme mortification 
 of the flesh, but by simple adhesion to rules of life based on the 
 conception of virtue a,s resting in selflessness, the avoidance of 
 desire, the avoidance of injury to others, the cultivation of love, 
 and the destruction of hatred. These were the simple elements 
 constituting the rules of the Bhikkhu's life and simply formulated 
 in the eight precepts — 
 
 " One should not destroy life. 
 One should not take that which is not given. 
 One should not tell lies. 
 
 One should not become a drinker of intoxicating liquors. 
 One should refrain from unlawful sexual intercourse — an 
 
 ignoble thing. 
 One should not eat unseasonable food at nights. 
 One should not wear garlands or use perfumes. 
 One should sleep on a mat spread on the ground." * 
 
 These eight precepts apply to all Buddhists, including house- 
 holders.* Two more are binding on mendicants, namely, to 
 abstain from dancing, music, and stage plays, and from the use 
 of gold and silver. These form with the first eight the ten moral 
 rules of the order. With these may be compared the division 
 into ten sins — 
 
 ' See Rhys Davids, Manual of Buddhism, pp. 109, 110, etc. 
 ' Suttas, pp. 187, 188. 
 ' Rhys Davids, Buddhism, p. 139. 
 The three last, however, are not obligatory. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 481 
 
 " Three of the body- 
 Taking life, , 
 Theft (taking what has not been given) ^ 
 Unlawful sexual intercourse. 
 Four of speech — 
 
 Lying. 
 
 Slander (includes ' saying here what one hears there ')j 
 Abuse (swearing), 
 Vain conversation. 
 Three of the mind — 
 Covetousness, 
 Malice, 
 Scepticism." ^ 
 
 Further, the Buddhist Manual of Ethics classifies moral duties 
 under six heads : The natural obhgations of Parents and 
 Children, of Pupils and Teachers, of Husbands and Wives, of 
 Friends and Companions, of Masters and Servants, of Laymen 
 and the ReHgious. The insistence on the duties of the husband 
 is noteworthy. 
 
 " The husband should cherish his wife — 
 By treating her with respect. 
 By treating her with kindness. 
 By being faithful to her. 
 By causing her to be honoured by others. 
 By giving her suitable ornaments and clothes." ^ 
 
 Still more the injunctions on masters. 
 
 " The master should provide for the welfare of his dependents^ 
 By apportioning work to them according to their strength. 
 By supplying suitable food and wages. 
 By tending them in sickness. 
 By sharing with them unusual delicacies. 
 By now and then granting them holidays." * 
 
 The Manual concludes that Uberality, courtesy, kindliness and 
 ' unselfishness — " these are to the world what the linchpin is to 
 the rolhng chariot." 
 
 6. The character of the true Buddhist is summarized in the 
 short paragraphs on conduct. 
 
 " He abstains from destroying life ... and full of modesty and 
 pity, he is compassionate and kind to all creatures that have 
 life. . . . He abstains from taking anything not given. . . . He 
 lives a life of chastity and purity, averse to the low habit of sexual 
 
 ' Rhys Davids, BwddfeisOT, p. 142. ^ Op. cit., p. 145. ^ ib.,p. 146. 
 I I 
 
482 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 intercourse. . . . He abstains from speaking falsehood. He 
 abstains from calumny. What he hears here, he repeats not 
 elsewhere to raise a quarrel against the people here. Thus he 
 lives as a binder together of those who are divided, a peace-maker, 
 a lover of peace, impassioned for peace, a speaker of words that 
 make for peace. . . . He abstains from harsh language. What- 
 ever word is humane, pleasant to the ear, lovely, reaching to the 
 heart, urbane, pleasing to the people, beloved of the people — 
 such are the words he speaks. . . . He abstains from vain con- 
 versation. He refrains from injuring any herb or any creature. 
 He takes but one meal a day. . . . He abstains from dancing, 
 singing, music, and theatrical shows. . . . He abstains from the 
 getting of silver or gold. He abstains from the getting of grain 
 uncooked. He abstains from the getting of flesh that is raw. 
 He abstains from the getting of any woman or girl. He abstains 
 from the getting of bondmen or bondwomen. He abstains from 
 the getting of sheep or goats. . . . He refrains from carrying 
 out those commissions on which messengers can be sent. He 
 refrains from buying and selling. He abstains from tricks with 
 false weights, alloyed metals, or false measures. He abstains 
 from bribery, cheating, fraud, and crooked ways. He refrains 
 from maiming, killing, imprisoning, highway robbery, plundering 
 villages, or obtaining money by threats of violence." ^ 
 
 These precepts are expanded in the " middle " and " long " 
 paragraphs, which further reprehend combats between animals, 
 games of many kinds " detrimental to progress in virtue," mean 
 talk, such as " tales of kings, of robbers, or of ministers of state : 
 tales of arms, of war, of terror, conversation respecting women, 
 warriors, demi-gods, ghost stories, empty tales." They depre- 
 cate wrangUng about orthodoxy; reproach those who perform 
 "the servile duties of a go-between," that is, between kings, 
 ministers of state, Brahmans, etc. ; denounce hypocrisy, divina- 
 tion, magic ; reprobate those who make their Uving by predict- 
 ing eclipses, or a rainfall, " or by drawing up deeds, making up 
 accounts, giving pills, making verses, or arguing points of 
 casuistry " ; by giving advice about marriage, imparting magical 
 formulae, and so forth. If some of these prohibitions appear to 
 us oddly assorted, the general purport is clear enough. The 
 follower of Buddha is to hold aloof, on the one hand, from the 
 frivolities and sensuaUties of the life of pleasure ; on the other, 
 from the quackery and professions ^ mixed up with quackery 
 
 1 SuttaSyV- 189. 
 
 ' In the Vinaya Texts, vol. iii. p. 152, sacrifices to the gods are included 
 ajnong the " low arts " which a Bhikkhu is not to teach. On the other 
 hand, in vol. ii. p. 103, the prudent man, wherever he takes up his abode, 
 is recommended " to make oSerings " to all such deities as may be there. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 483 
 
 into which the lower forms of religion so easily slide. But 
 underlying all this is the ideal goodness as consisting in universal 
 love. 
 
 " And he lets his mind pervade one quarter of the world with 
 thoughts of love, and so the second, and so the third, and so the 
 fourth. And thus the whole wide world, above, below, around 
 and everywhere, does he continue to pervade with heart of Love, 
 far-reaching, grown great, and beyond measure. Just, Vasettha, 
 as a mighty trumpeter makes himself heard — and that without 
 difficulty — in all the four directions ; even so of all things that 
 have shape or life, there is not one that he passes by or leaves 
 aside, but regards them all with mind set free, and deep-felt 
 love." 1 
 
 With this we may compare the character of the great King of 
 Glory, the ideal Buddhist ruler, realized in some measure in the 
 great King Asoka of Magadha. The King of Glory's greatness 
 depends on three qualities : those of forgiving, of self -con quest, 
 and self-control. And in this rule of love the doctrine of Lao Tse 
 is fully observed. 
 
 " For never in this world does hatred cease by hatred ; 
 
 Hatred ceases by love ; this is always its nature." 
 " Whatever an enemy may do to an enemy. 
 
 Or an angry man to an angry man, 
 
 A mind intent on what is wrong 
 
 Works evil worse." 
 " One may conquer a thousand thousand men in battle, 
 
 But he who conquers himself alone is the greatest victor." 
 " Let a man overcome anger by kindness, evil by good ; 
 
 Let him conquer the stingy by a gift, the liar by truth." ^ 
 
 The Grospel precepts of humility and self-knowledge naturally 
 find a place here. " Not the perversities of others, not their 
 sins of commission and omission, but his own misdeeds and 
 neghgences should a sage take notice of " ; and again, " One's 
 own self conquered is better than all other people." ' Spiritual 
 perfection is the supreme object and higher than all sacrifices. 
 
 ' Buddhist StiMaa, p. 201. 
 
 ' Bhys Davids, p. 128. Compare the story of King Dighili in the Vinaya 
 Texts, vol. ii. p. 298 fE. 
 
 ' DJummiapada, chap. iv. 50; ib., viii. 104. Compare the rule, "No 
 Bhikkhu who has not given leave may be reproved for an offence — I 
 prescribe, O Bhikkhus, that you reprove Bhikkhus for an oSence only 
 after having first asked leave by saying, Give me leave, reverend brother, 
 I wish to speak to you " (Vinaya Texts, vol. i. p. 264). 
 
 For the mildness of penalties in the early Buddhist order, cf. vol. iii. 
 p. 119, and the translator's remarks. 
 
484 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " If a man for a hundred years sacrifice month by month with 
 a thousand, and if he, but for one moment, pay homage to a 
 man whose soul is grounded (in true knowledge), better is that 
 homage than a sacrifice for a hundred years." ^ The " Arahat " 
 is as far above earthly things as the stoical wise man. "As 
 a sohd rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not 
 amidst blame and praise." * But by the same consequence 
 responsibihty and purification are individual. " By oneself the 
 evil is done, by oneself one suffers, by oneself evil is left undone, 
 by oneself one is purified. ... No one can purify another."' 
 And the essence of purification is the ethical change of heart. 
 Buddha accepts the confession and petition for forgiveness of 
 Vaddha the Tikkhavi. "For this, friend Vaddha, is the 
 advantage of the disciphne of the noble one, that he who looks 
 upon his sin as sin and makes amends for it as is meet, he becomes 
 able in future to restrain himself therefrom." * The saint must 
 not look for success in this world. He finds his happiness in 
 disregarding its hate. " We live happily indeed, not hating 
 those who hate us." ^ Again, " Victory breeds hatred, for the 
 conquered is unhappy." ^ Again, " Not to blame, not to 
 strike ... to be moderate in eating, to sleep and sit alone and 
 to dwell on the highest thoughts, this is the teaching of the 
 Awakened." ^ Hence the duty of non-resistance : " No one 
 should attack a Brahmana, but no Brahmana (if attacked) 
 should let himself fly at his aggressor. Woe to him who strikes 
 a Brahmana, more woe to him who flies at his aggressor." * The 
 distinctions of caste are overcome — /" 
 
 " I do not call a man a Brahmana because of his origin, or of 
 his mother, but the poor who is free from aU attachments, him I 
 call a Brahmana." ' " Him I call indeed a Brahmana who, 
 
 ^ Dhanwnapada, viii. 106. ' ib., vi. 81. 
 
 ° ib., xii. 165. * Vinaya Texts, vol. iii. p. 123. 
 
 " Dhammapada, xv. 197. ' ib., xv. 201. 
 
 ' ib., xiv. 185. ' ib., xxvi. 389. 
 
 ' Ordination, however, was forbidden, not only to criminals and debtors 
 but to slaves, eunuchs, dwarfs, hunchbacks, one-eyed people, the blind, 
 dumb and deaf; to a person that gave offence (by depravity) to those who 
 saw him, etc. {Vinaya Texts, vol. i. pp. 199, 224-225; of. p. 215). A 
 quaint rule prohibits the ordination of an animal on the strength of a story 
 of a serpent taking human shape and becoming ordained {ib., pp. 217-219), 
 and one of the questions asked of candidates was, " Are you a hiraian 
 being ? " (vol. iii. p. 349). 
 
 Women were admitted to ordination, but according to the account in 
 the Vinaya Texts with much reluctance and in an inferior position. The 
 Buddha at first declines altogether to institute a female order, but is over- 
 persuaded by the faithful Ananda. Yet he foresees disaster as a consequence, 
 wholly refuses to put Bhikkhunis and Bhikkhus on an equahty, forbids any 
 censure of Bhikkhas by Bhikkhunis, and ordains that a Bhikkhuni even 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 485 
 
 though he has committed no offence, endures reproach, stripes, 
 and bonds, who has endurance for his force, and strength for his 
 army. Him I call indeed a Brahmana who is tolerant with the 
 intolerant, mUd with the violent, and free from greed among the 
 greedy. Him I call indeed a Brahmana from whom anger and 
 hatred, pride and hypocrisy have drppt like a mustard-seed from 
 the point of a needle." ^ 
 
 This morality does not rest on a theological basis ; though 
 Buddha does not deny the gods, they play no important part in 
 his scheme. It is rather the inherent character and inevitable 
 consequences of conduct with which he is concerned. The ideas 
 of reward and punishment are not indeed wholly absent, for not 
 only is there reward in a temporary heaven and punishment in 
 a temporary hell for those in the lower stages of the path,^ but 
 those who reach the highest are rewarded by the final cessation 
 of the circle of existences. But this, after all, is a very negative 
 reward. The noblest prize that Buddha offers to man is to 
 attain in this life and now to inward perfection. Such perfection 
 has its essence in the absence of passion and desire, and its 
 manifestation in universal love, in forgiveness of sin, in for- 
 bearance with the wrong-doer, in humihty and self-respect. It 
 is an inward state obtainable by all men, and also by all women, 
 independently of caste, nationality, or sex. Love is for all and 
 salvation is open to all. 
 
 7. The selflessness of spiritual religion is carried to the point 
 of self -emptying, the negation of action along with desire, in 
 some forms of Mysticism. Of such Quietism probably the 
 earliest extant expression is to be found in The Path of Virtue, 
 by Lao Tse, an older contemporary of Confucius. Lao Tse is 
 no theologian, but his system is historically connected with the 
 Chinese conception of magical influences interpenetrating the 
 whole physical world. The Tao, which is variously rendered by 
 Way, Path, Truth, Reason,^ is the course or process of the 
 universe,* or perhaps, we may say, it is the one principle on 
 
 if a hundred years old, shall make obeisance to a Bhikkhu even if newly 
 initiated. On the other hand, all confessions of women are to be made to 
 women, and all disciplinary proceediags to be carried out in the same way 
 {.Vina/ya Texts, vol. iii. pp. 320-332). It is hardly necessary to remark 
 that the ascription of these details to Buddha himself is of no historical 
 authority. 
 
 ' Dhammapada, p. 92, sees. 396, 399, 406, 407. 
 
 " Strictly speaking, this part of the doctrine woiild have to be qualified 
 by what has been said above aa to Karma. 
 
 » Old, The Simple Way, p. 20. 
 
 * De Groot, Beligiovs System of China, iv. 67. 
 
486 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 which all the processes making up the life of the universe depend, 
 or in which they are expressed. It is a magical conception refined 
 into a metaphysical principle and made the basis of a system of 
 mystical ethics. For the leading idea of the Tao would appear 
 to be that man should surrender himself, his individuaUty, his 
 self-assertion, his efforts to be positive, to rule others for their 
 good, to be virtuous and benevolent — ^that he should abandon this 
 vain self-assertion, and merge himself in the main stream of 
 being which, flowing on its own course, sets all wrongs right, 
 brings the proud to the ground, and exalts the humble and 
 meek. " The sage governs by ridding the heart of its desires." ^ 
 Going back to one's origin is called Peace : it is the giving 
 oneself over to the inevitable.^ The mystical paradox is that 
 this excellent passivity is in reality the most effective of all modes 
 of action. The sage " acts through non-action and by this he 
 governs all." * The soft and the weak overcome the hard and 
 strong.* To teach without words and to be useful without action 
 — few among men attain to this.^ Even from the personal point 
 of view it is selflessness and restraint that yield happiness. 
 " The more he (the wise man) gives to others, the more he has 
 for his own." * " (The woman) conquers the man by continual 
 quietness." ' This wisdom practised by each would make virtue 
 prevail in the community.* For coercion is no remedy for social 
 ills. " When the actions of the people are controlled by pro- 
 hibited laws, the country becomes more and more impoverished. 
 The wise man says, ' I will design nothing, and the people shaU 
 shape themselves. I will keep quiet, and the people wiU find 
 their rest. I ■will not assert myself, and the people will come 
 forth. I will discountenance ambition, and the people wiU re- 
 vert to their natural simplicity.' " * But not only is the govern- 
 ment of the clever politician a " scourge." The ordinary virtues 
 are reaUy stumbling-blocks and rocks of offence. " By giving up 
 their self -righteousness and abandoning their wisdom the people 
 would be immensely improved. Forsaking C!harity and Duty 
 to the neighbour, they might revert to their natural relations."^" 
 That is to say, each should cultivate inward perfecijon and 
 entire restraint — outward active virtues are a poor substitute for 
 these. When Tao is lost it gives place to virtue, similarly in a 
 descending scale virtue yields to benevolence, benevolence to 
 justice, justice to expediency. ^^ In this excellent passivity 
 
 1 Old, chap. iii. ' ib., chap. xvi. ' ib., chap. iii. 
 
 * ib., chap, xxxvi. * ib., chap. xHii. • ib., chap. Ixxxi. 
 
 ' ib., chap. Ixi. ' ib., chap. lix. ' ib., chap. Ivii. 
 
 ^' ib., chap. xix. ^^ ib., chap, xxxviii. 
 
THE WORLD AND THE SPIRIT 487 
 
 certain virtues are inculcated in their most ideal form — humility, 
 universal charity, love of enemies : " The wise man knows no 
 distinctions ; he beholds all men as things made for holy uses." ^ 
 " By governing the people with love it is possible to remain 
 unknown." ^ "To joy in conquest is to joy in the loss of human 
 life,"* and "whosoever humbleth himself shall be- exalted, 
 and whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased." * The doctrine 
 of forgiveness is pushed to its furthest point : " I would return 
 good for good. I would also return good for evil. ... I would 
 likewise meet suspicion with confidence." ^ And though wisdom 
 prescribes passivity this is not from selfishness, for "the wise 
 man lives . . . with modest restraint, and his heart goes out 
 in sympathy to all men." * He is inactive because this is the 
 method of true happiness. For " the wise man is a constant and 
 good helper of his fellows," ' and the virtuous man acts " without 
 hope of reward." * 
 
 Such is the first recorded expression of the full doctrine of 
 non-resistance — a doctrine which, however one-sided and in- 
 appUcable to the affairs of men, enshrines the profound truth 
 that moral influence is distinct from and superior to physical com- 
 pulsion ; that force, however necessary in immediate exigencies, 
 settles nothing in the end, but is a menace to the moral balance 
 of the society and of the individual that employ it ; that men 
 are capable of being influenced, not only by retaliation, but also, 
 and more profoundly, by the deliberate refusal to retaUate. The 
 system of Quietism gave an extreme expression to these truths. 
 The world will always reject its ideas, and will always be haunted 
 by them until the time comes when, disregarding the extrava- 
 gances of form in which they are uttered, it begins to ask itself 
 in sober earnestness what truth they contain. 
 
 Putting aside the idiosyncrasies of different doctrines and 
 considering only the ethical teaching of the spiritual rehgions — 
 what advances and what limitations do we find ? To begin with 
 — a certain ideal of character is preached as the goal of man's 
 endeavours . To cultivate the best within himself and to aid others 
 in the same work is the means of salvation. Human character, 
 which in the lowest stages of moral thought is scarcely ever 
 appreciated as a condition and cause of actions, is now a distinct 
 object of activity, an end and aim of endeavour. Next, this ideal 
 of character is conceived negatively as the destruction of selfish- 
 ness, positively as the exercise of universal love. Here, again, 
 
 * Old, ohap. V. * ib., chap. x. ' ib., chap. xxxi. 
 
 • ib., chap. xxii. ' ib., chap. xlix. ' ib., chap. xlix. 
 ' ib., chap, xxvii. ' ib., chap. x. 
 
488 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 elements which exist in all ethics from the lowest stage upwards 
 are separated out and made into principles ruling conduct. For 
 in the most primitive sense of duty to fellow-clansmen there is 
 something of love and something of unselfishness, and something 
 of the surrender of one's own desires and ways of thinking and 
 personal pride. But these social centripetal quahties that tend 
 to bind men together are inextricably intertwined with the fierce 
 resentments, the pride of family or race, the antagonisms which 
 break up human fellowship and keep men apart. Hence the 
 group-moraHty of early times that we have described. Now in 
 this higher stage of rehgion and ethics we see the socially con- 
 structive qualities distinguished and idealized and recognized as 
 the source of human salvation. And yet, so roundabout is the 
 path of human advance, in the very act and fact of being so 
 ideahzed, their character as social quahties, their usefulness in 
 organizing society, are in large measure annulled. They are con- 
 ceived as being best cultivated apart from ordinary human ties, 
 and as the foundation of a monastic brotherhood rather than of 
 a living human society. Their negative side is emphasized. 
 Self -negation is made more prominent than active kindness and 
 love. Universal benevolence is held incompatible with the 
 passionate personal love of woman and of child. The practice 
 of ideal virtues seems too hard for the householder and the man 
 of affairs. Those very qualities which should refine the world 
 are thought to be soiled by the world. Self -surrender and 
 universal love — the two pillars of the higher ethics — are set up, 
 but they are left standing in a void. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 MONOTHEISM 
 
 1. To the western world spiritual religion is familiar mainly 
 in the form of the worship of one God, the creator and sustainer 
 of aU that is. If we conceive tliis form of belief as developing 
 out of polytheism we may find approximations to it by several 
 distinct paths. There is, first, the exaltation of one God as king 
 over the rest, which wiU only lead to monotheism if the lesser 
 deities become degraded to some lower plane of being. There 
 is, secondly, the identification of aU the gods with some one, an 
 example of which has been seen in the Vedas. This is a natural 
 effect of the feeUng of worship, but it is checked in its develop- 
 ment by the tendency to apply it to each god in turn, the result 
 of which is that no single god obtains a definite and permanent 
 supremacy. There is another and more subtle variant of this 
 process wherein the several gods of mythology come to be re- 
 garded as manifestations of an underlying force, principle, or 
 spirit, which is the sole reality — a line of development which 
 leads rather towards Pantheism than towards Monotheism in 
 the strict sense of the term. There is, lastly, the line of develop- 
 ment which lies through the exclusive worship of one national 
 god. This is the path through Monolatry to Monotheism, whicli 
 was trodden in particular by the Jews. The Yahveh of early 
 Judaism was not the one God, as we understand the term, but 
 was the only Gtod whom it was lawful for the Jews to worship. 
 Yahveh was the Grod of Israel, just as Chemosh was the God of 
 Moab. To each people, in Jephthah's view, their god has given 
 their land, and this gift is their title thereto.^ The worship of 
 Yahveh is properly confined to the soil of Canaan. To be driven 
 thence is to be compelled to serve other gods.^ Even in Deu- 
 
 ' Judges xi. 24. " Wilt thou not possess that which Chemosh thy god 
 giveth thee to possess ? So whomsoever the Lord our God hath dis- 
 possessed from before us, them will we possess." The power of Chemosh 
 seems implicitly recognized in 2 Kings iii. 27. Cf. Montefiore, Hibbert 
 Lectures, p. 35. 
 
 • Montefiore, id. 1 Samuel xxvi. 19. Apparently this ia the reason why 
 Naaman begs two mules' burden of earth of Eliaha, " for thy servant will 
 henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods but 
 unto the Lord " (2 Kings v. 17). These must be offered on Cannanitish 
 soil. 
 
 489 
 
490 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 teronomy, the First Commandment does not deny the existence 
 of other gods, but forbids their being worshipped " before Me " 
 or " beside Me." ^ Indeed, the Hosts of Heaven were in reaUty 
 gods appointed by Yahveh himself for the protection of the 
 nations of the world. They were gods, but God himself sat 
 supreme in the congregation of gods, and while he had divided 
 the lower gods among all the peoples under heaven, he had re- 
 served the direct worship of himself alone for the children of 
 Israel.^ Even when God controls the whole upper earth, his 
 writ does not at first run in the underworld : " Shall the pit give 
 thanks unto Thee, or shall it declare Thy truth ? " It is a late 
 Psalm which says : " If I climb up into heaven Thou art there, 
 if I go down into hell Thou art there also."* The oneness of 
 God and his supremacy over the whole earth are ideas which 
 arose comparatively late in Hebrew thought, and are conse- 
 quences rather than causes of a changed conception of his char- 
 acter. If Monotheism is taught — though indeed the teaching 
 is implied rather than distinctly avowed — in the prophets before 
 the exile, it is because with them the spirituality of Yahveh, his 
 indifference to sacrifice and his love of righteousness are always 
 first and foremost. It is his unique character which makes him 
 the one and only God. God is not the Ideal Being because 
 he is One, but is One because he is the Ideal Being, the 
 impersonation of the moral law. This is widely removed from 
 the primitive conception. The earher Yahveh had a well-defined 
 human personality. He walks in the garden of Eden in the cool 
 of the evening. He smells the sweet savour of Noah's sacrifice 
 and declares that he will never again curse the ground for man's 
 sake. He is not wholly without fear of the men that he has 
 made. They may obtain too much power. Adam "is become 
 one of Us." When men have all one language they attempt, 
 like the giants who piled Pelion on Ossa, to build a tower that 
 will reach to heaven, " and now nothing will be withholden from 
 them which they purpose to do." " So the Lord," having con- 
 founded their language, "scattered them abroad upon the face 
 of all the earth." * He has not always a human shape. He can 
 
 "■ R.V. marginal rendering, Deut. v. 7. 
 
 • Deut. iv. 19. Cf. Driver, Deut., pp. 70, 71. Here monolatry fuses 
 with the conception of a chief god. Yet in the very same chapter we find 
 a different thought, the thought achieved with difficulty by the prophets. 
 The gods of the nations are idols, " the work of men's hands, wood and 
 stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell " (Deut. iv. 28). 
 Parallel passages are given by Driver, p. 73. 
 
 ' The same idea, however, as Dr. Carpenter points out to me, is ex- 
 pressed by as early a writer as Amos (ix. 2). 
 
 * Gronesis xi. 6-8. 
 
MONOTHEISM 491 
 
 appear in a thick darkness or in a burning bush. Sometimes 
 he seems to dwell among the cherubim of the ar^ Sometimes 
 he almost seems identical with the ark itself .^ He is in magic 
 fashion dangerous to his worshippers. To touch the ark, or 
 " to break through unto the Lord to gaze "^ was fatal. In other 
 accounts he lives on Mount Seir and comes forth thence to battle. 
 Afterwards he chooses Mount Sion for his habitation, and from 
 Sion the prophet Amos declares that he would roar and utter 
 his voice from Jerusalem.* 
 
 As a human personahty he is half a barbaric chief, half an 
 Oriental despot, superhuman Uke the gods of Polytheism, be- 
 cause greater and more powerful than man, but no ideal as to 
 his moral attributes ; a jealous God, as he describes himself, 
 capable of punishing the children for the fathers, according to 
 the barbaric principle of collective responsibility ; occasionally 
 on the point of doing rash things, from which Moses, liis Grand 
 Vizier, with difficulty restrains him — asking him to consider 
 what people will say, and representing that if he destroys his 
 nation, others wiU ascribe it not to his want of will, but to his 
 want of power to preserve them.* He is certainly from the first 
 the Grod of Righteousness in the sense that he is the source and 
 upholder of the law. But it is the law of a barbaric people, and 
 a warlike race— a law with all the features of early group-morahty 
 and with some of them unpleasingly exaggerated. Yahveh is 
 a man of war. He allows and even insists on the total destruc- 
 tion of the Canaanities. Agag is put to death before him. His 
 favoured David smites every male in Edom, and puts the men 
 of Rabbah under saws and harrows of iron.^ His code recog- 
 nizes the blood feud, vengeance for unintentional homicide, and 
 vicarious responsibility. But if barbaric, the code has, as we 
 have seen in detail, many of the best features of early moraUty. 
 A strong sense of social solidarity is shown in the care taken for 
 the cause of the poor, the fatherless and the widow, in the pro- 
 hibition of usury, in the protection of the Hebrew slave and 
 concubine, in the cities of refuge to shelter from the fury of the 
 avenger of blood. The ethics of early Yahvism, in fact, exhibit 
 
 1 See Montefiore, p. 42. 
 
 " Exodus xix. 21. Cf. Montefiore, p. 39. ' Amos i. 2. 
 
 * See the dialogue between God and Moses, Numbers xiv. 11-25. God 
 having declared that He will smite the people, Moses replies, " Then the 
 Egyptians shall hear it " . . . and " the nations which have heard the fame 
 of Thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this 
 people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain 
 them in the wilderness." 
 
 ' 2 Samuel xii. 31. On Yahvism as exemplified in the story of David, 
 see Kuenen, Religion of Israel, vol. i. p. 326 ft. 
 
492 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 group-morality in its typical form with its best as well as some 
 of its worst features standing out in strong relief. 
 
 2. Such was the rehgion which was transformed by the labours 
 of the prophets from the eighth century onwards into a spiritual 
 worship of one God, the creator and ruler of all things, the God 
 of social justice, of mercy, and finally of love. It is not necessary 
 for our purpose to follow the steps by which the new reUgious 
 ideal was slowly and painfully acquired, with many backshdings 
 and reversions to lower types of thought. It will be sufficient 
 to point out the leading ideas which indicate the spirituality of 
 the new religion. The first of these, both in point of time and 
 perhaps in ethical significance, was the protest against the belief 
 that sacrifice could atone for sin. This is the ever-recurring 
 theme of the older prophets. " I hate, I despise your feasts, 
 and I will take no delight in your solemn assembhes. Yea, 
 though ye offer Me your burnt offerings and meal offerings, I 
 will not accept them : neither will I regard the peace offerings 
 of your fat beasts. . . . But let judgment roll down as waters, 
 and righteousness as a mighty stream." ^ So writes the first of ■ 
 the prophetic hne. Isaiah takes up the word : " To what pur- 
 pose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto Me ? saith the Lord : 
 I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; 
 and I dehght not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he- 
 goats." ^ " And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide 
 Mine eyes from you : yea, when ye make many prayers, I will 
 not hear : your hands are fuU of blood. Wash you, make you 
 clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before Mine eyes ; 
 cease to do evil : learn to do well : seek judgment, relieve the 
 oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."' This 
 is the first lesson of spiritual reUgion which finally culminates 
 in the doctrine that God is a Spirit, and they who worship him 
 must worship him in spirit and in truth. In the lowest stage 
 of ethical thought men washed away their sins with magic purges 
 or swore them off with incantation formulas. In the next stage 
 they bargained with the gods and offered a bull or ram, or in 
 extremity their own children to make up for their iniquity. The 
 ethical stage proper begins when these childish things are put 
 aside, and men conceive God as caring neither for gifts nor for 
 ceremonial adulation, but for repentance and change of heart. 
 
 A spiritual rehgion must be a rehgion of the imier man. The 
 ceremonies lose their magical effect. The true religious mystery 
 
 1 Amos V. 21. ' Isaiah i. 11. 
 
 ' Loe. cit., 18-17. Cf. Jer. vii. S, etc. 
 
MONOTHEISM 493 
 
 isjound in what passes within man's mind. " Citcumcise there- 
 fore Ithe foreskin of your heart," say the pronhets and the 
 prophetic code.^ Yet in the older prophets it is rather social 
 righteousness and social salvation than the justification of the 
 individual that occupy the first place. While nearly aU later 
 religions have appealed in the first instance to the individual 
 to come to God and save his soul, leaving social righteousness 
 to a secondary place, the prophets, innocent as yet of any doc- 
 trine of resurrection, beheving in temporal rewards and con- 
 cerned above all for the fate of Israel, put matters in a different 
 order. Their righteousness is emphatically a social righteous- 
 ness. We can trace in it the protest of a just and wise conser- 
 vatism against the so-called progress of a material civOization 
 ■with its tendency to break down the position of the poorer free 
 men and enslave them to the masters of wealth. The prophets' 
 teaching was hardly yet humanitarian. It was rather an in- 
 tensified form of group-morahty. But it was for justice and 
 equality, forbearance and consideration, as between all members 
 of the group constituted as such by God's choice. It is God's 
 people who are being oppressed. " What mean ye that ye 
 crush My people and grind the face of the poor ? saith the Lord, 
 the Lord of Hosts." ^ The tyranny of the monopohst is already 
 felt and denounced with a power that has never been surpassed. 
 " Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, 
 tiU there be no room, and ye be made to dweU alone in the midst 
 of the land." * " The Lord will enter into judgment with the 
 elders of His people and the princes thereof : it is ye that have 
 eaten up the vineyard : the spoil of the poor is in your houses."* 
 All the vices of material civihzation, wine-bibbing and luxury, 
 feminine vanity and ostentation, are denounced in the same 
 strain,' and the women are threatened with branding instead of 
 beauty, and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth. 
 
 These were not empty denunciations. The emancipation of 
 slaves in the sabbatical year * with provision to enable them 
 to start as free men, the prohibition of usury in deahng with 
 fellow Hebrews, the wiping out of debts in the sabbatical year, 
 the abolition of vicarious punishment, the limitation of blood 
 revenge, the provision for the fatherless and widows, the in- 
 culcation of humanity to slaves male and female, are embodied 
 
 ^ Deut. X. 16. ' Isaiah iii. 16. ' Isaiah v. 8. 
 
 * Isaiah iii. 14. = ib. 16-26; v. 8-12. 
 
 ' I have referred above (Part I. chap, vii.) to Jeremiah's account of the 
 attempts to enforce this rule (Jeremiah xxxiv. 8 ff.). The writer of Isaiah 
 Iviii. 6 insists on letting the oppressed go free, presumably meaning the 
 emancipation of slaves. 
 
494 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 in the prophetic code and represent perhaps the earliest conscious 
 effort towards systematic social reform, marred only by the 
 exclusive rehgious spirit, -which still (notwithstanding the con- 
 cern for the stranger that is within the gates) draws a deep line 
 between Jew and Gentile, emphasizes the necessity of exter- 
 minating the heathen, and proscribes the heretic. The heads 
 of the code are summed up in the chapter in which Ezekiel 
 repudiates the doctrine of vicarious responsibility. 
 
 " But if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right, 
 and hath not eaten upon the mountains, neither hath lifted up 
 his eyes to the idols of the house of Israel, neither hath defiled 
 his neighbour's wife, neither hath come near to a woman in her 
 separation ; and hath not wronged any, but hath restored to the 
 debtor his pledge, hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his 
 bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment ; 
 he that hath not given forth upon usury, neither hath taken 
 any increase, that hath withdrawn his hand from iniquity, hath 
 executed true judgment between man and man, hath walked in 
 My statutes, and hath kept My judgments, to deal truly ; he is 
 just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God." ^ 
 
 For a reformed and renovated Israel the prophets at first 
 foresaw a reward of inner peace and prosperity. But as troubles 
 thickened around them they began to feel that suffering might 
 have a necessity and a value of its own. God's servant is " de- 
 spised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief : and as one from whom men hide their face he was 
 despised, and we esteemed him not." It is the destiny of the 
 teacher to bear the burden of the world's folly and sin and to 
 bear it with nothing but contempt for his reward. " Surely he 
 hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows : yet we did esteem 
 him stricken, smitten of God, and affhcted. But he was wounded 
 for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities : the 
 chastisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes 
 we are healed." ^ His methods are those of gentleness and 
 peace. " He shall not cry, nor hft up, nor cause his voice to be 
 heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the 
 smoking flax shall he not quench : he shall bring forth judgment 
 in truth."' He bears his sufferings in silence and humiUty. 
 " He was oppressed, yet he bumbled himself and opened not 
 his mouth,; as a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and as' a 
 sheep that before her shearers is dumb ; yea, he opened not 
 his mouth."* Thus by a very different road and with much 
 
 ' Ezekiel xviii. 5-9. ' Isaiah liii. 4, 5. 
 
 ° Isaiah xlii. 2, 3. * Isaiah Uii. 7. 
 
MONOTHEISM 495 
 
 difierence of implied meaning, we are reaching the Buddhist 
 doctrine of renunciation and humihty — those cardinal points of 
 spiritualized rehgion. 
 
 Further, in proportion as Yahveh became the God of the 
 whole earth the old group-moraUty was compelled to yield in a 
 measure to Universalism. The warrior's song is changed to a 
 prophecy of peace. " And He shall judge between the nations, 
 and shall reprove many peoples : and they shall beat their swords 
 into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks : nation 
 shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn 
 war any more." ^ In its cruder form the idea was that other 
 nations should take their teaching from Jerusalem.^ Vengeance, 
 moreover, is still freely denounced on public enemies. " The 
 Assjrrian . . . shall flee, from the sword and his young men shall 
 become tributary." ^ The exilic writers declare that the children 
 of Babylon shall be dashed against the stones.* But though 
 national redemption and glory are still prominent we reach a 
 higher phase in the conception of a redeemed Israel which is to 
 evangelize the world.* Unfortunately, the experiences of the 
 Exile and return were not favourable to the further development 
 of thought along these lines, and there is a certain reaction 
 towards exclusive particularism in the Priestly Code.* Judaism 
 feared to lose itself in the great world from which it was separated 
 by no pohtical barrier, and it sought safety in drawing its skirts 
 closely round it, and even avoiding all contact with the unclean. 
 One of the noblest traits of Monotheism was thus corrupted. 
 Universahsm survived only in kindness to the stranger and in 
 the effort to proselytize, and even this was a matter of con- 
 troversy.'' Nor was the question finally determined within the 
 limits of Judaism itself, nor until the age of Paul. 
 . Yet the unity and omnipresence and goodness of God are by 
 this time established. The early prophets do not hesitate to 
 attribute vengeance and even deceit to Yahveh. " Shall evil 
 befall a city, and the Lord hath not done it ? " Amos asks.* In 
 the Deutero-Isaiah God declares that it is He who makes peace 
 and creates evil.* This belongs, no doubt, to the conception of 
 
 * Isaiah ii. 4. Dr. Carpenter informs me that the passage is now gener- 
 ally regarded as post-exilic. 
 
 * Zech. viii. 20-23. ' Isaiah xxxi. 8. 
 
 * Isaiah xiii. 16. Cf. Psalm cxxxvii. 9. 
 
 ° Montefiore, pp. 273-277. Yet Cyrus is also God's instrument. 
 
 « ib., p. 340. 
 
 ' That is to say, so far as the ofBoial religion is concerned. The univer- 
 salist tendency is maintained in some of the Psalms, in Jonah, and in the 
 Wisdom literature. 
 
 ' Amos iii. 6. ' Isaiah xlv. 7. 
 
496 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 divine punishment for transgression. It is going a step further 
 however, when Ezekiel maintains that in punishment for the 
 idolatry of the people God gave them statutes which were not 
 good and judgments wherein they should not live. At a later 
 stage, on the contrary, we find the authorship of evil imputed 
 to Satan. In the Chronicles it is he, not Yahveh, who incites 
 David to the numbering of the people. If in this we trace the 
 influence of Zoroastrian ideas we may recognize also an attempt 
 to keep pure the notion of God's goodness and to separate him 
 from all responsibihty for sin and suffering. God's unity and 
 omnipresent power are no less distinct than his righteousness. 
 Jeremiah already puts the question, " Am I a God at hand and 
 not a God afar ofiE ? " — a question to which more primitive 
 worshippers would have returned a very doubtful answer. " Do 
 I not fill heaven and earth ? " ^ After the exile, though God 
 still in some sense, symbolical or other, dwells in Sion and is 
 certainly in a pecuHar sense the God of Israel, yet there is no 
 more talk of separation from him, whether by exile or by death. 
 " If I climb up into heaven. Thou art there ; if I go down into 
 hell. Thou art there also." God was the creator, and father of 
 all, though aU men were not yet brothers. 
 
 Such was the adolescence of Monotheism. We have now to 
 deal with its full development and endeavour to measure its 
 main contributions to ethical thought — that is to say, to the 
 guidance of life. 
 
 3. The central idea of Ethical Monotheism admits of a short 
 and simple statement. There is one God only, the Maker of 
 heaven and earth. He is a Personal God, and in his personality 
 there is a touch of kinship with our human nature. But he 
 does not, like the gods of polytheism, differ from us merely in 
 being greater, wiser, and more powerful. He is not — when the 
 adolescence of monotheism is past — a mere magnified man. 
 For man is finite and he is infinite, eternal, without beginning 
 or end of days, the source and sustaining cause of all that is. 
 Again, man is of composite nature and therefore corrupt. God 
 is pure Spirit, and the spiritual is now the comprehensive ex- 
 pression for the highest and best that is known to man. It is 
 defined negatively by opposition to the earthly, positively by 
 the exaltation of moraHty into perfect purity of heart. God is a 
 
 ^ Jeremiah xxiii. 23-24. Yet, in Ezekiel's time, people remaining in 
 Canaan still taunt the exiles with being " far from Yahveh," and boast 
 " unto us is Yahveh's land given " (Montefiore, p. 207, citing Ezekiel 
 xi. 15). 
 
MONOTHEISM 497 
 
 Spirit, and his communion -with man is spiritual. They that 
 worship him must worship him in spirit, and fo;jns and cere- 
 monies are naught without the inward and spiritual grace given 
 unto us in them. As the Eternal Spirit Grod is the founder 
 and sustainer of the Ethical order, he punishes the wicked and 
 rewards the good, and yet — again except in the crassest appre- 
 hension — goodness cannot be assumed for the sake of the reward, 
 for so it would not, spiritually considered, be goodness. What 
 must win God is the genuine turning of the heart to him, a faith 
 in him, which is also in the highest monotheism a love for him 
 from whom flows love to man, and in this love is the beginning 
 and the end of human virtue. Finally, though man's corruption 
 separates him by a great gulf from the infinite perfection of 
 God, yet with a mercy that equals his justice God has him- 
 self appointed means whereby the gulf may be spanned and 
 forgiveness of sins obtained. 
 
 This comparatively simple conception in which the ethical 
 and the rehgious fuse, which provides at once for the govern- 
 ment of the universe and the entire direction of human hfe, 
 expresses what rehgion has in essence meant to great numbers 
 of devout souls. But the conception could not maintain itself 
 in so simple a form. At every point it bristles with theoretical 
 difficulties, to meet which great structures of dogma have been 
 erected, modified, and replaced by others, as the needs of con- 
 troversy have determined. Nor was the shape taken by dogma 
 determined by the pure monotheistic idea alone, but in large 
 measure by the particular contents of the historical documents 
 in which the monotheistic system was revealed. We have to 
 note the fundamental points in which the building up of dogma 
 affected ethics. 
 
 First, as to the nature of God and his relation to the world, 
 monotheism in all its forms appears to be agreed that he is the 
 uncreated, unconditioned creator and sustainer of all things. 
 
 "He is God alone ! 
 God the Eternal ! 
 
 He begets not and is not begotten ! 
 Nor is there like unto Him any one ! " ' 
 
 But for one clause this Mohammedan hymn of unity might be 
 sung with equal fervour by the Christian. So, again, another 
 
 " God, there is no God but He, the living, the self-subsistent. 
 Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. He is what is in the heavens 
 
 ' The Chapter of Unity. The Koran, vol. ii. chap. cxii. (Palmer's Tr.). 
 KK 
 
498 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and what is in the earth. Who is it that intercedes with Him, 
 saves by His permission? He knows what is before them and 
 what behind them, and they comprehend not aught of His know- 
 ledge but of what He pleases. His throne extends over the 
 heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, 
 for He is high and grand." ^ 
 
 God is the creator and sustainer of things. But according as 
 emphasis is laid on the one or the other of these descriptions, 
 divergent views of his relation to the world come into being. 
 As creator he makes the world out of nothing, and he makes 
 man in his image. He endows his creatures with existence and 
 they become in a manner separate from him. If pressed hard 
 this conception militates against God's infinitude. Man and the 
 world are separate from him, and in so far as they have inde- 
 pendent existences must be held to limit him. He is no longer 
 all that is. Upon this hne of thought he becomes a Ruler, all- 
 powerful, no doubt, but still an outside power acting upon this 
 earthly existence. On the other hand, as Sustainer of all that 
 is his relation to the world becomes more intimate. It is only 
 in him that things have existence. His will alone is the cause 
 of all that happens. He alone has independent existence and 
 the things of the world exist only by participation in him.^ 
 This line of thought, it is clear, is bringing us close to Pantheism,* 
 and though thinkers as orthodox as Thomas Aquinas have made 
 no small advances in that direction, the centre of gravity of 
 monotheistic dogma lies nearer to the creationist conception. 
 God made the world, but he is not the world : He made 
 man, but is not man. In so far his Being is limited. He is 
 transcendent, not immanent.* 
 
 ^ Koran, chap. ii. (Palmer's Tr., vol. i. p. 40). These passages express 
 God's power rather than his love and other moral qualities. But these 
 appear in their place. Palmer finds ninety-nine epithets of God in the 
 Koran, including The Merciful, Kuler, Holy, Peace, Faithful, Protector, 
 Mighty, Creator, Forgiver, Provider, Knowing, Honourer, Destroyer, 
 Hearer, Seer, Judge, Justice, Subtle, Aware, Forgiving, Exalted, Generous, 
 Answerer of Prayer, Comprehensive, Wise, Loving, Glorious, Truth, Sub- 
 sisting, Eternal, the First, the Last, Righteousness, the Relenting, Kind, 
 Lord of Majesty and Liberality, Equitable, Patient. 
 
 ' " Participatione ejus, qui solum per se ipsum est." Thomas, quoted 
 in Hamack, History of Dogma, E. T., vol. vi. p. 184. 
 
 ' " Theological theories have varied all the way from deism to a view 
 little removed from pantheism " (Adams Brown, Christian Theology in 
 Outline, p. 215). 
 
 * "Against Pantheism Christianity affirms the distinction " between God 
 and the world (Adams Brown, op. cit., p. 198). Yet God seems to be the 
 Absolute and the Ultimate Reality (op. oil., p. 122), and it is most natural 
 to think of creation in terms of the relation between phenomena and their 
 spiritual ground (op. cit., p. 214). One cannot but ask (a) Are phenomena 
 
MONOTHEISM 499 
 
 4. So far the interest is speculative rather than ethical. 
 Whichever view is taken, the unconditional ©mnipotence of 
 Grod at the outset is assumed. But with this assumption the 
 problem of evil at once becomes urgent, and we touch the very 
 heart of all ethico-reUgious theory. The Platonic doctrine that 
 Grod is good, and as good can be the author of no evil, may be 
 regarded as the corner-stone of all ethical religion. How was 
 this to be fitted in with the dogma of omnipotence which mono- 
 theism had accepted ? Broadly speaking, there were two pos- 
 sible methods. The first was to deny the reality of evil, the 
 second was to insist on the absolute right of the Creator to do 
 what He would with His own. Both explanations have held an 
 important place in dogma. According to Augustine, evil has no 
 positive and substantial existence. It is only " a privation of 
 good," ^ or, by a swift change of thought, it is the dark colour 
 that throws up the light. " For as a picture with dark colour, 
 set in its proper place, is fair, so is the universe of things, if one 
 can behold it, even with its sinners, though they, considered ly 
 themselves, are stained by their own ughness." * It is well to 
 remark that these two views are in essence quite opposed. In 
 the one, evil has no positive character. It is a void, where good 
 might be, but is not. In the other, there are things or persons 
 that are evil in themselves — evil is so far positive ; but their 
 badness when viewed in connection with the whole scheme of 
 things is held to have a good effect — a function to perform 
 whereby the picture as a whole is made more fair. 
 
 The optimistic doctrine that the evil of the world is merely 
 the dark colour which serves to show up the bright would be 
 tenable upon two hypotheses. If evil and good were so dis- 
 tributed that physical suffering, external calamities and moral 
 wrong-doing played an essential part in the growth of each 
 personaUty, and could be shown to tend tiltimately to its greater 
 perfection, the existence of evil would be reconcilable with a 
 divine justice which should take every personahty into account. 
 Equally, if personahty were left wholly out of account, it might 
 be theoretically maintainable that the unequal distribution of 
 evil in the world was a matter of no moment, provided that the 
 whole scheme of things be allowed to be sound at the core. 
 The second alternative was not possible for any system which 
 
 real? If so, we have a dualism ; (6) Are they an imperfect expression of the 
 underlying Real which is God ? If so, have we not Pantheism ? 
 
 ^ De Civitate Dei, Book XI. chap. xxii. : " Cum omnino natura nulla sit 
 malum, nomenque hoc non sit nisi privationis boni." 
 
 ' ib., chap, xxiii. 
 
500 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 took account of personality at all. In particular, so far as re- 
 gards moral evil, it was not open to Christian apologists, who, 
 on the one hand, maintained the infinite value of the individual 
 soul, and, on the other, visited the reprobate with the prospect 
 of eternal punishment. Evil which involves eternal suffering 
 as its punishment cannot be dismissed as something merely 
 negative, nor yet accepted as a mere incident in the working 
 out of a higher order — that is to say, it cannot be so accepted 
 by those who maintain the inherent worth of personaUty. 
 Hence theologians are driven back on a second line of defence. 
 They admit the evil will to exist, but they seek to exonerate the 
 Deity for responsibihty for its existence. The simplest method 
 of such exoneration is that of Pelagius, which makes the salva- 
 tion of man depend upon his own choice, that choice not being 
 conceived as predetermined by God. Free wiU, thus under- 
 stood, however, is clearly a limitation of the divine omnipotence, 
 and theology. Christian and Mohammedan ahke, has often been 
 driven to prefer the opposite alternative of limiting the responsi- 
 bility of man rather than the knowledge and authority of God. 
 Yet this alternative raises many problems, some of them of 
 grave ethical import. In the first place, how does the evil will 
 come into existence ? Augustine is clear that a good God can- 
 not create a bad nature.^ The nature of the wicked angels, 
 therefore was intrinsically good,^ and " we must believe the 
 providence of the Creator rather than be so rash as to condemn 
 any part of the world's fabric of any imperfection." ^ The nature 
 of the wicked angels being good, their fall arose from their evil 
 will. What then, we naturally ask, was the cause of this e%al 
 will, seeing that evil was not in their own nature ? The answer 
 is that the evil will has no cause. 
 
 " Seek the cause of this evil wUl and you shall find just none, 
 for what can cause the will's evil, the will being sole cause of all 
 evil — ' Cum ipsa (voluntas) faciat opus malum '■ — The evil will, 
 therefore, causes evil works, but nothing causes the evil will." * 
 
 But at this point we are at once brought to the free will 
 dilemma. Either the bad will must have an origin somewhere 
 in that structure of things which God has created, or it must be 
 
 ^ De Oivitate Dei, Book XI. chap, zzii., xxiii. ; Book XII. chap. i. 
 
 ^ Op. cit., xii. chaps, i. and iii. Inquantum naturse sunt, bonas sunt." 
 
 = ib.. Book XII. chap. iv. The free rendering of the old trans- 
 lator J. H. The Latin is : " rectissirae credenda prsecipitur providentia 
 Conditoris ne tanti artifiois opus in aliquo reprehendere vanitate humanas 
 temeritatis audeamus." 
 
 * ib.. Book XII. chap, vi., J. H.'s Tr. In the Latin the last words are : 
 " malse autem voluntatis offioiens est nihil." 
 
MONOTHEISM 501 
 
 a force arising per impossibile out of nothing, which the Creator 
 does not control. It may be said that he doe^not control it, 
 but only permits it . This does not offer escape from the dilemma, 
 either that it is a force arising somehow independently of him, 
 or that his permission is a negative condition w^hereby alone this 
 force can have any efifect. No theory of responsibihty can, from 
 the ethical point of view, draw any serious distinction between 
 a negative and a positive condition, and to permit evil, in the 
 plenitude of power that might prevent it, is all one with the 
 doing of evil. In point of fact, Augustine's own argument, when 
 looked into, tends to restore the omnipotence of God along with 
 his responsibility ; for although he denies that the evil will has 
 an origin, he is strenuous in maintaining that the good will is 
 created, and here he refuses to make any distinction between 
 the will arid the being to whom the will belongs, for he argues,^ 
 " Seeing that the angels themselves were created, how can their 
 wills but be so also ? " It might be retorted that if this argument 
 applies to the good angels, it apphes also to the bad ones. But, 
 further, Augustine himself is in the end led to the admission 
 that the difference between the bad and the good will rests upon 
 the choice of good, and the choice of good upon the grace of God. 
 Those angels "that were created good and yet became evil by 
 their proper wiU either received less grace from the divine love 
 than they that persisted therein, or if they had equal good at 
 their creation, the one fell by the evil wills, and the other, having 
 further help, attained that bhss from which they were sure never 
 to fall." ^ At this point, then, the whole argument becomes 
 consistent, but at the cost of dehberately accepting one horn of 
 the dilemma. The good wll is good because he who exercises 
 it has a greater measure of grace ; the bad will is bad because 
 grace does not sufficiently abound. This is in essence to abandon 
 the conception of the bad will arising uncaused, as a force external 
 to the providence of God, and to maintain the superintendence 
 of God throughout ; but it is also, by a logical necessity, to 
 constitute God the ultimate author of the moral depravity of the 
 wicked angels, and, on the same argument, of wicked man.^ In 
 
 1 Z>eCiOTto«eZ>ei, Book XII. chap. ix. ' *., Book. XII. ch. ix. J. H.'s Tr. 
 
 ' Augustine attempts to escape from the positive character of the evil 
 will by treating it as a deficiency in goodness (xii. 7). The want of 
 sufficiently good will does not touch the question of responsibility. If one 
 person's will is adequate to maintain the goodness of his nature while 
 another person's will fails in that respect, the difference must be due to one 
 of two causes. The want of will in the man who becomes bad is either 
 something that arises independently without the appointment of God, or it 
 is something which God foresees and appoints, and we are back in precisely 
 the old dilemma. 
 
502 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 fact, the determination to hold by the omnipotence of God at all 
 costs led inevitably to the doctrine of predestination, for if God 
 knows all things from the first, how can he but know the fate of 
 those whom he is about to create or whom he may create at any 
 future time, and if he creates them, knowing their fate, what 
 theory of responsibility can be invented which shall take the 
 burden of their fate off him ? True, their reprobation may still 
 be regarded as the consequence of their own wickedness. But 
 wickedness also is foreknown by God, and though that wickedness 
 issues from the will of each individual, yet precisely the same 
 argument applies to the will itself ; that also is foreknown and 
 foreappointed. Thus, though by various dialectical compro- 
 mises theologians may still endeavour to attribute foreknowledge 
 of sin without responsibihty for sin, the far more logical con- 
 sequence is that drawn by Calvin when he declares' that those 
 " whom God passes by He reprobates, and from no other cause 
 than His determination to exclude them." ^ And again, "I in- 
 quire again, how it came to pass that the fall of Adam, inde- 
 pendent of any remedy, should involve so many nations with 
 their infant children in eternal death, but because such was the 
 will of God. . . . It is an awful decree, I confess ; but no one 
 can deny that God foreknew the future final fate of man before 
 He created him, and that He did foreknow it because it was 
 appointed by His own decree." ^ As to the distinction between 
 will and permission Calvin admits that it is nugatory. " What 
 reason shall we assign for His permitting it, but because it is 
 His will ? " Thus, the strict insistence upon the omnipotence 
 of God led theologians, in proportion to their logical courage, 
 to a doctrine which did not, indeed, abohsh the human will, be- 
 cause the will was the instrument through which God worked, 
 but which did place upon God the final responsibihty for all 
 that exists in this world and all that man does therein, and all 
 that in consequence man shall enjoy or suffer hereafter. And 
 this, in accordance with views held to be derived from the 
 original revelation — though utterly repugnant to the true spirit 
 of Christianity — involved, among other things, the eternal 
 suffering in unspeakable torments of the vast majority of man- 
 kind, of that mankind for whose benefit in the main God was 
 nevertheless held to have created the world. 
 
 If we would know the ethical principle by which this scheme 
 
 of things can be justified, we can again turn to the logical Calvin, 
 
 in whom we find the consequences most thoroughly pushed home. 
 
 We merit punishment because we are corrupted by sin, and if 
 
 1 Calvin, ii. 141. » ib., p. 147. 
 
MONOTHEISM 503 
 
 it be replied that God has made us corrupt, the answer is that the 
 potter has power over the vessel. And it is not a question of 
 power alone. God is the supreme judge of the world, and the 
 supreme judge, from whom issue all law and all right, can do no 
 injustice. That is just, in short, which God wills, and if he deter- 
 mined at the outset upon the fall of man, it was because he fore- 
 saw it would tend to the justification and glory of his name.^ 
 With the admission that in order to understand the justice of the 
 scheme of God we must understand him to constitute justice 
 as suits him, we have, in point of fact, passed outside the range 
 of human ethics. We have admitted that ethical conceptions, 
 as we imderstand them, no longer apply, and Calvin himself 
 allows that the destruction of mankind is guided by an equity 
 indubitable, yet unknown to us. The Deity lays down an ideal 
 code for man, but the code which men ascribe to the Deity is 
 not ideal and can only be excused as being unintelligible to the 
 human mind.^ At this stage the ethical and rehgious elements, 
 the blending of which was the triumph of monotheism, definitely 
 fall asunder once more ; and those who will not face this schism 
 find themselves compelled to make some room for human re- 
 sponsibihty, and to conceive a will which is not a mere puppet 
 of an overruling Providence. 
 
 5. While limiting by imphcation the omnipotence of God, 
 the doctrine of Free Will is not without ethical difficulties of 
 
 1 Calvin, pp. 142-148. 
 
 At this point in theological development we come by a long round to 
 the arbitrariness of the Mohammedan Deity. " God's is what is in Heaven 
 and in the earth, and if ye show what is in your souls, or hide it, God will 
 call you to account ; and He forgives whom He will and punishes whom 
 He wUl, for God is mighty over all " {Koran, vol. i. chap. ii. p. 45). Com- 
 pare page 62, where, however, the concluding words run : " For God is 
 forgiving and merciful." Forgiveness may be the portion of any but the 
 idolaters, but they were created for hell. " Had God pleased they would 
 not have associated aught with Him " {Koran, i. chap. vi. p. 128), i. e. would 
 not have worshipped false gods. But " we have created for hell many of 
 the ginn and of mankind. They have hearts and they discern not there- 
 with ; they have eyes and they see not therewith ; they have ears and they 
 hear not therewith ; they are like cattle, nay, they go more astray ; these 
 it is who care not " (chap, vii, p. 160). These men God predestines to the 
 fire, and the believers are not to intercede for them. But as to whether He 
 will save all believers who avoid sin, it does not seem so clear. He is for- 
 giving and merciful, but he is also an oriental despot in whom there remains 
 an incalculable element of caprice. 
 
 This view, it need hardly be said, is repudiated by modern scientific 
 theology, which substitutes for the retaliatory a disciplinary view of punish- 
 ment, and tends, if a little hesitatingly, to a doctrine of ultimate universal 
 salvation (cp. Adams Brown, op. cit., pp. 293 seq.). 
 
 " Calvin, ii. 148. 
 
504 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 its own. Will either is or is not an expression of character. 
 If it is an expression of character, it figures but as one link in 
 the endless chain of causes and effects. We may trace this 
 chain back in the first instance to the original nature of the in- 
 dividual, and whether we say that this is determined by heredity 
 or was what God made it, we are equally throwing the responsi- 
 bility back on to something anterior to the individual, and on 
 the creationist principle this something must in the end be 
 God himself. If, on the other hand, we deny that wiU is an 
 expression of character, we not only assert something which is 
 in itself unintelhgible, but we in reahty destroy the very re- 
 sponsibility which we are seeking to maintain. For responsi- 
 bility ceases when identity of character ceases. A man is justly 
 rewarded or punished for what he has done only so far as he can 
 recognize himself as the doer. If the " I " who did the deed 
 is the " I " which suffers for it, well and good. But this " I " 
 is the permanent self with its abiding character, and punishment 
 has full ethical justification only so far as it tends to purge and 
 ennoble the character. Thus, if the theory of Free Will means 
 that it is not this self that does the deed, but a WiU which springs 
 out of no antecedent cause and has no fixed relation to what the • 
 " I " has been or will be, then it is not the " I " — the permanent 
 self— that has sinned, and to punish it wiU be of no avail.^ 
 Punishment is reduced to a bUnd retahation on the body which 
 the Will possesses, and the WiU itself is reduced to the condition 
 of an animistic spirit which enters a man from without and 
 works its wiU for a while with his hmbs. 
 
 1 Thus, the man who is punished must be essentially the same being as 
 he who did the deed. That is to say, justice and responsibility, ethically 
 conceived, imply the persistent identity of the personality. But this per- 
 sistent identity is precisely that which the Free Will doctrine in the stage 
 now under consideration attempts to deny. It is not the " I," the trend of 
 continuous connection running through all my conscious life, the subject 
 which thinks and feels and knows- — it is not that " I " which acts. For 
 this " I " has its definite character, modifiable, no doubt, by circumstances 
 and developed by its own reaction upon circumstances, capable of being 
 appealed to by an infinite variety of motives and often assimilating new 
 purposes, but nevertheless always the same " I," the character of which 
 at any given moment arises out of its previous state. It is not this " I," 
 but a Will that acts, a Will that comes from nowhere and stands in no 
 certain relation to me. This Will is not by the terms of the argument 
 what " I " was before the act was done. Why, then, do " I " take the 
 praise or bear the blame of the deed ? 
 
 The doctrine of the Undetermined Will, in short, destroys the moral 
 responsibility which it sets out to estabhsh. Moral responsibility infers 
 (1) continuous identity of character, and (2) the determination of action 
 by motives adopted in accordance with the character of the agent. This 
 implies " free wiU " in the sense that the agent must be unconstrained by 
 any force outside himself, never in the sense that he is free from himself 
 
MONOTHEISM 505 
 
 Furthermore, on either conception of Free Will the ultimate 
 responsibiUty of the Creator for evil remains. Sorrow and 
 suffering do not begin with the Fall, or if any theologian attri- 
 butes them to the sin of Adam and Eve in the spirit of the curse 
 in Genesis, he is merely bringing us back to the doctrine of 
 vicarious guilt. Even if all evil resulted from the wicked will 
 of man, yet it is Grod who made man and gave him freedom 
 to act as he would. Thus, though omnipotence is hmited, its 
 responsibiUty is not abrogated.^ The conception of Free Will 
 alone could not solve the difficulty. But taken in conjunction 
 with a more rational theory of the function of punishment it has 
 suggested a different method of approach. It was, above all, 
 the doctrine of eternal punishment which converted the difficul- 
 ties arising from God's foreknowledge and unhmited power into 
 ethical impossibihties. This doctrine is, of course, not essential 
 to Monotheism ; it conflicts with the moral teaching of the 
 GSospels ; and with the growth of a more refined ethics it has, in 
 fact, fallen into the background. Apologetics have then to cope 
 with the evils, moral and physical, of this world, and their 
 tendency would seem to be towards an " educative " conception. 
 Free WiU is higher than instinct. He only can be a morally 
 good man who is physically and psychologically capable of being 
 morally bad, for " ought " implies " can," and it is only 
 
 " when a soul has seen 
 By dint of evil that good is best," 
 
 that it can enter into spiritual rest. In no other way could a 
 moral order come into being, or could man be made god-like. 
 
 ' The doctrine of the dependence of responsibility upon character has 
 inherent consequences which are carefully to be marked oS from those 
 which follow from theories of creation or of the nature of causation with 
 which it may be associated. Moral responsibility imphes the dependence 
 of action upon the self with its definite character, and, since the self does 
 not arise out of nothing, its character, and therefore its conduct, must at 
 the next remove be referable to the conditions out of which the self arose. 
 Following this line of thought we are forced to conceive of Reality as a 
 single system of which all the parts are interconnected. The argument 
 does not imply that this interconnection is of a mechanical character. On 
 the contrary — so far as it consists in psychical operations working intel- 
 ligently towards clearly conceived ends, as is the case at least in human 
 actions — these are the opposite of mechanical. Nor, again, does the argu- 
 ment imply that any intelligent being foresaw and planned the whole. 
 If either of these creeds are held, they are held on other grounds. What 
 the argument goes to prove is that Reality is a single system of inter- 
 dependent parts. What kind of system it is must be discovered from 
 other sources. It is only when taken in conjimction with the belief in an 
 all-knowing and all-powerful Creator that this doctrine gives rise to 
 the ethical difficulties of Predestination, and only when combined with 
 a materialistic view of the universe that it destroys responsibility and 
 renders human purposes an illusion. 
 
506 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 As with moral evil, so with the pain and suffering inherent in 
 the order of nature. Sorrow exists that man may leam to bear 
 it. The happiness of childish innocence is sweet, but not so 
 worthy as the peace won for itself by the strong soul resting 
 upon God. To strive is the law of life, and its suffering is the 
 pang of travail. God might create a happy paradise for children 
 at play, but he could not, without implanting seeds of suffering., 
 produce the nobler race of strong men to be conquerors of the 
 earth. It seems, indeed, impossible to state this explanation 
 except in terms which condition the creative power of God. It 
 may be that to strive and fall, to endure suffering in ourselves 
 and even the sight of it in those whom we love, is an unavoidable 
 condition of moral growth, but if this is so, it is as much as 
 to say that there are laws and conditions in the spiritual world 
 which omnipotence itself cannot infringe. Unconditioned crea- 
 tion is thus in principle denied, and for an omnipotent Dis- 
 poser we are compelled to substitute the evolutionary concep- 
 tion of a Spirit striving in the world of experience with the 
 inherent conditions of its own growth and mastering them at 
 the cost of all the blood that stains the pages of history, and all 
 the unremembered tears that bedew the lone desert places of 
 the heart .^ 
 
 6. Amid all metaphysical difficulties monotheism remains 
 clear as to the basis of the ethical order. God's Will is the 
 source of moral obligation, his Word the revelation of the 
 practical rule of life. The fulfilment of his Will is the means 
 of salvation, and salvation is propounded as the supreme end of 
 life towards which every thought and act must be directed. The 
 order of ethical ideas springing from this principle has its own 
 definite features, which must now be considered. 
 
 1 Cf . Adams Brown, op. cit., pp. 207-209, who, however, in fear of limiting 
 the divine omnipotence, and rightly rejecting indeterminism, leans rather 
 to the view that sin itself is a part of the divine plan as a means to the 
 experience of salvation. That a limited spiritual power might be driven 
 to this method as the only one available would be a thesis at least in- 
 volving no contradiction, but that omnipotence could not achieve its 
 ends without the tortures of Torquemada is a meaningless proposition. 
 What, moreover, is the actual consciousness of a man who, having 
 sinned, believes that in so doing he was fulfilling the will of God ? How 
 can he at the same time feel that he is estranged from God and requires 
 reconciliation ? 
 
 The difficulties of Theism only become contradictions when its defenders 
 insist upon omnipotence. Yet we still find writers as open-minded as 
 Prof. Adams Brown insisting that " There is no doctrine which is 
 practically more important than that of the divine omnipotence " (op. 
 ci«., p.fll7). 
 
MONOTHEISM 507 
 
 God being on the one hand a perfect Being, on the other the 
 all-powerful Lord of all, all wrong-doing takes upon itself the 
 character of a sin against him. Sin is an act of rebi^llion against 
 a supreme authority, and it stamps the soul with a stain of guilt 
 wMch makes it unworthy to appear in the divine presence. Sin, 
 in fact, borrows something of the infinitude of the Being against 
 whom it offends and puts a measureless gulf between him and 
 the sinner. But, in the Christian conception, man inherited 
 from Adam— whether through the Fall or by a primaeval decree 
 of which the Fall itself was but the first consequence — an original 
 inherent sinfulness, whereby even those of the most spotless 
 virtue stood condemned in the sight of God. Nor could any 
 merit of their own avail to wipe their guilt away, for, judged by 
 the infinite excellence of the divine, no human virtue can be 
 called positively good, and our best acts, far from yielding an 
 overplus of merit which could, as it were, be set against our 
 natural faults, are themselves but poor attempts to carry out 
 that rule of subUme perfection which alone could deserve the 
 divine approval. 
 
 In all this the religious consciousness is expressing in its own 
 fashion an immeasurably heightened sense of the gulf between 
 right and wrong. In so doing it sets for itself a problem which 
 could not be solved altogether by ethical means. The Fathers 
 of the Church, in fact, found the solution in the history of Christ, 
 who, being at once God and perfect man, gives his own life for 
 us. In its crudest forms this conception of Atonement implies 
 the primitive doctrines of vicarious justice, and the transfer- 
 ability of guilt, both of which belong to a relatively low stage of 
 ethical development .^ But the conception was capable of a 
 more refined expression, and in Anselm's hands the death of 
 Christ appears rather as a voluntary act redounding to the 
 glory of God, and thereby meriting a recompense which Christ, 
 not needing it for himself, transfers to men. He makes men 
 the " heirs" of the " superabundance of his plentitude . . . that 
 what they owe for their sin may be remitted to them, and 
 what, by reason of their sin, they lack, may be given to them." ^ 
 In this treatment it is a question rather of the transfer of merit 
 than of guilt, and this merit is not passed on mechanically (as 
 in the semi-magical transfer of sins to the scapegoat), but only 
 by spiritual means — to those who follow Christ according to the 
 
 ^ By the prevailing tradition down to Anselm's time it would even 
 appear that the Atonement was held necessary as a means of satisfying 
 the otherwise imperative claim of the DevO. See Hamack, vol. vi. p, 70 
 (E. T.). 
 
 ' ib., pp. 66, 67. 
 
508 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 rules which his Church has prescribed. This reconstruction, 
 however, refines, but does not ehminate, the vicarious principle, 
 and leaves us with the conception of a divine retribution, not 
 as a consequence which attaches itself by a moral necessity to 
 the state of the sinner's soul, but as capable of being somewhat 
 arbitrarily softened by a gracious consideration for the noble act 
 of another. 
 
 The death of Christ, however, does not win salvation for all 
 men at a stroke. There are further conditions to be fulfilled. 
 The first and greatest of these is faith in Christ himself.^ With- 
 out faith no virtue can save, and, though they had no means of 
 knowing the Gospel, the best of the heathen are irrevocably 
 lost. This may be said to have been common ground to the 
 churches down to the modem period." But, further than this, 
 faith not merely in Christ, but in the Church's own scheme of 
 salvation is too often a necessity, and no virtue, no sanctity, not 
 even the utmost plenitude of the true spirit of religion, could 
 avail to make good this flaw. " For any man who does not hold 
 the unity of the Cathohc Church, neither baptism, nor alms 
 however profuse, nor death met for the name of Christ, can be 
 
 * Faith in God is similarly the first condition of salvation with Mohammed, 
 So accursed are the infidels that they do not even deserve the prayers of 
 the faithful. " It is not for the prophet and those who believe to ask for- 
 giveness for the idolaters, even though they be their kindred, after it has 
 been made manifest to them that they are the fellows of hell " {Koran, i. 
 chap. ix. ; Palmer, p. 189). Sometimes the prophet casts his net wide. 
 " There is no compulsion in religion ; the right way has been distinguished 
 from the wrong, and whoso disbelieves in Taghut " (i. e: the idols and 
 demons of the ancient Arabs) " and believes in God, he has got hold of tho 
 firm handle in which is no breaking off ; but God both hears and knows " 
 {Koran, i. chap. ii. ; Pahner, p. 40). Elsewhere threats are uttered 
 against the Christians. 
 
 ^ Calvin even detracts from the merits of the heathen : The good 
 works of the heathen are distinguished from bad and rewarded in this life, 
 but Augustine is right in saying, " That all who are strangers to the religion 
 of the one true God, however they may be esteemed worthy of admiration 
 for their reputed virtue, not only merit no reward, but are rather deserving 
 of punishment because they contaminate the pure gifts of God with the 
 pollution of their own hearts." They are restrained from evil not by a 
 sincere attachment to virtue, but by ambition, self-love, or some other 
 irregular disposition. The end of what is right is always to serve God, and 
 as they regard not this end any externally good act performed by them 
 becomes sin. 
 
 Luther, though of more tolerant disposition, is equally clear that outside 
 Christendom there is no forgiveness and can be no holiness {Primary 
 Works, ed. Wace and Buohheim, p. 104). The Anglican Article XIII. 
 denies that " works done before the grace of Christ" are pleasant to God — 
 " yea rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded 
 them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin." This 
 view is satisfactorily anathematized by the Council of Trent {Corpus 
 Juris, p. 14). 
 
MONOTHEISM 609 
 
 of benefit for his salvation." ^ To die for Christ has become a 
 small thing compared with acceptance of precisely the right 
 formula to express his relations to the Deity. * The ethical 
 consequences are double. Conduct, and not only conduct, but 
 the whole ethical attitude of a man, his character, his soul as 
 expressing itself in his Hfe and in his relations to other men, 
 fall into the second place and are subordinated to the single 
 consideration of his attitude to the doctrines of the Church — 
 even when that attitude can only be expressed by saying that 
 he has never happened to hear of them. Secondly, the original 
 universaUsm of the world rehgion disappears, and for the old 
 circle of the fellow-citizens marked off rigidly from the rest of 
 the world, is substituted the circle of the true behevers marked 
 off, too often, by a deeper, redder Une from the rest of humanity. 
 
 7. But faith is not necessarily the sole condition necessary for 
 salvation. Faith admits to the Church, membership whereof is 
 signified by baptism. But what of the baptized Christian ? Is 
 he sanctified, " justified," once for all, or may he yet sin and 
 fall from grace ? Should he faU, what means are open to him of 
 regaining salvation ? On these questions deep cleavage came 
 into being. The dominant view in the early Church was that 
 while baptism washed away all previous sins, after baptism 
 grave sins could not, unless under some exceptional circum- 
 stances, obtain forgiveness.^ The Church itself was to be a com- 
 munity of saints, and down to the beginning of the third century 
 expulsion was, in fact, the penalty for idolatry, adultery, forni- 
 cation and murder.* But during the latter half of the second 
 century the practice of allowing a single penance for sin began 
 to grow up as a " second plank " of salvation for him who had 
 made shipwreck, and from this beginning the great CathoHc 
 system of discipline was developed,* and the vast structure of 
 the Canon Law. If the church was to " come down to earth " 
 and embrace not only the saints, but the whole mass of sinful, 
 
 * Quoted from Fulgentius in the Deer. Oreg. Corpus Juris, p. 778, 
 where, however, it is attributed to Augustine. Augustine suggests that good 
 works may mitigate damnation when they cannot procure salvation, and 
 the case of schismatics who endure martyrdom is instanced {De, Patientia, 
 0. 26, quoted with approval by Gratian, p. 1228). 
 
 ' Hamack, vol. i. p. 172 (E. T.). 
 
 ' Op. cit., vol. ii. pp. 108-109. The impenitent were threatened with the 
 refusal of divine forgiveness. While exclusion was the logical consequence 
 of the conception of a community of saints, it does not in fact seem to have 
 been pressed home. OHenders were often dealt with in the light of a special 
 revelation. 
 
 * The new system received a great impetus from the numerous lapses 
 in the Deeian persecution {ib., vol. ii. pp. 110-112). 
 
510 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 struggling humanity, it was clearly necessary to find some 
 means of dealing with sins after baptism, and means more 
 elastic than that of a single penance. It was essential to recog- 
 nize true contrition as shown in the steadfast purpose to lead a 
 new life. But the Church did more than recognize. It systema- 
 tized it, enjoining confession as a proof of contrition, and 
 penance not merely as an outpouring of the contrite heart, but 
 as a means of satisfaction for the offence. The theory is 
 somewhat crudely expressed at an early date by Cyprian, who 
 held that no one could remain permanently without sin after 
 baptism, that accordingly God's wrath must be appeased by 
 sacrifices, or that sins must be expunged by exceptional works 
 of merit, among which almsgiving takes a conspicuous place.^ 
 Though it is insisted that such works can only be efficacious 
 in so far as God is pleased to accept them, it is clear that the 
 practical working out of such a principle will bring us peril- 
 ously near to a systematic money composition for sins, quite 
 comparable to the secular composition for wrongs in early laws. 
 The theory itself, moreover, contains the suggestion that special 
 merits may be weighed against sins ; a consideration justly 
 applicable by a divine judge summing up upon a man's whole 
 career, but deadly to the man himself.^ 
 
 The requisite, but perhaps not sufficient, correction to this 
 mechanical doctrine of satisfaction was a strong insistence on 
 the necessity of genuine contrition as evidenced by a change of 
 heart. This is, in fact, put forcibly by the Fathers,* and a 
 full contrition remains the main essential down to the thir- 
 teenth century. Gratian is even uncertain whether confes- 
 sion is strictly necessary for forgiveness,* and he has some 
 difficulties as to repeated confession. For the " everyday lesser 
 and lighter sins without which one's life is not led " satisfac- 
 tion is made sufficiently by the prayers of the faithful.^ As to 
 
 ^ Hamack, vol. ii. pp. 133, 134. 
 
 ' Harnaek's comment is not too severe. " Eine Kirche, die sioh bei 
 diesen Satzen auf die Dauer beruhigt hatte, hatte den letzten Rest ihrer 
 Christlichkeit sehr bald eingebusst" {ib., p. 135). 
 
 ' Thus Ambrose, " Penitentia est et mala prseterita plangere et plangenda 
 iterum non committere" (Gratian, p. 1211). Again, " Satisfaotio pseni- 
 tentise est peceatorum causas excidere nee earum suggestionibus aditum 
 indulgere " (attributed to Augustine, De Dogm., p. 54, by' Gratian, but 
 wrongly so according to the editors). This is the change of heart, " TJbi 
 dolor finitur, deficit et pasnitentia . . . Hinc semper doleat et de dolore 
 gaudeat" (Augustine, De Pwnit., quoted ib., p. 1212). This is the 
 doctrine of lasting remorse. 
 
 ' See the long discussion in Gratian, Corpus Juris, pp. 1159-1190, and 
 compare Harnack, vol. vi. pp. 245, 246. 
 
 » Gratian, p. 1214. 
 
MONOTHEISM 511 
 
 graver sins, Gratian is clear that they cannot be committed 
 over and over again and stiU be redeemed by ^Ims. Yet the 
 Church allows that by penitence sins are remitted, not once, 
 but scBjdssime, and though perfect penitence would be final, yet 
 there are degrees in penitence as there are in charity, and he 
 who has repented once is cleared of his sins until he falls again .^ 
 In all this we see clearly enough the conflict of a stricter and a 
 laxer view.^ With the growth of the opinion that penance does 
 not pre-suppose full contrition, but only an attritio, which the 
 sacrament of penance itself perfects, an impetus was given to 
 the less spiritual conception,* and this attained its full develop- 
 ment in the doctrine of indulgences whereby the treasures of 
 merit stored up by the faithful for the Church, and at her dis- 
 posal, could be held to remit the penalties of guilt here and in 
 purgatory for her obedient children* We have not here to deal 
 with the abuse of indulgences. It is sufficient for us to note 
 how great is the departure from an ethical theory of penitence, 
 when the Council of Trent pronounce an anathema, not merely 
 on those who deny that the function of the priest in absolution 
 is judicial, but on those who assert that true repentance is 
 shown in a new Hfe rather than in performance of penance.^' 
 
 The Indulgences led directly to the Reformation, and the abuse 
 of " works " went far to determine the attitude of the Reformers 
 to the whole question of Justification. The moralistic theory 
 of nicely-graduated penalties for sin and of the cancelling out of 
 sin against merit had ended in ethical disorder and even scandal. 
 Luther went back to the alternative principle of salvation, and 
 justification by faith alone is announced in statements that 
 sometimes seem to sweep the whole ethical order aside. 
 
 " We see, then, how rich a Christian, or baptized man is, since, 
 even if he would, he cannot lose his salvation by any sins, how- 
 
 ' Gorpua Juris, pp. 1213-1215. 
 
 ' Or perhaps a foTmalistic as against an ethical view. The rules of 
 confession became stricter — the decretals of Gregory IX. lay down de- 
 finitely that every adult must confess at least once a year (Gorpua Juris, 
 p. 887) — while the spiritual meaning of penitence is watered down. 
 
 ' See Hamack, vol. vi. pp. 248 ff. (E. T.). 
 
 * The doctrine of indulgence as laid down by Clement VI. is a very crude 
 statement of the transfer of merit, and the consequent cancelling of sin. 
 
 Quem quidem thesaunmi non in sudario repositum, non in agro abscon- 
 ditum, Bed per beatum Petrum . . . ejusque successores suis in terris 
 vicariis commisit (Dei filius) fidelibus salubriter dispensandum, et propriis 
 et rationabilibus causis nunc pro totah, nunc pro partiali remissione 
 poena temporalis pro peccatis debitse, tarn generaliter quam specialiter . . . 
 vere poenitentibus et confessis misericorditer applicandum " (quoted in 
 Hamack, op. cit., p. 267). This is not much above the level of the sin-eater. 
 
 ' Corpus Juris, Gouncil of Trent, p. 39. 
 
512 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ever great, unless he refuses to believe; for no sins whatever 
 can condemn him but unbelief alone. All other sins, if faith 
 in the divine promise made to the baptized man stands firm 
 or is restored, are swallowed up in a moment through that same 
 faith, yea, through the truth of God, because He cannot deny 
 Himself, if thou confessest Him, and cleavest believingly to 
 His promise; whereas contrition and confession of sins, and 
 satisfaction for sins, and every effort that can be devised by man, 
 will desert thee at thy need, and will make thee more miserable 
 than ever, if thou f orgettest this divine truth, and pufiest thyself 
 up in such things as these. For whatever work is wrought 
 apart from faith in the truth of God is vanity and vexation of 
 spirit." 1 
 
 This might seem to open the door to Antinomianism. But 
 Luther would maintain that instead of taking morals out of 
 rehgion, he had given them their true place within rehgion. 
 They are not a means of grace, but a consequence of grace. 
 " Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does 
 good works." ^ The servile theory of reward and punishment 
 should be banished from ethics. The Christian virtues are a 
 free service lovingly rendered to God. " Here is the truly 
 Christian Hfe, here is faith really working by love, when a man 
 applies himseK with joy and love to the works of that freest 
 servitude in which he serves others voluntarily for nought, him- 
 self abundantly satisfied in the fulness and richness of his own 
 faith." ^ Similarly in Calvin, he who knows God "restrains 
 himself from sin, not merely from a dread of vengeance, but 
 because he loves and reveres God as his Father, honours and 
 worships Him as his Lord, and, even though there were no hell, 
 would shudder at the thought of offending Him." * 
 
 * Luther, Christian Liberty, p. 343. " ib., p. 275. 
 = *., p. 280. 
 
 * Calvin, vol. i. p. 37; cf. vol. ii. p. 52, on Christian liberty. Calvin 
 explicitly rejects the contention that the works excluded from the scheme 
 of justification are merely the ceremonial works of the law. Moral works 
 go with them (vol. i. p. 595). All our best actions judged by their in- 
 trinsic merit are already defiled and polluted (p. 603), we have therefore 
 merely to humble ourselves and submit to the divine mercy (p. 604), and 
 our hope must be founded, not on our own regeneration, which is always 
 imperfect, but on our being engrafted into the body of Christ and so 
 gratuitously accounted righteous (pp. 610-611). Humility is here carried 
 out consistently, but at the cost in the end of throwing an arbitrary choice 
 on the Deity. 
 
 It is important that, in Calvin, regeneration does not complete itself at a 
 stroke. Its end is the restoration of the divine image within us, which is 
 not accomplished in a day, but by continual and som.6times tardy advances. 
 A fraction of evil still remains within ub which produces irregular desires 
 alluring us to sin (vol. i. p. 479). 
 
MONOTHEISM 513 
 
 Here the ethical consciousness has regained its freedom from 
 the bondage of a system of rewards and punishments. Yet the 
 union of the ethical and rehgious is even more completely un- 
 done. It is one thing to point out that virtue ceases to be virtue 
 when it asks for a reward. It is quite another to relegate the 
 whole question of character and conduct to the second place. 
 From this criticism the Counter-Reformation escaped by at- 
 tempting an elaborate and extremely subtle reconcUiation of 
 faith and works, divine grace and the responsibihty of the human 
 will. Justification, the Council lays down, is by Christ alone, 
 but only for those to whom the merit of his passion is communi- 
 cated. The first step in this communication begins " A Dei per 
 Christum Jesum prseveniente gratia," by which people are called 
 by no previously existing merits of their own to their own 
 justification. But they must assent and freely co-operate with 
 the grace of God, so that man is not inactive and yet could not 
 move towards justification without God's grace. Paith is the 
 "beginning of salvation, but faith without works is dead, and 
 Tieither faith nor works merit justification, nor could they confer 
 it but for the grace of God. Grace is lost by any mortal sin, 
 hut those who f aU away may be restored by aid of the sacrament 
 t)f penance. 
 
 The Council proceeds to pronounce thirty-three anathemas on 
 any one who falls away from this narrow plank of truth whether 
 to the right or to the left. It curses — to confine ourselves to 
 the most important points — any one who shall maintain — 
 
 (Clauses 1, 2, 3) That man can be justified by works, or by 
 any effort of his own will, without grace. (4) That human will 
 cannot co-operate or decline co-operation with the Divine 
 Spirit, "sed veluti inanime quoddam nihil agere." (5 and 6) 
 That there is no free wiU, but that God produces evil as well 
 as good, " non permissive solum sed etiam proprie." (7) That 
 ^11 works before justification are sins. (8) That the fear of heU 
 which restrains from sins, is a sin. (9) That justification is by 
 faith alone. (11) That it is by remission of sins without grace 
 and charity. (12) That justifying faith is nothing but trust 
 in the divine mercy. (13) That personal belief in our own 
 sahration is necessary. (17) That grace is for those predestined 
 to life only while others are called but do not receive grace " ut- 
 pote divina potestate prsedestinatos ad malum." (18) That 
 God's commandments are impossible even for the justified. 
 (19) That there is no gospel except faith. (20) That the justified 
 is bound not to obedience to the commands of God and the 
 Church but only to belief. (23) That man once justified cannot 
 sin. (24) That works do not increase justification. (25 and 26) 
 
 LL 
 
514 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 That the just earns no merit by good works. (27) That there 
 is no mortal sin except unbelief. (28) That through sin faith 
 is lost along with grace. (29) That the lapsed after baptism 
 cannot recover grace without penance. (30) That the penitent 
 sinner may escape temporal pimishment. (31) That good works 
 done in contemplation of an eternal reward are sins. (32) That 
 the good works of one who is justified are gifts of God in such a 
 sense that they are not also merits of the man himself.^ 
 
 Here there is at least a stout attempt to reconcile divine 
 grace and human responsibility, and to make moraUty along 
 with beUef essential to salvation. On the other hand, will is 
 stiU second to grace — the prime mover — and conduct to beUef — 
 the preliminary condition, nor is the fundamental ethical point 
 of the Reformers met, that moral service must be a service of 
 perfect freedom. 
 
 8. Christianity, Uke Buddhism, has an elaborate theory of the 
 basis of morals, and has appHed it to the moral and spiritual 
 education of man. It can teach, encourage, admonish, punish, 
 forgive, and raise again to repentance and amendment of life. 
 But in applying its principles to life, it has moved between two 
 poles of difficulty, which are perhaps inherent in the nature of 
 the subject. To elaborate a system of rewards and punishments 
 is to run the risk of degrading morals into a form of spiritual 
 calculation. The opposite alternative of declaring that conduct 
 follows truly and naturally from the convinced faith of a Christian 
 tends to degrade the ethical side of reUgion to a secondary 
 place. On behalf of the Protestant theory it may be urged that 
 rewards and punishments, except in so far as they are the 
 inherent consequences of action, belong to the legal stage of 
 ethical development. They are necessary for the maintenance 
 of social order, but are out of place when brought into relation 
 to moral obligation proper, and even tend to undermine the 
 genuine ethical conception. Thus, it may be said. Protestantism, 
 while seeming to give a less important place to ethics, was 
 really restoring to the moral wiU the "freedom" — ^from the 
 bondage of external sanctions — which it had lost, and so has 
 paved the way for a distinctly ethical view. But the truth is 
 that neither Protestantism nor the Roman Church advanced to 
 the ethical position that it is the good man through his goodness 
 who is nearest to God. Too intent on the doctrine of exclusive 
 salvation, with all that it meant for the dignity and importance 
 of their respective churches, they readily agreed upon one point, 
 * Council of Trent, Corptis Juris, 13, 14, 15. 
 
MONOTHEISM 515 
 
 that God was with them alone, and could see no good outside 
 their respective bodies. And they paid the pena]|y of spiritual 
 pride by marring the conception of righteousness at its source, 
 and breaking up that union of ethics' and rehgion which it was 
 the special function of Monotheism to achieve and maintain. 
 In the theories underlying both the main forms of Western 
 Christianity that union is impaired, if not destroyed, by concep- 
 tions from which theologians have not been able to escape of 
 the nature of God and his relation to the world and to man. 
 Not being willing to surrender the conception of the Deity as 
 an omnipotent Creator standing outside his world, they have 
 been compelled, under whatever disguises, to impute to him its 
 evil along with its goodness. To explain the history of Christ 
 they have maintained, with whatever refinements, the doctrine 
 of transferable merit, and in magnifying faith they have made 
 true lovableness and beauty of character secondary in God's eyes. 
 To this extent ethical monotheism has failed in its intention. 
 
 9. With regard to the standard, as opposed to the basis of 
 morals, aU forms of monotheism have something in common. 
 God is the Father of aU. Therefore, all men are brothers, and 
 should be members of one Church. This potential universaUsm 
 is common to Islam and Christianity, and the logic of it is so 
 strong that it even half broke down the barriers of Jewish 
 national exclusiveness. But in its fundamental teaching Chris- 
 tianity has really more affinity to Buddhism. In becoming 
 Christian, as in becoming BuddMst, the whole moral nature of 
 a man undergoes a change. The point of view is, as it were, 
 reversed. The " eye of the soul " is turned in a new direction. 
 The morals of the " natural " man, as we have seen them in 
 development, concern the maintenance of his famUy, his clan, 
 his community, his class. They are not selfish. They may 
 impose upon him the extreme of self-denial. But they are in 
 their most typical development the morals of the warrior — 
 brave, loyal, proud, generous, upright, of the Greek or Roman 
 patriot, of the modem man of honour. Sometimes they are 
 called the morals of self-assertion. But the term is hardly 
 just. Self-assertion was not the note of Regulus, or of the two 
 ■ Spartans who surrendered themselves to the Great King that 
 they might wipe out the curse incurred by their country through 
 its treatment of the Persian herald. It is truer to say that 
 they are the morals of men who assert themselves, and with 
 or through themselves their family, their caste, their country, 
 whose very self-denial is founded on the pride of life, the 
 
516 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 honour of a name, the glory of a tradition. As against this, the 
 Buddhist, and still more the Christian, teaching insists on a far 
 more thoroughgoing self -surrender. Pride is now the dead- 
 liest of the deadly sins. Through pride the angels fell. Out 
 of the mouths of babes and suckhngs God has ordained praise. 
 He has brought down the mighty from their seat and exalted 
 the humble and meek. He has made the foolish things of 
 this world to confound the wise. His own Son is despised 
 and rejected of men, and his followers rejoice, and are ex- 
 ceeding glad, when men persecute and revile them and say 
 all manner of evil things against them for his sake. They give 
 up the world, they put away the joy and pride of living. They 
 lose their own Ufe, ■ and in losing they find it. They must 
 sacrifice, not merely, as the older ethics taught them, life and 
 home and rank and fortune for their country's good, but the 
 very pride of race or family on which that sacrifice was based, 
 the very idea of worldly greatness to achieve which for their 
 city seemed the noblest duty of man. The soul must not 
 merely sacrifice, it must surrender itself, abandon its pride, 
 break down its barriers, and, in meekness, learn its duty. But, 
 here the moral paradox begins, in this weakness lies its strength. 
 Lao Tse had already taught that as water wears away the 
 rock, so the weakest things of this world overcome the strong. 
 This total self-surrender to the eternal truth meant a complete 
 spiritual victory over the lords of time. The meek shall inherit 
 the earth, not merely the heavens. Because they have humbled 
 themselves beyond all others they are set above aU others. 
 They overcome hatred with love. They conquer by refusing 
 to resist, and meet assault by turning the other cheek to the 
 smiter. And beneath this yielding softness of exterior they 
 reveal, when the right season comes, a firmness which is harder 
 than adamant. 
 
 In the old moral order men could, with a clear conscience, be 
 equally good haters and good lovers. It was said to them of 
 old time, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine 
 enemy." But the code of self-surrender has no room for hate. 
 Hatred is assertion, and its exercise manifests the fallacy of 
 assertion, for its open expression is the blood feud which never 
 ends, but remains an open wound in the vitals of society. 
 Morally regarded, revenge is a matter of physical strength and 
 a poor satisfaction at best. There is a nobler way of dealing 
 with an enemy which conquers him far more effectually. 
 " Hatred," Buddha taught, " does not cease by hatred but by 
 love." If you are in the wrong, it is for you to make amfindfi. 
 
MONOTHEISM 517 
 
 If it were he, then pity him for that he is wandering in error 
 and bhnd to the truth. No doubt wrong-doing must carry its 
 punishment. But it is not for finite intelhgence to measure the 
 guilt and assign the due penalty upon another man. " Venge- 
 ance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord." As for us, the best 
 of us are sinners infinitely far from the divine perfection and 
 needing infinite mercy for ourselves. If we judge others, shall 
 not we ourselves be judged ? And if neither personal antagon- 
 isms nor moral differences are to interfere with love, still less 
 can the barriers of class, and race, and sex be allowed to stand. 
 We are aU aUke members one of another, sons of God, brothers 
 and sisters upon earth and co-heirs of the kingdom of heaven. 
 Among us there can be no difference of Jew or Gentile, bond or 
 free, noble or lowly. He is most noble who the lowliest duties 
 on himself doth lay. The fallen woman becomes a saint and 
 the crucified thief is the first to sup with the Saviour in Para- 
 dise. The kingdom of God is not peopled by those who have 
 proved themselves the strongest on this earth. To their Father 
 the fate of the weakest and most despised is of no less moment 
 than that of those who have many talents entrusted to 
 them. The principle of Comprehensiveness — against the more 
 exclusive view of earUer morals — ^is here pushed to its furthest 
 point: Here, at least. Christian ethics at their best have been 
 determined and consistent, and here in this resolute recognition 
 of weakness has been their strength .^ Nor is salvation merely a 
 personal end which each must win for himself. It is also the duty 
 of every good Christian to win it for his brothers. He must go 
 out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in. 
 The universahsm of rehgion, then, is not the somewhat pale and 
 negative doctrine of equal rights on which moral philosophy 
 insists. It imposes a no less universal standard of duty, and 
 
 * Any one who will compare St. Paul's description of Charity, in which 
 term the whole of the distinctively Christian ethics is summed up, with 
 the Buddhist description of the true Brahmana, with the description of the 
 Highminded or Great Souled man in the Ethics (book iv.), and of the 
 Superior man in scattered passages of the Confucian Analects (sea below, 
 chap, v.), will form an idea of the relation of Christianity to other ethical 
 systems. I take the description of the Great Souled man as typical of 
 ordinary Greek thought, of the pagan " pride of life." The Great Souled 
 man "deems himself worthy of great things, being in reality worthy 
 of them." There is an honesty in his attitude to himself which is by no 
 means to be confused with arrogance — a " proper pride " which is the 
 alternative to the Christian hvunUity. But for passages typical of Greek 
 philosophy as opposed to pre-philosophic thought we must look elsewhere, 
 e. g. in Aristotle himself to the description of the philosophic life (book 
 X.), to Plato's description of the just man, and to that of the wise man in 
 Epictetus or Marcus Aurelius. 
 
518 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 demands a missionary spirit on the part of its true professors. 
 Ultimately this carries with it a demand upon society, which 
 owes to its members, and to the outer hesthen, the means of 
 grace. Whether as expressing the claims or the duties of the 
 individual, the doctrine of salvation may be taken as the keystone 
 of the Christian ethics, the basis of its aggressive conquering 
 activity, the inspiration of that wide humanity which, under the 
 most distorted forms of human personaHty, recognizes the same 
 essential soul to be saved. It enshrines a truth which modem 
 rationalism has sometimes ignored, and it lays the foundation 
 of an ethics which is not content with the mere regulation of 
 relations, but sets out to conquer the world for the Spirit. 
 
 10. Love, universal benevolence, forgiveness, humility, meek- 
 ness, combined with the extreme of resolute endurance for con- 
 science' sake- — such are the necessary outcome of that emptying 
 of self which Buddhism and Christianity alike demanded. In 
 them the spiritual order formed for itself a new sphere detached 
 from the more elementary morals of the ordinary good citizen. 
 In this detachment, however, were seeds of trouble. We have 
 already seen that the Buddhist life could hardly be lived in its 
 perfection by the ordinary householder. The spiritual and the 
 human had already fallen apart. In Christianity the fissure is 
 in some respects deeper. It is in monotheism that there first 
 arises a clear distinction between the natural and the super- 
 natural. In the earlier phases of rehgion the intervention of 
 gods and spirits was a matter of course, a thing of everyday 
 life. But in proportion as the one God absorbs all power into 
 himself, the course of the world comes to be thought of as 
 running smoothly and continuously in the fine which he has 
 laid down for it, and his direct interference with its orderly 
 movements becomes something marked and exceptional, re- 
 served for great occasions or for the special prayers of the 
 faithful. Thus a well-marked antithesis arises between "na- 
 ture " conceived as the ordinary course of events, and the 
 " supernatural " conceived as that which belongs directly to the 
 sphere of God. This antithesis dominates Christian teaching 
 from first to last, and has a profound influence upon ethics. For 
 in proportion as nature is separated from God, that which per- 
 tains to nature is set in antithesis to that which belongs to 
 God, and is apt accordingly to partake of the character of sin. 
 The great institutions of humanity, marriage, fatherhood, citizen- 
 ship, are things of this world. The Christian must make his 
 account with them, but they are not of Christian origin. He 
 is to honour the king, because he is not to concern himself with 
 
MONOTHEISM 519 
 
 worldly revolutions. The powers that be are ordained of God, 
 but merely to regulate the secondary and profane affairs of this 
 life. Christ's true kingdom is not of this world. It may be 
 necessary for the Church in the end to come out into the world 
 and regulate the affairs of men, for the universal benevolence 
 taught us by Christ forbids us to be indifferent to the happiness 
 or misery of our brother-men, and, above all, we can in no way 
 afford to neglect their spiritual interests, to which state laws 
 ought in future to accommodate themselves. But the emergence 
 of the Church into affairs of this world is hke the descent of 
 Plato's philosopher into the cave. The true saint finds no joy 
 in it. His life is not there, but hid with Christ in God. And if 
 in the end the Church became too much a thing of this world 
 and allowed itself to be by the world corrupted, that is but the 
 other side of the same shield. The detachment of what was 
 best in Christianity from the world's affairs made a Christian 
 body unfit to rule the world's affairs. Christianity has, in 
 fact, no theory of society by which to guide itself. Its doc- 
 trine is personal. The common life that it contemplates is 
 a hfe of brotherly love, a community of saints, where all things 
 are in common and lawsuits are not, nor any other mode of 
 maintaining order by the strong arm. Hence, amid aU the 
 wonderful descriptions of charity, of love, of self-surrender, we 
 hear very little of justice. Indeed, how could it be otherwise ? 
 What need of justice when love readily yields up all ? Why 
 talk of a fair division to one who, if his cloak be taken, will make 
 that a ground for giving up his garment ? What need for equal 
 rights among men who claim nothing for themselves and yield 
 all they have to all who want ? 
 
 11. The code of the Sermon on the Mount appears to con- 
 template what in modern phrase we should call a voluntaryist 
 or Anarchist community. Non-resistance is its central feature. 
 There is to be no fighting, no revenge, no lawsuits, no oaths, 
 no self-defence, no insistence on private property, no excessive 
 provision for the future. If there is to be any marrying or 
 giving in marriage at aU, there is to be no divorcing of wives 
 " save for the cause of fornication." There is to be unbounded 
 charity without display. Altogether a hfe that might be lived 
 for a while by a picked brotherhood of perfect men and women.^ 
 How were these rules to be made apphcable to a world in which 
 men and women are so far from perfect ? In regard to the 
 
 1 In fact, the Christian Ufe, far from being a scheme of permanent social 
 regeneration, was originally conceived as preparatory to an inuninent 
 millennium. There is here an important point of difference between the 
 primitive Christian commonwealth and the Buddhist order. 
 
520 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 general principle that law and government are necessities of 
 human existence, the Church was helped by those passages of 
 the Scriptures prescribing obedience to constituted authority. 
 These sufficed as long as Christianity was the religion of a 
 persecuted sect, but when it became the official creed of the 
 empire a further step was necessary, and means had to be 
 found of justifying believers in acting as judges and in executing 
 the law upon criminals. This was done by drawing a distinction 
 between the man and his office.^ Even the judicial act of 
 torture was but faintly reprobated or even justified by the 
 Fathers.^ The only serious doubt was as to capital punishment. 
 This was so genuine that Augustine begs Count Marcelhnus, 
 in punishing certain Donatists who had murdered a Catholic 
 priest, to avoid either inflicting death or mutilation.* Eor a 
 long period Christian clerks refused to enter death sentences in 
 so many words, and at certain periods, e. g. in England under 
 the Conqueror, death sentences were whoUy suspended for a 
 time under <!he influence of the Church.* In general, punish- 
 ment was to be limited by charity, and not to be embittered 
 by the spirit of vengeance. The reproof administered to the 
 apostles for wishing to call fire down upon the Samaritans was 
 a warning against vindictiveness. Injuries to self should not 
 be punished, but only those against God or our neighbour. 
 Punishment is like a medicine, and the precept that we should 
 love our enemies does not mean that we should relax censure, 
 or, if in the end it is required, punishment, but that we should so 
 carry out punishments as to reform the criminal and console 
 the penitent.^ These were excellent precepts, though they bore 
 
 1 Augustine, Epis. 154, adopted by Gratian, Corpus Juris, p. 932 ; cf. 924, 
 " Non imputatur fidelibus qui ex officio aut tormenta exeroent aut capitalem 
 sententiam ferunt " ; and see letter of Pope Innocent there quoted. Cf. 
 Jerome, sv/per Hierem., vol. iv. p. 22 (Gratian, p. 939). " Homicidas et 
 sacrileges et venenarios punire non est eHusio sanguinis sed legum minis- 
 terium." Cf. Gratian, 896, quoting or paraphrasing (see note ib.) Au- 
 gustine on Psahn cviii., to the effect that retaliation, though it is hardly 
 the part of a good man to demand it, may rightly be inflicted by the judge. 
 " Hie enim malum pro malo redderet, judex vero non, sed delectatione 
 justitise justum injusto quod est bonum pro malo," an ingenious turning of 
 the phrase, but surely a perversion of its original meaning. 
 
 * See preceding note, and Corpus Juris, p. 936. In Ep. 159, Augustine . 
 congratulates Marcellinus on getting at the truth without the use of any 
 torture worse than flogging, " qui modus coercionis . . . ab ipsis parentibus 
 Eidhibetur, ut ssepe etiam in judioiis ab episcopis solet haberi " (Gratian, 
 p. 929). 
 
 = Ep. 169. Gratian, p. 928. 
 
 * See Pollock and Maitland, i. 88 ; ii. 452. 
 
 ^ Gratian, Corpus Juris, pp. 909-914. Cf. also Ambrose, Sermon viii., 
 quoted p. 915. Mercy may be unjust. We should not give unrepentant 
 robbers the^opportunity of returning to their wickedness. 
 
MONOTHEISM 521 
 
 singularly little fruit, and for fifteen centuries the criminal 
 codes of most Christian nations remained a sending reproach 
 to civihzation. 
 
 Recognizing the authority of the law and the courts, the 
 Church was also compelled to admit the oath. It should be 
 taken not lightly, but when civil necessities so required.^ It 
 has been left to isolated sects, hke the Society of Friends, to 
 maintain the literal teaching of the Sermon on the Mount 
 on this point. There remained the further question whether 
 the law should be obeyed when in conflict with conscience or 
 the dictates of religion. The powers that be are ordained of 
 God, and that has led many devout Christians to a doctrine 
 of passive obedience. The Canon Law, however, recognized 
 that disobedience to secular authorities is often necessary, 
 and if, possibly, it may be right " per obedientiam bonum 
 deserere," yet it can never be lawful positively to do wrong.^ 
 The doctrine of non-resistance was destined to play its. part 
 as a moral support of absolutism, and it was even accepted 
 by Calvin, though rejected with much practical effect by so 
 many Calvinists.* It is manifestly appropriate only to a 
 small community which desires to lead its own hfe in the midst 
 of a great world that it can never hope to control. Hence 
 its most practical exponent in the modern world has been the 
 great writer who, living under the shadow of a tyranny of 
 overwhelming power, could defy all efforts to silence him, 
 primarily because he deprecated violence and confined the efforts 
 of himseK and his school to moral protests. Yet this same teach- 
 ing, effective while the tyranny was supreme, is out of date and 
 mischievous from the first moment at which it is shaken. 
 
 The principle of resistance admitted in the case of resort to 
 the machinery of law, is extended to the more doubtful case 
 of warfare. We have already traced the outUne of Christian 
 teaching on this point, and the somewhat dismal tale need not 
 here be told again. On this side also the maintenance of the pure 
 teaching of the Gospel has been left to small and isolated sects. 
 
 AVhUe the doctrine of non -resistance was frankly abandoned 
 by the majority of the churches, the doctrine of communism 
 had a somewhat different history. It is accepted in the Canons 
 
 • Corpus Juris, pp. 861-862. 
 
 ' Gratian, p. 671, chap. 99. Chap. oi. is more stringent, and see chap. xci. 
 and cxil. Even a bishop should not be obeyed if he should enjoin the 
 singing of a mass for heretics (p. 669). 
 
 ^ Institutes, ii. 62, 63. However, Calvin admits that God sometimes 
 raises up a servant as an avenger. He is also, of course, quite clear that 
 no behest of a magistrate that is contrary to divine law must be obeyed 
 cf. iv. chap. xx). 
 
522 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 as a part of the divine law, but as abrogated by the positive 
 law of the empire.^ Instead of communism the Church preached 
 abundance in charity, and on this was founded the great system 
 of poor relief which has played so large a part in the mediaeval 
 and modem world. On this side the Christian teaching, though 
 in a modified form, was incorporated in established institutions. 
 But still the pure teaching of the Gospel was left to a few con- 
 demned sectaries to preserve, and was put aside by respect- 
 ability as being merely that which " certain Anabaptists do 
 falsely boast." Yet the ideal has never wholly died out, and we 
 owe to it in our own times all the zeal and energy which Christian 
 Sociahsts have thrown into the movement for reforming the 
 conditions of industrial hfe. Here as elsewhere it is the few who 
 take the Gtospel Uterally that leave their mark upon the world. 
 
 12. To attempt to trace the full influence of Christian ethics 
 on social morahty is far beyond the scope of this work. It is 
 a question of countless actions and interactions, nor are there 
 many questions of history in which a just verdict would be so 
 difficult to come at. Christianity, like other movements, in 
 descending from the mount to the plain loses much of its purity, 
 while in turn gaining something from the impulse of other 
 movements and contact with a wider Ufe. These actions and 
 reactions make up a great part of the history of nineteen cen- 
 turies, and to deal with them fairly would be a work for many 
 volumes. We have, however, in the first part of this work, 
 seen something of the workings of Christian teaching in various 
 departments of law and morals, of its influence on marriage 
 and the position of women, on criminal justice, on war, on 
 slavery and class distinctions, on the practice of benevolence, 
 on the idea of the state and its functions in social life. This 
 influence is not one that can be summed up in a single word as 
 good or bad, nor is it even always harmonious in itself. Naturally 
 the different sects into which Christendom has been divided 
 have at times worked in contrary directions in the ethical as 
 in the theological sphere. If, for instance, we take the ques- 
 tion of slavery, we should have to weigh the recognition of the 
 institution by the early Church against the prohibition of the 
 
 ^ " Jure divino omnia sunt coinmunia omnibus, jure vero oonstifcutioniB 
 hoc meum illud alterius est," Gratian, p. 12). Cf. p. 2, where the principle 
 is referred distinctly to " natural " law. Augustine ingeniously applies it 
 to justify the confiscations of the property of the Donatists (p. 12, note) in 
 favour of the Catholics. No one holds any property except by human law 
 as interpreted by the emperor. The emperor gives and the emperor may 
 take away. There is no trace here of that divine right of property of which 
 modem orthodoxy sometimes speaks. 
 
MONOTHEISM 523 
 
 enslavement of Christian prisoners and the encouragement of 
 manumission : we should have to put the sanction of negro 
 slavery in the sixteenth century in the one scale, and all the 
 work of the Quakers and the Evangehcal churches for its ahoh- 
 tion in the other. If we take criminal justice, we should have 
 to allow for the spirit of clemency which arose from the sanctity 
 attached by the early Church to human life, and equally to 
 admit that the rehgious persecutions stand as instances of what 
 human savagery, pushed to its extreme limit, can achieve. If 
 our example were the position of women, we should have to 
 weigh the loss of the independence and dignity enjoyed by 
 the Roman matron and the degradation for a long period of 
 the ideal of marriage, against a conception of the moral and 
 rehgious capabihties of womanhood which paved the way, 
 first for charity, and ultimately for justice. In these and so 
 many other cases " Christianity " is hardly to be distinguished 
 from the civilization of Christendom. What is done officially, 
 whether for good or for evil, is generally done in its name, and 
 that cause must, indeed, be desperate, which cannot fi.nd some 
 Bibhcal text or patristic sajdng to twist to its support. It would 
 manifestly be unscientific to attribute corruptions of this sort to 
 Christianity as such. On the other hand, if what is bad finds 
 support in some distortion of religious teaching, it is equally 
 true that the churches claim credit for much that is good with 
 which Christianity has no special connection, and the epithet 
 Christian is freely apphed to virtues and moral principles that 
 are far older and more universal than Christianity. Lastly, 
 when we are taking the work of special sects into account, we 
 must remember that their ideas, though they themselves might 
 claim them as exclusively Christian, may be in greater or less 
 degree inspired by the general culture of their age to which 
 elements not distinctly Christian would contribute. 
 
 Probably we shall be safe in following the historian of the 
 period during M'hich Christianity superseded Paganism in attri- 
 buting to Christian infl.uence in the first place a heightened sense 
 of the sanctity of human Hfe. We have seen this at work in 
 the teaching of the Church as to penal law. Mr. Lecky^ calls 
 attention also to the prohibition of abortion and infanticide, 
 along with the growth of pubhc provision for exposed children 
 and for children of destitute parents.^ In this relation the 
 action of the Church was determined rather by the behef in the 
 
 ^ European Morals, vol. ii. p. 20. 
 
 ' ib., p. 30. Constantine's law, however, provided for the enslavement 
 of the exposed child to its protector. That was repealed for the Eaatern 
 empire by Justinian. 
 
524 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 terrible fate awaiting unbaptized children than by humanitarian 
 feeling in our sense of the term.^ The suppression of gladia- 
 torial shows is a more decisive instance of the triumph of 
 humanity, and with this we may associate the efforts, perhaps 
 not very strenuous efforts, of the Church to suppress private 
 fighting. For the rest, the historian lays stress on those efforts 
 to mitigate slavery and warfare, and to extend and systematize 
 works of charity, to which reference has been already made, 
 Apart from these contributions to humanitarian progress the 
 ideals of asceticism and ceHbacy and the estabhshment of indis- 
 soluble monogamous marriage (resting, however, on the free con- 
 sent of both parties) were the most noteworthy contributions of 
 organized Christianity to the ethics of the mediaeval world. 
 
 If, however, we take the Christian teaching, apart from all in-- 
 adequacies of historical appUcation, as a statement of an ethical 
 ideal, and seek to measure its value as an ideal, a more decisive 
 judgment is possible. It carries one side of ethics to the highest 
 possible pitch of perfection, but it leaves another side compara- 
 tively neglected. The conception of a brotherhood of love based 
 on the negation of self is demonstrably inadequate to the pro- 
 blem of reorganizing society and intelligently directing human 
 efforts. Even on the personal side it is deficient, for human 
 progress depends on the growth and perfecting of faculty, and 
 therefore requires that provision be made for a self-develop- 
 ment which is not selfishness but builds up a better personality 
 on a basis of self -repression. Equally on the social side the 
 ideal of loving self-surrender is beautiful, but not always right. 
 Utter self-sacrifice is magnificent, but it is not justice, and 
 justice and reciprocity are even more essential elements in 
 ajiy commonwealth that can survive and include average 
 humanity within it than the readiness to resign all for the sake 
 of others — a wilHngness which can hardly be made a uni- 
 versal rule without bringing action to a standstill. Nor does 
 true love mean brotherly kindness and a diffused benevolence 
 alone, but legitimately includes the whole gamut of human 
 passions — if the lust of the eye be excepted — and a working 
 ethical system must not suppress but provide a place for these. 
 Applying these considerations, we can see that spiritual religion, 
 though it recognizes personaHty, fails to give it full scope in all 
 its legitimate developments. It exalts the common life, but pays 
 little attention to the actual conditions of any social structure, 
 It inculcates duties, but overlooks rights — a factor scarcely less 
 essential to social progress. Finally, having found its ideal in 
 ^ Hence in particular the condemnation o£ abortion (Lecky, vol. ii, p. 23). 
 
MONOTHEISM 525 
 
 the heavens, and invested it with supernatural authority, it leaves 
 it to the priesth'ood to bring down to earth, by that method of 
 exegesis which tends too often to practise men in the art of 
 asserting principles without meaning them, and accepting ideals 
 with readiness because they know how to escape the practical 
 difficulties of their apphcation. Self-suppression, universal 
 brotherhood, the conquest of strength by silent endurance, these 
 remain ideals of conduct for which every rational system of 
 ethics must find a place, but they are not the whole of social 
 morality, and some of them are even capable of being pressed to 
 the point of danger. It is not merely that, humanity being 
 what it is, the hfe of the Gospel could only be Hved by a select 
 community of saints. There is another side to the question. 
 The opposition of the natural to the supernatural degrades the 
 ordinary life of men. What is of this world belongs to the 
 flesh, and what belongs to the flesh is of the nature of sin. In 
 the pursuit of an ideal which few or none can realize, the ele- 
 ment of the divine which hes in our ordinary human nature 
 is overlooked, or rather it is denied. That the love of man and 
 woman, of parent and child, may be a passion which can on 
 occasion raise the most ordinary and least saint-hke among 
 us to heights of self -negation which no ascetic can surpass, 
 is a truth to which common experience testifies. Yet super- 
 naturahsm which could paint the mystic love of the cloistered 
 enthusiast could only conceive of sexual love as a bondage of 
 the flesh .^ This utter misconception of one side of human 
 nature is only an extreme case of a general tendency. Super- 
 natural ethics fail in that they do not recognize the ideal 
 element in the performance of natural duty. Love of country, 
 loyalty to comrades, devotion to truth and justice, all serve 
 earthly and temporal ends, but are in themselves to be reckoned 
 among the spiritual forces that guide and inspire mankind. 
 With this interpretation of the spiritual, supernaturahsm is not 
 contented. Its service must be consciously dedicated to the 
 glory of Grod. It must ehminate the passions which retain in 
 them anything of an earthly element . It must cut the ties that 
 bind us to this world and extirpate at the root the deadly 
 passions that drag us into mortal sin. Hence it demands a life 
 separated from the world, which mixes with the world from 
 benevolence alone, but for its own part is dead to this natural 
 existence and lives only for Christ. 
 
 Fortunately for the Western world supernaturahsm was but 
 
 ' For the revolting conception of womanhood held by many of the 
 saints, see Lecky, History of European ^orala, vol. ii. pp. 116 seq. 
 
526 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 one side of Christianity. Christ himself was no anchorite, and 
 his teaching, if exacting, was also tender. There have never 
 been wanting individuals to show the world that it was possible 
 to follow in hiB steps, and live externally the ordinary life of a 
 commonplace citizen while their souls within them are filled with 
 their Master's teaching and overflowed in charity to all mankind. 
 It is here, in the simple personal following of Christ, that the 
 strength of Christianity will always he — ^not in the mazes of 
 dogmatic theology, not in the spiritual machinery for drawing 
 souls to God, not in the teaching of the churches, not in the pomp 
 of ceremonial, not in the fervour of the preacher, not even in the 
 enthusiasm of the mystic who dreams of his oneness with God — 
 not in these does Christ hve, but first in the few who Uve as he 
 did, shedding the light of peace around them, and next in the 
 wider circle of those who, dwelhng on the borderland dim betwixt 
 vice and virtue, or in the twihght of conventional ideas, are 
 irradiated now and then by a gleam from the true meaning of 
 words with which they have been all their lives f amihar, and for 
 a while see themselves as they are and respond with some efiort, 
 however faint and short, towards the truth of things. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ETHICAL IDEALISM 
 
 1 . The preceding chapters have illustrated the close connection 
 between ethical and rehgious ideas. We have, in fact, seen 
 ethics, upon the whole, in a position of dependence and subor- 
 dination. But we have now to deal wth more independent 
 forms of ethical thinking. In barbaric society, indeed, rejQection 
 of this kind occupies no very important place ; it hardly goes 
 beyond some of those proverbial maxims of conduct which form 
 the simple worldly wisdom of uncultivated peoples all the 
 world over. In the early civiUzations we find this proverbial 
 philosophy acquiring a somewhat fuller development as exem- 
 plified in the seven sages of ancient Greece and the gnomic 
 poetry which belongs to the same period. We have already 
 mentioned certain regular treatises on practical morals which 
 are a feature of ancient Egyptian Hterature. Writings of tliis 
 kind are not without their value for the historical student, pre- 
 cisely because they do little more than formulate the current 
 ideas of the age to which they belong. Indeed, the whole race 
 of proverbial morahsts through the four thousand years that 
 separate Ptah-Hotep and Martin Tupper are apt to degenerate 
 into platitudinists. They utter irreproachable sentiments — senti- 
 ments, at least, irreproachable according to the standard of 
 their own times — but we can hardly .think that even in their 
 own day men rose from the perusal of them with any deep feel- 
 ing of gratitude for heightened insight into the laws of conduct 
 or the relations of man to man. In them the ethical ideal is 
 not yet born ; they take the traditional morality and formulate 
 it into neat and general statements. 
 
 It is far otherwise with the class of thinkers with whom we 
 have now to deal. We have seen in the history of rehgion a 
 stage at which the divine (which at first is lower, and for long 
 ages is at least no higher, than the human) becomes ideahzed, 
 and there arises a conception of a spiritual being which is an 
 embodiment of all that man can dream of perfection. This is 
 one way in which an ideal dawns upon humanity. The other 
 way is through reflection upon life and man's place in it, upon 
 
 527 
 
528 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 human nature and its potentialities, upon human action and its 
 ends. Following this road, thought proceeds by the deUberate 
 examination of human experience, and seeks thereby to deter- 
 mine where man's true purpose has. By this method, with 
 little or no reference to supernatural sanctions or even to divine 
 commands, it may make for itself an ideal of conduct, to which 
 it calls man to conform simply because such conduct is best for 
 himself and for humanity. In such a method we have the 
 beginning of an ethical system conceived as the basis of a con- 
 scious ordering of human life by the dehberate efforts of the 
 best and wisest members of the human race ; and we have now 
 to trace briefly the development of this ideal, and to indicate 
 the phases which it has assumed and the function which it has 
 perfofm.ed in different civilizations. 
 
 2. Between the sixth and the fourth centuries before Christ 
 schools of thought following this method arose in two distant 
 parts of the world — in China and in Greece. The Chinese 
 thinkers founded a great system which from that day to this, in 
 Spite of the efforts of the reactionary dynasty which destroyed 
 the classical books and prohibited their teaching, has guided 
 the destiny of what was, down almost to our own times, by far 
 the greatest empire of the world in point of population. It has 
 Bupphed the rule of life for the governing classes and maintained 
 the essence of Chinese culture intact through, and in spite of, 
 successive irruptions of semi-barbarous conquerors ; and may 
 thus, so far as its practical influence is concerned, fairly claim 
 respect as one of the greatest and most influential doctrines of 
 ethical conduct which the world has known. What, then, were 
 the leading doctrines of the founder of this influential schocd ? 
 
 The first principle of an ethical idealism, which is to rise 
 above the common morality of custom and to depend on its own 
 excellence rather than upon any rehgious sanction to recom- 
 mend it to mankind, must from the nature of the case lay down 
 that, fcir the individual, virtue is its own reward. It is this 
 which distinguishes the ethical from the supernatural view of 
 morals on the one hand and the ffiateriaUstic or prudential on 
 the other. This principle is constantly insisted upon by Con- 
 fucius : "I have not seen a person who loved virtue or one 
 who hated what is not virtuous. He who loved virtue would 
 esteem nothing above it; he who hated what is not virtuous 
 would practise virtue in such a way that he would not allow 
 anything that was not virtuous to approach his person." ^ The 
 • LBgge, Oonfucian Analects, Book IV. chap, vi.-seo. 1. 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 529 
 
 sage whose conscience is clear and who knows that his deahngs 
 are upright can fear no punishment from the powers of this 
 world. " Heaven has produced the virtue that is in me. 
 Hwan-T'uy — what can he do to me ? " ^ And again: "The 
 determined scholar and the master of virtue will not seek to 
 live at the expense of injuring their virtue. They will even 
 sacrifice their lives to preserve their virtue complete." " Every 
 man is master of himself, and thus, as the Western Stoic taught, 
 has a sovereignty which no one but himself can take from him. 
 " The commander of the forces of a large state may be carried 
 off, but the will of even a common man cannot be taken from 
 him." * The sage is not made of adamant nor is he wholly 
 unaffected by fortune and misfortune, but he shows his strength 
 by rising superior to calamity. " With coarse rice to eat, with 
 water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow, I stiU have 
 joy in the midst of these things." * Even the desire of post- 
 humous fame must be banished from the mind. It is true 
 that by a very human weakness the superior man dishkes the 
 thought of his name not being mentioned after his death,* but 
 this motive is rejected as unworthy. " To live in obscurity and 
 yet practise wonders in order to be mentioned with honour in 
 future ages, this is what I do not do." * Nor is there any hint 
 of a divine reward. The current doctrine of universal animism 
 is not indeed exphcitly rejected by Confucius, but he nowhere 
 appeals to the benefits to be gained from the cult of spiritual 
 beings, but, on the contrary, warns his followers to have as little 
 to do with them as possible, and devote themselves instead to 
 their duty towards their neighbours. " To give oneself earnestly 
 to the duties due to men and, while respecting spiritual beings, 
 to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom." ' Nor does 
 Confucius encourage thinking about the future hfe. Ke Loo 
 asked about serving the spirits of the dead. The Master said, 
 " While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their 
 spirits ? " Ke Loo added, " I venture to ask about death." He 
 was answered, " While you do not know Hfe, how can you know 
 about death ? " * Only the consciousness that the Supreme 
 spiritual being who inhabits heaven knows him through and 
 through remains a consolation. " Alas ! there is no one that 
 knows me. . . . But there is heaven ; — that knows me." * And 
 
 * Legge, Confucian Analects, Book IV. chap. vii. sec. 22. 
 ' ib., Book XV. chap. viii. ' ib.. Book IX. chap. xxv. 
 
 ' ib.. Book VII. chap. xv. ° ib.. Book XV. chap. xix. 
 
 ' The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xi. ' Analects, Book VI. chap. xx. 
 
 ' ib.. Book XI. chap. xi. ' ib.. Book XIV. chap, xxxvii. 
 
 MM 
 
530 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the appointment of heaven is frequently recognized and used 
 as a ground for ignoring the littleness of men and the obstinacy 
 of rulers. "If' my principles are to advance, it is so ordered. 
 If they are to fall to the ground, it is so ordered. What can 
 the Kung-pih-Leaou do, where such ordering is concerned ? " ^ 
 Fortified by the favour of heaven, the superior man rises above 
 all ordinary human weaknesses and is completely master of him- 
 self. " The way of the superior man is threefold. . . . Virtuous, 
 he is free from anxieties ; wise, he is free from perplexities ; 
 bold, he is free from fear." ^ Upon the whole. Stoicism itself 
 has hardly drawn a bolder picture of the self -poised, self -master- 
 ing personality, lord of his own bosom and therefore of all things 
 that aiBEect him. But as with Stoicism, so with Confucius, this 
 self-mastery is founded upon nature, and manifests itself in con- 
 formity to the rules of social life, in the execution of justice and 
 the practice of benevolence. " The doctrine of our master," 
 said Tsang, " is to be true to the principles of our nature and 
 the benevolent exercise of them to others — this, and nothing 
 more." ^ Similarly, the Master said, "Man is born to upright- 
 ness. If a man lose his uprightness and yet Uve, his escape 
 from death is the effect of mere good fortune." * This nature is 
 conceived as common to aU men, the differences that arise being 
 due to their own conduct. " By nature, men are nearly ahke; 
 by practice, they get to be wide apart." ^ Nor is virtue to be 
 found in deserting the common life and going out into the 
 wilderness to seek for occasions on which to manifest one's 
 superiority. " The path is not far from man. When men try 
 to pursue a course which is not far from the common indications 
 of conscience, this course cannot be considered The Path." * 
 But instruction is often essential. Knowledge of duties may be 
 inborn, acquired by study, or after a painful feeUng of ignorance. 
 They may come with natural ease, from a desire for their advan- 
 tages, or by strenuous effort.' The only distinctions which the 
 teacher claims for himself are, first, that his efforts towards per- 
 fect virtue, though never successful, are constant and unceasing — 
 the Master does not rank himseK with the sage and the man of 
 perfect virtue, but strives without satiety to become such ' — 
 secondly, that he passes his life in learning. " In a hamlet of 
 ten farnihes there may be found one honourable and sincere 
 
 • Analects, Book XIV. chap, xxxviii. ' ib., Book XTV. chap. xxs. 
 
 » *., Book IV. chap. xv. • ib., Book VI. chap. xvii. 
 
 5 ib., Book XVII. chap. ii. 
 
 ° Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xiii. sec. 1. 
 
 ' ib., chap. XX. sec. 9. 
 
 ' Analects, Book VII. chap, xxxii. and xxxiii. 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 531 
 
 as I am, but not so fond of learning." i That is to say, the 
 fundamental moral qualities are widely diffused, but not the 
 intellectual attainments which direct them. On the other hand, 
 mere customary morality is sweepingly condemned, and here 
 breathes the true spirit of ethical ideahsm. " Your good, careful 
 people of the villages are the thieves of virtue " ^ — a text which 
 is ably commented upon by the greatest of Confucians — 
 
 " Wan Chang said, ' Their whole viUage styles those men 
 good and careful. In all their conduct they are so. How was 
 it that Confucius considered them the thieves of virtue ? ' 
 
 " Mencius replied, ' If you would blame them, you find nothing 
 to allege. If you would criticize them, you have nothing to 
 criticize. They agree with the current customs. They consent 
 with an impure age. Their principles have a semblance of 
 right-heartedness and truth. Their conduct has a semblance of 
 disinterestedness and purity. All men are pleased with them, 
 and they think themselves right, so that it is impossible to 
 proceed with them to the principles of Yaou and Shun. On 
 this account they are called " The thieves of virtue." ' 
 
 " Confucius said, ' I hate a semblance which is not the reality. 
 I hate the darnel, lest it be confounded with the corn. I hate 
 ghb-tonguedness, lest it be confounded with righteousness. I 
 hate sharpness of tongue, lest it be confounded with sincerity. 
 I hate the music of Ch'ing, lest it be confounded with the true 
 music. I hate the reddish-blue, lest it be confounded with ver- 
 mihon. I hate your good, careful men of the villages, lest they 
 be confounded with the truly virtuous.' " ^ 
 
 The basis of morals, then, is the intrinsic desirability of a 
 great ideal which accords with the true principles of man's 
 nature when brought to their due development by proper 
 education. To such an ideal man must hold fast in spite of 
 all that fortune or his feUow-men can do to him, and that 
 win be best for him in that he so remains lord of himself. In 
 so doing he keeps the appointment of heaven, yet his reward 
 is nothing external to the act itself, but consists merely in the 
 high desirability of the life lived in accordance with the best 
 principles that are in one. 
 
 3. In what outward conduct does this ideal show itself ? 
 Generally speaking, in the conduct of the good citizen, the dutiful 
 son, the kindly neighbour and, in particular, the upright official 
 who would resist to the death the corrupt tyrant. Uprightness 
 
 ' Analects, Book V. chap, xxvii. ' ib.. Book XVII. chap. xiii. 
 
 ' Mencius, Book VII. part ii. chap, xxxvii. sees. 10, 11, 12. 
 
532 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and benevolence are the two master-words. Confucius accepted 
 and re-constituted the traditional standard of Chinese ethics 
 with its closely linked family ties and its patriarchal relations 
 of ruler and subject. He calls himself a transmitter and not a 
 maker, believing in and loving the Ancients.^ Hence he insists 
 repeatedly upon a conception of fihal devotion which to the 
 Western mind appears exaggerated. He finds the standard of 
 conduct frequently in those rules of propriety which belong to 
 ancient tradition, and prescribe the requisite term of mourning 
 for the cult of the dead, the due order of precedence among 
 relations, a ceremonial etiquette as between the prince and his 
 officers, and so forth. In the Book of Rites he is, generally 
 speaking, moderate and reasonable in his interpretation of 
 customary rules ; ^ but, considering the incubus which the cult 
 of the dead has imposed upon industrial life in China, it is to be 
 regretted that he did not apply himself more resolutely to 
 inquiring into the grounds of custom, and teaching men that its 
 authority rests only upon its value in the social life of mankind. 
 He is very clear that the requirements of virtue are not satisfied 
 by mere outward conformity. In mourning, for instance, the 
 f eehng of grief was a far more essential matter than the form in 
 which it was expressed,* and again, outward conformity to law 
 may be secured by punishment, but this is not a moral education 
 of the people, but, on the contrary, a corrupt influence. " If 
 the people be led by laws and uniformity sought to be given 
 them by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment 
 but have no sense of shame ; if they be led by virtue, and uni- 
 formity sought to be given them by the rules of propriety, they 
 will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good." * 
 Confucius, therefore, held by tradition, and advanced no 
 reasoned theory of the rules of conduct. Yet certain funda- 
 mentals appear. Virtue must come from the good will. While 
 the " rules of propriety " generally supply the detail, the broad 
 principles of conduct are those which follow from the conception 
 of oneself as the servant of mankind, and of social happiness as 
 the supreme end of endeavour for the individual. Tor example, 
 we are told that Tsze-ch'an had four of the characteristics of 
 the superior man; "in his conduct of himself he was humble, 
 in serving his superiors he was respectful, in nourishing the 
 people he was kind, in ordering the people he was just." ^ Again, 
 perfect virtue is " when you go abroad to behave to every one 
 
 1 Analects, Book V/I. chap. i. ' De Groot, ii. 662, etc. 
 
 ' Analects, Book III. chap. iv. •■ ib.. Book II. chap. iii. 
 
 * ib., Book V. chap. xv. 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 533 
 
 as if you were receiving a great guest ; to employ the people as 
 it you were assisting at a great sacrifice ; not tg do to others 
 as you would not wish done to yourself ; to have no murmuring 
 against you in the country and none in the family." ^ The 
 virtues of the sage are acquired for the happiness of the world 
 at large. " Tsze-loo asked what constituted the superior man." 
 The Master said, " The cultivation of himself in reverential 
 carefulness." " And is this all ? " said Tsze-loo. " He culti- 
 vates himself so as to give rest to others." ..." Is this all ? " 
 asked Tsze-loo. The Master said, " He cultivates himself so as 
 to give rest to all the people." ^ In the practice of benevolence 
 the family relations come first. Benevolence is the character- 
 istic element of humanity and the great exercise of it is in loving 
 relations. Righteousness is the acting in accordance with what 
 is right and the great exercise of it is in honouring the worthj'. 
 The decreasing measures of the love due to relatives and the 
 steps in the honour due to the worthy are produced by the 
 principles of propriety.* Indeed, Confucius's simple and some- 
 what elementary pohtical philosophy rests on his conception of 
 the family as the type and exemplar of the state. " There is 
 filial piety, therewith the sovereign should be served ; there is 
 fraternal submission, therewith the elders and superiors should 
 be served ; there is kindness, therewith the multitude should be 
 treated." * Thus, the Confucian rule of benevolence is not a 
 mere abstract principle, but one regulated in its apphcation by 
 well-understood duties depending on a man's position in his 
 family or in the state. It is moreover always conceived in close 
 connection with justice. The "golden rule " to treat others as 
 we would have them treat us, which Confucius was the first to 
 formulate, is as much a matter of justice as of benevolence. It 
 is a rule of impartiality as between self and others. Tsze-kung 
 asked, " Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice 
 for aU one's life ? " The Master said, " Is not reciprocity such 
 a word ? What you do not want done to yourself do not do to 
 others." * Benevolence, indeed, should be universal,® but there^ 
 must be a rule of justice in applying it. We should forgive 
 injuries, but we should not push that principle to the point of , 
 treating the evil and the good ahke. The philosopher Lao Tse 
 had urged that instead of returning evil for evil we should 
 recompense evil with kindness. Being asked what he thought 
 of this principle, the Master said, " With what, then, will you 
 
 '■ Analects, Book XII. chap. ii. ' ib.. Book XIV. chap. xlv. 
 
 ' Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xx. sec. 5, * The Great Learning, chap. ix. 
 ' AxvdectSf Pop}{ ?5iy, phap. xxiii. ' ib.. Book XII. chap. xxii. 
 
534 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 recompense kindness ? Recompense injury with justice and 
 recompense kindness with kindness." ^ But this is not to be 
 taken as justifying vengeance. " To show forbearance and 
 gentleness in teaching others and not to revenge unreasonable 
 conduct, this is the forcefulness of Southern regions and the 
 good man makes it his study." ^ 
 
 Such then, in brief, is the code of private Ufe. To Uve in 
 the service of mankind, to respect parents and superiors, to be 
 kind and helpful to those in need, to have no enemies, to for- 
 bear with the offender and forgive him within the hmits of 
 justice, to be prepared to love all men, to hate only those who 
 slander others and thrust themselves forward against all social 
 tradition,* to serve a good ruler but withstand him to his face 
 if he is bad, to undergo privation and, if necessary, death for a 
 moral principle, to be grieved and feel pity for the criminal 
 instead of triumphing over him,* not to withdraw from the 
 world, to reahze that man's life is to be Hved in the midst of 
 humanity whatever the difficulties and drawbacks may be, and 
 in all these things to recognize that the beginning and the end 
 is sincerity ^ — such is the ideal of personal conduct that Confucius 
 taught to China. 
 
 The ideal of pubhc conduct is Hke unto it. In fact, through- 
 out Confucius is talking with officials, addressing men who hold 
 office and who are concerned with the problems of conscience 
 arising in connection with the tenure of office, with the duties 
 of the king and the relation of king and officer. Throughout 
 he insists upon the duty of prince to people. The relationship 
 should be that of father to children. The first duty of the 
 prince is to order his own conduct aright, and to show in Ms 
 own household those principles of family life upon which the 
 structure of Chinese society was held to depend; from his 
 example outwards the influence would radiate. When Ke-K'ang 
 asked about government Confucius rephed, " To govern means 
 to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness who will 
 dare not to be correct ? " ^ And when Ke-K'ang was distressed 
 by the number of thieves, Confucius replied with much direct- 
 ness, " If you. Sir, were not covetous, although you should 
 reward them to do it they would not steal." " The people are 
 by nature disposed to virtue ; they break out into mutiny only 
 in times of distress. The duty of the prince is to keep down 
 
 1 Analects, Book XIV. chap, xxxvi. ^ Doctrine of the Mean, chap. x. 
 
 ' Analects, Book XVII. chap. xxiv. ' ib., Book XIX. chap. xix. 
 ' Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xxv. 
 
 • Analects, Book XII. chap. xvii. ' ib.. Book XH. chap, xvm., 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 535 
 
 taxation, avoid harsh punishments and excessive forced labour.^ 
 When the people are numerous what next is to be done for 
 them ? The answer is, " Enrich them." " And Aen they have 
 been enriched ? " " Teach them." " The virtuous and wise 
 prince is able to dispense with punishment. " Sir, in carrying 
 on your government why should you use killing at all ? Let 
 your evinced desires be for what is good and the people will be 
 good. . . . Thegrassmust bend when the -ndnd blows over it." 3 
 A succession of good governors lasting over a century would be 
 able to transform the violently bad and dispense with capital 
 punishment.* In accordance with the doctrine of universal 
 benevolence the people are the first object in the state. The 
 king is their servant, and that sovereign is most praised who 
 takes upon himself the sins of the people and is responsible for 
 them to heaven.^ We have here, in short, a theory of conduct 
 which is at the same time a theory of society, elementary no 
 doubt, especially in its pohtical aspect, yet the foundation 
 of that cultivated class which has for two thousand years 
 governed China and kept Chinese civiUzation erect through all 
 its vicissitudes. 
 
 4. The teaching of Confucius was further developed by the 
 greatest disciple of his school, the philosopher Mencius (371- 
 288 B.C.). Mencius made no entirely new departure, but put 
 the moral theory of Confucius in a more systematic form, stated 
 many of the Master's fundamental positions with a vigour and 
 incisiveness that were entirely his own, and laid special stress 
 on certain sides of political morahty, such as the inherent wicked- 
 ness of mihtarism, and the right of rebeUion against a vicious 
 sovereign. With him again virtue is the supreme end of Hfe. 
 Perfect uprightness alone casteth out fear. He attributes to 
 "the Master" a saying, "If on self-examination I find that I 
 am not upright, shall I not be in fear even of a poor man in 
 his loose garments of hair-cloth ? If on self-examination I find 
 that I am upright, I will go forward against thousands and tens 
 of thousands." ^ He who knows his own nature, knows heaven, 
 and "to preserve one's mental constitution and nourish one's 
 nature is the way to serve Heaven." ' Heaven has its appoint- 
 ments which we should accept instinctively, but this is not to 
 lead us into fatahsm. 
 
 1 CI. Doctrine of the Mean, chap. XX. li. ^ 4noJec«», Book XIII. chap. ix. 
 
 ' ib.. Book XII. chap. xix. < ib.. Book XIII. chap. xi. 
 
 ' ib.. Book XX. chap. i. see. 3. 
 
 ' Mencius, Book II. part i. chap. ii. sec. 7. 
 
 ' ib.. Book VII. part i. chap. i. 
 
536 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 " He who has the true idea of what is heaven's appointment 
 will not stand beneath a precipitous wall. 
 
 " Death sustained in the discharge of one's duties may correctly 
 be ascribed to the appointment of heaven. 
 
 " Death under handcuffs and fetters cannot correctly be so 
 ascribed." ^ 
 
 The other elements of happiness depend on virtue. Being 
 asked by King Hwuy whether wise and good princes find pleasure 
 in geese and deer, Mencius replied, " Being wise and good they 
 have pleasure in these things. If they are not wise and good, 
 though they have these things, they do not find pleasure." ^ 
 
 " To dwell in the wide house of the world, to stand in the 
 correct seat of the world, and to walk in the great path of the 
 world; when he obtains his desire for office, to practise his 
 principles for the good of the people; and when that desire is 
 disappointed, to practise them alone ; to be above the power of 
 riches and honours to make dissipated, of poverty and mean 
 condition to make swerve from principle, and of power and force 
 to make bend," * such in a few words are the life and character 
 of the great man. His principles allow of no compromise. 
 " Never has a man who has bent himself been able to make 
 others straight." * 
 
 5. Man must be lord of himself. But in the pursuit of virtue 
 he is doing no violence to himself. He is merely fulfilhng, 
 bringing to the perfection of development the seeds of good 
 implanted in him by nature. Here the teaching of Mencius is 
 more distinct than that of his master, and contains the germs 
 of a scientific theory of moral psychology. The foundation of 
 virtue is in the " passion-nature " which occupies a position in 
 the soul somewhat analogous to that of the ^D/xociSe? in Plato's 
 scheme. The " passion-nature " needs guidance and its natural 
 leader is the will,^ directed as we collect from other passages by 
 education and the "rules of propriety." But this will must 
 lead and not force, just as the ruler should not subdue men by 
 violence but win their hearts by virtue. Or, in a different 
 metaphor, the "passion-nature" must be weeded, not pulled 
 up.^ For the feehngs are the foundation of the virtues. " The 
 feehng of commiseration is the principle of benevolence. The 
 feehng of shame and dishke is the principle of righteousness. 
 The feehng of modesty and complaisance is the principle of 
 
 1 Mencius, Book VII. part i. chap. ii. 
 
 ^ ib.. Book I. part i. chap. ii. sec. 2. 
 
 ' ib.. Book III. part ii. chap. 2. sec. 3. 
 
 ' ib.. Book III. part ii. chap. i. sec. 5. 
 
 '^ ib., Book II. part i. chap. ii. * *., Book II. parti, chap. ii. sec. 16. 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 537 
 
 propriety. The feeling of approving and disapproving is the 
 principle of knowledge. Men have these four pjinciples as they 
 have their four limbs," and those who say they cannot develop 
 them play the thief with themselves.^ " All men have a mind 
 which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others." ^ "Even 
 nowadays," if we saw a child about to fall into a well, we should 
 experience alarm and distress, not from any desire for the favour 
 of its parents, nor from any love of praise, but because com- 
 miseration is essential to man.' Only as we saw above * in the 
 story of King Seuen, it is the misery that we see that affects us, 
 and our imaginations are not vivid enough to make us feel the 
 pain that we do not see. What is needed is development of the 
 good material that is in man. Let the four principles "have 
 their complete development and they will suffice to love and 
 protect all within the four seas. Let them be denied that 
 development and they will not suffice for a man to serve his 
 parents with," ^ These principles are not infused into us from 
 without. " Seek and you will find them. Neglect and you 
 will lose them." * But men differ much in the cultivation 
 
 1 Menoiua, Book II. part i. chap. vi. ^ ib.. Book II. part i. chap. vi. 
 
 ' Loc. cit. ' Part I. chap. vi. 
 
 ' Book 11. part i. chap. ii. Elsewhere (Book VI. part i. chap, i.) a 
 dialogue occurs between Mencius and Kaou, which Kaou begins by suggest- 
 ing that righteousness is to man's nature as a cup to willow wood. Mencius 
 objects that this implies that violence must be done to humanity to convert 
 it to righteousness. Kaou then compares human nature to water, which 
 flows east or west according as a channel is opened for it. Mencius replies 
 that " the tendency of man's nature to good is like the tendency of water 
 to flow downwards." Kaou then draws a distinction between Righteous- 
 ness as external and Benevolence as internal. I honour an old man not 
 because there is a principle of reverence in men, but just as when I see a 
 white man I consider him white. Kaou is here taking up a position some- 
 what analogous to that of the " moral sense " school. Mencius's reply is 
 to the effect that whiteness is a quality common to a man and a horse. We 
 do not honour an aged horse ; nor is there any righteousness in the age of a 
 man, but in our honouring it (». e. righteousness is not a perceptible quality 
 of things, but lies in a relation of ourselves to other persons). Kaou then 
 says that he loves his yoimger brother, but not the younger brother of a 
 man of Tsin — the feeling is therefore determined by himself, internal 
 (subjective). On the other hand, he honours an old man whether of his 
 own people or of Ts'oo. Therefore this (a point of righteousness) is external. 
 Mencius replies that we enjoy roast meat, whether roasted by ourselves or 
 men of Tsin. Would Kaou say that our enjoyment of roast meat is 
 external ? The discussion is as interesting as the examples are quaint. 
 Kaou is contending for the objectivity of the moral standard as contrasted 
 with the subjective variations of good feeling ; Mencius for the subjectivity 
 of all morals, in the sense that they proceed from and rest on human nature. 
 The solution is perhaps to be found in the Blantian distinction between 
 subjective as = the necessary laws of a subject, i. e, of a rational being, 
 and as = the individual variations which make up a man's idiosyncrasies. 
 
 ' Mencius, Book VI. part i. chap. vi. sec. 7. 
 
538 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 of them, and what is needed is to work on the basis of good 
 which exists in all and extend it ^ so as to cover the whole of 
 life and achieve that universal benevolence which is "the most 
 honourable dignity conferred by Heaven." * 
 
 Benevolence and righteousness are the leading notes of the 
 character that is fully developed. Not indeed that benevolence 
 should be equally apportioned to all men. Natural ties have 
 their place. The philosopher Mih taught that we should love 
 all equally, which is contrary to fihal duty, but " To acknow- 
 ledge neither king nor father is to be in the state of a beast." * 
 
 ^ "All men have some things which they cannot bear; extend that 
 feeling to what they can bear, and benevolence will be the result. All men 
 have some things which they will not do ; extend that feeling to the things 
 which they do, and righteousness will be the result. 
 
 " If a man can give full development to the feeling which makes him 
 shrink from injuring others, his benevolence will be more than can be 
 called into practice. If he can give full development to the feeling which 
 refuses to break tlirough or jump over a wall, his righteousness will be 
 more than can be called into practice. 
 
 " If he can give full development to the real feeling of dishke with which 
 he receives the salutation, ' Thou,' ' Thou,' he will act righteously in all 
 places and circumstances" (Book VII. part ii. chap. 31, sees. 1-3). 
 
 In more modem phrase, one might say that every man " has his code." 
 In that code lie concealed impulses which, adequately developed, would 
 furnish a perfect character. By it are inferred principles which, consistently 
 carried out, would suffice for a saint. Thieves' honour recognizes a prin- 
 ciple which the thief applies only to his fellow-thieves. If he apphes it 
 without any such arbitrary restrictions, he must become an honest man. 
 
 " Book II. part i. chap. vii. sec. 2. 
 
 ' Mencius, Book III. part ii. chap. ix. sec. 9. Mih's expression of the 
 doctrine of universal benevolence was of the most sweeping kind. " It is 
 this principle of making distinctions between man and man which gives 
 rise to all that is most injurious in the empire " (Legge, ii.. Prolegomena, 
 p. 111). Mih seeks to turn the objection that the doctrine is contrary to 
 filial piety by urging that by loving and serving others a man will obtain 
 their love and benefits for his parents (i6., pp. 105-119). Mih's practical 
 polemic was directed against the excessive burden thrown on Chinese life 
 by the laws of mourning, and the classical philosophy, as De Groot's account 
 clearly shows, erred by adhering too closely to the traditional observance. 
 
 Mencius follows closely the typical Chinese view in the extension of the 
 principle of filial piety to cover all forms of wrong-doing that might 
 indirectly injui'e parents, and in exalting it to the disparagement of 
 duties to wife and child. Thus he enumerates five common things which 
 are unfilial. 1. Laziness. 2. Gambling, chess-playing and wine-bibbing. 
 3. Love of money and selfish attachment to wife and child — ^these three 
 when followed to the point of neglect of parents. 4. Following the desire 
 of eyes and ears so as to bring parents into disgrace. 5. Being fond of 
 bravery, fighting and quarrelling so as to endanger parents (Book IV. 
 part ii. chap. xxx.). He holds up for imitation the example of Chang, who, 
 because his father was offended, sent away his wife and child, and all his 
 life received no cherishing attention from them {ib., sec. 5). There is, of 
 covirse, another point of view — that of Chang's wife and child and the 
 attention that they might expect. The Western world puts them first 
 the Chinese second longo inte-rvallo. 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 539 
 
 Human excellence lies in the performance of the social duties. 
 The life of the hermit is like that of an earth-Tworm.^ The sage 
 learns humhly from others. " When any one told Tsze-loo that 
 he had a fault, he rejoiced," and Shun "regarded virtue as the 
 common property of himself and others, giving up his own way 
 to follow that of others, and delighting to learn from others to 
 practice what was good." " Though it is the duty of the sage to 
 teach as well as learn, yet there is a pitfall here. " The evil of 
 men is that they like to be teachers of others." * As to the 
 conventions, Mencius holds by the "rules of propriety," but 
 sometimes not without symptoms of impatience. A stickler for 
 strict rule would not a touch a woman's hand even to save her 
 from drowning. Such a man, says Mencius curtly, is a " wolf." * 
 The intrinsic importance of the rule must be taken into account, 
 and also the urgency of the motive for casting it aside .^ Had 
 this principle been developed, it would have broken the crust 
 of Chinese formalism and opened the way for a richness of 
 spiritual growth which, crusted over by tradition as it has been 
 from the first, Confucianism has never brought forth. 
 
 6. But it is in its political applications that the ethical teach- 
 ing of Mencius is most thoroughgoing. Here the principles of 
 justice and benevolence require that the welfare of the people 
 should be the iSrst consideration of government. "The people 
 are the most important element in a nation, the spirits of the 
 land and grain are the next, the sovereign is the lightest." * The 
 people's will practically expressed in unanimous support of, 
 or aversion to, a ruler is of divine authority. " Heaven sees 
 according as my people see : Heaven hears according as my 
 people hear." ' The king must care for their prosperity. He 
 should refrain from interfering with husbandry, spare the 
 growing trees and the young fish, plant mulberry-trees about 
 the homesteads and inculcate filial and paternal duties in the 
 schools. A ruler so governing his state would certainly become 
 emperor. Instead of this he says severely to a prince — 
 
 " Your dogs and swine eat the food of men, and you do not 
 know to make any restrictive arrangements. There are people 
 dying from famine on the roads, and you do not know to issue the 
 stores of your granaries for them. When people die, you say, 
 ' It is not owing to me; it is owing to the year.' In what does 
 
 ^ Book m. part ii. chap. x. ' Book II. part i. chap. viii. 
 
 ' Book rV. part i. chap, xxiii. 
 
 * ib., chap. xvii. Cf. Douglas, Society in China, p. 189. 
 
 " Book VI. part ii. chap. i. ' Menoiiis, Book VII. part ii. chap. xiv. 
 
 ' Book V. part i. chap. v. sec. 8. 
 
540 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 this differ from stabbing a man and killing him, and then saying, 
 ' It was not I ; it was the weapon ? ' Let your Majesty cease to 
 lay the blame on the year, and instantly from all the empire the 
 people wiU come to you. . . . 
 
 " In your kitchen there is fat meat; in your stables there are 
 fat horses. But your people have the look of hunger, and on the 
 wilds there are those who have died of famine. This is leading 
 on beasts to devour men." ^ 
 
 Lighter taxation, care for the poor and childless, the punish- 
 ment of corrupt officials, moderation in punishments avoiding 
 the principle of collective responsibihty, attention to works of 
 pubUc necessity, and, above all, aversion to warfare, were the 
 marks of the good ruler. In the good old days of King Wan — 
 
 " The husbandmen cultivated for the government one-ninth of 
 the land ; the descendants of officers were salaried ; at the passes 
 and in the markets strangers were inspected, but goods were not 
 taxed ; there were no prohibitions respecting the ponds and weirs ; 
 the wives and children of criminals were not involved in their 
 guilt. There were the old and wifeless, or widowers; the old 
 and husbandless, or widows ; the old and childless, or solitaries ; 
 the young and fatherless, or orphans — these four classes are the 
 most destitute of the people, and have none to whom they can 
 tell their wants, and King Wan, in the institution of his govern- 
 ment with its benevolent action, made them the first objects of 
 his regard." ^ 
 
 ' Book I. part i. chap. iii. sec. 5 ; chap. iv. sec. 4. 
 
 ^ Mencius, Book I. part ii. chap. v. sec. 3. The whole theory of govern- 
 ment is somewhat more fully stated in Book VI. part ii. chap. vii. : " The 
 five chiefs of the princes were sinners against the three kings. The princes 
 of the present day are sinners against the five chiefs. The great officers 
 of the present day are sinners against the princes." 
 
 " The emperor visited the princes, which was called ' A tour of inspection.' 
 The princes attended at the court of the emperor, which was called ' Giving 
 a report of office.' It was a custom in the spring to examine the ploughing, 
 and supply any deficiency of seed, and in autumn to examine the reaping, 
 and assist where there was a deficiency of the crop. When the emperor 
 entered the boundaries of a state, if the new ground was being reclaimed 
 and the old fields well cultivated ; if the old were nourished and the worthy 
 honoured ; and if men of distinguished talents were placed in office : then 
 the prince was rewarded — ^rewarded with an addition to his territory. On 
 the other hand, if, on entering a state, the ground was found left wild or 
 overnm with weeds ; if the old were neglected and the worthy unhonouied ; 
 and if the offices were filled with hard tax-gatherers : then the prince was 
 reprimanded. If a prince once omitted his attendance at court, he was 
 punished by degradation of rank ; if he did so a second time, he was de- 
 prived of a portion of his territory ; if he did so a third time, the imperial 
 forces were set in motion, and he was removed from his government. Thus 
 the emperor commanded the punishment, but did not himself inflict it, 
 while the princes inflicted the punishment, but did not command it. The 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 541 
 
 It is on the conditions of life that the behaviour of the people 
 depends. Human beings have a naturally good disposition, but 
 not one strong enough to resist the trials of adverse conditions, 
 especially when these are due to unjust laws. Bad governments 
 goad the people to crime and then punish them. " This is to 
 entrap the people." ^ If the king failed in his duty his chief 
 ministers should remonstrate with him, and if repeated remon- 
 strance proved fruitless, they should dethrone him. So Mencius 
 told King Seuen to his face.^ In the last resort the minister 
 should put the king to death.* For aU this of the duties of the 
 king is not to be mere exhortation as in most preaching of the 
 kind. It was meant in earnest, and behind it hes the sanction 
 of just rebeUion. 
 
 In fact, we feel throughout that Mencius's sayings are the 
 very reverse of ordinary moral platitudes. They are truths 
 appUcable to all time, but not empty, as such truths too often 
 are. On the contrary, they have a sting which we can feel even 
 at the present day, or ought to feel if we do not. The great 
 Chinese classical writers, in fact, laid the foundation of a distinct 
 ethical and social ideal, in many ways analogous to the best 
 teaching of the founders of spiritual religions, but different in 
 
 five chiefs, however, dragged the princes to punish other princes, and hence 
 I say that they were sinners against the three kings. 
 
 " Of the five chiefs the most powerful was the duke Hwan. At the 
 assembly of the princes in K'wei-k'ew, he bound the victim and placed the 
 writing upon it, but did not slay it to smear their mouths with the blood. 
 The first injunction in their agreement was : ' Slay the unfilial ; change 
 not the son who has been appointed heir; exalt not a concubine to the 
 rank of wife.' The second was : ' Honour the worthy, and maintain the 
 talented, to give distinction to the virtuous.' The third was : ' Respect 
 the old, and be kind to the young. Be not forgetful of strangers and 
 travellers.' The fourth was : ' Let not offices be hereditary, nor let 
 ofiioers be pluralists. In the selection of officers let the object be to get the 
 proper men. Let not a ruler take it on himself to put to death a great 
 officer.' The fifth was : ' Follow no crooked policy in making embank- 
 ments. Impose no restrictions on the sale of grain. Let there be no 
 promotions without first announcing them to the emperor.' It was then 
 said, ' All we who have united in this agreement shall hereafter maintain 
 amicable relations.' The princes of the present day all violate these five 
 prohibitions, and therefore I say that the princes of the present day are 
 sinners against the five chiefs." 
 
 Note the relationship of the emperor to the princes, a feudal relationship 
 to which Mencius seeks to give an ideal ethical form ; the supervision by 
 the state of family relationship ; the insistence on the distinction of chief 
 wife and concubine ; and the idea of purity and merit in official life. 
 
 '■ Mencius, Book I. part i. chap. vii. If this view sounds somewhat 
 materialistic, we may set against it passages like Book III. part i. chap. iv. 
 If men " are well fed, warmly clad, and comfortably lodged, without being 
 taught at the same time, they become almost like the beasts." 
 
 ' Book V. part ii. chap. ix. ' Book I. part ii. chap. viii. 
 
542 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 its setting. Chinese religion was at this time and has since 
 remained, except in so far as influenced by Buddhism, a form 
 of animism, distinguished first by its systematic character — a 
 multitude of spirits dependent on those of Heaven and Earth 
 respectively ; and secondly, by the remarkable development of 
 ancestor worship. This rehgion offered httle scope for ethical 
 ideahsm except at two points — the idealization of family con- 
 tinuity, and the supremacy of Heaven. Of both these points 
 Chinese ethical writers took advantage ; of the first to re-enforce 
 the doctrine of filial piety ; of the second to insist on the moral 
 unity of the empire. But in the main their concern was social 
 salvation, and they were deliberately working out an ethical 
 theory to contribute to that end, and appealing to the nature 
 and training of individuals to use the means by which the end 
 was to be reached. Thus the psychological basis of conduct and 
 the conception of its ultimate end are not those of Buddhism or 
 of Monotheism. For example, man is not inherently bad and 
 redeemed from evil only by divine grace. In himself he is 
 potentially good, and the germs of goodness in him only need 
 favourable circumstances, teaching, and effort to come to perfec- 
 tion. But they are developed, not to the greater glory of God, 
 but to the maintenance of human life, that all along the rich 
 valleys with their milUon homesteads the husbandman may 
 reap the harvest he has sown in fields unstained by blood, that 
 he may cherish wife and child and be nurtured by them in age, 
 and pass duly honoured to the tomb ; that worthy officers be 
 found to serve just and benevolent kings; that wars may die 
 away ; that crime may be repressed, not by punishment, but by 
 the example of virtue ; in a word, that peaceful industry and 
 happy family life undisturbed by civil jars, official corruption, 
 royal avarice, and mihtary ambition, may be the lot of one-third 
 of the human race. Not the glory of God, but the peace of man 
 is the aim ; not good fortune here nor salvation hereafter is the 
 disciple's reward, but merely his own best self independent of 
 all that comes — righteousness for its own sake, benevolence 
 because it is itself the best gift of heaven. Not the chaining up 
 of human nature, but its full and harmonious development is the 
 object of ethical training. In other respects the ethical and 
 the religious ideals of character are more remarkable for their 
 correspondence tha.n for their divergence. The modesty of the 
 sage is not perhaps drawn in such bold lines as the humUity of 
 the saint. Forbearance and forgiveness are upheld as better 
 than revenge, but the returning of good for evil is set aside in 
 favour of a severer application of justice. Benevolence should 
 
ETHICAL IDEALISM 543 
 
 be for mankind generally, but for our own families first.^ In all 
 this there is some infusion of practical sense whjch may not un- 
 fairly be set against the loss of the romantic glow. Perhaps, if 
 we may strike a balance, there was less to stir the brain's blood, 
 and so set men thinking and working towards wider problems yet 
 and deeper solutions. But there was a definite theory of conduct 
 appeaUng to the best of man's nature and calhng him to the 
 service of his fellow-men, and this theory has for more than two 
 thousand years formed the actual working basis of life for a great 
 division of the human race. 
 
 ' Uniyersalism, indeed, is not so pifominent as in Mohammedan and 
 Christian ethics. The Confucians were thinking and writing for a homo- 
 geneous people among whom the divisions were those of a decaying feudal 
 system. They speak of mankind in general terms, but they have no sharp 
 distinctions of race to overcome. They refer occasionally to the outlying 
 barbarous tribes which will be " attracted " by good government, or in- 
 fluenced by civilized teaching. But the fate of these peoples plays no 
 important part in their minds. Nor were class divisions a serious problem 
 for them. Confucius lays down that " there being instruction there will 
 be no distinction of classes " {Analects, Book XV. chap, xxxviii.). Un- 
 doubtedly they stand for the Chinese community as one great whole, but — 
 from the nature of their historical position — they can hardly be said to have 
 conceived Humanity as has been done in Western thought. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 
 
 I. The profound conception of the Ethical basis taught by 
 the great Chinese thinkers was arrived at independently by a 
 movement of thought arising at about the same period of time, 
 but in a distant part of the world, and under deeply contrasted 
 conditions of culture. The great Greek philosophers from the 
 fifth century B.C. onwards, worked out a theory of life in which 
 the inherent excellence of good conduct, the strength and seK- 
 dependence of the disciphned character, the order and harmony 
 of the well -governed state, were held up as ends of human actions 
 sufficient in themselves to inspire effort and justify self-sacrifice, 
 worthy to be followed by every man even if in doing so he 
 " should escape the notice of gods and men." But in speaking 
 of Greek thought and its distinctive message — and it is only 
 what is distinctive and that only in the barest outhne that can 
 be touched on here — we must recognize at the outset that its 
 method was no less important than its results. The Chinese 
 masters inculcated some profound truths and arrived at results 
 often closely similar to the best teaching of the Greeks. But 
 they seem to have laid them down almost as dogmatically and 
 with as little attempt at rational proof as though they had been 
 dogmas of theology. Certainly there is but little trace of system 
 in Confucius and not much more even in Mencius. They made 
 little attempt, it would seem, to go back to first principles and 
 ask the why and wherefore of all moral rules. Hence they were 
 moral teachers rather than philosophers, and hence also in the 
 practical result they accepted only too much of Chinese tradition, 
 and left their country, after all, bound in the fetters of antiquity. 
 
 With the Greeks, on the contrary, moral philosophy begins 
 its course. With the early thinkers, contemporaries or perhaps 
 predecessors of Socrates, who propounded the question " What 
 is the Good, the end of human life, the aim which a thinking 
 being should set before him as the goal of his existence ? " there 
 begins a new epoch in moral development, the epoch in which 
 the ethical consciousness, long dominated by the forces which 
 shape its conceptions unawares, begins to re-act upon them, to 
 
 544 
 
PHILOSOPHIC fiTHlCg 54:6 
 
 turn round upon the conditions that have hitherto determined 
 its growth and inquire into their why and wherefore. This 
 is part of a movement which extends far beyond the sphere 
 of ethics and attacks the very foundations of knowledge and 
 belief. 
 
 Its own processes and methods, the principles and presup- 
 positions of all its thinking, are the last things of which the mind 
 becomes conscious. In the earHest stages of its development 
 in humanity it forms ideas under the stimulus of experience 
 by methods which have aU the roughness and imperfection 
 of hereditary or instinctive reactions unpohshed by rational 
 reflection. The ideas themselves are loose and shppery. They 
 are linked one with another, not by any coherent logic, but as 
 the vague impulses of casual association suggest, or as emotional 
 conditions predispose the imagination to impute connections 
 between events. It is out of this chance-medley of mental forces 
 that the ideas of primitive fancy are evolved. 
 
 We have seen how the advance of intelligence brings some 
 order into this chaos, how in the building up of thought casual 
 suggestion is replaced by systematic meditation in which trained 
 reasoning and methodical analysis play their part. We have 
 seen how under these influences the naive imagery of the childish 
 mind yields to the profound conception of the sage, in which 
 finally the structural categories underlying all experience are 
 brought clearly before consciousness, and utilized in the con- 
 struction of a philosophy of things. 
 
 In such a construction there is undoubtedly implied a certain 
 criticism both of the conceptions formed and of the methods by 
 which they are formed. Yet underljring it all are assumptions 
 which are only brought to hght by a stiU more fundamental 
 criticism, the criticism wherein thought seeks to determine its 
 own value as a measure of reaUty. Consider, for example, the 
 question of logical method. Criticism may have shown some 
 reasoning to be fallacious, and other reasoning to be apparently 
 sound. But what is this appearance ? Is it, after aU, only an 
 impression made on us, which we accept as convincing because 
 we cannot resist it ? But if so, what is its worth ? The fallacy 
 also impressed us tiU some one pointed out the flaw, and perhaps 
 it stiU impresses other minds and seems as sound to them as it 
 appears absurd to us. Is there, then, any more objective or 
 absolute standard of sound logic which, once revealed, would 
 settle all doubts, and if so, how are we to know it ? Again, 
 suppose our logic is sound so that we may unerringly connect 
 concept with concept, what precisely is the value of it all at the 
 
 NN 
 
546 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 end ? We may forge a perfect chain of logical links, but what 
 does it hang from ? Is it suspended in mid -air, or are there first 
 principles fixed in the adamantine firmament, or possibly solid 
 supports reared on earth, from which the chain may hang?. 
 Does thought form a world of its own, or does it relate to an 
 independent reahty, and if so, how is the relation established 
 and its validity guaranteed ? Questions such as these, never 
 finally resolved, but constantly renewed with deeper meanings 
 and more subtle suggestions, form the permanent content of 
 the philosophic criticism of thought. 
 
 This criticism, being directed throughout to the discovery of 
 an " objective " standard which is to rescue truth from the 
 fallibility of ordinary human weakness, must, in the first 
 place, concern itself with method. It will evolve a logic to 
 justify the distinction of the sound from the unsound in reason- 
 ing, and systematize valid argument on some connected and 
 coherent principles. Secondly, it will inquire into the genesis 
 of our conceptions and wiU test them by reference to the ex- 
 perience from which they are educed. Then, applying these 
 methods, it will seek to reconstruct its conception of Reahty. 
 The Socratic Elenchus (notwithstanding the Umits which Socrates 
 imposed on himself), the Platonic Dialectic, the Aristotelian 
 Logic and Metaphysics, were successive attempts in this direction. 
 The reconstruction of Reahty on the basis of a criticism of first 
 principles was in fact first seriously taken in hand by the Greeks. 
 But in the progress of criticism a problem emerges affecting the 
 bare possibiUty of Reconstruction- — a problem which can hardly 
 be said to have come fully within the purview of Greek thought. 
 The mind itself may be regarded as a product of the Reality 
 which it seeks to understand. Or, conversely, the world of 
 experience may be regarded as a product of the Mind. Its 
 sensations, its conceptions, its methods, its principles, the very 
 self-criticism by which it has been seeking to rectify its principles, 
 may all be results of its own growth and dependent for their 
 peculiar shape on its own development. If this is so, must not 
 the ultimate result of the philosophical movement, however far 
 it may push its criticism of knowledge, still he within the circle 
 of the mind's own making ? Will not the truth that satisfies us 
 still be a truth for ourselves alone, or if it is more, how can we 
 be assured of it ? Truth is truth, but does it give us Reahty ? 
 To determine this question we must " know ourselves" in a new 
 sense. We must ascertain the facts as to the constitution and 
 growth of the mind. We must re-examine the very conceptions 
 of Truth and Reahty. We must determine the conditions under 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 547 
 
 which knowledge is possible, we must ascertain the limitations 
 under which thought arises and ask how far those limitations 
 are overcome. To attempt this more thoroughgoing evaluation 
 of the subjective factor in knowledge has been the special task 
 of modern philosophy. To some aspects of the problem we shall 
 return later, confining ourselves in the present chapter to the 
 philosophy of the Greeks, and, indeed, to one branch of their 
 philosophical development. Their reconstruction of knowledge 
 and reformed conceptions of the world-order intimately affected 
 their ethical thought, which was, indeed, merely a part of the 
 general movement of critical reconstruction, but it is only the 
 ethical side of the movement which can be outlined here. 
 
 Indeed, a philosophical reconstruction is by no means less 
 necessary in the region of conduct than is that of knowledge. 
 On the contrary, rules of conduct have, as a matter of history, 
 grown up under conditions eminently unfavourable to a rational 
 apprehension of the ethical order best suited to human needs. 
 They have arisen under the conditions of group-morality, and 
 are tarnished with the brutahties incident to the struggle for 
 existence. They have been infected by gross conceptions of 
 magical influence and spiritual resentments. They have been 
 distorted by the sophistications with which men hide their 
 spiritual nakedness. They have been bent into weapons used 
 for the justification of class or race supremacy, of arbitrary 
 power, of sexual wrong. In no other department are the funda- 
 mental categories in such permanent need of criticism. Good 
 and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice — all the elementary 
 conceptions forming the pigeon-holes wherein we arrange our 
 ideas about conduct, what at bottom do they mean ? What is 
 their value and justification ? What grounds have we in reason 
 for the judgments which we pass on conduct when we use them ? 
 Are they anything more than expressions for our feelings, or 
 have they a higher authority? Is the standard by which we 
 apply them final, or, seeing that human standards vary, is there 
 any Mgher standard to which a rational society would conform, 
 and if so, how is it to be ascertained ? Such are the questions 
 of philosophic ethics, and they cut deeper than any simple 
 ethical ideaUsm. We have seen ideals of character arising 
 under Buddhist, Christian, and Confucian influence, and the 
 mere formation of such ideals involves an immense advance in 
 reflection. But such ideals are formed by laying stress on 
 certain elements of virtue and by seeking to choke up certain 
 sources of vice without any systematic inquiry into the meaning 
 and object of virtue, without any rational examination of the 
 
548 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ultimate purpose and function of human conduct, and therefore 
 without any scientific determination of the rules by which it 
 should be guided. Such ideals accordingly, though they may 
 carry us far beyond the common morahty of the average man, 
 are not necessarily well adapted to the actual conduct of Ufe 
 and the furtherance of human progress. They may even lead 
 us further away from the path. The ultimate hope of a rational 
 reconstruction of ethics must be to bring us back from the rules 
 and ideals that have grown up at random and without any 
 thought-out method to the conditions of conduct which a critical 
 theory of what is best for humanity may prove to be required. 
 The first steps towards such a reconstruction are to be found in 
 Greek Ethics, and the resulting movement of thought, main- 
 tained with many fluctuations of vigour throughout the period 
 of classical antiquity, interrupted though not wholly arrested by 
 the revival of the theological conception of ethics, and resumed 
 in a new shape in the modern period, engendered the principal 
 forms of ethical theory which it remains for us to mention. To 
 write the history of the movement would be incompatible with 
 the scope of this work. At best, the most fundamental features 
 which distinguish this order of ethical conceptions from others 
 may be summarily mentioned. 
 
 2. So far as he had a theory at aU, the early Greek, as we 
 have seen, held to the magico-rehgious basis of law and morals. 
 The Furies punished the parricide. The perjurer or the betrayer 
 of his guest aroused the wrath of Zeus. The curse fell upon the 
 offender, and would work itself out in the fate of his children, 
 if not in his own Ufe. A pubUc offence, as in the celebrated 
 case of the Alcmaeonidse, might involve a city in disaster and 
 render necessary a pubUo ceremonial of purgation. The wrath 
 of Talthybius fell upon the Spartans for their unceremonious 
 treatment of the heralds of Darius, and could only be appeased 
 by the devotion of two Spartans who voluntarily surrendered 
 themselves to the Persian king to deal with as he pleased. But 
 stronger, perhaps, than any explicit dread of divine punishment 
 was the half -mystical reverence for established law, the customs 
 written and unwritten of each city, and the common traditions 
 of all Hellas. With the absolute and unquestioned authority 
 of estabUshed tradition was bound up, as the Greeks felt, in- 
 articulately perhaps, but none the less vividly, all that made the 
 free civic life of Greece possible. The Greek citizen was a free 
 man because he was governed by law, and the culmination of 
 the charges against the tyrant was that he overrode all laws, 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 549 
 
 written and unwritten. To render back to the laws the service 
 due to them was the pride of the free Hellene, #rho contrasted 
 his freely rendered service to a constitution supported by 
 his own voluntary efforts with the slavish submission of the 
 Oriental to the arbitrary will of his master. The attitude of the 
 true freeman is nowhere more justly stated than in the words 
 which Herodotus puts into the mouth of Demaratus, the ex-king 
 of Sparta and an exile at the Persian court, quoted in the first 
 part of this work. But perhaps the most complete expression 
 of the traditional Greek view is given in the well-known defence 
 of Antigone. Creon has tyramiically forbidden the burial of 
 her brother. She tells him why she has disregarded his 
 proclamation — 
 
 " It was not Zeus who laid this ordinance on me, nor Justice, 
 housemate of the gods below, by whom these laws were laid down 
 among men. Nor did I deem thy order of such might that thou, 
 a mortal man, shouldst override the unwritten and unshaken 
 laws of gods. For these are not things of to-day or yesterday, 
 but live for ever, and none know whence they sprang. For 
 them I was not minded — not in fear of any man's pride — to pay 
 the penalty among the gods. That I should die, I knew — how 
 else ? — even hadst thou made no order, and if before my time I 
 die, I call it but a gain." 
 
 Here the dominant note of truth and right for ever against 
 the petty tyrant of a day, who holds mere life and death in his 
 hands, blends now with a whisper of a judgment beyond death, 
 and a Justice that sits as assessor on the judgment-seat in Hades, 
 now with a more decided mysticism which makes the traditional 
 law supreme, not because it comes from the gods, but because 
 it is eternal and its source is lost in the darkness out of which 
 things come. 
 
 3. Tills uncritical acceptance of traditional morality was 
 rudely shaken by the negative movement of thought in the fifth 
 century. The dialectics of Zeno had shaken the first principles 
 of orinary knowledge. The metaphysics of Herachtus had 
 attacked the testimony of the senses. On the speculative side 
 the negative movement culminated in the doctrine of Protagoras, 
 that " man is the measure of all things, of those which are that 
 they are, of those which are not that they are not." The appli- 
 cation to ethics does not appear to have been made by Protagoras 
 himself, but it lay ready to hand and was freely used by some 
 of the so-called Sophists, men like the Polus, CaUicles and 
 Thrasymachus of the Platonic dialogues. If there is no rational 
 
550 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 ground for our knowledge of nature, how can we expect to find 
 any for our theories of the moral life ? True, there is law in 
 every state, and he who breaks the law will be punished by law, 
 but what is the source and authority of law itself ? The law 
 which the tyrant makes rests, as all men admit, on the strength 
 of his own arm, wherewith he will punish those who break it. 
 But in precisely the same way the Law which the ruling Few 
 impose on the subject Many rests on the power of Pear, whether 
 due to superior valour or better organization, to enforce their 
 will ; and by precisely the same argument in a democracy the 
 law is simply what the majority who are here the stronger 
 decide that it shall be. In every case the " ruler," whether an 
 individual or a class, frames the law in his own interest and 
 enforces it by his power. Justice is merely a name for the 
 "interest of the stronger." Hence it was that the rule of 
 justice differed, as the travelled Greeks were discovering, from 
 nation to nation. Herodotus told of tribes who were as scanda- 
 lized at the Greek custom of burying the dead as the Greeks were 
 at them for eating their dead. If right and wrong were founded 
 in nature, this would not be. The same rules would be in force 
 everywhere. But depending on convention, they vary from 
 place to place as it suits the dominant power to conceive them. 
 And so vo/j.o's, the law written and unwritten, is identified 
 with convention, or institution depending on the arbitrary and 
 changeable will of men, and is opposed to <f>vcn^, nature, as the 
 temporary and variable to that which is permanent and rooted 
 in the essential structure of things. 
 
 The extent to which this sceptical doctrine had sunk into 
 the practical life of Greece may be measured by any one who 
 will corffcrast with the passage quoted above, the arguments 
 ascribed by Thucydides to the Athenian delegates in the famous 
 Melian Dialogue. 
 
 " As for the gods, we expect to have quite as much of their 
 favour as you. . . . For of the gods we beKeve, and of men we 
 know, that by a law of their nature wherever they can rule they 
 will. ... As to the Lacedssmonians ... of all men whom we 
 know they are the most notorious for identifying what is pleasant 
 with what is honourable, and what is expedient with what is 
 just," ^ etc. 
 
 4. Thus, the breakdown of the traditional Greek theory 
 of the moral sanctions, of the divine basis of virtue, and the 
 authoritative supremacy of law, was not merely a matter 
 
 1 Thuc, V. 105. Tr. Jowett. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 551 
 
 of speculative interest. It represented a change which had 
 sunk deep into the minds of the people, and,was a cause of 
 anxiety to all thinking men. Accordingly, the efforts of the 
 constructive thinkers of Greece during the latter part of the fifth 
 century, and throughout the fourth, were devoted to the recon- 
 struction of private morals and pubUc law, to find arguments 
 in admitted principles of thought or in the unimpeachable 
 evidence of experience to replace the old supernatural basis of 
 virtue, and to determine, in the phrase of the day, what was 
 natural in state law as opposed to what was merely a matter of 
 human agreement. In this effort the negative movement had 
 already supphed a point of departure, for it had in essentials 
 formulated a first principle of action ; that every man aims at 
 what is good for him, or at least at what appears good for him, 
 was the principle tacitly or openly avowed to which negative 
 criticism had been brought. This principle was taken up by 
 Socrates and his followers and made the starting-point of a 
 moral reconstruction. No Greek thinker, whether constructive 
 or negative, ideahst or hedonist, Platonic or Aristotehan, called 
 this axiom itself in question, but it was possible to show, as 
 Socrates was the first to discover, that, however selfish in form, 
 it was capable of an interpretation which would not only 
 reconcile it with the highest claims of the moral consciousness, 
 but even set these claims upon an apparently firm basis in 
 reason. For though it may be true that all men aim at the 
 apparent good, it does not follow that that good is the interest 
 of self, or the satisfaction of the sensual nature as opposed to 
 the fulfilment of a man's function as a citizen and the cultiva- 
 tion of his higher faculties. J On the contrary, Socrates, whose 
 philosophical method was tnat of conversation at the dinner- 
 party or in the market-place, was easily able to appeal to the 
 ordinary opinion of the average man, and to elicit from him 
 that he held courage and justice, wisdom and temperance, the 
 ordinary virtues of the good citizen, in higher esteem than the 
 pleasures of the senses or the interest of money-getting. But 
 if this were so, if it were in reahty best for a man to restrain 
 his lower nature and to practise the duties of a good father and 
 a good citizen, if the higher good, however defined, lay in this 
 direction, then the principle that each man chooses what appears 
 to him to be good will inevitably lead a wise man , who has found 
 out where the true good lies, in the path of virtue and good 
 citizenship ; and if we find people who are cowards and unjust 
 and unbridled in their licence, it is because they do not know 
 where their true good Ues, So the critics who held themselves 
 
552 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 superior to the ordinary moral tradition found their own weapon 
 turned against them. Their principle that every one must aim 
 at his own good is freely adopted, with the rider that he who 
 knows his true good finds it essentially in adherence to those 
 traditions which the sceptic scorns. The abandonment of virtue 
 is a proof, not, as had been urged, of superior wisdom, but of 
 ignorance of the real interests of human nature.^ Virtue, in A 
 
 I fact, might be defined as a kind of art of measuring — ^the art of -1 
 measuring values aright^ He who knows what true pleasure is 
 finds it in the pursuit oi virtue ; he who finds it elsewhere has 
 made a mistake in his fundamental principles.^ 
 
 5. But, after all, it was open to the critics to rejoin that the 
 intrinsic value and goodness of the just and virtuous life was 
 assumed rather than proved. By what argument, it might be 
 asked, or by what appeal to experience can it actually be made 
 clear to a doubter beyond any possibility of a cavil that the man 
 who is sacrificing some direct interest, some money-profit, or, 
 perhaps, his personal security, for the sake of justice, is not mak- 
 ing a gross miscalculation of values ? In what sense is it urged 
 that justice is in itself superior to injustice ? Do we not admit 
 that in refraining from injustice we are giving up something 
 that is useful to ourselves and seeking the gain of another, and 
 is this not incompatible with our first principle that every reason- 
 able man seeks his own good ? It is true that his losses might 
 be made up to the just man by human rulers or by a divine 
 judge, but what are we to say of the position of the just man 
 under a tyrant or a tyrannous democracy, and what are we to 
 think of the problem of divine judgment when the whole frame- 
 work of the supernatural is being called in question ? Besides, 
 if the just man is acting for the sake of a reward — ^indirect and 
 remote it may be, postponed to a future life it may be — ^is he 
 really acting from a principle of justice ? Is he not, after aU, 
 seeking a reward for himself though he calculates on a different 
 basis from the unjust man, and if he miscalculates, need we 
 admire or pity him ? In a word, had any one the ring of Gyges 
 would he not, once rendered invisible and so invulnerable to 
 his feUow-men, do as Gyges did, and practise against them all 
 manner of villainy that might be necessary in the course of 
 satisfying his own desires ? These positions are stated with 
 extreme force and clearness in the second book of the Republic, 
 
 ' This is the position attributed to Socrates in the Protagoraa, and no 
 doubt represents one side of the Master's teaching, though the hedonism 
 of the Dialogue probably represents one aspect only of the Sooratic view. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 553 
 
 and the demand is made upon the Socrates of the Dialogue to 
 give an account of justice which will sweep all |his network of 
 doubts aside. Socrates is to show that the just man is happier 
 and better ofi than the unjust, even if he escapes the notice of 
 gods and men, even if he is misjudged in this world and the next, 
 even if he suffers the penalties of injustice and the unjust man 
 gets the rewards of the innocent. The benefits of justice in 
 itself are to prove such as to outweigh every possible considera- 
 tion of external reward or penalty. Never before or since has 
 the claim of the moral consciousness to override every other 
 consideration been more uncompromisingly stated. The method 
 by which Plato makes Socrates set out to answer the formidable 
 difficulties propounded to him is that of inviting his hearers to 
 a deeper analysis of the nature of the human being and of the 
 state. He finds that human nature is in itself a commonwealth 
 in miniature, in which there is a ruhng portion represented by 
 the reason. There is a spirited element whose natural function 
 it is to assist the reason, as the mihtary element of the state 
 should assist the philosophical rulers. And, lastly, there is 
 within man a many-headed monster of desire hke the many- 
 headed mob of the Athenian democracy. There are certain 
 natural and proper relations which these different portions of 
 the soul should maintain towards one another. The reason 
 should rule, the spirited element should assist it in so doing, the 
 many-headed monster should be under control ; and when these 
 conditions are satisfied a certain harmony results ; it is well 
 with the man, his inner man is at peace. And in this peace 
 and harmony the cardinal virtues which the ordinary Greek 
 recognizes have their different parts to play. In the due exercise 
 of the reason there is wisdom. In the aid rendered to wisdom 
 by the due cultivation of the emotional element which enables 
 us to withstand ahke the temptations of danger and the se- 
 ductions of pleasure, there is courage. For though the weak 
 man may have implanted in him the right opinion as to how 
 he should guide his action, something more than opinion is 
 necessary when it comes to the pinch; there must be that 
 tenacity which enables us to maintain our opinion in the face 
 of temptation, and to show that tenacity is to be brave. Again, 
 there must be an agreement' among all the three parts, a harmony 
 stretching through the whole of the soul, that reason should 
 rule, and this harmony is temperance. Given these three 
 virtues we have the conditions necessary for the healthy func- 
 tioning of each part of the soul. This active functioning, which 
 consists in a perfect co-operation of all parts of the soul, each 
 
554 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 doing its own work without going outside, is Plato's definition 
 of justice. Justice, then, is, in the fiist place, the harmonious 
 healthy Hfe of the soul itself. But it is this inner harmony 
 which enables a man to do his duty in the world to which he 
 belongs. He plays the part required of him in the larger life 
 of the state, because each element in his own nature plays the 
 part required of it within the miniature commonwealth that 
 forms his soul. The outer harmony depends on the inner. A 
 man behaves as a good citizen because his moral nature is in 
 healthy working order, and, conversely, when he fails in that 
 duty his own nature is out of harmony with itself and is cor- 
 rupted and diseased. Thus, at the end of the argument, justice 
 is above all things valuable to its possessor, in so far as the soul 
 is more valuable to itself than all the rest of the world. Justice 
 is to the soul what health is to the body— it is its active ex- 
 cellence and perfect life ; without it, nothing that seems good 
 can be really good, with it there is no evil that cannot be faced. 
 If pleasure be alleged as a more rational end for man, it may be 
 retorted that it is only the pleasure of the soul which is a real 
 pleasure. The pleasures of the many are transitory and fuU 
 of contradiction. We see them on their hoUdays, then as now, 
 fiUing the unreal part of themselves with unreal joys. The 
 philosopher alone knows what reality is, and is proved, with a 
 characteristic bit of Platonic humour, to have at least seven 
 hundred and twenty-nine times as much real enjoyment as the 
 devotee of the senses. 
 
 6. Thus justice, which is here in reaUty the name for virtue, 
 is founded upon an explicit theory of the nature of man, and 
 both the positions of the sceptic are met and turned against him. 
 On the one hand, it is shown that if a man aims at what is good 
 for himself, he must, if he is a reasonable and instructed being, 
 endeavour to obtain that which is for his soul what health is for 
 the body. On the other hand, if it is asked on what laws or 
 conditions of nature is justice founded, the answer is that it 
 is founded on the constitution of human nature itself and of 
 the societies which human beings form. These positions are in 
 essence retained by Aristotle, though with more of that com- 
 promising spirit which belongs to Aristotle's method. The good 
 is that at which everything aims, and is to be found in the per- 
 formance of that function which nature assigns to it in the scheme 
 of things. In this scheme the function of every class of being 
 lies especially in the active realization of its own specific character. 
 The specific character of man is that he is a rational animal, 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 555 
 
 capable of goverping himself by reason in a social life and capable 
 of exercising his reason in the great department of speculation 
 as a philosopher. In the first direction his moral virtues are 
 developed, in the second his speculative powers. And so the 
 well-being of man consists in an active reahzation of the soul- 
 hfe in accordance with what is excellent, and especially in 
 accordance with the best and highest of excellences. This is the 
 essence of well-being. But perhaps it would be extreme and 
 paradoxical to maintain that external misfortune has no effect 
 upon it. A man is not happy if the misfortunes of a Priam 
 beset him. Yet even in such a case the nobihty of his character 
 will shine through. He will never be wretched as the caitiff 
 and the sensuaUst might become ; it wiU still be well for him in 
 that he bears his misfortunes better than other people. But 
 though fortune may help to make or mar, and though there is 
 an element of chance in human life which is never wholly mastered 
 and overcome by human reason, nevertheless, speaking generally 
 — and Aristotle is clear that we can only speak generally and 
 not universally in deaUng with human affairs — the man who 
 resolutely makes the best of his own powers and actively reahzes 
 them, is the happiest. He has no need of the ordinary pleasures 
 as an appendage, so to say, to his life, for this reahzation of him- 
 self at his best has its own pleasure within itself ; as his Hfe is the 
 best, so is it also the pleasantest. Bad fortune will hinder him, 
 good fortune wiU aid him in making the most of himself and in 
 showing all that he has it in him to be. But this is at the utmost 
 a not indispensable advantage, and the essence of his well-being 
 is that he himself does well. 
 
 7. Thus, upon the fundamental question of moral philosophy 
 Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were essentially at one. That 
 question is by most modern morahsts defined as the question 
 of the nature of moral obhgation. Why should I do what is 
 right, or why should I recognize the distinction between right 
 and wrong, ought and ought not ? Is it a matter of some 
 external reward or punishment befaUing me according to the 
 character of my conduct, or is it a matter of some intrinsic 
 quahty in the conduct itself ? To the Greek philosophers the 
 question took the form : What is the character of that which is 
 really good for man, or in what does human weU-being consist ? 
 The answer which they gave to it was essentially that it consists 
 in the practice of virtue as being that wherein human nature 
 finds its best, happiest and most harmonious expression. This 
 method of handhng the problem leads at once to the converse 
 
556 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 question, Why do the majority of men at one time or another 
 neglect virtue and do that which is evil ? Nothing could be 
 more characteristic of Greek modes of thought and of the gulf 
 which separates them from Christian and post-Qh.ristian ethics 
 than the method of handUng this question. To the Christian 
 theologian and to the morahst handling the subject with theo- 
 logical conceptions behind him, the difficulty is to see how men 
 come to do good. To the Greek thinker the paradox is rather 
 that so many men do wrong. From the axiom from which all 
 Greek thinkers started, it was clear that men could only do 
 wrong from some mistake in their conception of what was good. 
 If, as the three great thinkers whom we have mentioned were 
 agreed, the good for men lay essentially in the pursuit of virtue, 
 then in strict logic it could only be from some ignorance of its 
 first principle that men went astray. jSocrates, in fact, drew this 
 deduction apparently without any hesitation or compromise. 
 To him vice was ignorance, and if a man were found to be in- 
 temperate, cowardly or unjust, it was only because he did not 
 know what true temperance, courage and justice were, or how 
 to apply the rules based upon them to the circumstances of his 
 own life. He was a bad craftsman in the art of life, a man who 
 did not know how to use his tools, and capable of being im- 
 proved by instruction and by instruction alone. It was easy to 
 see that the position so uncompromisingly stated led to para- 
 doxical results. It tended to make all conduct a matter of the 
 intellect and not of the character, and so in a sense to destroy 
 moral responsibihty j Accordingly in Plato we have an attempt 
 at a reconstruction of the Socratic view. At any rate, in the 
 maturer Dialogues we find, as has already been remarked, that 
 the emotional or spirited element in man is called upon to take 
 its share in the work of governing the wild beast that is within 
 human nature. The force of character which enables a man to 
 maintain his opinion is recognized as something distinct from 
 the purely rational element in him which enables him origin- 
 ally to gain his opinion. In the story of Leontios the son of 
 Aglaion, the internal moral conflict, the division of the self into 
 factions, and the wrath of the better part of human nature at 
 the victory of the lower, are dramatically described. But for a 
 complete theory of responsibihty as far as Greek thought could 
 take it, we must turn to Aristotle. Aristotle does not deny the 
 major premiss from which the Socratic syllogism starts. Every 
 intelligence, he admits, chooses what is best for itself, but in 
 order that a right understanding of what is best may be attained, 
 something more than inteUigence is required. It is, after all, 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 557 
 
 only moral men who can thoroughly understand the nature of 
 a moral code, for in moral matters intellectual enhghtenment 
 depends upon character. Hence those are mistaken who urge 
 that we cannot be responsible for wrong-doing because the 
 wrong-doer acts in accordance with what appears to him to be 
 good and, if he is mistaken, cannot be held responsible for his 
 ignorance. The reply to this is that ignorance proceeds from and 
 is a mark of bad character, and it is his own slack method of 
 Uving which has corrupted the bad man's views and made him 
 at once remiss in his conduct and mistaken in his judgment. 
 [Virtue does not come purely by nature, nor can it be taught in 
 the schools like an art, but along with teaching, or rather ante- 
 cedently to teaching itself/ the youth must undergo a training in 
 practice. This practical training will produce the necessary 
 character. The character being formed will give us the right 
 aims, and then a trained intelligence is necessary in the form 
 of Practical Wisdom to reason from those aims and apply the 
 results to practical affairs. This, in brief, is the psychology of 
 the good man. Contrasted with him stands, in the first place, 
 the profligate who has what Plato called "the he in the soul," 
 who entertains, that is to say, the radically false principle of life 
 that the proper thing for a man is always to pursue the pleasure 
 of the moment . This character is again consistent . Bad training 
 has given its possessor a bad principle, and he apphes his principle 
 resolutely in action. But between the good and the bad stands 
 a third character whose essence is to be inconsistent. This is 
 the incontinent man who has sufficient moral enhghtenment to 
 admit the goodness of virtue as a general principle, but who is so 
 far overcome by passion and appetite as to find means of evading 
 the apphcation of the principle to the facts of conduct. He 
 allows himself to be deluded by self-sophistication, and lets his 
 desires represent the action which he is about in a light which 
 prevents it from being seen to faU under the general rule which 
 would forbid it. He does not deny that the courageous man is 
 superior to the cowardly, but he is always sure that the present 
 occasion is one which calls for discretion, and not for an imprudent 
 display of valour. He does not uphold injustice, but while con- 
 stantly overreaching his neighbour, is all the time convinced that 
 he is only too modest in maintaining his own rights .^ But all 
 
 * These illustrations are not Aristotle's, who confines himself to the case of 
 the actual obliteration of rational reflection by sensual appetite. But the 
 principle is the same. The great mass of wrong-doing, particularly in 
 public aSairs, seems tp have a measure of self -sophistication as its necessary 
 condition. Few people will admit nakedly, even to themselves, that what 
 they do is wrong. They must have some specious terms in which to cloak 
 
558 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 this intellectual jugglery does not free him from responsibiUty. 
 It is the consequence and the sign of an imperfectly disciplined 
 character, and each man not only chooses his own actions, but, 
 at least at the outset, he chooses his own character also, because 
 the character is made by the actions. Human nature, upon 
 this view, is neither intrinsically good nor intrinsically bad. It 
 needs no supernatural grace to lift it out of the slough of original 
 sin, neither is it born in a state of innocence from which it falls 
 away as life proceeds. It has originally a natural capacity to 
 be influenced by training and teaching, and if favourably situated 
 where the winds blow upon it from healthy and salubrious climes, 
 it flourishes and grows up into wisdom and moral goodness. If 
 it fails to receive the right nutrition, and if no effort is made to 
 respond to the training of the spiritual pastor and master, then 
 it falls away, possibly into the deUberate corruption of the 
 principle of selfish pleasure, perhaps rather into that twilight of 
 the average sensual man in which the rule of right is something 
 seen and acknowledged from afar, but never allowed to shine 
 unshaded upon the agent's own conduct. 
 
 8. From the question why we should concern ourselves to be 
 virtuous and how we should go about to be virtuous, we pass 
 next to the question in what virtue consists. If by this is 
 meant — What in the modern sense is the moral standard ? it 
 must be admitted that none of the thinkers we are here con- 
 sidering have a perfectly definite answer to give. Even the 
 famous AristoteHan Doctrine of the Mean is not a doctrine 
 laying down an objective measure to which the rules of conduct 
 and the laws of the state should conform. Nevertheless the 
 Socratic thinkers have an ideal of their own which in many 
 respects is very clearly defined. It is by no means identical with 
 the ideal of the more spiritual religions ; we may say that it is 
 both more and less than they are. It is essentially an ideal for 
 this world, and it bids men make the best of their life in this 
 world. It is an ideal made for human nature. It is not one 
 which consists in overcoming human nature. It is an ideal for 
 the active citizens of a free state, not for men who can only 
 hope to practise virtue by retiring from state affairs. Though 
 they put the philosopher's Ufe above the statesman's, neither 
 Plato nor Aristotle could forget that they were members of a 
 self-governing community, owing their freedom and their culture 
 
 the deed. They must screen themselves from their own inner conscious- 
 ness, and thus, though sophistication is not the originating caxise, it is an 
 essential condition of most conduct, public or private, that conflicts with 
 admitted principle. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 559 
 
 to the security which their citizenship gave them; nor could 
 they leave out of their minds that a great part of the impulse 
 which had turned men's minds to moral phil(?sophy was the 
 endeavour to save the city state from that loosening of the 
 bonds of political obUgation which they saw going on around 
 them. Hence the first duty of man, whether in the Republic or 
 in the Ethics, is to be a good citizen. Whether, indeed, he can 
 always be a loyal citizen in a bad state, is a point which gives 
 Aristotle some difficulty ; but that the ideal arrangement is that 
 he should find a state of society in which to be a good man and 
 a good citizen are one and the same thing is a matter about 
 which there is no doubt. The good citizen is one who can both 
 rule and be ruled. He has the seH-disciphne which enables him 
 to submit to others when their turn comes, and the wisdom 
 which enables him to direct, not only his own affairs, but those 
 of the state when his own turn comes. He must be ready to 
 fight for his city in war and to count it the noblest of deaths 
 to die for her. He must be moderate in his pleasures, capable 
 of restraining appetite lest it should get the mastery of him, 
 not given to anger, but capable of righteous indignation when 
 circumstances require it, liberal without ostentation in money 
 matters, and careful of the rights of others to the point of being 
 wUhng always to take less than his own share rather than press 
 his interests too keenly. He should have an adequate measure 
 of self-respect, and a great-souled man, who is in a sense the 
 perfect type of this kind of character, being worthy of great 
 things, should deem himself worthy of great things. He should 
 know himself for what he is, and do nothing to behttle or demean 
 himself. In voice, in gait and in gesture his dignity should be 
 reflected. He should feel a proper pride in himseK, and trust 
 to that pride to keep him from anything degrading. He is thus 
 the direct antithesis of the holy and humble man of heart whom 
 the Christian teaching holds up to esteem. The antithesis is 
 inevitable ; the Christian saint is conscious of a sinfulness from 
 which the divine grace alone has raised him, and which never- 
 theless still tinges and stains all that he does when it is matched 
 against the white radiance of infinite perfection. The great- 
 souled Greek has learnt to govern his own nature ; he measures 
 himself with his equals, and if he owes a debt it is to his country 
 and her laws, which he repays in the capacity of faithful and 
 upright magistrate and citizen. And thus the Greek ideal is 
 cast rather in the mould of the hero or the statesman than in 
 that of the saint. Justice is far more prominent than benevol- 
 ence ; in place of the mortification of the flesh we have a reason- 
 
560 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 able temperance, a self-restraint which prevents the lower nature 
 from usurping the place of the higher .^ We have the conception, 
 perhaps not less illuminating, that justice, being good, can only 
 have good as its result, and therefore the punishment that is 
 just, far from doing harm to the criminal, is medicine that he 
 should welcome for his own sake.^ Finally, with the patriotism 
 bound up with the city state we get the inevitable limitation 
 which a purely civic morality entails. The rights and duties 
 which the Greek citizen recognized were obUgations existing in 
 the full sense only as between a limited circle of free men. Plato 
 does not carry his humanitarianism beyond the point of urging 
 that, in making war with one another, the Greek states should 
 treat the conquered as they do now in the civil contests of 
 factions within each state, and that, in making war upon the 
 Barbarian, they should treat the conquered as they now treat 
 conquered Greeks. Aristotle grades the rights of human beings 
 according to the degree in which personahty is developed. The 
 man capable of full citizenship is the man fully capable of directing 
 affairs, and he is the possessor of practical wisdom in its complete- 
 ness. The woman, the child and the slave who are not so quali- 
 fied have inferior rights, and we have seen how Aristotle found in 
 this a justification for the inequahty of the sexes and for slavery. 
 Yet the slave is, after all, a man, and, in so far as he is a man, 
 he is capable of friendship and of entering into and fulfilling 
 obUgations. Rights, as a modern might put it, depend on per- 
 sonality. But personality — ^the capacity for free, responsible 
 self-direction — ^is not the attribute of aU human beings. 
 
 Such, then, in brief, are the virtues and Hmitations of the 
 civic ideal, but we must always remember that neither in Plato 
 nor Aristotle is this the highest ideal of all. The idea of rising 
 beyond human nature to something beyond it, the idea of becom- 
 ing citizens of a better world than this, is to both the crown of 
 their work ; and we see in them the way paved, not only for the 
 wise man of the Stoic philosophy who should reach perfection 
 
 1 In some of the Platonic Dialogues this is pushed to the point of 
 asceticism, and this line of the Platonic teaching is carried further by the 
 old Academy and revived in Neoplatonism. But the maturer mind of 
 Plato himself, as seen, for example, in the Republic, does not push asceticism 
 beyond the limit of healthy self-restraint in the interests of the character 
 as a whole. 
 
 ^ That justice, being good, can never show itself in doing harm either to 
 one's enemy or to a bad man is the gist of the argument with Polemarchus 
 in Bepiiblic, i. (see esp. p. 335). So in the Laws (Book IX. 854) the object of 
 punishment is never evil, but to make a man better, or at any rate less bad. 
 Similarly in the Ethics, only the incurable are to be altogether " put 
 beyond the boundaries." 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 561 
 
 in a state of slavery or under a tyrannical rule, but even for the 
 Christian saint who found his highest bUss in withdrawing from 
 the affairs of this world altogether. The Platonic philosopher 
 only remains a statesman from his sense of obhgation to the city 
 which has nourished and trained him. We shall not do Mm an 
 injustice, says Plato, if we compel him to return into the cave 
 where the prisoners of this world dwell, watching the play of 
 unreal things in a dim and uncertain light ; but in his heart he 
 wiU always desire to range abroad freely in the Elysian Fields, 
 where by the purer light of reason he can contemplate the essential 
 goodness of things. So in Aristotle's scheme, for the philosopher 
 the ultimate value of practical wisdom is to so regulate the 
 affairs of life and bring the lower elements of the mind into order 
 as to set the speculative wisdom free to rise to those higher 
 objects of contemplation in which the Sage finds his true dehght. 
 The philosopher remains a man, partaker of a corruptible nature, 
 and, therefore, incapable of sustaining a permanent conversation 
 with high and heavenly things. Yet he must, as far as possible, 
 put off his mortahty and put on the hkeness of the divine in- 
 telligence, which is the centre of the universal order about which 
 and towards which aU things move. 
 
 If we find this ideal lacking in some of the graces of those 
 ethical systems which are associated with the spiritual rehgions, 
 we must admit some counterbalancing merits of no less import- 
 ance to Ethical growth. Instead of the rule of self -repression 
 we have the ideal of expansion, of harmonious self -development, 
 an ideal which may on occasion involve in it the necessity of 
 extreme self-sacrifice, even to the point of dying for friend or for 
 country, but which in more fortunate circumstances blossoms 
 into the full flower of human excellence conceived as the reaUza- 
 tion of many-sided capacities, physical, moral, intellectual, and 
 spiritual. Secondly, we have the conception that this ideal is 
 to be sought, in the first place, in patriotic devotion to the state 
 regarded as a community of free citizens existing for the very 
 purpose of glorifying common hfe and bringing forth from it the 
 best it has in it to be, an association that comes into existence 
 that men may Uve, but continues to exist that men may Hve well. 
 Thirdly, the gifted man rises above, though never beyond, this 
 civic ideal. He may never neglect the spiritual mother that has 
 borne him, yet he has bis own life apart, a life which is, in later 
 phrase, hid with God, sharing with him the spiritual joy of con- 
 templating nature and seeing that it is good, bathed "in that 
 content surpassing thought the Sage in meditation found, and 
 walked with inward glory crowned." 
 
 CO 
 
562 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 9. While Plato and Aristotle may be said to have continued 
 and developed the Socratic condition in its fulness, different 
 sides of the Master's teaching, taken by themselves, became the 
 sources of separate schools. The hedonistic tendency in Socrates 
 was developed by Aristippus, and through him became the 
 source of the Epicurean philosophy. The more ascetic tendency 
 which sprung from the Socratic teaching of self -containment 
 and the practical hardihood and moderation of his life, became 
 the central feature in the teaching of Antisthenes. Here the 
 doctrine that virtue is the essential condition of happiness is 
 pushed to the point from which, as we have seen, Aristotle drew 
 back. Man is made in a fuller sense the master of his fate. To 
 live in accordance with virtue is laid down as the end of hfe, and 
 it is the object of the wise man to render himself independent 
 of all external conditions over which he himself cannot exercise 
 control. Aristotle, in defining self-sufficiency, laid down that 
 we cannot apply the term to any man considered by himself, 
 but only by taking into account his family, his friends, and, 
 indeed, his city, since man is by nature a political animal. To 
 the Cjmic, virtue alone was self-sufficient for happiness, needing 
 nothing further, unless it were a Socratic fortitude. He had 
 overcome desire. He would enter into no hampering bond with 
 other human beings. In particular, the city was one of the en- 
 cumbrances from which the true philosopher was free. For a 
 home, his tub sufficed for Diogenes, and if asked of what state 
 he was a citizen, he rephed that he was a citizen of the world — 
 a cosmopohtan. Thus, a full-blown doctrine of self-rehance 
 makes also for universalism. The particular and special ties by 
 which men are grouped together faU away, and Avith the abstract 
 assertion of the human personahty as the supreme object of hfe 
 and as ruler of its own destiny, there arises also the conception 
 of universal humanity as the only community to which the 
 individual owes an allegiance. The doctrines of self-mastery 
 and world-citizenship thus originating with the Cynics, were 
 developed into the most influential system of antiquity by the 
 founders of Stoicism. The wise man of the Stoics was to hve, 
 in accordance with the first formula of the school, consistently. 
 In accordance with the second and better-known formula he was 
 to live consistently with Nature. But what was Nature ? It 
 was the universal order and harmony of things where everything 
 by a divine overruling providence had its place, where everything 
 which fulfilled its nature served the whole, where the healthy 
 life of every part was a contribution to the life of the whole 
 organism. The wise man learnt, in the first place, to contain 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 563 
 
 himself and to bow to the universal order of things ; to will, as 
 Epictetus said, that each thing should take place as it does take 
 place — ^that is, " as the disposer of things has disposed them ; and 
 he has ordained that there should be summer and winter, plenty 
 and scarcity, virtue and vice, and all these contraries for the sake 
 of the harmony of the whole." In this universal scheme of 
 Nature man must play his part in accordance with the natural 
 capacity assigned to him. He is the child of God in a special 
 sense, and he should realize, therefore, that he has no lowly or 
 ignoble birth, and realizing that, he will have no lowly or ignoble 
 thoughts about himself. A god is given to each man, a deity 
 (in the shape of his own reason), to guard over him ; one that 
 is sleepless and incapable of being deceived, who, if you shut the 
 doors and make it all dark, is still there with you, and with him, 
 God Himself. " For you are not alone, but God is with you and 
 your deity." God, in disposing things, has put certain things 
 within our power, or rather within the power of this controlhng 
 deity within us — our reason. Our part in life consists in ruling 
 those things well, and in realizing that other things are such 
 as we cannot rule. And since God is good he has put within 
 our power all things essential to our own happiness to possess. 
 It follows that external things which we cannot control are 
 indifferent to us, and all that matters to us is to preserve our 
 own souls untouched. Externals are merely the material, in 
 the use of which our own character manifests itself. " Good 
 things are the virtues and what appertains to the virtues ; evil 
 are the opposite to these ; indifferent are wealth, health, and 
 reputation." He whom these things can disturb is not a wise 
 or virtuous man, but if you ask who is the invincible, he is the 
 man who has put the world beneath his feet, whom none of those 
 things which are independent of his will can move from his 
 course. 
 
 This self-centred conception of the wise man can at times be 
 pushed to the point of harshness and coldness. For instance, 
 in discussing suicide, Epictetus bids the philosopher remain in 
 the bodily prison as long as reason tells him, just as Plato had 
 already said, that he is placed there as a sentinel and must not 
 desert his post. God has need of the world and its inhabitants, 
 but if He sounds the signal as he did to Socrates, then the 
 philosopher should obey the signaller as his general. But in 
 the performance of duty, the feelings of his relations, even of 
 his mother, are not to be taken into account. It is not your 
 action that will grieve them, but just that which grieves you — 
 namely, their own opinion. " Do you take away your own 
 
564 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 opinion, and if they do well they will take away theirs, and 
 otherwise it will be on their own responsibiUty that they will 
 lament." But Stoicism has a softer and more social side. 
 Since God is the father of all, it follows that all men are brothers ; 
 the slave differs from the emperor only by accident of external 
 position. If Epictetus is asked how one is to refrain from anger 
 with a neglectful slave, he will answer, " Slave yourself, will you 
 not bear with your own brother ; he has Zeus as his forefather, 
 is a son of the same loins as yourself and the same descent. . . . 
 Do you not remember who you are and what men you are ruhng, 
 that they are kinsmen and brothers by nature, that they are 
 descendants of Zeus ? " Do you answer — I bought them ? If 
 so, you are looking "into the abyss, into the wretched laws of 
 the dead and not to those of the gods." Thus the brotherhood 
 of the Stoic transcends the gulf betwixt bond and free ; equally 
 it obliterates the distinction between the fellow-citizen and 
 stranger,^ and the great and supreme community is the society 
 of man and gods from whom all things come. " The poet says, 
 ' Dear city of Cecrops,' will you not say, dear city of Zeus ? " 
 
 Though hard with himself, the Stoic could not be hard with 
 the offender, for vice, says the mild emperor following Socrates, 
 is ignorance of the good, and I who have seen good could not 
 be angry with the bad man who is my kin. Moreover, if your 
 father does wrong, says Epictetus, he suffers already in character. 
 Do not then wish him to lose anything else on that account. 
 Even the false judge can do you no harm. The real evil of 
 punishment falls always upon the offender, and what have you 
 to do with the evil which belongs to another; if the judge's 
 decision is unjust, that is his loss. Men are indifferent to the 
 Stoic, however, only in the sense that their doings cannot affect 
 his mil, nor therefore what is essentially good or evil to him. 
 But, says Marcus Aurelius, in so far as I ought to benefit and 
 bear with them, they are the nearest of things to me. Virtue, 
 though springing from the individual and resting on his personal 
 wisdom and self-control, is eminently social in its manifestations. 
 " Rejoice in one thing alone and rest in it, in passing from 
 one social action to another social action with mindfulness of 
 God." If the expressions of Stoicism are often hard and lend 
 themselves at times to a certain appearance of heartlessness and 
 
 ^ Similarly in social intercourse, Epictetus, who represents the more 
 rugged side of Stoicism, bids us prefer goodness to every other consideration. 
 " I have nothing in common with my father but with the good man." 
 " Are you so hard ? " " Yes, for so I was made. . . . For this reason, 
 if the good is anything different from the noble and the just, father and 
 brother and country and all things are gone " (Epict., iii. 3. 5). 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 565 
 
 isolation, in the gentler handling of a spirit like that of Marcus 
 the social side becomes the dominant feature, ajid we learn that 
 if a man is to ask nothing for himself, yet he is gratefully to 
 acknowledge every good gift that he receives from all around 
 him, and to be willing to give his all to others.^ 
 
 10. But it was not so much the gentler social virtues as the 
 fundamental obligations which bind man to his fellows that 
 interested the Stoics. Deep as was the mark left on the world 
 by their self -containment, it was not the greatest or most lasting 
 eSeot of their teaching. It was at the point where moral philo- 
 sophy touches the theory of law and government that their 
 influence was widest and most abiding. For it is to them more 
 than to any other school of thought that the world owes the 
 conception of an ethical ideal standing above the wiUs of legis- 
 lators, whether despotic or popular, as a standard to which they 
 ought to conform. This ideal took shape in the conception of 
 a Law of Nature which stood above all human conventions and 
 held up a standard to which state law ought to conform. The 
 conception of Nature was not introduced into Ethics by the 
 Stoics. We have seen that at the outset the fundamental 
 problem of conduct was raised in the form of the question, 
 " Are justice and the other virtues natural or merely conven- 
 tional ? Are they founded on nature or the products of human 
 agreement, which may be relegated at will to the lumber-room 
 of disused ideas ? " We have seen how Plato undertook to prove 
 that they were founded on nature, and did so by showing that 
 they rest on the constitution of man and of human society. So 
 far "nature " appears as the basis of morals. In Aristotle it 
 begins to serve as a standard of custom. At least in regard to 
 justice, Aristotle recognized that there must be some more ideal 
 and scientific standard than that embodied in the written and 
 unwritten law and custom of the Greek states. Rules of justice 
 as embodied in law were changeable and varied from place to 
 place, while that which is natural is the same everywhere. But 
 though natural laws change, says Aristotle, there must be one 
 state, one constitution, which is everywhere natural — namely, 
 that which is the best : and there must be one set of laws every- 
 where natural — namely, those which the best state would adopt. 
 But the law of nature, after all, is an incident in Aristotle's treat- 
 ment of justice ; with the Stoics it becomes the central principle. 
 
 ^ In the above references to Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius I have 
 freely used Mr. Long's translations, without, however, always adhering to 
 his words. 
 
566 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 It appeared to supply, and in its degree it did supply, that 
 systematic conception of a moral standard in which they found 
 earlier theories lacking. For if the older thinkers had taught 
 that man's true happiness lies in the practice of virtue, they had 
 given little attention to the question why certain classes of action 
 are considered virtuous. They took over in the main the current 
 ideas which they found as to the particular virtues, idealizing and 
 sometimes supplementing and correcting them, no doubt, but 
 not upon the whole seeking for any first principle by which the 
 value of these traditional rules might be tested. Now such a 
 principle the Stoics conceived that they had found in the law 
 prescribed by Nature itself to man. This could be discovered — 
 such, at least, seems to be the imphed process of thought — ^by 
 considering how far the rules of conduct which we actually recog- 
 nize are due to human institutions, and what would remain if 
 we conceive them done away with. Proceeding on this line of 
 thought, for instance, it is easily recognized that such an institu- 
 tion as slavery is not " natural." It is an institution of men, for 
 without such institution who would enslave himself 1 So again 
 with all other inequahty of rights. By law one man may be 
 given privileges over another, but take away the law and what 
 privilege could remain 1 On the other hand, if we consider such 
 a matter as the fulfilment of obUgations, the obligation itself, 
 we may say, is the result of a compact made by men, yet we 
 feel in ourselves a " natural " impulse to fulfil it, even without 
 legal compulsion, and so to keep our contracts is a part of 
 " natural " law. Reasoning on such lines as these, from their 
 conception of Nature as one Kosmos, animated by One God, the 
 father of all mankind, the Stoics arrived at the idea of a Law 
 of Nature prescribing the freedom, equahty and brotherhood of 
 mankind, overriding all distinctions of class, and race, and 
 nation, prescribing good faith and mutual obhgation, even when 
 there was no law. This was no empty theory, but an active 
 principle, influencing the practical legislation of the great Roman 
 lawyers.! jUie freedom, equaUty and brotherhood of man, the 
 inherent injustice involved in distinctions of class and of nation- 
 ahty, the original sanctity of contracts, and, as a consequence, 
 the recognition of moral obligations to those to whom one is 
 bound by no law — such ideas as these originate with the con- 
 ception of a law which Nature lays down for man, and is, there- 
 fore, independent of convention and superior to the enactments 
 of kings. We have already seen the influence which this con- 
 
 * See quotations from the stoically trained jiirisoonsults in Iiecky, 
 History of European Morals, i. 295, 296. 
 
PHILOSOPHIC ETHICS 567 
 
 oeption had in mitigating the hardships of Roman slavery. 
 We trace it in the successive extensions of the franchise, which 
 broke down the barriers between conquering* Rome and the 
 subject provincials. We may trace it once more in the humane 
 laws which broke up the barbaric supremacy of the paterfamihas. 
 Indeed, "there were few departments into which the catholic 
 and humane principles of Stoicism were not in some degree 
 carried." In the mind of the best of the emperors, Stoical 
 principle kept alive the ideal of a "constitution of equal laws 
 ordered in accordance with equahty and equal freedom of 
 speech, and a kingship honouring above all things the freedom 
 of those who are ruled." Such an ideal was unattainable in 
 the second century after Christ, but that it should have been 
 placed on record by the absolute master of the Roman world as 
 his conception of the principle by which he would govern him- 
 self, is not the least remarkable testimony to the strength of 
 the Stoical creed. The law of Nature was not, as we shall see 
 more fully, in the end an adequate formula for the moral standard, 
 but it was a step in that direction. It was an assertion that such 
 a principle coiild be found, and it recognized that actual codes 
 deviate from the principle in consequence of what is arbitrary 
 and accidental in the laws of their growth. 
 
 Greek ethics thus bequeathed two great contributions to the 
 solution of the ethical problem. In its earUer stage it founded 
 moral obligation on the well-being of the individual. It taught 
 that virtue was not an emptying but a fulfilment of the person- 
 aUty. It reconciled individual self-development with legal, 
 law-abiding citizenship in a free city state. In its later stages, 
 when the old civic life was breaking up and the problem taking 
 new shape, it laid the foundations of a universaUst ethics by 
 conceiving an ideal standard of conduct apphcable to all man- 
 kind, not subordinate but superior to state law, an ideal to which 
 social as well as individual custom should be made to conform. 
 In neither of these directions, however, was its analysis final. 
 How it was pushed further by modern thought we have now to 
 inquire. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MODERN ETHICS 
 
 1. The tradition of Greek ethics did not wholly disappear 
 ■with the decay of the classical civiHzation. In part it was 
 incorporated in Roman law, and if buried with it for a time, 
 shared in its revival from the twelfth century onwards. In 
 part it coalesced with the leading ideas of Christianity, and 
 was made subservient to the exposition of Christian doctrine. 
 Particularly, as we shall see more fuUy later, the idea of a Law 
 of Nature has a continuous history from the " common reason " 
 of Heraclitus and the "natural justice" of Aristotle, through 
 the Roman jurisprudence and the Canon Law to Grotius and 
 Hobbes, and from them to Locke and Rousseau. Modem 
 Moral Philosophy starts with the wisdom of the Greeks as its 
 working capital. But from the first it had to deal with a more 
 complex situation, a more tangled conflict of claims upon the 
 conscience, a wider apparent fissure between the individual Ufe 
 and the social order. 
 
 The rise of a world rehgion, with claims on the spiritual hfe 
 which were by no means easy to reconcile with any poKtical 
 authority, resulted in mediseval Europe in a separation of the 
 Spiritual and Temporal powers and the erection of distinct 
 and frequently opposed authorities, each claiming the strict 
 allegiance of the individual. The Reformation threw these two 
 powers in many countries into prolonged and violent antagonism, 
 and the problem of conflicting duties to king and country on 
 the one hand, and to Christ and the Church, or to God and 
 conscience, on the other, was raised in its most acute form. 
 Such a conflict could leave neither political nor spiritual authority 
 unimpaired, and where the Greek philosophers had something 
 to appeal to which all men were in a measure ready to recognize 
 in the state and the traditional laws and customs which the 
 state maintained, the first problem of modern philosophy was 
 to find a higher authority to which either State or Church might 
 appeal. There could no longer in thinking minds be any question 
 of accepting either of the rivals as ultimate and supreme arbiter 
 of right and wrong. Thus deprived of an unquestioned external 
 
 568 
 
MODERN ETHICS 569 
 
 authority, men were thrown back, in the first instance, on their 
 interpretation of the revealed Word of God, bu^ as the principal 
 conflict had turned from the first on questions of interpretation, 
 and as experience had shown how the plainest meaning could be 
 wrested into an ambiguous sense or the most categorical mandate 
 erected on the basis of a forced interpretation, it was plain that 
 revelation alone could supply no single and unquestioned standard 
 whereby doubts might be removed. Hence the logic of facts 
 drove men to the admission of private judgment, and the decay 
 of a universally recognized authority forced the thinker to fall 
 back on the individual, and to find in his conscience, his instincts, 
 his reason, possibly in his merely selfish necessities, but at any 
 rate somewhere in his "nature " as a human being, a point of 
 departure for theories of moral conduct and the social order. 
 
 This was in a sense to repeat what the Greek thinkers had 
 done when they found a basis of pohtical order and social justice 
 in the moral nature common to all human beings. But the 
 whole historical situation made it impossible for modern thought 
 to offer so simple a solution as that which had satisfied the 
 Greeks. The conflict between law and conscience, pubhc 
 authority and private judgment, had been raised in too acute a 
 form. The Greeks might be satisfied with the proof that, man 
 being a social animal, his duties as a citizen were a necessary 
 part of the life that was best for himself, and so conclude to a 
 close identification of private and public welfare. But to the 
 modem it was not merely seK-interest, but conscience which 
 often clashed with authority. While to the Greek there was 
 one form of political association which was obviously best, to the 
 modem, particularly at the period of the rise of modem ethics 
 in the seventeenth century, it might be said with more truth 
 that there was no form of political association open at all, but 
 only submission to some form of political despotism. The cor- 
 porate hfe of the Middle Ages was everywhere in an advanced 
 stage of decay. Pohtical virtue meant for the many, not " the 
 capacity to rule and be ruled with a view to the best hfe," but 
 submission to the powers that were. The process of erecting a 
 true commonwealth under modern conditions had not passed 
 the experimental stage, nor had the experiments been wholly 
 encouraging. It would have been to assume too much to lay 
 down that pubhc and private well-being were two sides of the 
 same thing. It had to be recognized that the individual might 
 have a hfe of his own, and that both from interest and from 
 conscience he might have motives bringing him into conflict 
 with the interests of state as interpreted by the ruler. 
 
570 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 Thus the antithesis of the individual and society was more 
 deeply cut than in the Greek days. The claims made by the 
 moral law were more exacting, and in some measure consisted 
 in ideals to which the mass of men have never been brought to 
 render much more than Up service. It was one thing to agree 
 that true well-being for the individual lay in the exercise of 
 qualities which all really admired, and outside the discussions 
 of the sceptic's lecture-room treated in practice as the essential 
 equipment of a gentleman. It was quite another thing to proffer 
 the same justification for duties which few in their hearts re- 
 garded as more than formulas which might mean something to 
 an anchorite, but had little living relation to the affairs of ordinary 
 life. Not only is the modern moral code harder, but modern 
 life is more complex and its ramifications more widespread. 
 PoUtical duty, to instance a single point, may impose on the 
 citizen of a great kingdom, and still more on one of a world 
 empire, consideration for those whom he never has seen or wiU 
 see, and the kind of poUtical virtue so called upon is far more 
 difficult to evolve and sustain in active being than the pubhc 
 spirit of a compact community where every one knows his neigh- 
 bours, and the consequence of a pubhc wrong falls at once and 
 manifestly, if not on the very men who have voted for it, then on 
 neighbours whose sufferings they actually witness. Thus it is 
 owing partly to an advance in thought, partly to a change in the 
 ethical situation, that in modem philosophy the Greek antithesis 
 between the real and the apparent good, the choice respectively 
 of reason and desire, deepens into the opposition of duty and 
 interest, and morality presents itself, not so much as a source of 
 happiness which every enhghtened man must eagerly choose for 
 himself, but rather as a law imposed on human nature to the 
 cheerful performance of which it may by an effort attain, but 
 which compels by authority, rather than appeals by inherent 
 attractiveness. Duty and self-sacrifice become central concep- 
 tions of ethical theory. At the same time, since conduct cannot 
 have moral worth unless it is unconstrained, the sanction of 
 this law had to be found within human nature itself, and even 
 in a sense within the nature of each individual, who must at least 
 adopt of his own choice the law by which he is compelled uni- 
 formly to consider other interests than his own and may be con- 
 strained to sacrifice all that is dear to him. Thus the modern 
 world has the ancient paradox before it in a yet sharper form. 
 For though it may be said that true well-being hes for us, as for 
 the ancients, in well-doing, and though this solution is occasion- 
 ally brought up afresh, yet it fails to the modem mind to be more 
 
MODERN ETHICS 571 
 
 than a re-statement of the problem to be solved, since that well- 
 being which was an undivided conception for^he Greeks has 
 been analyzed for us into the Happiness which a man experi- 
 ences within his own consciousness, and the excellence which 
 another may praise and admire in him, but which may have 
 brought him a heavy balance of sorrow. For similar reasons 
 the Greek axiom that every man seeks the good, though useful 
 in its place, can hardly avail to solve an antithesis which derives 
 its whole point from the frequent conflict of moral goodness 
 with the good things for which our nature craves. 
 
 2. Thus modern systems have moved between the poles of an 
 authoritative moral law and an unconstrained seK-direction of 
 human nature, and the attempt to suppress either term of the 
 antithesis brings about its Nemesis in the movement of thought. 
 The ball is set rolling by Hobbes, in whose system the element 
 of law, identified here with state law, becomes merely derivative. 
 By the " law of nature," as we find it at this stage, each man 
 seeks his own preservation, but since in the correlative " state of 
 nature," where every man's hand is against every man. the Hfe 
 of all is or would be " soHtary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," 
 men agree together tacitly or expressly to confer the plenitude 
 of their natural rights upon a king who shall rule over them 
 and keep them from mutual wrongs. This is the social contract 
 which men make and maintain, each for the sake of his own 
 preservation, since its persistent breach would reduce society 
 to primaeval chaos. Thus, in the name of the Law of Nature, 
 Hobbes reduced morality to egoism as its ultimate basis. But 
 in so doing he provoked the retort that his account of our nature 
 does not correspond with the facts, and a succession of writers 
 lay stress on the several social elements in human nature, while 
 Butler, the form of whose theory is still determined by the 
 questions set by Hobbes, elaborates a complete theory of the 
 natural constitution of man in which conscience is , by the very 
 law of the constitution and with the approval of self-love itself, 
 established as the authoritative guide. Yet Butler in the end 
 fails doubly, not only because he has no provision for the actual 
 variations in the deUverance of conscience, but also because, 
 with a backwash of feeUng from the currents of the time, he end 
 by admitting self-love to a supremacy which would be fatal to 
 his whole argument if he had not future rewards and punish- 
 ments to fall back on. But to fall back on the supernatural 
 was, in effect, to abandon the position and leave the way open 
 for other lines of thought. 
 
672 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 The most vigorous of these, in England, was the attempt to 
 conciliate the egoistic and social sentiments on the lines of what 
 was later known as UtiUtarianism. Partly through the analysis 
 of moral Judgments (as in Hume's Enquiry), partly by the 
 analysis of desire (as in Hartley and the MiUs), the position was 
 reached that the good is universally the pleasurable. But on 
 this at once arose the fundamental question. Whose good and 
 whose pleasure are to be considered ? Mine by me and yours 
 by you, or that of all men by both of us ? In this statement of 
 the question the antithesis of duty and interest was resolved 
 into that between others and self, and assumed a particularly 
 acute form. For the psychological proof that pleasure is the 
 object of desire pointed to egoism. It was my pleasure which 
 my desire was supposed to contemplate. But the thesis that 
 the pleasurable is the good, once granted, was applied to society 
 as a whole. The happiness of all men was laid down as the 
 standard of action, and its promotion urged (as by the younger 
 Mill) as a duty. The reconciliation between these somewhat 
 contradictory positions was sought in the sympathy and social 
 feelings of mankind whether natural (Adam Smith) or built up 
 on a more egoistic basis by a process of association (Hartley and 
 James Mill). Through these feelings a man might come to 
 identify his pleasure and pain with those of others, and de- 
 liberately sacrifice aU purely personal happiness for the pleasure 
 of serving his feUow-men, or to avoid the pain of remorse con- 
 sequent on a betrayal. Taken at its best, however, this explana- 
 tion gives no adequate account of rational obligation. It may 
 be said to show that self-sacrifice is possible, and to offer an 
 account of how the feehng of duty arises in the individual ; but 
 it does not make clear in what precise sense we can teU the man 
 whose sympathies are not sufl&ciently developed to make him 
 prefer another's happiness to his own, that he " ought " to do 
 so, that this is his " duty," to perform which is " right " and 
 to neglect it " wrong." Do these terms simply mean that this 
 is the course of conduct which we prefer and which, if he felt 
 as we do, he would also prefer, or do they mean that the more 
 social conduct is intrinsically preferable whether he or we happen 
 to prefer it or not ? 
 
 If with the last of the great UtiMtarians we adopt the latter 
 view, we impinge upon the Hne of thought which in the form 
 at one time of Intuitionism, in another of Rationalism, has run 
 its course throughout modern philosophy from the Cambridge 
 Platonists to our own day. We need not here refer to earher 
 phases of this form of thought, for rationalism took upon itself 
 
MODERN ETHICS 573 
 
 a new being in the Kantian theory. To the conception of 
 morality as a law Kant gave the strongest expression that it 
 has ever received. For him the very assertion of a moral judg- 
 ment implies the existence of a law binding on all men as such, 
 irrespective of persons and of consequences, and duty is duty 
 only when done for the .fulfilment of this law and for no ex- 
 traneous motive. But again, since in morality man must be 
 free, it is only man himself who can impose this law upon him- 
 self. He is at once sovereign and subject, sovereign as a rational 
 being, a member of the spiritual world, which underhes pheno- 
 mena ; subject as a phenomenon existing in time and space, 
 conditioned by those categories of substance and causation by 
 which alone a phenomenon can exist. As rational he prescribes 
 to himself a law which, as a being in the world of sense, he may 
 obey or disobey. If he were pure reason, he would conform to 
 law without effort and be perfect. If he were pure sense, he 
 could know no law. Partaking of both natures, he is a respon- 
 sible being, the subject, but not always the obedient subject, 
 of a moral law. 
 
 In defining moraHty as law and in making it a law set by 
 man to himself, Kant is in the centre of modern ethical thought. 
 But the pecuUar setting of his doctrine was in part determined 
 by the transitional character of the Kantian metaphysics, and 
 in part by certain exaggerations natural at the outset in the 
 statement of all that a law impHes. Kant's critics have pointed 
 out, for example, that a rational law cannot disregard circum- 
 stances or consequences, as Kant would have it do. On the 
 contrary, if the practical reason in man meant anything, it 
 meant a capacity to be guided by ends and to direct action 
 thereto, and ends could not be served without taking changes of 
 circumstance and all manner of consequences into account. 
 Hence, if there was to be a rational law binding on aU human 
 beings as such without regard to any extraneous considerations, 
 it must be a law binding them to permanent regard for some 
 universal end. Again, those who stand nearest to the direct 
 Une of descent from Kant in modem Ethics admit that Reason 
 was misconceived when it was placed in fundamental opposition 
 to every emotional impulse. Reason, on its practical as on its 
 theoretic side, is that which makes for coherence, connectedness, 
 harmony. It forms experience into a connected whole, and it 
 condemns as irrational only that idea which will not fit into the 
 whole. On the ethical side it is that which makes for unity and 
 coherence among the different and often jarring elements of our 
 nature, and it is to be understood accordingly, not as an authority 
 
574 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 above and outside all feelings, emotions, sentiments and what- 
 ever else may impel us to action, but as a principle working 
 within them towards harmony. If under the name of feeling 
 we include all the interest we take in action and the ends and 
 outcome of action, then reason undoubtedly rests on a basis of 
 feehng ; but while as irrational beings we feel things imperfectly, 
 confusedly and inconsistently, so as to be led hither and thither 
 by the stress of impulse, the work of reason is to gather up all 
 feelings into one steady movement of will-power, to give them 
 unity or at least consistency of direction, and so achieve for us 
 a life that is at one with itself. Such an order is a rational 
 order, because its component parts, instead of conflicting, 
 support and further one another. 
 
 If the work of reason could be so completed that every impulse 
 within us fitted in of itself as part of such an order, we should 
 have what Kant called the perfect will and the sense of duty 
 would cease. But because the work of reason is never complete 
 our nature is never wholly at one with itself, there is strife 
 within us. In part our impulses are harmonized and set in one 
 definite direction, and it is here that we feel that our true self 
 lies. In part they still rebel and chafe against their Umits, and 
 then arises the feeling of constraint and of moral obligation. 
 Thus our nature in a sense lays a law upon itself, and this law 
 is a rational law, and yet its foundation is in feeUng and its 
 purpose is the satisfaction of the permanent bent of our nature. 
 These and similar criticisms urged by the Idealist thinkers who 
 claim descent from Kant fall into line with the metaphysical 
 criticisms by which they sought to overcome the duahsm of the 
 Critical philosophy and to depict the entire process of things as 
 a working out or reahzation of Spirit. In this way of thinking 
 the familiar ethical antitheses tend to be regarded as apparent 
 rather than real. The opposition between duty and interest or 
 reason and desire is resolved into that between the real and 
 permanent self and the iUusory or temporary impulse. The 
 very distinction between self and others disappears in the con- 
 ception of a Universal Self which is the underlying reahty of 
 each, and whose movement towards realization constitutes the 
 World process. 
 
 Apart from metaphysical controversies, the ethical rock lying 
 always in the track of this movement of thought is the idea of 
 PersonaHty. IdeaUsm sets out to overcome the separateness 
 of individuals, but often seems to be only too successful, and 
 to destroy what it ought to explain. Philosophy, then, has still 
 to find a satisfactory method of stating the theory of moral 
 
MODERN ETHICS 675 
 
 obligation in terms which do full justice at once to individual 
 personaJity and to the spiritual unity which binds men to the 
 service of the common good. I will endeavour to state as briefly 
 as possible the conclusion to which, in my own view, the course 
 of thought, as shovra in the considerations here just touched 
 upon, seems to point. 
 
 3. As to the general conditions of the problem, any theory 
 which recognizes an obligation in ethics must admit that there 
 are actions which, if a man does not perform them with his 
 whole heart, he yet feels constrained to perform. So far we 
 have obhgation as a psychological fact, explain it how we may. 
 But further, a rationalist theory of ethics maintains that this 
 constraint, to be of a " moral " nature, must be quite distinct 
 from any pressure of external sanction, i. e. it must proceed from 
 human nature, and so, as Kant showed, be imposed by each man 
 upon himself. But none the less, thirdly, if it is to be some- 
 thing more than a psychological fact — a mere expression for the 
 ultimate preference for one course of conduct over another — it 
 must also be " objective," i. e. it must hold good for you and for 
 me whether you or I ultimately acquiesce in it or not. It is 
 the primd facie opposition of these two last points which con- 
 stitutes the apparent paradox and the real difficulty of moral 
 obhgation. The moral law which I recognize must be some- 
 thing which I adopt as a law binding on myself, and in that 
 sense subjective. Yet it must be a law which binds me, even 
 though I do not adopt it, and in that sense objective. 
 
 The Greeks formulated this problem in the shape of the 
 contrast between my own good and that of others (the aXkorpLov 
 ayadov), and Solved it (Ethics, ix. 8) by the thesis that my real 
 good was the good of my real seK, that this was the reason that 
 is in me, and that reason might tell me to sacrifice the apparent 
 good which lay in the satisfaction of my lower desires and satisfy 
 my real self by serving others. In sum, in morals as in all 
 conduct I seek my own good, but as a moral man I judge truly 
 that my good is to secure the good of others. The Kantian 
 solution starts from a similar antithesis of reason and desire, but 
 rests on a profounder analysis of the moral judgment and of 
 the whole distinction between the objective and the subjective. 
 To Kant, morality is subjective in that it is a law which I freely 
 adopt as my own, which proceeds therefore from my own nature. 
 It is objective in that it expresses a rational order which I 
 apprehend as a rational being, and which I disobey only when 
 and in so far as I am also an irrational being. The principle 
 
576 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 underlying the solution is the pecuharly Kantian thesis that the 
 objective is the rational, and, if this principle be admitted, the 
 antithesis between subjective and objective ceases to be an 
 antithesis between something that proceeds from within and 
 something that proceeds from without. The contrast which the 
 terms henceforward express, hes between that which rests on 
 the caprice, the inchnation, the erroneous or partial judgment 
 of the individual, and that which must commend itself to all 
 men in so far as they are guided by the rational element within 
 them. 
 
 The problem, then, being re-stated, the question whether 
 moraUty can be regarded as a matter of obUgation resolves 
 itself into the question of finding rational grounds for the moral 
 judgment. Now if we seek for such ground outside the moral 
 order we are at once convicted of the attempt to find a non- 
 moral justification for morahty. The rationalist, then, who 
 stands by a moral obUgation must seek it in the content or char- 
 acter of the moral order itself. He must ask himself whether 
 the moral order is a rational order, and he must determine the 
 question by applying the same tests of rationahty which he 
 would use in any other intellectual problem. It is, indeed, ob- 
 jected to this test that the moral judgment does not, Hke the 
 judgment which relates to the physical order, state a matter of 
 fact, but rather imposes a command. We might accept the 
 objection without fundamentally altering the test to be used. 
 For orders issued may be inteUigible or unintelligible, con- 
 sistent or inconsistent. We can compare them one with another 
 and see how they stand when regarded as a totaUty, and, as 
 we shall clearly see when the tests of rationahty are passed in 
 review, we can apply these tests to them as readily as to any 
 other body of thought. But further, the rationalist will not 
 wholly admit that the moral judgment merely issues an order 
 and does not state a truth. On the contrary, it either asserts 
 or implies that one course is " right," or " good," or " better " 
 than another, and in so doing it appears to be founded on real 
 relations of things, and as such subject to the test apphcable to 
 all judgments which claim to be valid and to deal with reality. 
 
 Now the validity of any judgment can only be tested or 
 measured by another judgment independently formed but 
 bearing on the same point. If the first judgment is corrobo- 
 rated by the second, we, so far, consider it vahd. Now the 
 second judgment in turn may demand corroboration. No fitnal 
 test of vahdity can be attained untU we have exhausted all 
 the points of view from which a given order of reahty can be 
 
approached. At this point the system of connected judgments 
 so formed is valid, not in view of any further judgment founded 
 on some outside source, for ex hypothesi no such outside Judg- 
 ment remains to be formed, but in virtue of its internal coher- 
 ence. Thus the validity 6f a single judgment depends on its 
 place within a systein 6f judgments, the vaUdity of the system 
 on its internal coherence, the fact that it is built up of judg- 
 ments which not Otd'y do net Conflict, but maintain and necessi- 
 tate one another.- Final truth in such a system could only be 
 claimed with perfect assurance if we knew that we had exhausted 
 all the points of viewing the order of reality tvith which we are 
 deahng, and this is why final truth is not attainable by man. 
 But the most complete truth which man can reach hes in the 
 most comprehensive system of coherent thought which he can 
 construct, and the way of reason lies always in the effort towards 
 such a system, and of unreason in the adoption of beliefs which 
 conflict with one another and cannot be reduced to a harmonious 
 order. 
 
 Reason, then, generically is the impulse towards a coherent 
 whole, and it takes any partial judgment as an element which 
 must be assimilated by the whole before its final truth can be 
 estabhshed. 
 
 Now what is Reason on its practical side ? When we deem 
 a thing good or bad we are making a judgment and even assert- 
 ing a fact. But that fact at bottom is a preference. I do not 
 seriously think a thing good unless I prefer it to what is indifferent 
 or bad, and such a preference involves not a mere cognitive or 
 detached intellectual state, but an attitude which may be called 
 one of feehng, using the term feehng as a general name for 
 whatever prompts, maintains, arrests, or re-directs effort, or, if 
 conditions either frustrate or do not require effort, expresses 
 itself in emotion or in simple enjoyment or suffering as the case 
 may be. Good and bad are terms for objects of experience about 
 which we feel. The good object is, as such, and apart from 
 incidental counteracting causes, one in which we find pleasure 
 and one which we seek to produce and maintain as long as the 
 pleasure lasts. There is here a harmony — that is, a relation of 
 mutual support between the object and the feeling, for the 
 feeling is maintained by the object and also gives rise to the 
 effort to maintain and complete the object. Conversely, where 
 there is pain there is disharmony, the effort here being to the 
 arrest of the experience, and removal or destruction of the object. 
 If there were in existence only one consciousness with only one 
 object of pleasure its efforts would be solely directed towards 
 PP 
 
578 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the maintenance of that object and the removal of all else. 
 But there are many objects of pleasurable and painful conscious- 
 ness, and between them there is often a practical inconsistency, 
 the conditions which produce pleasure in one relation producing 
 pain in another. Now the rational impulse is as intolerant of 
 this practical inconsistency as of theoretical inconsistency. On 
 the practical side, accordingly, it is the impulse towards a 
 harmony of feeUng which should make life one in its purpose, 
 just as on the cognitive side it is an efEort towards a harmony 
 of judgments making thought one in its principle. Practical 
 reason, then, may be simply defined as the basis of harmony 
 in the world of purposes. This harmony is no more to be 
 achieved without a re-modelling of impulses than consistency of 
 thought without a re-casting of judgments. For (a) my own 
 purposes may conflict with one another, and (6) any or all of 
 them may conflict with those of another person. All such 
 conflict exists for the practical reason only as an obstacle 
 to be overcome, just as contradiction exists for the speculative 
 reason only as a difficulty to be resolved. It makes no difference 
 whether the conflict is due to difference of persons, of com- 
 munities, or merely of tendencies within one mind, for the 
 reason is no" respecter of persons or of anything partial except 
 so far as it can be brought into a harmony of the whole .^ This 
 harmony has behind it the sum of all the driving force of feeling, 
 impulse, will, which it has brought within its scope, and its 
 authority is independent of the concurrence of any particular 
 impulse or any particular person because it is rationally estab- 
 lished, and has already given to the objection such weight as 
 in an impartial regard to the whole system of purpose is its due. 
 It is objectively valid in the sense in which this term can be 
 appUed to purpose, i. e. in the sense that it is rationally estab- 
 lished. Now the plenitude of such authority could only attach 
 to a completed system, but as in knowledge, so in action, the 
 
 1 For want of recognition of its universal character the practical reason 
 is too often identified with prudence and so with egoism. The reason is 
 here thought of as a purely intellectual process of the adaptation of means 
 to ends, and the ends are conceived as determined by personal desires 
 alone. This view ignores the elements of impulse-feeling which connect 
 every man but an idiot directly with some others and potentially with 
 all others, and missing the character of practical reason as an impulse it 
 also fails to grasp its aim, which is to unify not my purposes or yours, 
 but all purposes. In this impulse all that tends to bind humanity — we 
 may even say the sentient world — into one is summed up. 
 
 Conversely, the unity of the world of mind is generally conceived as 
 something mystical. The truth is that its binding thread is just practical 
 rationality, including therein all the elements of emotion and conation 
 that go to make up the rational impulse. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 579 
 
 rational impulse is authoritative against any counter impulse 
 although its results are incomplete, and the in<lividual is there- 
 fore under obHgation to the working code that it has produced 
 except in so far as he can point the way to a fuller harmony. 
 
 4. But in what sense would it " bind " him ? This is generally 
 taken as resolvable into the more precise question, " What will 
 befall him if he ignore it ? " Accepting the question in this 
 form, let us from the outset insist that this consequence is not 
 essentially or universally a loss of personal happiness. Admit- 
 ting aU that can be said of the pangs of remorse and the blessed- 
 ness of martyrdom, we should still be, to say the least, unwise 
 to stake anything on the possibihty of proving that a loss of 
 conscious, reahzed happiness attends every fall from virtue or 
 refusal of duty. We may, if we please, maintain that it is well 
 with the man who does his duty to his worldly loss, and ill with 
 him who rejects it, but in speaking confidently on the point, 
 we can only be judging them from outside. We are measuring 
 them by that standard of merit to which we think men should 
 conform, to which we ourselves wish to conform. We are not 
 fudging by the conscious happiness or misery which the two men 
 experience, for we have no means of deciding with certainty 
 what that consciousness is. If, indeed, we assume both of them 
 to be animated aKke by this same desire to conform to the rule 
 of human duty which our judgment on them postulates, then 
 we may impute those feelings of inward peace on the one hand, 
 and lasting remorse on the other, which we know to be in average 
 humanity determining factors in the balance of happiness and 
 misery. But suppose that we have to deal on the one side with 
 a conscientious soul much tried and often sore bested in the 
 race, and on the other with a consciousness which gradually, 
 perhaps half dehberately, blunts its moral feelings and loses the 
 sting of shame. We may say with confidence that the second 
 is a lower type, but we cannot with equal confidence assume 
 that it experiences more unhappiness. Indeed, the probabihty 
 lies in the opposite direction, and if, nevertheless, we persist that 
 if we had to choose we would prefer for ourselves the former 
 character, we do so on the ground that something other than 
 our own happiness is the motive which does and should move 
 us, and that it is better to be half a hero and miserable than 
 a whole-hearted brute, satisfied with brutishness. Such a con- 
 clusion is, in fact, held in germ in the bare conception of a moral 
 obhgation that is not merely a superior and more exact calcu- 
 lation of the elements of personal happiness and misery. In 
 
580 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 our thinldng on this subject we are too often tempted to get 
 the best of both worlds, to claim superiority to all selfish con- 
 siderations when insisting boldly on the supremacy of the moral 
 law, and then, by an elastic interpretation of happiness, to make 
 terms with prudence and insist that even from this point of 
 view the faithful servant of duty is proved wise in his generation. 
 We are aided in this double feeling by phrases and turns of 
 thought which enable us to identify Happiness and the Good. 
 These terms are, indeed, closely related. We find happiness in 
 conscious reahzation of the good, but we may attain the good 
 without knowing it, or we may strive towards a supreme good 
 at the cost of pain and misery which in the actual measurement 
 of conscious feeUng would probably far outweigh such satis- 
 faction as our poor onward efforts may bring. Once admit and 
 resolutely adhere to the admission that happiness is a condition 
 of our conscious life, and we bring clearly into reUef the truth 
 that the ethical conception of the good carries us beyond our 
 own conscious being and forbids us to look for a reward there. 
 
 This deduction fairly faced, we come back to the conception 
 of obUgation as resting on the relation of self to others, or more 
 broadly, on the position of each man as a member of the great 
 whole in which, insignificant part as he is, he has his function 
 to perform. It is that in him which answers to this position 
 which realizes, however dimly, the nature of the whole to which 
 he belongs, which drives him on and impels him even through 
 the wreck of his own happiness and the ruin of his personal 
 desires to play his part. In a perfect human being, indeed, 
 all such conflicting desires would be overcome. If we imagine 
 the reason within a man finding a perfectly rational order of 
 ideas to guide it, and responding by carrying its own work of 
 re-moulding impulse to completion, we should have a character 
 in which every impulse would of itself fit into an ordered whole. 
 For such a being no satisfaction could be found outside the 
 performance of the duties falling to his lot, and thus for him 
 the antithesis of happiness and duty would be overcome. We 
 do not find this perfection in real life, but we find the mirror 
 of it, or rather a fragment of it, wherever there is love. For 
 here, too, happiness rests in service, and there can be no joy in 
 satisfaction gained at the expense of the loved object. Hence 
 the few men gifted with the genius of love which enables them 
 to feel for mankind what ordinary men feel for wife or child, 
 have always stood forth as the teachers capable of inspiring the 
 world with a new gospel. In ordinary humanity we do not 
 find the perfect adaptation of the impulses to the service of the 
 
MODERN ETHICS 581 
 
 whole. But neither do we find outside the asylum a reign of 
 purely anarchic impulse. There is a movemeat towards har- 
 mony which gives a certain general direction to our lives, and 
 which has within it all the gathered-up forces of the impulses 
 which it has brought into a synthesis. The pressure of this 
 system on any impulse that conflicts with it is what we feel 
 as obUgation. This system may, of course, be formed on narrow 
 Unes and then it only leads us astray, but so far as it is the 
 work of the rational impulse it tends to bring each of us into 
 harmony with the world of life about him. The adaptation in 
 the perfect state in which all emotion is attuned to it is experi- 
 enced as love; in its incomplete state, when the system has 
 to maintain itself with effort against unreconciled elements, as 
 duty. Finally, the constraint which it so exercises is one that 
 we recognize as just and vahd in proportion as we are reasonable 
 beings — that is, in a word, the obligation is rationally justified. 
 This impHes that man is bound by spiritual ties to a community 
 with a hfe and purpose of its own. But the tie is not such as 
 to destroy his separate personahty, but rather such that, Hke 
 Love, it maintains the distinctness of the persons whom it binds 
 together, and hence, though the whole to which he belongs may 
 be called a spiritual whole, it is only by metaphor a self or a 
 person. More strictly it should be a Spiritual whole in the true 
 conception of which Personahty is a subordinate element.^ If 
 this conclusion is correct, the problem of finding the principles 
 of a rational moral order resolves itself into that of formulating 
 the nature and supreme purposes of the whole to which man 
 belongs . To the efforts made by modern thought in this direction 
 we must now turn. 
 
 5. Here, once again, modern thought starts with the idea of 
 " nature." The conception of a Law of Nature binding on man 
 as man had been adopted by the Church, which extended the 
 conception by adding to the principles implanted in human 
 nature itself those revealed in Holy Writ. These two sources 
 of law are set forth at the outset of the Decretum Gratiani as 
 together distinguished from the positive law of states. 
 
 " Humanum genus duobus regitur, naturali videlicet jure 
 et moribus. Jus naturae est, quod in lege et evangelio con- 
 tinetur, quo quisque jubetur alii facere, quod sibi vult fieri, et 
 prohibetur alii inferre, quod sibi nolit fieri." * 
 
 1 Here the term super-personal, employed by some idealists, points in 
 the right direction. 
 « Deer. Grat., C. J. 1. 
 
582 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 This is an ethical rather than a juristic principle. What follows 
 corresponds better both to the ancient and modem idea of 
 "natural " laws. 
 
 " Jus naturale est commune omnium nationum, eo quod ubique 
 instinctu naturae, non constitutione ahqua habetur, ut viri et 
 feminae conjunctio, liberorum successio et educatio, communis 
 omnium possessio et omnium una libertas, acquisitio eorum quas 
 caelo, terra marique capiuntur ; item depositee rei vel commen- 
 datae pecuniae restitutio, violentiae per vim repulsio." ^ 
 
 The just supremacy of natural over state law is asserted by 
 Gratian, and the authority of Augustine ^ and other Fathers 
 adduced in its favour. The same doctrine is maintained by 
 St. Thomas, and the Law of Nature, which was destined to 
 become the associate and leader of revolutionaries, entered 
 upon the modern period with all the odour of sanctity. 
 
 But it was not till the decay of theological ethics had begun 
 that it assumed any real importance. Monotheism had divided 
 reahty into the natural and the supernatural, and when the one 
 began to lose authority men turned to the other as of course. 
 The Law of Nature provided a basis for morals, a standard for 
 law, and a rule of conduct where no law was. It was in the 
 last capacity in particular that it emerged as a working factor 
 in thought . The Reformation had torn Western Europe asunder, 
 and so destroyed that spiritual headship of the popes which 
 had provided some sort of common authority for the rival 
 powers which it contained. The behef grew up that in inter- 
 national matters men were bound by no obligations whatever, 
 and the behef was practically exempUfied in the amazing horrors 
 of sixteenth and seventeenth century warfare. The thinkers 
 who sought to remedy an evil which had almost destroyed 
 civilization in Germany, turned to the old antithesis between 
 nature and human convention. They appealed to the concep- 
 tion of a natural law which all parties recognized, and which, 
 being prior to political sovereignty, could be recognized by 
 warring states without prejudice to their independence. Con- 
 fining ourselves to Grotius as the most influential of the school, 
 it is interesting to see how he conceives the Law of Nature. 
 Combating the assumption that every animal seeks its own 
 advantage, he lays down that there is in man (and even in 
 some lower animals) an ajypetitus societatis, a desire for com- 
 
 1 Deer. Grat., C. J., 2. 
 
 2 In the passages cited Augustine seems to have " divine " rather than 
 " natural " law in view, but they are treated as the same by Gratian (see 
 pp. 13-16). 
 
MODERN ETHICS 583 
 
 munity, and that not of any kind but of a tranquil kind, ordered 
 in a manner congruous to his intelligence. W^find an impulse 
 to benefit others among certain of the animals and in infants 
 anterior to any education. This social tendency is the fountain 
 of natural law to which belong the obhgations of " abstaining 
 from what is another's, restitution of deposits, fulfilling con- 
 tracts, reparation for culpable injuries and administering due 
 punishment." ^ Further, since fulfilment of contracts is a part 
 of natural law, and since a compact is the foundation of society, 
 natural law is indirectly the source from which state laws flow. 
 Lastly, though natural law would have force even if there were 
 no God, or if He were indifferent to human things, in fact all 
 Christians beheve that He will punish disobedience to His law, 
 and natural law, though it proceeds tx 'principiis homini internis, 
 is still ultimately ascribable to Him as the fashioner of human 
 nature.^ Natural law, then, was something based on the nature 
 of man as such, independent, therefore, of the whims of kings, 
 nobles, or majorities, no respecter of the national boundaries 
 or of any other differences that part groups of men, binding even 
 on sovereign powers. 
 
 In elevating human personality above social convention and 
 making its essential attributes tacitly, if not expressedly, the 
 groundwork of pohtical obligation, the law or nature was one 
 way of formulating the most vital tendency in modern ethical 
 thought. Moreover, it appeared to provide the fixed standard 
 which in the decay of the supernatural was required by the 
 ethical thinkers. But in this respect its promises were in large 
 measure delusive. What precisely was natural was, and always 
 has been, hard to say. If it was open to Grotius to maintain 
 that man was naturally social and the fundamental laws of 
 society were deductions from the law of nature, it was also 
 possible for Hobbes to assert that man was by nature selfish, 
 and that no social law could be produced from human nature 
 if it were not for the fear that men entertain of one another. 
 The Canon Law might lay down that by nature all things are in 
 common, while Grotius and Locke would agree that respect for 
 others' property was a natural law. In one sense everything 
 that occurs is natural and everything that men do arises out of 
 human nature, and if that view is pressed the whole difference 
 between the natural and conventional disappears. Government 
 is natural, even the freaks of a fashion are natural. It is 
 certainly in human nature to tyrannize and domineer quite 
 as much as it is in human nature to respect the equal rights of 
 ^ Grotius, Prolegomena, 5-9. - i6., sees. 11, 12. 
 
584 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 another. In this sense clearly nature means too much to be 
 of any value as a term in ethics, but if, on the other hand, the 
 permanent and fundamental conditions of human nature are 
 meant, the question arises how the fundamental is to be dis- 
 tinguished from the accidental and temporary, and the use of 
 the term natural itself provides no test. Lastly, if natural means 
 the ideal, the term which is really wanted when we speak of a 
 standard by which laws and customs are to be renovated, then 
 the canon of what always has been is insufficient for our pur- 
 poses in so far as the natural falls short of the possible, and we 
 could only identify the natural and the ideal by making unhis- 
 torical assumptions as to a state of nature in the Golden Age, 
 which can do nothing but mislead. 
 
 In regard to the "natural rights " of man, definiteness was 
 given to the doctrine by the complementary theory of social 
 compact. Certain primary rights belong to a man as a human 
 creature, and not merely as a member of society. They are 
 regarded rather as attributes in individuals than as elements in 
 a social system. Society is founded upon a contract whereby 
 individuals yield up a portion of these rights in order to secure 
 mutual aid in enforcing those which they retain. Thus, while 
 political or legal rights flow from the constitution of society, 
 natural rights are the unexhausted residue of the original stock 
 with which men are endowed. So much is common ground to 
 upholders of the social contract from Hobbes to Rousseau and 
 Paine, though they differ as to the conditions under which the 
 contract was formed, and to the extent to which and the form 
 in which the barter of natural for civil rights was effected. The 
 general theory is very clearly stated by Paine. 
 
 " Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of 
 his existence. . . . Civil rights are those which appertain to man 
 in right of his being a member of society. Every civU right has 
 for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the indi- 
 vidual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is 
 not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are aU 
 those which relate to security and protection." ^ 
 
 From this principle it follows that opposite deductions might 
 be drawn, and in fact were drawn, as to the sphere and functions 
 of government. It might be used, as with Hobbes, to support 
 despotism ; or, as by Locke, to prove that a king who does not 
 keep an implied contract with his people may be dethroned; 
 or, as by Rousseau, to prove the ultimate and iiidefeasible 
 
 ,1 BigMa of Mart., f. 3Q^. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 585 
 
 sovereignty of the people as a whole. This last conception 
 underlies a good deal of modem political thougjit, and we must 
 note what it imphes. The conception of natural rights, then, 
 leads in Rousseau's argument to popular sovereignty, because in 
 the compact upon which society rests each man surrenders his 
 own rights only in return for equal consideration in the decisions 
 taken by the whole community. On the other hand, while the 
 absoluteness of popular sovereignty is thus deduced from the 
 doctrine of natural rights, it is limited by the same doctrine, for 
 it may be held that in the exchange of natural for civil rights 
 men do not part with aU their rights, but assign some only to 
 society, retaining those which are necessary to the inherent 
 safety and dignity of the human personality. This point of 
 view, in fact, underhes the Declaration of Rights by the French 
 National Assembly. The theory is very clearly expressed by 
 Paine. It is — 
 
 " First — ^That every civU right grows out of a natural right; 
 or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged. 
 
 " Secondly — ^That civil power, properly considered as such, 
 is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights 
 of man, which becomes defective in the individual in point of 
 power, and answers not his purpose, but when collected to a 
 focus becomes competent to the purpose of every one. 
 
 " Thirdly — ^That the power produced from the aggregate of 
 natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be 
 applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the 
 individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as 
 the right itself." i 
 
 The first six clauses of the Declaration of the Rights of Man 
 show how the leaders of the French Revolution endeavoured to 
 give practical shape to these ideas. 
 
 "1. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in 
 respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be 
 founded only on public utUity. 
 
 " 2. The end of aU political associations is the preservation of 
 the natural and imprescriptible rights of man ; and these rights 
 are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. 
 
 "3. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; 
 nor can any individual, or any body of men, be entitled to any 
 authority which is not expressly derived from it. 
 
 " 4. Political Liberty consists in the power of doing whatever 
 does not injure another. The exercise of the natural rights of 
 every man has no other limits than those which are necessary 
 
 1 Paine, 307. 
 
586 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 to secure to every other man the free exercise of the same rights ; 
 and these limits are determinable only by the law. 
 
 "5. The law ought to prohibit only actions hurtful to 
 society. . . . 
 
 " 6. The law is an expression of the will of the community. 
 All citizens have a right to concur either personally or by their 
 representatives in its formation." ^ . . . 
 
 We may sum up in a single sentence this expression of the 
 creed in which the doctrine of the law of nature had culminated. 
 Freedom, equal rights and security of person and property, 
 limited only by considerations of pubUc utihty as determined 
 by a sovereign people, this is the only moral basis of govern- 
 ment. These principles insist upon the claims of human person- 
 ality more fully than any previous ethical system had done ; 
 in so doing, and also, it must be granted, in placing a Hmit on 
 the function of the state, they expressed a tendency with which 
 the modern mind was, on the whole, in sympathy. 
 
 The state is thus conceived as having a sphere carved out of 
 the original totahty of rights in accordance with the necessities 
 of the social compact. It figures as a necessary derogation from 
 the plenitude of individual freedom — a necessary evil which, 
 whenever it passes these natural limits, becomes a positive evil. 
 The good the state can do is negative. It is the free individual 
 on whom progress depends. In this conclusion yet another 
 element in the conception of "nature " co-operated — the tend- 
 ency to identify what is natural with what is best — a tendency 
 whitJh We find alike in the Physiocrats and in Adam Smith, 
 and which was bequeathed by them to the economists of the 
 first half of the nineteenth century. Not only had men a natural 
 right to freedom in industry and trade, but the natural course 
 of industry and exchange produced the best economic results. 
 The industrial and commercial mechanism became perfect in 
 proportion as it was allowed to run without interference from 
 the central government. Under "natural" conditions, i.e. in 
 the absence of attempts at collective direction, rent, profits, 
 interest, wages, find their level. Any attempt to disturb this 
 level produces a recoil, involving friction, waste and misery. 
 Under natural conditions production finds for itself the course 
 of greatest profit and least waste. The need that men have of 
 one another makes them insensibly fiiid the line of least resist- 
 ance in their mutual dealings, and what that Hne will be none 
 can tell for each individual so well as he himself. He moves 
 precisely where his interest draws him, and to deflect him from 
 1 From Paine's Rights of Man, pp. 351, 352. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 587 
 
 the line of movement is to inflict on him and on others whose 
 interests are involved in free dealings with hirg a net loss. 
 
 Thus in various forms — ^now as a Universal Law, now as a 
 Primitive State, now as the source of indestructible right, and 
 again as a beneficent tendency of things — ^the idea of nature 
 formed a setting for men's thoughts on social ethics. It lent 
 itself with an elasticity that was all its own to the varying 
 needs of successive thinkers. But so far as it had a fixed mean- 
 ing in social philosophy, it expressed the antithesis to the de- 
 liberate action of governments, and thus it was well fitted to 
 serve as a rallying point for the modem pohtical movement, the 
 object of which, put in the most general terms, was to substitute 
 the state based upon consent for the rigime of governmental 
 authority based on force. The conception of nature was a 
 useful lever in the demohtion of the old structure of monarchical 
 absolutism and feudal privilege, wherein government very readily 
 appeared as something imposed on the mass of the community 
 from outside instead of springing from their own " nature " 
 within. For the most part it was only too true that the less 
 such governments meddled with afiairs, the better it was for 
 the people concerned. It was true that the social structure 
 which they preserved was not natural as resting either on 
 the fitness of things or on permanent and insuperable necessities 
 of human nature. Nor was it only the destructive side of 
 the movement that the idea of nature expressed. In a dim 
 and somewhat inarticulate fashion the term stood for funda- 
 mental conditions of human welfare, and in particular for the 
 claims of human personality as independent of and superior to 
 aU legal and political obhgations. Round the central conception 
 range, as shown above (Part I., Summary), all the rights claimed 
 by the modern man and woman, and those rights are one pole 
 of modern ethics and of the modem state. 
 
 6. But when the question of the more precise definition of 
 these rights arises, the limitations of the doctrine become 
 apparent and the other pole of ethics comes into view. No 
 right can be made absolute without threatening the destruction 
 of society, and it is impossible to discuss the adjustment of any 
 claims of the individual for many sentences without admitting 
 a reference to the common welfare or some such principle. This 
 is the point of departure for Bentham's criticism. The so- 
 called Rights of man were, according to him, so many " anar- 
 chical fallacies." A man had a right to so much as was con- 
 sistent with the general happiness, and no more. About the 
 
588 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 cause of happiness and misery one can inquire and debate, and 
 finally prove an opinion or disprove it. But as to rights men 
 can debate endlessly and prove nothing. 
 
 " To any such word as right, no other conception can ever 
 be attached but through the medium of a law, or something to 
 which the force of law is given; from a reallaw comes a real 
 right ; from an imagined law nothing more substantial can come 
 than a correspondently imagined right. Lay out of the question 
 the idea of law, and all that you get by the use of the word right 
 is a sound to dispute about. I say I have a right ; I say you 
 have no such right : men may keep talking on at that rate till 
 they are exhausted in vociferation and rage ; and, when they 
 have done, be no nearer to the coming to a mutual conception 
 and agreement than they were before." ^ 
 
 The argument could only be settled by reference to the 
 higher principle of the general welfare, which both disputants 
 could accept. If there is no common good which both admit, 
 definable in terms which both can recognize, there is nothing 
 to limit the possible claims of each. But the common good is, 
 after aU, a vague phrase. Could any means be found of so 
 defining it as to make it an objective test of the right and wrong 
 of action 1 Such means the Utihtarians (if the name may 
 be appHed retrospectively) conceived themselves to have dis- 
 covered in the calculus of pleasures and of pains. The general 
 happiness was the supreme end of creation. Happiness con- 
 sisted positively in the consciousness of pleasure, negatively 
 in the avoidance of pain. The goodness of a form of govern- 
 ment, a social or pohtical institution, a law, or a moral rule, 
 might thus be submitted to a positive and objective test. Did 
 it on the whole produce more happiness than misery ? If so, it 
 was good. Did it produce a balance'of pain ? If so, it was bad. 
 Here was an objective test which a perfected sociological science 
 (here the word must be allowed prospectively) might carry out 
 into detail. In point of fact Bentham set himself to work out 
 a theory of law and government upon that basis. But the first 
 condition of any such undertaking was that rights should be 
 reduced from their proud position. They were not fundamental 
 and inviolable principles, but were means to an end. If freedom 
 in any given direction promotes the general happiness — well and 
 good . Men have a right to that kind of freedom . Let it be shown 
 however, that such freedom tends to produce a balance of pain, 
 and the right disappears. Rights, then, are related to the happi- 
 
 ^ Bentham, Securities against Misrule adapted to a Mohammedan State, 
 1822-23, chap. i. ; Works, vol. vii. p. 557. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 589 
 
 ness of mankind. On the other hand, the two most important 
 " rights of man " are, in point of fact, incorporaljpd in Bentham's 
 scheme. Equahty, in fact, may be said to be its comer-stone — 
 " Everybody to count for one and nobody for more than one." 
 
 " The happiness of the most helpless pauper constitutes as 
 large a portion of the universal happiness, as does that of the 
 most powerful, the most opulent member of the community. 
 Therefore the happiness of the most helpless and indigent has as 
 much title to regard at the hands of the legislator, as that of the 
 most powerful and opulent." ^ 
 
 The thought here appears to be that happiness is the sole end 
 of value, and that any person's happiness is of equal value with 
 any other person's. As in Kant, impartiality between persons 
 is the foundation of morahty. Individual Uberty was also well 
 provided for. The close relation of private and general happi- 
 ness was an essential part of the scheme. Whether by en- 
 hghtened self-interest or by the cultivation of the social feel- 
 ings men could come to identify their good with that of other 
 people, and it was to this free choice rather than to any form 
 of compulsion that the Utilitarians as a whole mainly trusted. 
 On the other hand, since power in the hands of one man or 
 of a few. might be used selfishly, it was necessary that each 
 man should have a share in determining the government of 
 the country, and so the third of the great "ideas of '89 " is 
 reached by another path. There must be democratic govern- 
 ment, not because popular sovereignty is a matter of absolute 
 right deducible from the imagined character of a fictitious social 
 compact, but because it is the only way to check the selfishness 
 of rulers and so ensure the general happiness. 
 
 In this statement government is still tacitly conceived as 
 
 essentially an infringement on the sphere of the individual, a 
 
 necessary evil, the encroachments of which must be carefully 
 
 watched. This attitude to government is not, indeed, essential 
 
 to the UtUitarian principles, but it is characteristic of the phase 
 
 of thought to which Utihtarianism historically belongs. In 
 
 the Utihtarian method, society is still thought of in terms of 
 
 " numbers " of people whose feehngs of happiness and misery 
 
 can be added and subtracted, rather than as a whole, in which 
 
 the injury of any one part is apt to spread its bad influence 
 
 through the body. With the same tendency, an even more 
 
 vital defect is connected. To make general happiness the 
 
 standard of law and morals was an immense advance in the 
 
 ' Const. Code, Book I. chap. xv. sec. 7; Works, vol. ix. p. 107. Cf. 
 Mill's VtUitarianiam, chap. v. p. 92. 
 
^90 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 direction of defining the moral idea upon the old conception of 
 nature, and in Bentham's hands it could initiate a valuable and 
 far-reaching series of reforms. Yet to make happiness the sole 
 criterion, as though the kind of objective hfe in which men find 
 happiness were unimportant, was a mistake which hampered 
 Utihtarianism from the outset in accounting for moral obUga- 
 tion. Even if happiness were in theory the ultimate end, it 
 was not sufficiently recognized — unless, perhaps, by the younger 
 MiU — ^that the kind of life in which happiness is found is all- 
 important. The happiness of one section, or of one generation, 
 might be purchased at the expense of misery in the future, and 
 if this was to be avoided and an intelligent view of the per- 
 manent conditions of happiness for mankind at large was to be 
 obtained, it was necessary to make the laws of healthy social 
 development the object of study and the direct standard of 
 conduct. The direct appHcation of the Greatest Happiness 
 principle might be applied with success to the flagrant abuses 
 with which the men of Bentham's day had to contend, but as 
 more controversial questions arise and greater scientific pre- 
 cision is needed, the calculus of pleasures and pains becomes 
 inapplicable. We cannot think out the value of action in terms 
 of the indefinitely large number of persons affected. We do not 
 know where to stop in taking consequences into account, and 
 the thread of causation is lost as we endeavour mentally to 
 follow it into the dim distance. If we are to trace social cause 
 and effect with any hope of securing tangible and well-grounded 
 results, we must therefore start from the other end. We must 
 think of the corporate hfe of society and inquire whether it 
 exhibits any laws of health, of growth or decay, and so far as 
 we can ascertain such laws we may judge of the broad effects 
 of conduct. 
 
 7. Thus on several sides the Utihtarian method needed to be 
 supplemented by a conception of the collective social Hfe of 
 humanity emerging and maturing under conditions which it is 
 the supreme object of practical wisdom to ascertain and under- 
 stand. Such a conception had already entered into modem 
 thought with the work of writers like Vico and Montesquieu, 
 and formed the basis of an historical treatment of sociology. 
 From these it passed through Condorcet and the St. Simonians 
 to Comte and his disciples. In another incarnation it inspired 
 the Hegehan philosophy of history. Amid great variations, not 
 merely in detail but in the whole handhng of the subject, his- 
 torical sociology. leads to certain fairly well marked, views on 
 
MODERN ETHICS 591 
 
 questions of ethical principle. First of all, it lays down that 
 neither duties nor rights can be studied without a knowledge 
 of social conditions, for without society there is neither duty nor 
 right. But further, social conditions are not the same every- 
 where or at every time. The relations on which the preacher of 
 absolute right and wrong would rest his moral laws are them- 
 selves moving relations. Humanity is a growing organism, and 
 the problem of the thinker is to understand the laws of its 
 growth and adjust the code of conduct which his disciples are 
 to preach to the needs of the present phase. For though there 
 are " laws " of social growth, we are not to suppose that the 
 result is so determined as to be wholly beyond the power of 
 human intelligence to modify. There are " laws " of health, yet 
 there is a use for doctors. It is so far as we understand the 
 laws of social Ufe that we can hope to affect it inteUigently, and 
 in point of fact it is of the essence of its growth that humanity 
 becomes conscious of itself ; that is to say, more and more aware 
 of the conditions upon which its happiness and progress depend, 
 and so capable of self-direction. In this conception of a self- 
 directing humanity lies the basis of scientific ethics. 
 
 As conceived by Comte, it was more than a basis of ethics. 
 Collective humanity, as a being that never dies, but grows, learns 
 and develops throughout the ages, was to be the object of a 
 new rehgion, a religion deahng with reaUties and based on 
 science, that should put behind it for ever the dreams of the 
 theologians and the cobwebs of metaphysics. Whatever there 
 was of spiritual good was to be found in the life of humanity, 
 in the relations of human beings to one another, and nowhere 
 else in the world. With regard to the ultimate origin and 
 basis of things, men could imagine what they pleased, but no 
 absolute truth was obtainable. Throughout history schemes of 
 theology had arisen, flourished and decayed. They had come 
 into being to meet some intellectual or moral need of mankind. 
 They had flourished so long as they satisfied that want ; they 
 had perished when other wants arose, when deeper questions 
 were asked, when they no longer fitted the more developed 
 character of the race. Their strength lay not in their truth, but 
 always in their practical value. For humanity had worked out 
 empirically, as it were, in a bhnd, groping, unconscious manner, 
 both the fundamental institutions necessary to its existence, 
 such as marriage, property and government, and also the ethical 
 and rehgious systems which were suited to each stage of its 
 development. But in all cases there was a large admixture of 
 error, and it was the problem for a scientific rehgion to maintain 
 
692 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the truth, letting the shell of error drop ofl. The gods, taken 
 at their best, were incarnations of essentially human relations, 
 human feelings, human duties. Could not these human relations, 
 these human duties, be made objects of reverence apart from 
 the shell in which they had hitherto lived, and would they not 
 be purer so conceived ? For the very process of incarnation had 
 robbed the spiritual of half its character. By transferring it 
 to a supernatural world, it had given ground for the suggestion 
 that it had no. application to this world, and based it on dogmas 
 which proved a treacherous support, instead of allowing it to 
 stand by its own inherent strength. The problem of positive 
 reUgion was to restore virtue and righteousness, charity and 
 justice, to their true dignity, to recognize in them a positive 
 value as integral elements in the noblest Hfe of humanity, 
 requiring no sanction, theological or metaphysical, to back them 
 up, but relying on their own inherent beauty and strength. 
 But theological religion at its best, as seen in the mediaeval 
 Church, had provided a rule for all Hfe. It had presided over 
 every occasion ; it had been present at birth, marriage and 
 death, in sickness and in health, in good and evil fortune, en- 
 couraging saintship, heroism and devotion, comforting misery 
 and cheering the penitent. In all these directions the conception 
 of humanity was to fulfil the same function ; it was the focus 
 and meeting-point of all good and resolute effort ; the humblest 
 devotee of science no less than the greatest philosophic intelli- 
 gence was contributing to its progress. The statesman, the 
 man of affairs, the captain of industry, had their function, did 
 their service in forwarding the progressive organization of hfe. 
 The poet, the musician, the artist inspired or expressed the 
 onward movement of the human spirit. AH past history was 
 lit up by the conception of this great movement to which all 
 previous efforts of humanity pointed. A positive reHgion would 
 provide for a renovated worship of saints and heroes in the 
 persons of all who had contributed to the march of the human 
 mind. The light thus reflected on the past shone even more 
 brightly upon the present. Every social effort, every endeavour 
 to the furtherance of knowledge, art or industry received a new 
 dignity when considered as contributing, each in its degree, to 
 one great, all-embracing cause. Nor were the minor interests 
 of life swamped by the supreme conception. ReHgion and 
 humanity preached no vague diffused benevolence which should 
 override the more direct and personal ties that bind us to our 
 family, our neighbour and our country. On the contrary, all 
 these had their place. Each was recognized as intrinsicaUy a 
 
MODERN ETHICS 693 
 
 worthy object of devotion, only it must be a devotion limited 
 by the broad requirements of the human religion — that is to say, 
 it must be a devotion purged of the elements of collective pride 
 and selfishness. We must love our country, but not so as to 
 wish it to dominate all others. Our chief pride in it must he 
 in our sense of the service that it renders to humanity, just as 
 the only legitimate pride that we can feel in our own achieve- 
 ments or in the career of those near and dear to us shouM de- 
 pend on the extent to which those achievements or that career 
 has been of service to the world at large. Humanity was not 
 to override those fundamental attachments which make up 
 the larger part of practical life for all of us. It was to purify 
 and co-ordinate them, to infuse into them a spirit of wider 
 sympathy, to elevate them by a deeper sense of their meaning 
 and value. 
 
 The peculiar form given to humanitarianism by Comte has 
 been criticized from many points of view. Fundamentally it is , 
 objected that it propounds to us the worship either of a vague 
 impalpable abstraction, or, if we reduce humanity to concrete 
 terms, of ourselves — weak, imperfect beings as we are. To 
 this, one of Comte's ablest disciples rephes that the conception 
 of humanity as the goal and basis of human effort is misunder- 
 stood. 
 
 " No one thinks that when he mentions the word England or 
 France or Germany, he is talking of a ghost or a phantom. Nor 
 does he inean a vast collection of so many millions of men in 
 the abstract ; so many million ghosts. Man in the abstract is 
 of all abstractions the most unreal. By England we mean the 
 prejudices, customs, traditions, history, peculiar to Englishmen, 
 summed up in the present generation, in the living representa- 
 tives of the past history. So with Humanity. ... Is such a 
 reUgion self -worship ? . . . What explains the error is the belief 
 that by Humanity we mean the same thing as the human race. 
 We mean something widely different. Of each man's life, one 
 part has been personal, the other social: one part consists in 
 actions for the common good, the other part in actions of pure 
 self-indulgence, and even of active hostiUty to the common 
 welfare. Such actions retard the progress of Humanity, though 
 they cannot arrest it : they disappear, perish, and are finafly 
 forgotten. There are lives wholly made up of actions such as 
 these. They form no part of Humanity. Humanity consists 
 only of such lives, and only of those parts of each man's life, 
 which are impersonal, which are social, which have converged to 
 the common good." ^ 
 
 * J. H. Bridges, Essays and Addressee, pp. 86-88. 
 
594 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 It would seem from this that the conception of Humanity is 
 not so much what logicians call a collective concept including all 
 men and women. It is rather that of a Spirit pervading human 
 beings and their life; not, indeed, a Being outside and over 
 above men and women, but a Being that is the best of them — 
 the good that is in each working together — the spiritual whole 
 so constituted.^ 
 
 When stated in these terms the conception of Humanity 
 comes into close relation with a conception towards which the 
 metaphysical method which Comte rejected had made indepen- 
 dent advances. The Hegelian philosophy, for example, conceived 
 history as a process wherein the Spirit, continually seeking 
 reaUzation, arrives finally at self-consciousness. Allowing for 
 difference of terminology and for the more essential point of 
 divergence that Positivism is a theory of practice, Hegehanism 
 a theory of the ultimate nature of reality, this is, after all, some- 
 thing very close to the idea of humanity as a name for aU that 
 makes for good in men winning through the long struggles 
 of historical development to consciousness of itself, and the 
 deH berate guidance of its own life. In either case it is at bottom 
 the idea of the development of t^ie divine in man that is used 
 as a solution of ethical and rehgious problems. From such 
 opposite poles do we approach an idea which would seem to be 
 at the heart of modern thought. The God of Monotheism, as 
 the ideally perfect Being, became, as we saw, separated from 
 the world as. its Creator and Ruler. Prom this separation arose 
 ethical problems which might be concealed under a mass of 
 optimistic verbiage, but were incapable of any genuine solution 
 on the basis of an unconditional creation of things by a Being 
 who is perfect in himself. We have seen the partial recognition 
 of this impasse, pointing rehgious thinkers through the theory 
 
 ^ If it be said that such a unity of individual distinct minds can only 
 have a mystical meaning, it may be replied that it is precisely the kind of 
 iinity towards which the passage quoted above from Dr. Bridges points. 
 If, further, it is alleged that only the individual minds are real and that a 
 totality constituted by them is not a real being, the reply is that this is 
 a form of the nominalist fallacy. The totality ia not another individual 
 similar to those which compose it, but is none the less the real being which 
 together they make up. All the vital processes of the human body pro- 
 ceed in separate cells. The body itself is not another cell, but neither is it 
 a mystic creation. It is the totality of the cells, and its life the totality of 
 the cellular processes. So in all probability conscious life depends, not on 
 a process in any one cell of the brain, but in multitudinous processes carried 
 on simultaneously in cells that lie far apart in the cerebral mass. Yet 
 consciousness is one. So the Mind of Humanity is the unitjr in process of 
 formation of multitudinous minds of men. To call it " mind " may be 
 metaphorical and inadequate. But to call it a real agency is, I think, 
 literal prose. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 595 
 
 of Free Will to an educative conception of the dealings of God 
 ■with man. Idealism, carrying this further, ha» sought to over- 
 come the cleavage involved in Monotheism, to bring back the 
 divine Creator into the undivine created world. It has thus 
 been led by a very roundabout road to a transfigured version of 
 that indwelhng Spirit with which religion starts, a Spirit which 
 dwells in things instead of controlhng them from without . When 
 the attributes of this Spirit are frankly criticized they are found 
 to imply that it is not the whole of nature, but is conditioned 
 by nature even while shaping it, and strives with things, though 
 they are its own flesh ; and only through the evolutionary 
 process which science, as well as philosophy, recognizes, presses 
 on to that final and complete domination of the conditions of 
 existence which the earher theory attributed to it at its point of 
 departure as the starting point and origin of Creation. 
 
 The conception of Development has been applied and extended 
 by physical science. Biology has carried it far beyond the 
 limits of human history and appUed it to aU forms of hfe. Con- 
 temporary physics and chemistry are using it to explain the 
 constitution of inanimate matter. However Uttle thinkers may 
 agree about its philosophic interpretation, the idea of Develop- 
 ment is the central conception of modern thought, and the idea of 
 Humanity in development holds that place in modern ethics.^ 
 
 If we consider carefully the difierences of interpretation which 
 distinguish different schools of thought, we shall find that they 
 turn largely on the value of this conception — or, indeed, of any 
 conception derived from human experience as an expression 
 of the ultimate nature of reahty. The self-conscious Spirit of 
 Hegel, and the self -directing Humanity of Comte, for example, 
 
 ^ It is one of the ironies incidental to the development of thought that 
 the biological theory of evolution, which was precisely the contribution re- 
 quired from Physical Science to round off and amplify the humanitarian 
 conception of progress, should, for half a century, have been the most potent 
 intellectual weapon against humanitarianism. This unfortimate result 
 appears attributable to a confusion between diSerent planes of thought. 
 When evolutionists set themselves in earnest to find a meaning for such 
 terms as " higher and lower," " fit and unfit," which come so readily to the 
 lips, they cannot well avoid the appeal to a rational standard of ethics. 
 With the introduction of such a standard there arises the possibility of 
 distinguishing the processes which make for the evolution of a higher type 
 from those which tend only to differentiation. The upward process, the 
 " orthogenic line," as it has elsewhere been called, being thus distinguished, 
 it became possible to define its tendency as that which makes for the ad- 
 vance of mind towards self-mastery. But this is again the self-conscious 
 Spirit of Hegel, the self -directing Humanity of Comte. 
 
 It is very noteworthy that Mr. Kidd, starting from the biological point 
 of view, has in his later work {Principles of Western Civilization) laid great 
 stress on self-conscious development as the turning point in Evolution. 
 
596 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 differ primarily on this point. The Hegelian would hold that 
 Absolute Self-CJonsciousness can be proved by a metaphysical 
 demonstration to express the true character of the Absolute. 
 Those who at all lean to Positivism would deny that such reahty 
 is in any way knowable, and would claim' for their principle 
 merely that it formulated the results of experience and would 
 prove a trustworthy guide of life. But the doctrine that the 
 ultimate nature of reality is unknowable is itself a metaphysical 
 proposition which is open to question. It is equally possible to 
 hold that all knowledge is, so far as it goes, knowledge of reality. 
 On this view reahty shows its character in experience, though in 
 our limited experience it shows it only in part. If, then, the 
 whole course of history, or say, rather, of physical, biological, and 
 social evolution, is to be summed up in this^ — that it is a process 
 wherein mind grows from the humblest of beginnings to an adult 
 vigour, in which it can — as in the creed of humanity it does — 
 conceive the idea of directing its own course, mastering the 
 conditions external and internal of its exercise, if this is a true 
 account of evolution — and it is the account to which positive 
 science points — then we cannot say that this is a mean and 
 unimportant feature of reality that is disclosed to us. We can 
 hardly suppose such a process accidental or quite pecuhar to 
 the conditions of this earth. At any rate, as far as the widest 
 synthesis of our experience goes, it shows us Reahty neither 
 as a providentially ruled order nor as a process of fortuitous 
 combinations and dissolutions, but as the movement towards 
 self-reahzation of a mind appearing under rigidly hmited con- 
 ditions of physical organization in countless organisms, and 
 arriving for the first time at a partial unity in the consciousness 
 of a common humanity with a common aim. 
 
 8. To enter more fully into the questions of historical fact and 
 philosophic interpretation raised by the humanitarian theory 
 would be beyond our present scope. But on the ethical question 
 which it suggests a word should be said. To begin with, we may 
 remark that as a standard of action the conception of human 
 development requires some further definition. A Utihtarian in 
 particular might ask whether it is any and every sort of develop- 
 ment that we seek, or only such development as leads to happi- 
 ness. If the former, he will contend that our standard is bad ; 
 if the latter, he will maintain that we are, after all. Utilitarians, 
 taking pleasure as an ultimate end, though we may. call a 
 scientific view of the collective life of Humanity our means to 
 that end. By introducing the idea of historical growth we have 
 
MODERN ETHICS 597 
 
 not, after all, evaded the philosophic problem. How moral ideas 
 have arisen and grown is one question, how aad by what prin- 
 ciple we, as conscious and reflective beings, ought to shape 
 them, is another. We must therefore revert to the question 
 raised by the Utihtarians, and ask how the standard they propose 
 looks in the light of the further developments of thought which 
 have been traced. 
 
 The UtiHtarian theory, we saw, rested principally on an 
 analysis of Desire. Now in the controversies to which this 
 analysis has given rise, two opposite fallacies have been revealed. 
 On the one hand, pleasure has been taken as the direct and 
 universal end of action. On the other, those who have refused 
 to identify pleasure and the good, have denied all relation 
 between them, or have reduced pleasure to the position of a 
 result supervening on the attainment of desire. Now, inasmuch 
 as pleasure is distinct from happiness, this latter position has a 
 justification of its own, but this has hardly been the point of 
 the controversy .1 When we have distinguished Will and Happi- 
 ness as having to do with the permanent elements of well- 
 
 * To resolve happiness into pleasure was the initial mistake of the Utili- 
 tarians. In part it proceeded from the influence of the Humian meta- 
 physics, which denied permanent " substantiality " to the ego and resolved 
 it into a series of states. Such an ego could only have a series of feelings, 
 and to such temporary feelings the name of pleasure and pain are appropri- 
 ate. But at bottom, I think, it proceeded from a laudable desire to define 
 a man's happiness as something strictly pertaining to his own conscious 
 existence. Without such a strict definition the fundamental question of 
 modem ethics is not fairly faced. For the man who sacrifices happiness 
 to duty admittedly " does well," and from this it is easy to proceed to 
 the proposition that " it is well with him," and that he is accordingly a 
 " happy " man. In that way of putting the argument (which has nothing 
 to do with the empirical fact that by abandoning apparent happiness a 
 man may obtain real inward peace, which is conscious happiness in another 
 form) the old ambiguity between happiness as something felt and happiness 
 as the possession of admirable qualities is revived, and the question whether 
 the one should be given up for the other is blurred. The Utilitarians 
 deserve more credit than they have received for forcing a clear statement 
 of the question by resolutely defining happiness in terms of feeling. On 
 the other hand, if the self is more than a series of fleeting states, happiness 
 is more than a succession of pleasurable feelings. If the self is the per- 
 manent constitution or psychical fabric which is the subject of experi- 
 ence, happiness is the relatively stable condition of the structiire — ^the 
 quality which tinges ordinary life and lends it a roseate hue, which makes 
 pleasure joy and pain bearable. I say relatively stable, because though in 
 a measure dependent on our own personality — so that some have a happy, 
 others an unhappy temperament- — it is capable of being temporarily or even 
 permanently destroyed by the really great events of life — some one's death, 
 or the ruin of a cherished hope. It is oi/teWj' n in that it belongs to our 
 personality, and Su<raipaipeT6v in that no light thing robs us of it. But 
 under the misfortunes of a Priam the most that can be said is " StaXiiiim 
 rh Ka\6v." 
 
598 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 being from desire and pleasure as concerned with the temporary, 
 the same question arises in a new form. Is personal Happiness 
 the direct object of Will, or do we choose a certain mode of hfe 
 from merits of its own, and merely find happiness in the fact 
 that we are able to reahze the result of efforts ? 
 
 There is a third alternative which seems to accord best 
 with the analysis of effort and to be supported by comparative 
 psychology. In speaking of pleasure we are apt to forget in 
 EngKsh the Greek distinction between to ■^Sv and ■^ ^Sovi;, the 
 pleasant object or action, and the pleasure which we feel in 
 relation to the object or in performing the action. The normally 
 constituted animal on the whole desires things that are pleasant. 
 Were it otherwise, pleasure and pain would have no func- 
 tion. For they come into existence by serving the function of 
 regulating impulse, encouraging one impulse, and modifying or 
 inhibiting another. The impulse to eat nasty food is checked 
 by its nastiness, the preference for pleasant food is encouraged 
 by its pleasantness. Indeed, in the life of the lower animals aU 
 that we know by direct observation is the encouragement and 
 the inhibition, and the permanent effects thereof. The pleasure 
 and the pain we impute to the animal on the analogy of our 
 own consciousness. The value of this machinery for the regu- 
 lation of impulse is that it enables the hereditary structure to 
 become more elastic. The animal which can learn by pleasure 
 and pain may have impulses which would lead to its destruction 
 if not checked by the painful results, but for this very reason 
 it is not compelled to come into being with aU its modes of 
 behaviour preordained, but may safely possess a richer inherit- 
 ance, enabling it to deal with wider variations of circumstances. 
 The imphcation here is that the pleasurable on the whole coin- 
 cides with the life-giving, and the unpleasant with the harmful. 
 
 Impulse, then, is on the whole regulated by pleasure, and 
 pleasure is on the whole subservient to the needs of hfe. But 
 (1) impulse is the primary fact. It is not based on pleasure but 
 confirmed or modified by it, and the same thing is true of Desire, 
 which is impulse shaped and directed by the idea of its object. 
 The desired object is attractive, and the attraction is not essenti- 
 ally a faint anticipatory realization of the pleasure to be derived 
 from it, but a feeling-tone attaching to the idea itself and giving 
 it driving-force. (2) The adaptation of desire to pleasure, 
 and of pleasure to life-giving or, as we may call them, develop- 
 mental ends, is never perfect. Human, and even animal, nature 
 is many sided, and a function which on the whole tends to pre- 
 serve the stock may have many harmful developments which 
 
MODERN ETHICS 699 
 
 natural selection fails to lop off. Thus the pleasure of eating 
 and drinking, which on the whole is necessary, may stimulate 
 over-eating and over-drinking, which are pro tanto harmful. 
 Further, different impulses and different pleasures may conflict 
 with one another, and those which are on the whole most 
 necessary to the life of the species may be thwarted by others 
 felt with greater immediate intensity. 
 
 While Desires are many, various, and passing, they belong to a 
 self which is single and permanent and which may act as a unity 
 for ends which appeal to it as such. This action, which we call 
 that of WiU, implies a certain inter-relation of the various im- 
 pulsive and emotional tendencies, which are naturally fostered 
 and strengthened so far as they f aU in with the ends which the 
 Will adopts, pressed and re-moulded to adapt them to the course 
 of life which it prescribes, or it may be altogether resisted and, if 
 possible, suppressed. In so far as the ends adopted respond to 
 the main impulses of the individual, giving scope, for example, to 
 his emotional needs or intellectual power, it satisfies, and pro- 
 vides the substance of Happiness, while internal conflict and stiU 
 more the anarchy resulting from the loss of any unifying object 
 are felt as unhappiness and misery. But here again the object 
 is not chosen as a means to happiness, but valued as an end, and 
 the same quahty that makes it valued makes of the experiences 
 active and passive which it yields, a Ufe in Uving which we feel 
 happy. Happiness and WiU are thus in a relation analogous 
 to that of Pleasure and Desire. Happiness in the experience 
 of the Ufe chosen confirms and strengthens the hne of choice. 
 Misery, discord, and the sense of unfulfilment inhibit action, and 
 tend, if all too slowly, to re-shape the course.^ 
 
 What can be said in general terms of the objects which the 
 will adopts ? First, the conditions of evolution determining 
 the genesis ahke of Desire and Pleasure, and Will and Happi- 
 ness, secure a rough and broad correlation of these driving and 
 guiding forces of action with the vital needs of the race. This is 
 
 ' The question of the relation between pleasure and desire, will and 
 happiness, may be put in a simpler form by asking, e. g. whether the value 
 of a given object consists in the pleasure derivable from it, so that if we 
 imagine the pleasure removed the value would disappear also. If the 
 answer is affirmative, the conclusion may be drawn that the thing itself 
 is indifierent — ^merely a means to pleasure. If negative, that the pleasure 
 is, as it were, adventitious and irrelevant. The true answer rather is that 
 the pleasure we take in a thing is merely another expression for the value 
 we attach to it. But the value is attached to the thing. Or if we prefer 
 the phrase, the pleasure is in the thing, related to the thing, not a subsequent 
 efiect which the thing happens to produce and which might as well be 
 produced by anything else. 
 
600 MORALS IN EVOLXJTION 
 
 true of the springs of action from hunger to romantic love and 
 from fear to a patriotic devotion. Thus in the raw material of 
 instinct as rough-hewn by heredity there is a potentiality of 
 harmony between impulse-feeling and the permanent require- 
 ments of life, but there is also manifold opportunity for conflict 
 and loss. Not only may one impulse clash with others, but the 
 effort after self-control may take the form of stamping out 
 capacities and so impoverishing life. Similarly in the relations 
 of individuals and groups. The anarchic self-interest of each 
 segment centred on that which makes for the preservation and 
 expansion of its own stock is matched by the narrowing tenden- 
 cies of repressive despotism. Between these poles rational ethics 
 seeks the line of harmony. Instead of achieving unity by the 
 repression of any given capacity, it seeks, if possible, to take it 
 up, transmute it, and find for it a direction in which it may work 
 with the rest, and in so doing it makes for a life which is fuller and 
 more harmonious. Now if life is good — ^if , that is to say, it is 
 the maintenance of the needs of the individual and the race which 
 forms the groundwork of our aims and our emotional interests — 
 then a fuUer, wider, richer hfe is better, and the fullest, widest, 
 richest life the best. But from the rational point of view, which 
 contemplates the hfe of the race as a whole, any enrichment of 
 life in one direction which is necessarily balanced by loss in 
 another direction cannot on the whole be good. The race as a 
 whole, life as a whole is its concern, and the fuUer life which it 
 seeks must therefore in its many-sided activities be in harmony 
 with itself. The aim of rational ethics, then, is the harmonious 
 development of the racial life, and this, stated in terms of feeling, 
 is the same thing as general happiness, happiness being the sense 
 of a full and harmonious life. 
 
 This analysis of Desire and Will, Pleasure and Happiness has 
 thus led us by another road to that conception of a synthesis or 
 harmony of Action which we said above to be the postulate of a 
 rational theory of moral obUgation. As the supreme object of 
 endeavour this furtherance of the collective life of humanity 
 becomes the standard by which moral rules and social institutions 
 are to be judged. This object includes all the partial aims of 
 man, all his loves, joys, hopes, ambitions, tastes, his love of 
 family and fatherland, — aU, so far as they do not antagonize one 
 another but co-operate. Thus it rests on elements of feehng 
 imphcit from the first in the moral consciousness, but its full 
 apprehension as that which gives meaning to all earlier develop- 
 ment postulates in the collective mind a self-knowledge and self- 
 guidance parallel to the self-consciousness of the individual. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 601 
 
 Moral progress is the gradual conversion of the mind whereby 
 this meaning becomes explicit, whereby its o-vjn unity becomes 
 apparent to it, and the potentiahties of its life and growth as a 
 unity are grasped as the supreme object of endeavour, and the 
 principle governing the rules of right and wrong. 
 
 In essentials this principle is the distinctive achievement of 
 the modem mind. It is true that in the central conception 
 of harmony modern ethics is a return to the Greeks. But it 
 returns charged with all the protest against human limita- 
 tion, aU the romance, the chivalry, the sense of infinitude which 
 are incarnate in mediaeval and ^modern feeling. Now harmony 
 imphes order, measure and system. Divergent elements can be 
 brought into a unity and made to co-operate only when each is 
 fined and pohshed to fit in with its neighbour. Hence symmetry, 
 balance, and in a sense limitation are the features which always 
 impress us in the Greek ideal . It is, indeed, easy to over-emphasize 
 a contrast which strikes every one on the surface. Plato, after all, 
 is the first great Romanticist with his insistence on Eros as the 
 driving force even in the world of pure thought, with his Philo- 
 sopher King who, holding fast to real Beauty and real Justice, 
 moves in an Elysian region far above the turmoil of that poor 
 mankind for whose sake he wiU yet descend as a ruler and 
 guardian into their cave, with his just man sustained by that 
 which makes him indifferent to the opinion of gods and men, 
 who wiU meet an unjust death rather than break the laws which 
 human government is mishandling to his hurt. Aristotle 
 enshrines the same spirit in four words which thrill through his 
 matter-of-fact acknowledgment of human weakness when he 
 bids the thinker as far as may be " put off his mortahty." The 
 Stoic brings the wise man in direct relation to the supreme reason 
 that controls all things, and sets the free life of the soul above 
 the limits of all physical and social conditions. None the less, 
 the ideal to which all alike aspire is that most clearly expressed 
 by Aristotle as the perfection of a type which is in essence eternal 
 and immutable in a universe whose process consists in the reafiza- 
 tion of a system of such typical forms, and the notion of type, 
 even the notion of perfection involves that of something measur- 
 able, defined, and in the last resort limited and statuesque . When 
 we turn to mediaeval life, whether to its poetry or its action, 
 to its rehgion or its chivalry, to its cloistered chastity or its 
 romantic love, whether to the dim vaults of its cathedrals or to 
 the grotesques of their gargoyles or misereres, we are conscious 
 of a wider and more untamable force, a breath from the Teutonic 
 forest urging on to the unattainable and finding no joy in that 
 
602 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 which it can actually reach. We feel it the more keenly because 
 it is confronted with a theory of subordination, an admission 
 of human impotence and nothingness, an exaltation of divine 
 majesty, and a negation of earthly life crushing with vast super- 
 incumbent weight the forces of thought and imagination that 
 have reared it. Every impulse of man is raised to its highest 
 power and is in its turn supreme. The love of God is spoken of 
 in terms of romantic passion and the love of woman in terms of 
 the worship of Grod. The least thought of the flesh is deadly and 
 the knight is stirred to golden deeds of selfless chivalry by the 
 glance of a woman's eyes. The mart3rr bears utter ignominy 
 without raising a hand in self-defence, and personal honour com- 
 jiels a man to wipe out the least fleck upon it in the blood of the 
 assailant. Charity has nothing to do with that Hberahty which 
 is the mean in the expenditure of money. It is to divide the last 
 coat with the beggar and go forth in rags into the world. The 
 sainted king must kiss the leper and wash the beggar's feet, 
 yet the powers that be are ordained of God, and their magnificence 
 and state are proper adornments of the heads of that hierarchical 
 order which is of divine institution. The pope is slave of the slaves 
 of God, but yet is the summit of the earthly order, with power to 
 bind and loose here and hereafter. At every point we are taken 
 beyond what is actually or even possibly human. The require- 
 ment that man sets upon himself is infinite — ^not the harmony of 
 measured parts each rounded to perfection in itself, and as such 
 fiUing its due place in order with the rest, but the measureless 
 which this life cannot attain and which experience can only 
 symboHze. But by the most tragic contradiction of aU, the theory 
 of the infinite, the system of salvation, is the one thing that is 
 worked out to compact and finite form, and in the end to dull 
 and deadly prose. The mediaeval scheme of divine government, 
 with its frigid distinctions, its cold hierarchies of conceptions, its 
 dismembering of truth, appHes the Aristotehan logic to the 
 establishment of an order more statical than that of its progenitor, 
 and mechanical in its interpretation of nature and spirit where 
 Aristotle had ever sought for an organic view. The implicit 
 infinitude of the mediaeval mind broke upon the strong finitude 
 of its theory.^ Modem thought, breaking away by successive 
 wrenches from mediaeval disciphne and urgent to found a theory 
 of life which it can justify in reason, is stiU confronted by a very 
 similar dilemma. The rational appeal is to the nature and 
 experience of man, the rational impulse is to introduce harmony 
 
 ^ Of . on the whole of the above, Taylor, The Medimval Mind, esp. Book II. 
 chap. xiv. ; Book III. ehaps. xv., xvii., xxiii. ; Book VII. chap. xUv. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 603 
 
 into effort and life, but in human nature itself lies the effort 
 to transcend it, in human experience the qu^tions that point 
 beyond it, in the ethical impulse that makes for harmony quahties 
 that brook no limitation and break up any estabhshed finite 
 order. Hence, though social order is wider and in outer relations 
 generally more tranquil, there is a deeper and more perpetual 
 unrest and a swift, unceasing swing of thought. But though 
 there is paradox here and a problem, there is no insuperable con- 
 tradiction. Such order, intellectual or practical, as imperfect 
 man can estabhsh is never complete and all-embracing, but 
 limited and provisional. It has to expand, and the rebelhous 
 elements are the ferment that maintain life and make for growth. 
 But that element which is the spring of progress has a value which 
 in the coolest rational assessment must stand high, and all the 
 higher, in accordance with the strictest scientific calculus of 
 demand and supply, for its variety. It is true that devotion 
 to an impossible cause may waste much energy and break the 
 life of the individual. But the spirit which sustains such devo- 
 tion is the most vital thing in the world, and it is better that it 
 should Uve and act unwisely than perish from not acting at aU. 
 The deeper issues are apt to be stirred only at certain points of 
 concentrated interest, and at first blush there always seems some- 
 thing irrational in preferring a single object to the whole order of 
 normal hfe. But in reahty, if we could start from one of these 
 points of decision and deploy all the line of consequences upon 
 the plane of ordinary experience, it would be found to cover 
 ground enough in mere magnitude to justify the value which we 
 place upon the issue. The theoretical problem of ethics is to 
 effect this measure, and thus find place in a rational system for 
 that which on an over-simphfied view figures as irrational. Its 
 practical problem is to find the real direction of these impulses 
 and so convert them from wasting torrents to irrigating streams 
 in human life. To do this is to make them aware of their origin 
 in human needs and their function in human emancipation. In 
 this the modern spirit has so far succeeded as to transfer the 
 devotion of the martyr and the fire of the prophet to causes 
 more real and free from selfish alloy than that of personal salva- 
 tion. It has spent them in no niggardly measure on the libera- 
 tion of a nation, a class, or a sex, on the emancipation of the 
 slave and the industrial toiler, on the heaUng of the sick, on 
 the advancement of knowledge, the exploration of the earth, the 
 conquest of material power. From the French movement of the 
 mid-eighteenth century onwards it has thus in a manner united 
 the enthusiasm of the Orient, the fighting spirit of the Crusader 
 
604 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 and the social rationalism of the Greek. For it has emphasized 
 the claims of the individual, his rights, his conscience no less 
 than his duties, and has often set the established order at naught 
 if it has seemed to violate what is sacred to personahty. Liberty 
 and social service are the poles on which it turns, and to find the 
 true meaning of the one and the end and method of the other is 
 the task of social theory. The ethics that is to do justice to this 
 liberating and yet constructive movement must aim not at a 
 complete and static harmony but at one that moves and adapts 
 itself to growth. Its model is not the completed circle, but 
 rather the cycle of the fohage ending in the point which enfolds 
 the leaf -buds of next spring. 
 
 These changes affect the idea of harmony in what we may call 
 its form. The whole sum of intervening experience since the 
 days of the classical philosophers has also deepened and enlarged 
 its content. To formulate the character of changes so complex 
 in any summary terms may well seem a hopeless task. At most 
 we may hope to seize certain pivotal points on which develop- 
 ment turns. The earlier Greek ethics of the fifth and fourth 
 centuries achieved a reasoned ideal of personal character and 
 social order in harmonious interaction. But its personal ideal 
 was on the whole aristocratic and its social ideal statical and 
 restricted by the limitations of the city state. The later moralists 
 and, in particular, the Stoics, appljdng the law of nature as a 
 living principle of criticism, expanded the conception of human 
 brotherhood, made the individual — noble or base bom, Greek or 
 barbarian, bond or free — the master of his fate, and set forth the 
 simpler elements of a world pohty. But in the Stoic period free 
 social organization is already giving way to centralized miUtary 
 empire, a constructive social scheme is ceasing to be possible, 
 and the individual is, on the whole, left to grapple with his social 
 surroundings as best he may. Still, the Stoic universalism 
 prepared the way for the doctrine of salvation, which we may 
 take as the pivot of the Christian ethics. Now, salvation is not 
 merely open to all men who accept Christ. It is equally the 
 duty of all Christians to secure the salvation of their brothers 
 and sisters. Universalism thus acquires a new meaning. It is 
 not merely that all have a certain minimum of rights, but that 
 all owe to all a duty which touches the essentials of being. The 
 missionary spirit, the work of practical redemption, takes a place 
 which only a rehgion could give it. It is the duty of each man 
 not only to save himself, but his brother. In another way the 
 universahst principle is richer in content, for the Christian sal- 
 vation is not confined to the strong and wise, but is within the 
 
MODERN ETHICS 605 
 
 reach of babes and sucklings, and the humblest soul has a value 
 which is in a sense infinite, seeing that no g^n elsewhere can 
 replace its loss. There is here at bottom the most thorough- 
 going doctrine of equality and the most comprehensive hope for 
 all men ever preached, and this core of ethical religion remains, 
 however woefully overlaid with the husks of sectarian narrow- 
 ness and doctrinal strife. Yet, the doctrine of brotherhood 
 and the missionary spirit notwithstanding, the Christian ethics 
 remained at its centre individualist and supernaturahst. It is 
 the individual soul that is to be saved, and its salvation is a 
 preparation for another world. The distinctive note of modern 
 ethics is the return to the social and the positive point of view. 
 The salvation of every man and woman is still one pole of ethics, 
 but it is one pole only. Salvation is to be within this life and 
 for this life. It stands not only in the possession of the soul in 
 complete self-mastery, but in an organic relation to a wider life 
 — ^in its simplest form a personal relation to other individuals, 
 in its wider and more complex forms an impersonal relation to 
 the hfe of the community and the race. But salvation so con- 
 ceived cannot be compassed by the individual alone or by mis- 
 sionary effort to the individual as an individual. There must 
 equally be a social salvation. Society has a soul to be saved, 
 and its salvation is in the justice, humanity and freedom reaUzed 
 in its inward and outward relations. Only under such institu- 
 tions and in response to such governing principles can the in- 
 dividual find his right niche and do the work which is to make 
 the best of himself and the best service to his kind. The Greek 
 harmony returns, but charged with deeper and richer content. 
 It is not merely the harmony between the self-development of 
 a wise and strong man and the requirements of a civic order 
 which he, as one of the ruhng class, helps to maintain. It is the 
 wider and more difficult harmony between the claims of human 
 nature in its infinite variety, in all its ascending and descending 
 range of power and scope, to find expression and live its life, and 
 a claim of the collective effort, itself hardly less variable and self - 
 conflicting, towards the reahzation of great ends common to the 
 race. The actual social order, including in that term the system 
 of ethical and rehgious ideas along with the body of institutions, 
 is of the nature of an experiment in the organization of hfe. Its 
 value is relative on the one hand to the requirements of every 
 individual soul within its sway, on the other to the hfe of man- 
 kind as a whole. To bring these two poles into relation is the 
 problem of modem ethics. Thus, where the Greek sought a 
 harmony between the self -development of the individual and the 
 
606 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 stability of the social order, the modern seeks a social order 
 which shall reconcile the ultimate claims of every individual 
 upon society with the claims of collective human progress upon 
 each constituent social unit. Ancient ethics worked up to the 
 doctrine of universal salvation with the warmth of brotherhood 
 and, further, of missionary zeal which this implies. Modem 
 ethics has restored to this doctrine the social and positive 
 content wliich it lost ; and thus effects a synthesis of the Greek 
 and the Christian teaching of social statesmanship and apostolic 
 ardour. 
 
 Finally, the positive conception of ethics in relation to the 
 modern idea of development carries with it a penetrating 
 change in the ethical point of view. Common sense evolves for 
 itself a certain practical standard with which the thinker starts. 
 That standard is at first his own, and to get from it to a reasoned 
 system he has to view his own mental make-up from outside, 
 to regard it as something due to determinate conditions, to find 
 out what these conditions are, and to distinguish what is per- 
 manent and necessary in their operation from that which is 
 transitory or accidental. This is the relative standpoint, which 
 is characteristic of modern thought and is essential to the full 
 appreciation of development. 
 
 Ancient thought, it is true, recognized a conventional element 
 in estabhshed custom, and contrasted it with the natural, which 
 is the same everywhere. But, to the modern, nature is itself a pro- 
 cess and human nature a composite product — the very structure 
 of our moral consciousness depending on anterior conditions. 
 Now, if we are to attain an objective — that is, a rational — 
 standard, we must lay bare these conditions. We must resolve 
 the structural concepts which at first we take for granted — con- 
 cepts such as self and others, good and bad, right and duty, with 
 the experiences out of which and the thought processes by which 
 they are built up. Starting from these elements we can thus re- 
 cognize in the ethical code of mankind from the most primitive 
 onwards, beginnings of a synthesis, incomplete and inconsistent, 
 no doubt, yet, such as they are, the indispensable basis of social 
 life. Through many failures and relapses, these beginnings are, on 
 the whole, enlarged in response to the needs of a wider social life. 
 This movement is referable, both in its origin and its advance, 
 to those elements of thought and feeling which we have here 
 gathered together under the name of practical rationality. 
 Such rationality, co-operating in countless individuals through 
 the generations, is a real bond of unity in mankind, and it is this 
 unifying principle that has been called Humanity. Now, in 
 
MODERN ETHICS 607 
 
 the culmination of ancient ethics man -was to serve humanity as 
 a community witliin the kosmos, but we might say rather that 
 humanity is that — call it spiritual principle, organic unity or by 
 whatever inadequate name we may — which works towards the 
 realization of a kosmos that is as yet a very distant ideal, and 
 not only are duties owed to it, but its needs prescribe what our 
 duties are. Hence, though our argument has gone to show that 
 our ethics are founded on deep-lying instincts, and though the 
 humanitarian idea is held to be only the exphcit recognition of a 
 principle that was all along implied in the conscious moral judg- 
 ments of mankind, yet the effect of this principle, once recognized, 
 is a Copemican change of attitude. Hitherto human conduct 
 has been conceived as bound by law — first by divine law, then by 
 natural law. But if the humanitarian principle is correct, man 
 is not made for the law, but the law for humanity. Instead of 
 supernatural rehgion being the basis of ethics, ethics becomes 
 the test to which such rehgion must submit. The relative value 
 of the creeds is measured by their ethical efficacy, and the ethical 
 consciousness is seen to be the only firm point of departure for 
 any attempt at a spiritual interpretation of nature. As with 
 religions, so with social institutions. Property, contract, mar- 
 riage, the position of women, class distinctions, pohtical obliga- 
 tions, the right of warfare and of conquest — all these in olden 
 days were founded on custom and supported by divine authority. 
 Whoso would seek the good of society must work within the 
 limits thus rigidly laid down by the moral or the rehgious 
 tradition. When revolts against these limitations occurred, they 
 took the form of appeals to expediency, or perhaps of a sweep- 
 ing denial of moral obhgation, or, again, of the assertion of some 
 counter principle of no greater claims than that which was called 
 in question. In a rationahstic system of morals the whole point 
 of view is changed. These institutions have grown up in rough 
 accordance with the circumstances of social life, but they have 
 no value or vaUdity except in so far as they subserve human needs. 
 On the other hand, they are not to be set aside on particular 
 occasions when they happen to be inconvenient, as the doctrine 
 of expediency suggests, not 03Qly because in the long run nothing 
 is so inexpedient as the practice of unsetthng society, but also 
 because the rights and duties recognized by the ordinary con- 
 sciousness when viewed genetically are seen to have arisen in 
 response to social needs, and to contain elements, however 
 roughly put, of ethical truth. They are like the empirical 
 generalizations of common sense which contain truth, though 
 not accurately true as they stand, and historically speaking they 
 
608 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 are seen to develop, to expand, define themselves, deepen and 
 purify their meaning as ethical thought has developed. Thus 
 they lie ready to hand as a basis for a scientific sociology. 
 Sociology, therefore, is not compelled to start from an empty 
 slate and consider what in each case would promote the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number. It has rather to take the 
 institutions it finds, and aim at a scientific determination of the 
 function which they fiU in the life of humanity.^ Take the case 
 of private property, for example. Here is an institution which 
 from one point of view may be regarded as the only method of 
 securing to the workman the fruits of his toil. Under suitable 
 conditions it may in reahty have that effect. Under other 
 conditions it may as easily become the means of excluding the 
 great mass of the people from the means of earning an indepen- 
 dent livelihood. When the right of property is made absolute, 
 whether as right natural or right divine, there is no ethical means 
 of discriminating between the two cases. All the wealth of the 
 country might fall into a single hand, as in Mr. Wells's romance, 
 yet if it were in the bond, society could do nothing but submit. 
 Rights pushed to this point are answered by rebeUion, and are 
 therefore justly stigmatized by Bentham as anarchical fallacies. 
 They provoke the doctrine of pure expediency, which denies that 
 there is any right but the welfare of society, and forgets that it 
 is essential to the welfare of society that the obligations and 
 expectations of its members should be defined and secured. The 
 rationalist criticism of property would have to meet aU these 
 points. It would have to discuss the functions which the in- 
 stitution of property performs, and so define it as to secure that 
 it should perform those functions and obstruct no other useful 
 organ of the social structure. It could not be satisfied with 
 upsetting generally recognized rights wherever they happen to 
 be inconvenient, nor with the permanent maintenance of rights 
 which can be shown to entail a balance of evil consequences. 
 It would have to take the institution of property and examine 
 it in all its developments and ramifications, to consider in- 
 heritance and bequest, the nature of exchange and the resulting 
 
 ^ The great historical example of this method is, of course, the work of 
 Bentham. For an estimate of the reforms achieved under his influence, see 
 Dicey, Law and Opinion in England, pp. 183-209. Professor Dicey, in 
 whom after many years Bentham at length finds a fair judge, does not 
 ignore the limitations of the Utilitarian basis. These, in fact, were such 
 as to render sure going possible only so far as the means to the general 
 happiness were matter of obvious common sense. For the more complex 
 problems — economical, social, religious, political — of the modern world a 
 scientific sociology is needed, and the need is even more urgent than in 
 Bentham's time. 
 
MODERN ETHICS 609 
 
 distribution of wealth under the conditions of modem industry, 
 the effects of monopoly and the growth of values arising from 
 the increase of population, the morahty of acquiring wealth 
 from occupations injurious to the people at large — these and 
 countless other details have to come up for judgment in a scien- 
 tific reconstruction of the nature and measure of the rights of 
 property which a rational scheme of ethics would recognize as 
 suitable to be maintained in the permanent interests of society. 
 
 9. Such a reconstruction is not the work of a day — and 
 in social development, be it remembered, a hundred years are 
 but as yesterday. If we would know the fruits which ethical 
 rationalism has borne we must seek them, not in the work of any 
 one school which has apprehended the principle in all its fulness 
 — for no such finahty is as yet, if it is ever, possible — but scattered 
 in the work of different and often opposing schools, in which 
 the principle has been apprehended partially or under different 
 aspects. Indeed, the influence of the humanitarian spirit in the 
 modern ivorld has been far wider than that of all the schools 
 which could be called distinctively humanitarian.^ For where 
 there are few who will agree that human ethics form the root 
 from which all true knowledge of rehgion springs, there are many 
 who wiU admit that the relation between religion and ethics has 
 been in a manner reversed in the modern world, so that whereas 
 ethics was formerly based on rehgion, religion is now deemed to 
 have its firmest root in ethics. Many, again, who would doubt 
 or reject the conclusions reached above as to the ultimate basis 
 of obhgation, would yet admit that humanitarian ethics, whether 
 acting directly or through a revivified rehgious consciousness, 
 has had a large share in the distinctive changes that have made 
 the modem state and the civihzation of the modern world. In 
 this broader sense humanitarianism has, in fact, touched every 
 department of practical morals — class and racial divisions, the 
 position of women, the law of marriage, the criminal law, the 
 
 1 Still more obviously is it wider than any sohool or schools of Philosophy. 
 The distinctive ideas of the modem mind have expressed themselves in a 
 thousand ways, in lyric poetry and in music, in fiction and the drama, as 
 well as in avowed political and sociological or religious discussion. In 
 particular, the contrast between the realities of human nature and the con- 
 ventional assumption of traditional ethics has been handled with more 
 boldness and far more wealth of detail by the novelist and the dramatist 
 than by the professed philosopher. If in the text I have confined myself 
 to philosophy, it is because here the movement of thought receives, not 
 indeed its fullest expression, but its most exact analysis, and is therefore 
 presented in the form most easily comparable with the thought of earlier 
 
 68. 
 BB 
 
610 MORALS IN EVOLTJTION 
 
 law of war, the rights and duties of states, the claims of 
 nationality, the right of property, the law of contract, the rights 
 of association and of citizenship, the equaUty of religions. We 
 find the humanitarian spirit in that re-casting of values which 
 makes the infliction of misery on mankind a sin not to be erased 
 by any access of national glory. We find it in the heightened 
 sympathies which begin to make cruelty a crime, and in the 
 calmer insight into human nature which banishes the use of 
 cruelty in the repression of crime. We find it in the heightened 
 belief in the power of reason which suggests that in the end 
 rational suasion and just treatment are better methods of leading 
 men to see what is good for them than the shorter and sharper ex- 
 pedients of the drill sergeant, that freedom to advocate error is the 
 best social safeguard for truth, and to rule by the consent of the 
 governed the surest road to social stability. Humanitarianism, 
 indeed, has justified the Christian ethics on its positive side. As 
 against those who maintained that the Sermon on the Mount had 
 only an ideal meaning appUcable to a better world, it has vindi- 
 cated the practical application of the Beatitudes to this world of 
 ours. It has shown that when we look at matters from the point 
 of view of common humanity it is true that there is none so 
 lowly but he must be considered equally with the noblest, that 
 the spirit of mild equity is better even in the interests of order 
 than that of harshness, that it is a hard fact that hatred does not 
 cease by hatred but by love, that the fundamental remedy for 
 evil and for error is not physical force but spiritual regeneration. 
 In a similar spirit it has been able to show that in industry it 
 is not the hard master but the liberal employer who practises 
 the best economy, that from the mere point of view of the output 
 free labour is better than slavery, and highly organized labour 
 than that of the sweater's den ; that in pohtics self-government 
 is a better preservative of union than a centrahzed despotism, 
 and that order is best maintained when those who have to obey 
 share in the framing of the rules. In a word, it has not only 
 reconstructed ethics, but it has shown that the ethical is vaHd — 
 that it works as a force to be reckoned with in human affairs. 
 But with no less emphasis ethical rationaKsm has insisted on 
 that active development of human qualities which supernatural 
 religions have too often ignored. It has justified individuals, 
 classes, creeds, nationalities, that have stood resolutely by their 
 rights and fought for their liberties. It has fostered the newer 
 education of the faculties and ridiculed the sentimentaUsm which 
 regarded all independent initiative in one half of the race as a 
 kind of indecency. In short, it has conceived the permanent 
 
MODERN ETHICS 611 
 
 elevation of both sexes and all classes to a life in which they 
 could enjoy that free and full cultivation of their powers, which 
 the best of the older civilizations only imagined to be possible 
 for a narrow class. 
 
 Of the future of rationahsm it is not our business to speak. 
 We are not concerned with prophecy, but with the analysis of 
 past and present tendencies. But one common misconception 
 has, I hope, been avoided in the account here given. There is a 
 tendency to think of any " rational " system as claiming a certain 
 finahty, as forming as it were a closed circle from which the world 
 of imagination is quite shut out. Nothing could be further from 
 the true spirit of reason, which insists as a first principle on the 
 relativity of all human conceptions, on the narrowness of the 
 area reclaimed by knowledge as compared with the ocean of 
 reahty, and on the unhmited power of human capacity to expand 
 and explore. Nothing is more certain, if the rationaUst doctrine 
 is true, than that doctrine itseH will grow, and, as growth imphes, 
 wUl change. But, precisely because such changes are to be ex- 
 pected, any attempt to define their outcome must be valueless. 
 The rational ideal must be an ideal of growth that can accept 
 change, and as it were assimilate it. We may hold the expan- 
 sion of human faculty, the perfecting of social unity, the as- 
 cendency of mind over the conditions of nature and its own 
 existence, for formulas which in different words express im- 
 perfectly, but in the best way at present attainable, the supreme 
 end in which aU human interests are summed up. But whither 
 this expansion, this growing sovereignty will lead us, is a question 
 to which we can return no certain answer. We stand on the 
 edge of illimitable, unexplored regions, into which our vision 
 penetrates but a little way. But at least we can dismiss as 
 foohsh the fear that science will exhaust the interest of reahty, 
 or peace destroy the excitement of hfe, or the reign of reason 
 cramp imagination. The conquests of mind have a very different 
 effect. The more territory that it brings under its sway, the 
 vaster the unconquered world looms beyond. 
 
 Note. — This chapter has been revised at a time when the humanitarian 
 ethics is under eclipse, and in re-publishing it the writer is aware that he lays 
 himself open to a criticism and a question. The criticism would be that he 
 has given no space to the rival which for the time being has gained the upper 
 hand, the principle of forcible self-assertion in its various forms. The 
 types of thought which radiate from this conception as a centre certainly 
 deserve close analysis, but this analysis wovild belong rather to a work on 
 ethical theory and its applications than to one concerned with the main 
 outlines of ethical development. A doctrine which the writer regards not 
 as ethical but as anti-ethical could only come within his scope if he were 
 to follow out every branch and side-track of misdirected thinking, which 
 
612 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 is foreign to his purpose. But at this point the question may be raised 
 whether the doctrine of super-morahty — the indiHerence of the strong 
 man or of the strong government to the claims of personaUty or the rights 
 of other people — <loes not really express the main tendency of the modem 
 mind. Hvunanitarianism, it may be held, was a temporary product of the 
 eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The movement which set in with 
 full vigour after 1870 is conceived by the humanitarian as a reaction, but 
 has the twentieth century and the future with it. To that we may reply 
 that it may have the future with it — that no one can foretell — ^but it will 
 not be a future of civilization. It may be that the humanitarian spirit is 
 not yet strong and coherent enough to establish itself, that its partial and 
 qualified successes represent a culminating point in civilization, and that 
 the world will have to undergo another period of re-barbarization before 
 it pulls itself together for a more enduring effort. But prediction in 
 sociology is a fond thing vainly invented. We set out at the beginning to 
 analyze and compare stages of ethical development, and of these the highest 
 and most distinctive of the modem mind, whatever its influence or its 
 future fate may be, is, I would still contend, humanitarianism. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE LINB OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 
 
 1. Ethics as treated in the present work is the study of the 
 regulation of life. This regulation, as we saw in chapter i., 
 begins in the animal world. We find it, indeed, in the lowest 
 grades of life. For while at this level inteUigence, in the sense of 
 the purposeful use of the animals' own experience, plays a small, 
 perhaps at the bottom of all, a vanishing part of the matter, 
 action is determined in almost every detail by methods of re- 
 sponse to stimulus (internal or external) which are fixed by the 
 structure inherited by each individual from its ancestors. There 
 is every probabihty that these methods, which display a general, 
 though by no means perfect, adjustment to the requirements 
 of the organism are in an indirect sense actually determined 
 by those requirements. In every generation individuals which 
 gave the responses best suited to preserve themselves and bring 
 offspring into the world would probably survive in the largest 
 numbers, and by the constant repetition of this process structures, 
 fixedly determining the most suitable response to each kind of 
 stimulus, would arise and be handed on. In this exceedingly 
 slow, cumbrous and roundabout method, some of the experiences 
 of the past generation (those, namely, which directly affect Ufe, 
 death, and reproduction) determine the behaviour of the present 
 generation, and so determine it as to aid in assuring the future 
 maintenance of the race. Thus, from the lowest organic grades 
 upwards we have a rough correlation of the past, present and 
 future experience of the species. 
 
 The simplest responses so determined are, as we saw, of the 
 Reflex type. These proceed with an almost unvarying mechani- 
 cal sameness, with httle, if any, adaptability to varying needs. 
 But at a shghtly higher stage there appear Instincts which, 
 though they are generically inherited modes of response with 
 essentially the same history and function, are more elastic in 
 their operation and admit, as they expand, of correction by 
 experience and modification according to varying requirements. 
 Such instincts, as has been remarked, are not confined in their 
 function to the service of the individual. They are directed to 
 
 613 
 
614 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 the production of the young as weU as to the maintenance of 
 the hfe of the parent. At a fairly low level they are directed, 
 further, to the preservation of the young when produced. At 
 first very rudimentary, parental care assumes more and more 
 importance as we ascend the scale and as intelligence arises to 
 assist it, but there is no reason to doubt that its basis is through- 
 out instinctive. That instincts of this kind should arise in the 
 animal world might, indeed, be expected from the operation of 
 those conditions under which instinct has grown up. What we 
 have supposed is that certain stocks have survived in prepon- 
 derating proportion in so far as the behaviour of their members 
 was weU adapted for the maintenance of the stock, and the pro- 
 duction and care for the young by each individual or each pair 
 would be as important an element in this process as the preser- 
 vation of each individual itself. Thus biology does not lead us 
 to assume an original egoism or self-regard out of which altruism 
 is evolved as a secondary result. Egoism is something at once 
 too deUberate and too limited to be primitive. What we infer 
 ahke from biological principles and from observed facts is rather 
 an unreflective, possibly a quite unconscious, impulse growing 
 by heredity into a determinate instinct producing responses 
 adapted to the maintenance of the stock by means of the 
 maintenance of the life of the agent and its young. 
 
 In the lowest stages there is no reason to think that instinctive 
 actions are accompanied by any sense even of the proximate 
 end which they are adopted to secure. Not only so, but there 
 are definite reasons for thinking the contrary. Such bhnd 
 action we call generically Impulse. But far down in the animal 
 scale we found cases in which impulses are arrested by pain or 
 encouraged by pleasure. These introduced us to a new feature 
 in the conditions affecting behaviour. The act of the individual 
 is now no longer guided by the inherited structure, but, in these 
 cases, by the effect of the individual's own past experience as 
 well. The inherited structure is affected by experience, and the 
 reactions which it will give are re-modelled accordingly, with the 
 result that they are better adapted to securing an immediate 
 benefit to the animal in the shape of a satisfaction obtained 
 or a pain avoided. 
 
 It would be premature to call this modification of behaviour 
 intelligent. But, still within the animal world and on the plane 
 of instinct, we get a higher adaptation. We find actions which 
 are modified, not because they are felt as pleasurable or painful, 
 but because they produce pleasure or pain in the sequel. That 
 is, the act and its consequences are distinct for the animal ; and 
 
THE LINE OP ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 615 
 
 the relation between them seems to be intelligently rather than 
 mechanically established in its mind, since e. g. an animal which 
 has been punished for some darhng sin wm restrain himself 
 under circumstances which might lead to detection, and enjoy 
 himself when he feels secure. Here, as we find that action is 
 successfully varied according as it does or does not produce a 
 given effect, we may say that the relation of the act to the 
 effect, that is the purpose, is the determining factor. Impulse 
 so modified becomes Desire and Aversion. On the other hand, 
 though we should say that it is desire for things that are 
 pleasant (to. ^Se'a) rather than for pleasure (■^Soi'17), it is still 
 pleasure (and pain) that are the moderators of desire. 
 
 But the same intelhgenee which transforms impulse into 
 desire renders possible the concrete apprehension of other 
 individuals. To the higher animal, its master, its young, its 
 friends, and its enemies are known apparently with some 
 measure of individual recognition, and, moreover, their be- 
 haviour, what they do, what they express, and what is done to 
 them, are often matters of Uvely concern. Hence, though we 
 can no more see inside a dog's mind than inside that of another 
 human creature, we attribute sympathy to the one as to the 
 other, and if we allow the dog intelligent purpose in securing 
 his own pleasure and avoiding his own pain, we must by the 
 same reasoning treat as purposeful what he does for another 
 creature, human or animal. So we may attribute, not merely 
 the gregarious instinct, but also the rudiments of a social inter- 
 course to the higher animals, and hold that their actions are 
 adapted, not only by instinct, but also in some measure by 
 conscious intelhgenee to the protection, reUef, or satisfaction 
 of those for whom they feel affection. Thus we now find a 
 considerable enlargement of the sphere of intelhgenee. We find 
 it aiding in the adaptation of actions not only to the immediate, 
 but to the somewhat more remote satisfaction of the agent, and 
 also to the satisfaction of others whom the agent loves. But 
 in all this it must be remembered that the inherited psycho- 
 physical structure is the underlying condition. It is that which 
 makes experience pleasant or painful, and it is this, for the most 
 part, which renders possible and also limits the circle of affection.^ 
 The main Unes of behaviour, social as well as self -regarding, are 
 
 • I mean, e. g. that though a mother cat may tend a kitten inteUigently 
 at times, yet the basis of mother love is instinctive. At this stage " natural 
 selection " would even combat a wider love, since it would interfere with 
 the predominance of any given stock which indulged it. So the conditions 
 of race maintenance appear both as positive and negative determinants of 
 social feeling. 
 
616 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 laid down by inherited structure in accordance with the con- 
 ditions of race maintenance. Only variations within these lines 
 are left to the play of intelligence. Nevertheless, this play 
 increases the adaptabihty of the individual, enlarges the part 
 which it plays in the world, and enables it to maintain the 
 stock with a smaller number of descendants and with less waste 
 of life. 
 
 2. While animal purposes, in the strict sense of the term, 
 appear to be hmited to the concrete results of each particular 
 action, and, so far as directed to the good of another, to be 
 swayed wholly by feeUng, in man we saw that the rise of 
 general conceptions — a process which may be regarded as at 
 once the effect and the cause of the growth of language- — en- 
 larges the scope of purpose and renders possible the laying 
 down of fixed rules by which action is judged and the handing 
 on of these rules by tradition. Forming a concept of himself as 
 a permanent being with varied interests, of his wife or children, 
 his social group, etc., in the same manner, man re-acts to these 
 larger interests just as the animal does to the immediate 
 stimulus of desire. This re-action to larger purpose we have 
 called Will ; distinguishing it from Desire, because in it the 
 whole personality tends to be involved rather than a single 
 sense or a single emotion, and because its object is not that 
 which gives pleasure, but those larger vital issues in which 
 the more stable conditions of happiness are found. But the 
 will does not set to work to construct its ends in a kind of 
 vacuum of the pure reason. It finds itself guided and limited 
 from the first by rules containing the traditions of society, and 
 forming a standard by which the conduct of each man wiU be 
 judged. These rules embody a tradition, the origin of which is 
 for primitive man himself lost in myths. We do not, and 
 probably never shall know in detail the actual stages by which 
 the earliest customs originated. On the other hand, we do 
 know something of the conditions by which custom in general 
 is maintained and of the forces by which it is modified. We 
 know, for instance, how customs change and grow and disappear 
 unconsciously as an individual stretches a point here or makes 
 a new apphcation of a precedent there. We can see how the 
 interaction of multitudinous forces transmutes custom and 
 produces a new tradition before any one has been aware of the 
 change, and we have no difficulty in conceiving the original 
 growth of custom out of the inherited impulses of gregarious 
 man as proceeding along the same general lines. It needs but 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 617 
 
 that these impulses should be formulated and generalized, and 
 there is already custom in germ, and the gro^j^th of custom will 
 be of the highest value to nascent society as enabling men to 
 understand each other, i. e. to know what in given circum- 
 stances each may expect from the other. The hues on which 
 custom is formed wiU, however, be determined in each society 
 by no reasoned principle, but by the pressures, the thousand 
 interactions of those forces of individual character and social 
 relationship which never cease re-moulding what they have 
 made — men's loves and hates, their hopes and fears for them- 
 selves and for their claldren, their dread of unseen agencies, 
 their jealousies, their resentments, their antipathies, their 
 sociabihty and dim sense of mutual dependence — all their 
 qualities, good and bad, selfish and sympathetic, social and anti- 
 social. We were able, however, on general grounds to lay down 
 two limits within which from the first custom must move. 
 First, it must bear some relation to the character of primitive 
 man. That is to say, although custom doubtless imposes upon 
 him many restraints, nevertheless those restraints in the main 
 faU into line with his own fears, reluctances, sympathies, and 
 antipathies, and do not deviate from them to the snapping-point. 
 For if this point is frequently reached, not merely in exceptional 
 individuals, but in the average member of the tribe, there must 
 either be a change of custom or anarchy. This hmitation wiU 
 cut both ways, will equally prevent the level of social tradition 
 from rising above or from falling below the level which in this 
 rough manner corresponds to primitive character. The rule 
 of conduct must in effect be so far adapted to the nature of 
 primitive man as to embody much of what is bad in him along 
 with much of what is good — ^his hmited sociabihty, his hatred 
 and dread of strangers, his craven fear of the unknown. Evil 
 and anti-social impulses, in fact, contribute to the first formation 
 of the moral consciousness, along with affections and sympathies 
 and the dimly felt need of co-operation. 
 
 In the second place, the body of custom must upon the whole 
 be suited to the conditions which make for the maintenance of 
 society, since otherwise the society would not be found in being 
 for any length of time. But once again, the beneficent ef&cacy 
 of these conditions must not be exaggerated. In the first place, 
 particular customs may be injurious provided they are not 
 fatal. They may be the consequences of some idea which upon 
 the whole makes for good order. Thus the taboo may be useful 
 for the preservation of property. It may, however, have many 
 useless or harmful appUcations. Further, when we speak of 
 
618 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 customs suited to the maintenance of society, we really mean 
 the maintenance of a given social type. A custom which is 
 quite necessary at one stage may block the advance to a higher 
 stage, and if conditions are arising which make that advance 
 possible, society will gain by its removal. The fact that custom 
 rests on the requirements of social life does not render it inviolable 
 in cases where those requirements have altered. However, 
 when all these limitations are allowed for, it remains that without 
 any reasoned conception of social welfare the broad conditions 
 of stock preservation indirectly determine the main hnes of 
 conduct just as they do in the animal world, only those con- 
 ditions no longer operate merely by fashioning the physical 
 structure of the organism. They operate also through social 
 tradition, and thereby once again are rendered more elastic, 
 and are able to shape action over a wider sphere. The starting- 
 point, then, for the development of human ethics is custom 
 arising and maintaining itself, not through any reflective thought 
 as to what is best, but by the play of human impulses within 
 the limits of a life lived in social groups. 
 
 3. From primitive custom as our starting-point, we can con- 
 ceive ethical development as proceeding along three different 
 lines. We may conceive it as an evolution in ethical concep- 
 tions, in the character of human beings, or in the estabUshed 
 relations of society. To consider first the movement of ethical 
 conceptions, we have found it closely bound up with the develop- 
 ment of thought in general, of ideas as to the nature and origin 
 of things and the destinies of man. Now the evolution of 
 thought, stated in general terms, consists on the one hand in 
 growing precision or accuracy of analysis, on the other hand 
 in the ever extending reach or grasp of experience, the result 
 being a more and more articulate understanding of an ever 
 larger segment of reaUty. In this development we may dis- 
 tinguish certain phases, though we should regard them rather 
 as milestones that mark the advance in a single journey than 
 as gaps parting distinct stages from one another. Bearing 
 this caution in mind, we may briefly recapitulate what the 
 previous chapters have shown. In the lowest stages of human 
 thought, then, we have seen reason to think that the difficulty 
 of forming any conceptions at all is such that the familiar 
 categories of common experience are not fuUy distinguished. 
 Attributes and relations become substances, while distinct 
 individuals melt away into one another and preserve no clear- 
 cut identity. There is no sound basis of generalization, no 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 619 
 
 methodical interconnection of ideas, and no adequate distinction 
 between the imaginary and the real, or betjyeen make-beUeve 
 and earnest. Inferences are formed by unconscious assimilation, 
 by fusion or confusion of ideas, and by the influence of emotional 
 prepossessions. Distinctions that are most elementary in the 
 structure of knowledge are quite insufBciently grasped, and the 
 result is seen in magic, witchcraft, and the primitive doctrine 
 of the quasi-material spirit. It is a great step forward when 
 the world of ideas begins to be purged of these confusions, and 
 thought no longer blurs and obhterates the primary lines of 
 distinction, the common categories into which experience falls. 
 Persons now are persons, functions are functions, relations 
 are relations. Concrete experience is reflected with sufficient 
 distinctness in mental pictures or images, and the thought- 
 world, instead of being a distorted and confused rendering of 
 the world of sense, is rather its counterpart and duphcate; 
 The gods at this stage form a second human community in 
 another sphere. Pure fancy, or fancy guided by crude ideas 
 of physical causation, plays freely round them and gives them a 
 living personality, often a really concrete character, with family, 
 social and poHtical relationships, loves, hates, joys and sorrows, 
 and complete Hfe histories. Progress from the inarticulate to 
 the concrete idea is thus reflected in the transition from spirits 
 (and occult forces) to gods. 
 
 Now the gods are already not only human, but in varying 
 degrees superhuman. They preside over great departments of 
 nature or of human life, thus embodying a wider and more dis- 
 criminating colligation of experience. But, further, they often 
 show traces of ideahzation, and in this we get a hint that the 
 world of ideas is destined to be something more than a mere 
 re-dupHcation of sense experience. This brings us to the next 
 step in advance, wherein image-making develops into thinking. 
 The " picture " ideas, loosely defined and uncritically connected, 
 are transformed into definite or " abstract " conceptions ; the 
 "general" notion vaguely appUed into the universal, which, 
 wherever used, has one constant meaning. Such concepts, of 
 which those of number and quantity, and of Spatial and Temporal 
 order, are probably the first to arise, are connected, developed 
 and tested by systematic methods of analysis and synthesis — 
 the concept once rendered exact being capable of methodical 
 comparison with other concepts. 
 
 But beside the minor " departmental " conceptions which give 
 rise to special sciences or to methodical arts, the fundamental 
 all-embracing categories of experience also enter at length into 
 
620 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 clear consciousness. The mind had learnt in its image-making 
 to represent Persons and Attributes, Relations and Functions, 
 and to keep them distinct. It now learns to recognize what it 
 is that distinguishes them, and so to form conceptions of Person- 
 aUty, Attribute, Relation, Function. In so doing, it has grasped 
 and set before itseK as distinct objects of thought the structural 
 principles of its world. It is now in a position to attempt 
 a theory of reality as a whole, to deal with the problems of 
 permanence and change, of reality and appearance, of the finite 
 and the infinite, and all the other antinomies which present 
 themselves as soon as a serious effort is made to conceive a 
 totaUty of things. Its theory of the world-process, its God, 
 if it finds the solution in a God, is an embodiment, so to say, 
 of the categories which it finds most satisfactory. God is 
 infinite, absolute, unconditioned, the First Cause, perhaps the 
 true substantial reahty of things. He is also — since a founda- 
 tion is required for practice as well as for theory — an incarnation 
 of the moral ideal. 
 
 Here, then, we have reached the level of the philosophical, or, 
 as we have called them, the spiritual religions, systems which 
 seek to concentrate all experience in one focus and to illuminate 
 all reahty from one centre, — thought, as ever, becoming more 
 comprehensive as it becomes more explicit. But such syntheses, 
 however formed, contain in themselves the germ of contra- 
 dictions,^ the cause of which is not fully understood till thought 
 has taken a fresh turn in which the genesis and function of 
 conception in general is made the subject of inquiry. This, in 
 its simplest form, is a return from the ideal to the actual, and 
 as such is carried out in miniature in every special science. 
 But the criticism of method has a deeper implication. It 
 
 1 Speaking generally, these arise, as appears further on, from the mental 
 attitude which takes the categories as vehicles of ultimate truth, rather than 
 as modes of rendering experience and interconnecting experiences. The 
 more the " metaphysical stage " develops, i. e. the miore the mind disen- 
 gages itself from imagery, and insists on exactitude of conception and 
 reasoning, the more clearly the inherent difficulties of this point of view 
 emerge. The contrast between the hard insufficiency, the narrow finiteness 
 of the categories and the subtle plasticity, the boundlessness, the variability 
 of experience becomes almost disruptive of thought. At times it forces the 
 mind by a confusion of planes to find reality in the categories themselves, 
 and not in metaphysics alone, but in many departments of ethics, politics 
 and law, the lines of distinction and definition which conceptual thought 
 draws become stones of stumbling when gradations of meaning and the 
 actual continuity of nature are to be dealt with. The world of thought 
 tends to fall apart from the world of experience. But thought is meaning- 
 less unless it illuminates experience. This, as already indicated in principle 
 by Aristotle, is the starting-point of criticism, alike of the special criticism 
 of a particular science and of the general criticism of philosophical analysis. 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 621 
 
 involves, when pushed through, an inquiry into the ultimate 
 basis of knowledge, and the paradox of the ij^quiry is that since 
 to inquire and examine is still to think, the very processes that 
 are being examined have to be used in examining them. Nor 
 can we who criticize place ourselves outside that which we are 
 criticizing. The human mind is a structure which has grown 
 up under conditions, and the thoughts which it forms and the 
 criticisms which it passes on its thoughts depend upon that 
 structure. Not only the thoughts, but the experience which 
 they are to interpret is, again, conditioned by the structure of 
 the sense organs. We are therefore compelled to regard the 
 highest conceptions which the mind can reach as conditioned 
 by the nature and limits of the mind itself, and to recognize 
 that even though we could frame a theory which might com- 
 mend itself to us as an adequate interpretation of our experience, 
 it does not necessarily follow that it would express the final 
 truth about reahty. But further, when our conceptions are 
 analyzed to the bottom they are found not to give an adequate 
 interpretation of experience as a whole. On the contrary, it is 
 when we endeavour to grasp our world as a totality that we fall 
 into contradictions. Criticism, therefore, compels us to realize 
 the limitations of our own thought, and to desist from the 
 endeavour to force the universe into the narrow moulds which 
 our experience has so far enabled us to frame, when what is 
 needed is rather to enlarge our conceptions by taking in fresh 
 experience. For it does not foUow that because we find limits, 
 these must be limits fixed for ever. On the contrary, the study 
 of evolution indicates the possibility of indefinite growth. It 
 helps us to understand how our mental structure has arisen 
 from very humble beginnings, and how its methods, its logic 
 and its philosophy have grown up in the continuous endeavour 
 to grasp and organize its experience, and so direct and under- 
 stand its own life. We measure a sufficiently great advance 
 from the first dawn of consciousness in an animal which can 
 Just learn through pain, to the synthesis of the sciences and the 
 analysis of philosophy, and we can in some degree judge thereby 
 of the possibihties of further development. We can understand 
 that what is readily intelligible to the highest human intelh- 
 gence should be wholly inconceivable to a savage, and we must 
 learn to understand that our own thought is no more final 
 than that of the savage, but at best represents mental growth 
 advanced by one stage. 
 
 It does not follow that we are landed in mere scepticism. 
 The thought which gives harmonious, coherent interpretation 
 
622 MORALS IN EVOLXJTION 
 
 to experience is true so far as it goes. It is only as a final 
 interpretation of Reality that it is never the whole truth. Yet 
 a philosophy which does not yield final truth may have its 
 value as an approximation. Each new interpretation, provided 
 it is honest and intelUgent, carries us a stage forward. The 
 error is only in taking the completion of the stage for the 
 end of the journey. Truth, even ultimate truth, is no empty 
 dream. She is a phantom only when we think that we grasp 
 her. She is real when, recognizing that she is a being enthroned 
 above us, we are content to touch the hem of her robe. 
 
 The tendency of the critical movement which constitutes 
 philosophy is therefore to trace the conceptions, methods and 
 principles of thought to their elementary conditions in the 
 nature of mind and its relations to reahty. Starting from these 
 conditions it re -models the whole idea of knowledge and of the 
 nature and test of truth. Reality is conceived as something 
 more than experience, and the truth attainable by man is seen 
 to be only a partial approximation to the final truth of things. 
 As a consequence thought is recognized as a growth, and its 
 conceptions as the products of a given phase, having their 
 genesis in earUer phases, and the test and measure of their 
 vaUdity in their power to contribute to that coherent, systematic 
 interpretation of reahty towards which growth aspires. 
 
 Thus, in dragging to Ught the conditions of the cognitive 
 process and the factors at work in the building up of thought, 
 the philosophic movement renders the mind conscious of its own 
 nature and history. Here it impinges on the results of the 
 physical and social sciences which have been building up the 
 conception of evolution, and the effect, according to the view of 
 contemporary thought here taken, is to establish the conception 
 of mind in growth as the central fact of experience and the 
 basis from which we must start in the further interpretation, 
 aHke of knowledge and of conduct. 
 
 4. Turning from the movement of Thought in general to 
 the special sphere of Ethics, we have now to summarize the 
 evolution described in the previous chapters. The resulting 
 picture of the phases of Ethical development will show a rough 
 parallehsm with that of Thought in general. This could hardly 
 be otherwise, since the two movements are in constant inter- 
 action. At the same time, since other influences affect ethics 
 the parallehsm is not exact and must not be exaggerated, and 
 this caution must be taken as quahf ying the general descriptions 
 which a summary statement can hardly avoid. We have to 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 623 
 
 consider the evolution of the ethical idea, as it were, in its 
 depth and breadth ; that is to say, in the degree of clearness 
 and intensity with which its distinctively eftiical character is 
 reahzed, and in the extent to which it succeeds in directing 
 conduct and organizing life. In this evolution we have found 
 several phases. Now the general features of the ethical idea, 
 according to our analysis in the last chapter, are that every 
 man as a responsible agent stands under certain obhgations, 
 whether to himself, to others, or to society as a whole, defined 
 by the requirements of the common good ; or, in other words, that 
 men are deemed good or bad in accordance as they do or do not 
 recognize certain rights and duties important to the welfare of 
 society as a whole. Obhgation is the general expression for the 
 relations in which men accordingly stand, and it is (a) in the way 
 in which obligation is conceived, and (6) in the conduct which 
 it covers, that ethical evolution is principally seen. 
 
 Now in the lowest stage of customary ethics obhgations of a 
 social character are undoubtedly recognized in a certain sense, 
 but (1) they are almost entirely limited to the relations of men 
 and women in small groups, and (2) though they tend to secure 
 certain fundamental rights, yet the protection that they give 
 is in large measure indirect. For example, human hfe is pro- 
 tected by the blood feud, but the custom of the blood feud is 
 not based upon the principle that human life is itself sacred, but 
 on the principle that I must avenge a wrong done to a member 
 of my Mndred. Property is protected by the law of restitution 
 or, within hmits, of blood vengeance, yet when we look into the 
 matter more closely we find that it is not because the thief ought 
 to be punished, but rather because a man who has suffered theft 
 may reasonably demand restitution or avenge himself. Similarly, 
 the marriage tie is maintained in the sense that any husband 
 may reasonably be expected to kiU a man who violates it. The 
 idea of justice is not separated from that of retahation. Thus, 
 the elementary rights and duties on which social hfe is founded 
 can hardly as yet be said to be recognized as rights or duties, that 
 is to say as matter of direct moral obhgation, even in relation to 
 feUow-members of the same society.^ Nor again, is character as 
 
 1 It may be said (1) that, after all, there are from the first certain laws 
 directly enforced by society, (2) that within the innermost group the 
 general obligations of mutual aid and mutual forbearance are often, if not 
 always, true " categorical imperatives." Both objections are valid so far 
 as they go. But (as shown in Part I. chap, iii.) they only cover a section 
 of the sphere of conduct. Many fundamental obligations are only recog- 
 nized in the indirect sense explained. 
 
 It may be urged that it is all a question of group-morality, that within 
 the innermost group obligation is directly enforced, and that the tribe or 
 
624 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 yet, strictly speaking, the subject of a moral judgment. So little 
 is this the case that primitive justice draws a very insufficient 
 distinction between the intentional and the unintentional or 
 between the agent and his relatives, and even personal identity 
 is not clearly conceived when the actions of a man may freely be 
 attributed to a spirit which possesses him temporarily. 
 
 This view of customary morahty is supported by what we 
 know of primitive ideas as to the basis of custom, for in the 
 lowest grades of ethical thought the sanction of conduct is found 
 in taboos and other magical terrors or in the fear of vindictive 
 and resentful spirits. But the powers of magic have no moral 
 purpose, and the spirits of animism are neither essentially moral 
 nor immoral. In general they are guided, like men, by the law 
 of retaliation. But the mere dread of vengeance from a spirit 
 has no more morality in it than the corresponding dread of a 
 man. On the whole, then, social rules in this stage, though 
 doubtless supported by ethical feeUng, are not yet clearly 
 conceived as moral obligations. 
 
 A step onwards is taken when certain rights and duties are 
 attached to members of a society as such, when, c. g. it becomes 
 a duty to protect life instead of merely aiding the avenger, to 
 guard property instead of only countenancing retahation upon 
 the thief, to redress wrongs and yet in so doing to entertain 
 questions of responsibiUty. This stage appears distinctly in the 
 earlier civilizations, though remnants of cruder barbarism, of 
 course, survive. The essential features of group-morahty are 
 still retained. ObUgations do not in principle exist in relation to 
 those outside the group, and the moral consciousness is stiU 
 drenched through with the old spirit of self-assertion, the passions 
 appropriate to the struggle for existence among small and ill- 
 organized groups of mankind. On the other hand, certain social 
 duties are now matters of direct obligation. The basis of this 
 obhgation is still in the supernatural, but with the development 
 
 community is merely to be regarded as a wider group not yet fully brought 
 within the area of obligation. But this account would not comprehend all 
 the facts, viz. (1) that the " wider group " here spoken of is normally a true 
 society, the different members of which meet and mix freely. The later 
 group-morality leaves out the stranger or the slave, but this earlier rule of 
 custom does not properly include the associate and the equal. (2) That 
 the " subjective " side of morality as shown in the text is undeveloped. 
 (3) That the magico-animistic basis of obligation is distinctly non-moral. 
 Bearing in mind that we are nowhere in contact with the actually primitive, 
 we may put it that the moral conceptions found in the simpler societies 
 are such as we should expect at a stage in which morality proper, as a 
 system of impartial and unconditionally binding rules, is still in process 
 of formation. 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 625 
 
 of religious ideas it tends to take a more ethical character. The 
 deities, heroes and ancestors of the anthrojjpmorphic religions, 
 which on the whole are dominant in the higher barbarism and 
 the earlier civilizations, are morally superior in the main to the 
 animistic spirit, and would be still more so but for the persistence 
 of myths dating from the animistic period. They are generally — 
 though with some terrible exceptions when magical ideas per- 
 sist — at least as just as a fairly good man, they are opposed to 
 demons and to witchcraft, and in some instances they have an 
 element of the ideal. Moreover, some gods or perhaps some 
 specially developed spirits often undertake the special pro- 
 tection of the moral law or branches thereof, and one or more 
 of them are often judges of the dead. Thus, at this stage it is 
 not uncommon to find that there are some gods who stand in an 
 essential relation to ethics, and, though the fear of punishment 
 is not a high motive, yet a god who punishes acts because they 
 are wrong is very different from a god who merely avenges an 
 injury. His existence is a recognition of the moral idea. But 
 the spiritual needs imposed by the conception of judgment are 
 insufficiently met at this stage by sacrifice or magical rites 
 instead of repentance and forgiveness, and even if the gods prefer 
 justice they are hardly as yet incorruptible judges. Considering 
 morahty as a whole at this stage we may say that certain social 
 duties are recognized as obhgations, and obhgation is based on 
 human and divine sanctions. But just as the social code is a 
 confusion of " love and hate," so the divine world is a blur of the 
 just and the unjust, the righteous and the tyrannically wicked. 
 There is as yet no thoroughly worked-out ethical ideal, human 
 or superhuman. 
 
 It is the emergence of such an ideal which gradually transforms 
 the primitive code of blended love and hate. In close connection 
 with the spirituaUzed ideal of religion, an ideal of character is 
 set up in which there is no room for the virtues of enmity; 
 forgiveness replaces the duty of revenge, self-sacrifice the exac- 
 tion of one's due ; the humility of self -suppression supplants 
 the pride of self-assertion, missionary effort for the salvation 
 of all mankind the narrower and more material ambitions of 
 self, or family or nation. This imphes a profound modification 
 of the original moral consciousness which, arising under the 
 influence of division into groups, has the anti-social or dis- 
 uniting blended with its social or binding tendencies. The 
 principal change that moral history records is the subjection of 
 this side of moraUty to the purely social element in the moral 
 consciousness. It is paralleled by a no less revolutionary 
 s s 
 
626 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 change in religious thought. The materiaUstic deity disappears. 
 Grod is spiritual, and the non-spiritual elements of His worship 
 are gradually eliminated. True, the judgment of the dead (or as 
 an alternative certain automatic consequences of good and bad 
 actions) hold a prominent place in the spiritual religions, but for 
 the best minds the notion of retribution as a basis for moraUty 
 is already transcended. God rules by love, and not by fear. 
 On the other hand, in so far as the omnipotence of the Creator 
 and the necessity of faith in Him as the basis of all goodness are 
 hard pressed, the ethical falls into the second place and may 
 even be opposed to the religious view. And the actual content 
 of ethical teaching is affected by the position which it holds. 
 Though the social quaUties are emphasized, their social func- 
 tion is often misunderstood, and self-suppression rather than 
 development is the central point of the ethical ideal. And 
 thus, though the teaching of the world religions laid the founda- 
 tions of humanitarianism, it has often tended, paradoxically 
 enough, to paralyze humanitarian energy, and by holding up an 
 unreahzable ideal to remove virtue from the world and make it 
 possible only in the monastery. 
 
 At this stage, then, moral rules have references to a distinct 
 ideal of life and character. This ideal still rests on some super- 
 natural mode of being, but the supernatural is itself the incar- 
 nation and expression of moral perfection. Idealism, however, 
 is not necessarily critical, and a further step is taken, according 
 to the view put forward in the previous chapters, when the 
 attempt is made to set out systematically the full implications, 
 personal and social, of the moral judgment. 
 
 The attempt to construct or reconstruct the ethical order 
 upon the basis of a reasoned theory of hfe was initiated by the 
 philosophic movement of antiquity, which, though it appealed 
 less strongly to feeling and missed at the outset some grace 
 and tenderness of the religious ideal, left the individual person- 
 aUty standing, and made the development of its faculties rather 
 than their repression the end of conduct, recognizing that 
 individuality has its claims, that even original self-assertion 
 contained a kernel of truth, and that what humanity claims is 
 self-devotion rather than self-effacement. But in proportion as 
 the idea of personahty becomes the centre of ethical teaching, 
 it must follow that rights and duties are regarded as belonging 
 to every human being as a responsible agent, and that human 
 character, the development of faculty and the Hving happiness 
 of men and women, become the ends of life. A direct con- 
 sequence of this view is that the duties and rights formerly 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 627 
 
 dependent on membership of a group are now universalized. But 
 with this universaUsm all of primitive custSm that belongs to 
 the law of enmity drops away, and the law of love is reached by 
 another road and under another name. Humanity becomes a 
 single community, and the Law of Nature — an ideal by which 
 all positive law should be judged — prescribes our duties as 
 members thereof. 
 
 But we are still only in the first phase of rationahsm. The 
 content of philosophic teaching required the inspiration of 
 reUgion to be converted into a living universahsm, the object 
 of a missionary effort seeking actively and aggressively to 
 spirituahze in the world. In this change as it was historically 
 effected the rational basis was undermined, and modem rational- 
 ism, instead of working continuously from the Greek basis, had 
 to compass the return from the supernatural to nature. In so 
 doing it (a) gave a social and positive interpretation to the 
 doctrine of salvation, and thus applied the aggressive energy 
 of reUgion to the spiritualization of actual hfe, while (6) it re- 
 placed the conception of "nature " as a fixed and ideal standard 
 by that of development — a process which can only be rightly 
 appreciated after allowance is made for the thinker's position 
 within it. Our standards are the product of a spiritual move- 
 ment at work within the race, and are subordinate to its ultimate 
 ends. These ends we can appreciate at least in so far that 
 they include the fuUest and most harmonious development 
 of the hfe of the race, and as such they serve as stimulus and 
 guide to every form of noble effort. 
 
 The ethical order being thus interpreted, the claims of duty 
 are urged on the ground that when we thoroughly understand 
 its nature and all its bearings on our own life and that of 
 humanity, we are compelled as rational beings to recognize its 
 vaUdity, and admit that the ends to which it points are wider 
 and greater than any private good of our own that may conflict 
 with it. Thus for rationahsm the moral basis hes in the un- 
 folding of the full meaning of the moral order, as that through 
 which the human spirit grows. 
 
 To summarize the whole evolution in the fewest possible 
 words, it would appear that at the outset customary rules have 
 not acquired the distinctive character of moral laws. Next, 
 moral obhgations are recognized, but are not yet founded on 
 any general ethical principle. Up to this point the moraUty of 
 primitive social tradition persists, wherein "love and hate," the 
 social and anti-social impulses are blended. In a third stage, 
 moral principles and ideals of character and conduct are formed, 
 
628 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 partly by the influence of religious emotion, partly under the 
 guidance of philosophic criticism, and these culminate in the 
 doctrine of an evangelizing mission with the salvation of mankind 
 as its aim. But this salvation is conceived in supernatural 
 terms, and reasoned ethical principle is subordinated to rehgious 
 belief. Hence a further critical movement is required, con- 
 stituting a fourth main stage in which the meaning of religious 
 duty is interpreted in terms of human experience, and it is 
 the development of the spiritual principle at work in the actual 
 life of man that becomes the object of reUgion and supplies the 
 canon of ethics. We may describe the whole process as one 
 in which, by successive steps, the full meaning of the ethical 
 principle becomes clear. ObUgation, resting at first on occult 
 forces or the resentment of vindictive spirits, and then on the 
 wrath of a not unjust god, comes to be based on the nobler 
 desire to be at one with God, or to reahze a higher spiritual 
 life and, finally, extrinsic consequences being dispensed with, 
 on the inherent goodness of the life which it renders possible. 
 The social bearings of moraUty emerge by a parallel process. 
 Duties at first indirectly guaranteed become directly inculcated. 
 Next, they are so extended as to overleap the bounds of group- 
 morahty and destroy the claims of self-assertion. Finally, 
 the reason of the thing is rendered clear in the exposition of a 
 spiritual development as the source and object of duties and 
 rights alike. By successive stages obUgation becomes first a 
 distinct element in consciousness, and finally a principle, the 
 whole meaning of which is gradually thought out. 
 
 5. With the deepening consciousness of ethical meanings goes 
 a wider and more coherent sjmthesis of experience and purpose. 
 Primitive moraHty (whether in the first or second stage) builds 
 up bodies of custom, introducing a measure of order into life. 
 These rules are in an indirect manner fashioned by racial ex- 
 perience, since they are handed on by tradition, and their effect 
 upon the social welfare can seldom be without an infiuence in 
 determining them. To this extent early moraUty may be said 
 to direct conduct towards social welfare on the basis of past 
 experience. On the other hand, the rules of conduct are not 
 combined into a whole or harmonized by subordination to any 
 clearly understood principle, whether an ideal of personal con- 
 duct or of social organization. On the contrary, they are in 
 large measure such as to justify social disharmony. 
 
 In the ethics of the spiritual rehgions the correlation is more 
 complete. There is an ideal of character, a principle of right- 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 629 
 
 living, to which all rules of conduct are subordinated. And 
 this, being a rule of peace and love with all the world, contains 
 at least the potentiality of a complete synthesis of human pur- 
 poses. On the other hand, there is httle disposition to take the 
 actual experience of mankind into account, and in effect the 
 tendency is to ideaUze one side of virtue — self-negation — and 
 leave no room for the conception of seK-development. On 
 the social side also, though many of the best social virtues are 
 exalted, there is a tendency to disregard the actual working of 
 society as a merely mundane affair. Thus, though there is an 
 express and dehberate correlation of the conceptions of good 
 conduct, it is of a kind which leaves much that is most valuable 
 outside its scope. 
 
 The philosophical movement, by its criticism of the conceptions 
 of good and bad, aims at a fuUer correlation. Greek philosophy 
 harmonized self -development with the common good of the city 
 state, but had behind it less of the spiritual experience which 
 builds up the idea of self -negation and none of the social experi- 
 ence which could give hfe to the conception of a world polity. 
 Modem thought, bringing ethics into relation to the theory of 
 development, conceives a synthesis of which the total recorded 
 experience of the race — an experience always operative, though 
 in earher stages less consciously — should be the basis, and the 
 further development of mind in society the end — a correlation 
 of past and future racial experience. 
 
 It helps us to understand the character of ethical, as of all 
 mental evolution, when we observe that at each stage the mind 
 as it expands brings within its scope the conditions and in- 
 fluences which have previously acted upon it unawares, but that 
 in so doing it rationalizes and therefore modifies them. Thus 
 the custom of the blood feud is enforced because it is custom, or 
 nominally because it so pleases the gods. But the real value of 
 it is that it tends to secure hfe. This is the latent or unconscious 
 factor which fosters the institution in early society as making 
 on the whole for order. In the next stage this factor enters into 
 consciousness, and protection to person becomes a right and to 
 recognize it a duty or a virtue. But words such as " right," 
 or " virtue," carry weight only because men make moral 
 judgments, approve certain types of character, etc., and the 
 imphcation is that a certain type of character, or of social or 
 rehgious life, is the guide and norm of conduct. Accordingly 
 the next step is that this ideal enters consciousness and is set 
 before man as his end. But, lastly, the influences which deter- 
 mine him in his preference of one character over another are a 
 
630 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 complex inass of traditions, instincts, partial reasonings. What 
 is coherent in these appears to be what makes for the growth of 
 mind in man, and the final step is to bring this aim into con- 
 sciousness as a rational principle and the base of what went before. 
 In looking backward over the process which has led us to this 
 point we realize that the same factors, though not in the same 
 rational form, have been present all along. The conditions of 
 maintaining a social life operate in the very formation of social 
 instinct and tradition. Custom, that is to say, is fixed by certain 
 psychological forces and inter-relations of man and man, which 
 arise, and are maintained, and grow, because the society which 
 they engender can support itself in its environment. These 
 forces all along underhe the work of consciousness, until bit by 
 bit consciousness encroaches on them and takes them into itself. 
 In so doing it transmutes them with something from its own 
 quality. It makes them rational ends, and as such into forces 
 that make not merely for life, but for a good hfe, and a hfe of 
 growth and development. 
 
 Though the phases of development here distinguished pass 
 into one another by such gentle transitions that the very at- 
 tempt made to distinguish them may appear artificial, the total 
 change which they constitute is of no small importance. Taken 
 as a whole it forms a distinct stage onward in the evolution of 
 mind, not unfairly comparable to that which parts the mind of 
 the lowest savage from that of the beast which he chases and 
 adores. Just as mental evolution enters on a new phase — a 
 change of kind so far as the phases of a continuous process are 
 ever changes of kind — when the nascent human intelligence 
 formulates for itself in general ideas experiences which were 
 already operating to direct its inferences, though before it knew 
 them not nor named them, so a gradual but not less fundamental 
 revolution is effected as the " eye of the soul is turned " upon 
 the methods by which these generahzations are built up — ^that is 
 to say, from the objects of thought to the processes by which they 
 are formed, the conditions on which they rest — ^in a word, to the 
 mind itself, its nature and potentiahties.^ At the begirming of 
 this revolution the thought world is occupied by the fragmentary 
 and confused ideas of the primitive mind, moulded without 
 
 * For we are dealing here with an order of reality — the ultimate con- 
 ditions of knowing and being — ^which underlies the simple general truths 
 of common sense just as these underlie the concrete and practical relations 
 recognized by the animal mind, and to do bo implies a new turn to mental 
 activity — the bringing into consciousness of methods and processes — ^whioh 
 is quite as profound a change as that involved in the first attempt to draw 
 out the "universal" that lies in the particular. 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 631 
 
 criticism in accordance with mental predispositions out of the 
 mass of unsifted experience and tradition. At its end, as the 
 result of a movement which extends from t!ie first attempt to 
 observe a fact or define an idea to the profoundest analysis of 
 the conditions of the cognitive process, is the synthesis of racial 
 experience in which the mind grasps the conditions and possibili- 
 ties of its own development, conscious for the first time in the 
 full sense of its own nature and growth. This movement has 
 its close parallel in ethics. At the beginning is custom, with its 
 blend of the ethical and unethical, accepted without criticism 
 and guiding Hfe without system or general plan. At the end 
 is the rational order of conduct founded on the conditions of 
 human development, and directed to the furtherance of that de- 
 velopment as its supreme end. If, finally, we put together the 
 results of the intellectual movement which reveal the conditions 
 of development and of the ethical which make its furtherance 
 the purpose of hfe, we recognize that the evolution of mind in 
 man, from being a blind, unconscious, fitful process has become 
 a purposive, self-directed movement. This is the fundamental 
 change effected in the course of human history. 
 
 6. So far we have traced ethical evolution as an evolution of 
 thought. But in questions of morals it is easy, fatally easy, for 
 thought to outstrip action. How far, then, does this develop- 
 ment of conceptions correspond either to an actual improvement 
 in social relations or in the character of human beings* The 
 candid student cannot but feel grave doubts on this question 
 from time to time when he turns from the disorders and tyrannies 
 of our own day to the simple and harmonious life which he finds 
 among many of the " lowest " peoples. May it not be, he is 
 forced to ask, that at bottom the moral factor is, so to say, a 
 permanent quantum not susceptible of constant increase or 
 diminution, unaffected in essence by intellectual progress, but 
 rather liable to grave lesions by social changes against which it 
 recovers itself from time to time, so exhibiting the misleading 
 appearance of periods of moral progress. Thus it may be urged 
 that the genuine humanitarian progress of the Victorian era was 
 but a desperately needed reaction against the tremendous social 
 disorganization of the Industrial Revolution and the Napoleonic 
 wars, and now that it has made things tolerable is in turn re- 
 laxing its efforts and giving place to the creed of force and the 
 self-centred will. As against this view it may be maintained 
 that we may easily overestimate the moral value of harmony in 
 the simpler social conditions. Social sohdarity is one thing in 
 
632 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 a group of a couple of dozen men, women and children, and 
 another when it is predicable of a nation of forty millions. Moral 
 progress consists in surmounting difficulties and uniting elements 
 which are naturally opposed. Simple societies may enjoy a 
 measure of practical freedom and equality which is lost at a 
 higher stage. But the discipline, the organization, the output of 
 will-power evinced at such a stage are equally necessary to the 
 permanent progress of human achievement. The intensive life 
 of the small community has advantages which are lost in the 
 ordered union of a great empire, but the extension of the area 
 of peace is a step which advancing civihzation must take. Social 
 evolution is full of these antitheses, and the case for effectual 
 moral progress is that, upon the whole, it makes for a synthesis. 
 It goes for little to have the gentler qualities without the more 
 assertive, chastity without passion, meekness without courage, 
 liberty without the capacity for discipline, equahty without 
 the opportunity for domination. Repeatedly one hmb of the 
 antithesis grows at the expense of the other, and loss or gain 
 may be recorded as suits the bias of the observer. On the whole, 
 our survey goes to show that while no new elements arise, while 
 human nature is fundamentally the same, the synthesis effected 
 in the actual hfe of the modem state, incomplete as it is, is wider, 
 fuller and richer than that of earlier times. The will grows — 
 understanding by the will the organized energy of social endea- 
 vour. It is at once more masterful and more discipUned, wider 
 in purview, firmer in grip, and, on the whole, more conscious of 
 its true purpose. 
 
 In Social Evolution as a whole there is, in fact, a correlation, 
 however rough and irregular in detail, with the ethical and 
 religious development here set out. Among many simpler 
 societies we see (1) the fundamental institutions of the family 
 and government stiU very incomplete. We trace (2) the growing 
 consolidation of the little community on the basis of kinship, 
 then (3) the extension and improved organization of society on 
 the principle of Authority and (4) finally, the advance towards a 
 harmony between liberty and authority in the state. In the 
 first two stages we have the morality of custom gradually passing 
 into that of impartial law. In the third we have the reign of 
 law and in its higher phases the ethics of the world-religions. 
 The fourth is associated with humanitarian ideas. At the same 
 time social growth does not always go with ethical progi-ess. 
 Social changes are in large measure unconscious, uncontrolled 
 by any intelhgent direction, and the more completely so the 
 further we go back into the beginnings of history. Hence 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 633 
 
 they do not run precisely parallel with the growth of mind, 
 but at times impede, at other times, again, forward it. But as 
 the higher phases are reached the two processes fuse into one. 
 Eor the state rests on a measure of Right in the relations of men, 
 and is so constituted as to be modifiable by the dehberate act of 
 the community. In the method in which changes are effected, 
 indeed, we find a definite evolution from the unconscious and 
 unnoted changes of custom, through the dehberate changes 
 introduced on occasion by the fiat of authority to the organic 
 legislation of the modem world in which at its best there is an 
 effort to determine social progress in accordance with a rational 
 ideal. When this stage is reached social and ethical evolution 
 become one. This union becomes reahzed in proportion as the 
 mind attains that control over its own growth which it already 
 possesses over the processes of nature. Here, as Comte first 
 made plain, lies the true significance of the history of science. 
 Through science mind dominates nature ; first physical nature, 
 then organic nature, lastly the conditions — physical, psychologi- 
 cal, social — of its own hfe and growth. This movement goes on 
 at an ever accelerating rate, and as it proceeds the conditions of 
 a rational guidance of social life are one by one being satisfied. 
 At the basis of these stands the mastery of external natural 
 conditions, in which regard the last hundred and fifty years 
 have witnessed a complete revolution, and so far there is every 
 indication that the changes of the coming century will be not 
 less, but even more sweeping. Next come the laws of hfe, the 
 conditions of health, the causes of disease, the factors of physi- 
 cal evolution. The scientific treatment of these subjects can 
 scarcely be said to be more than seventy years old, and it may 
 be maintained without exaggeration that, little as we know even 
 now, the sum of what we have learnt in that time as to the true 
 causation of disease, as to the nature of heredity and the modi- 
 fiabihty of organisms, far outweighs all that had been learnt 
 in the previous two thousand years. There follow the laws of 
 mental growth, and here our own time has witnessed the emer- 
 ence of psychology as a science, and education as a true art 
 aiming at educing from the mind what is in it, aiding natural 
 development, and stimulating or correcting it at need, as the 
 physician follows the efforts of the body towards the restoration 
 of the balance of health — the whole a conception still in merest 
 infancy, but already promising a vigorous hfe. Here, then, 
 we have the conditions forming for development of body and 
 mind and their maintenance in health. To these have to be 
 added the scientific adjustment of the relations of man to man — 
 
634 MOKALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 sociology. Here, again, we have a science in its infancy, but 
 the mere attempt to deal with public questions in the spirit of 
 science implies an advance ethical as well as intellectual. At 
 any rate it is on the possibility of controlling social forces by the 
 aid of social science as perfectly as natural forces are controlled 
 at present by the aid of physical science, that the permanent 
 progress of humanity must depend. 
 
 7. For progress is not something that goes on of itself by an 
 automatic law or an inherent tendency of things. The struggle 
 for existence is not as such a force that makes for betterment, 
 and in fact in human history we find epochs of progress followed 
 by long ages of stagnation or retrogression. IE the evil of the 
 world overthrew the doctrine of unconditioned creation, the 
 disorders and reactions of history are no less fatal to a purely 
 teleological doctrine of the world process. There remains the 
 possibility, however difi&cult to conceive in concrete shape, of a 
 spirit subject to conditions and achieving its full growth only 
 by mastering them. If this view is correct, progress is made 
 only in so far as the conditions of life come more and more 
 under the dopiinion of Mind. There is nothing in the scheme 
 of organic evolution to determine that the higher type should 
 prevail except the inherent strength of the tjrpe itself.^ On the 
 other side of the account let us bear in mind that there is no 
 evidence of any permanent force working against the higher 
 type as such, or singHng it out, as it were, for destruction. Evil 
 is not a positive force. There is no real Ahriman that strives 
 with Ormuzd. EvU is merely the automatic result of the in- 
 organic. Physical evil results from the impact on the spiritual 
 order of natural causes which intelhgence has not been able to 
 subordinate to its ends, moral evil from the clashing of purpose 
 in minds which have not been brought into an organic unity. 
 Hence the working of that retributive principle in history where- 
 by whatever is evil, being inorganic, conflicts with itself and 
 perishes " by its inherent badness," while the elements of good- 
 ness, of rational harmony, in the long run support and further 
 one another, and this upon the whole at an accelerating rate in 
 proportion as they have already acquired organic union. Here 
 is that internal inherent strength on which the spiritual order 
 depends for its ultimate victory. 
 
 ^ In BO far as it bears on the ultimate question of the element of purpose 
 in Reality as a whole (as distinguished from the scheme of organic evolu- 
 tion), this statement should be qualified by the considerations advanced in 
 Mind in Evolviion, pp. 402-406, and more fully in Development and 
 Purpose, Part II. 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 635 
 
 Thus the principal method of spiritual progress Hes in this — 
 that what is achieved at one epoch is a starting-point for fresh 
 development. Hence progress is sure and cSntinuous in pro- 
 portion as it depends on the principle of tradition, ». e. in pro- 
 portion as the gains of the past can be handed on and form a 
 capital for advancing the operations of the future. This method 
 is most readily appHcable in the case of positive knowledge, 
 wherein it is possible for every student to equip himself with 
 all that Newton or Darwin have to teach. But when something 
 more than mere learning is required, other factors enter in. 
 Even in the realm of thought so far as the deeper principles are 
 concerned, every man must in a measure go through for himself 
 the processes which Hume or Kant thought out, if he would 
 really understand what Hume and Kant mean. Still more is this 
 true of moral thought. We must have some spiritual experience 
 of our own to enable us to reahze what the message of Christ or 
 of Buddha means. There must at least be an inward mirror to 
 reflect the spiritual Hght. Hence ethical truths have sometimes 
 been lost, or at least have lain dormant till new prophets have 
 arisen to inspire them with fresh life. Nevertheless tradition, 
 the mere contact with great ideas, counts for much in the ethical 
 field, and there is, on the whole, a clear though not an uninter- 
 rupted advance of ethical teaching.^^ But when we come to the 
 development of character, the third point of ethical growth, the 
 case is altered. So far as ethical teaching affects character, tradi- 
 tion has its influence. But so far as the foundation of character 
 is inherited by each of us from his parents wholly different 
 
 ' The bearing of tradition on progress may be measured by comparing 
 knowledge, morals and art. Knowledge — the whole collective achieve- 
 ment of thought — stakes the lead in progress because each generation can 
 acquire the whole possessions of the past unimpaired and add to them its 
 own. In ethical theory this is less easy in proportion as what is required 
 is the deeper thinking-out of principles rather than the addition of past 
 experiences. Nevertheless, the road once trodden is always easier to tra- 
 verse anew. In ethical practice we have not only to learn, but to come to 
 be, and this in large measure each must accomplish for himself, yet tra- 
 dition still operates in that it is incorporated in law and custom and the 
 spirit of a people. In art there seems to be epochs of progress in which 
 some new vein is struck out by pioneers. This is worked by one artist 
 after another, each learning from the last, till the best that can be done 
 along that line is reached. The vein is then exhausted, and subsequent 
 work along that line produces less and less ore and more and more dross. 
 Tradition at this stage becomes a real barrier to progress. Meanwhile 
 other pioneers are striking out in a fresh direction, and art revives in a new 
 place. The cause of this brokenness of its history seems to be that the 
 function of art is to give perfect expression — that is, expression in which 
 the feeling- tone of the sense-symbols used precisely fits the thought ex- 
 pressed — ^to whatever facet of experience the artist seeks to approach. 
 When this is once done adequately it cannot be done again. 
 
636 MORALS IN EVOLUTION 
 
 conditions apply, and the question whether the innate character- 
 istics of men tend to improve, stands on a wholly different foot- 
 ing from the question whether their collective achievements in 
 the realm of thought and of conduct exhibit growth and develop- 
 ment. The data for deciding this question do not appear as 
 yet to be sufficient. The laws of heredity are in large measure 
 unknown. So far as natural selection is concerned, its operation 
 is known to be extremely slow, nor could it be favourable to 
 character unless the conditions of life in society were through 
 many generations such as to eUminate the more selfish, less 
 honest, less generous type, and preserve in greater degree those 
 who are more worthy. How far this has been the case I must 
 not here attempt to determine. We can easily imagine that 
 some virtues, such as parental love, have been fostered by the 
 better chances of survival enjoyed by the children of loving 
 parents. Of other virtues it is less easy to speak with any 
 certainty. At many periods social institutions have directly 
 tended to ehminate the stock of those best fitted to serve society. 
 I think, for instance, of reUgious persecutions, or again of the 
 ideal of cehbacy which over great tracts of the world operated 
 for centuries to deter many of the best men and women from 
 perpetuating their stock. Nor is the question whether, morally 
 considered, the human breed has in fact improved, by any means 
 easy to settle empirically. Considering the improvement of 
 ethical conceptions, is the actual improvement in our conduct 
 as compared with that of our ancestors greater than we might 
 expect, or even as much as we might expect ? He would be a 
 bold man who would found an argument for the improvement 
 of the human breed by heredity on a dogmatic affirmation in 
 reply to this question. Upon the whole we must be content for 
 the present to leave this factor in evolution an uncertain quantity. 
 Ethical progress is essentially a progress in ethical conceptions, 
 acting through tradition. 
 
 These conceptions, as they advance, are, as we have seen, in a 
 manner realized in law and custom. Here the element of tra- 
 dition plays its part. But in so far as the old vices of character 
 remain, the work is always liable to be undone and needs con- 
 stantly to be done over again. The very growth of society sets 
 up new problems needing a re-thinking of old ethical ideas, so 
 that here again the ethical advance is fitful and uncertain. As 
 society becomes larger and more complex many of its obligations 
 become more remote and impersonal. Losing their direct 
 application to our neighbour whom we see, our charity and 
 our sense of justice are diluted and lose their strength. Our 
 
THE LINE OF ETHICAL DEVELOPMENT 637 
 
 sympathies cease where our imagination fails to reach, and the 
 great fabric of government is apt to become aij inhuman machine 
 advancing bUndly over the living flesh and blood that happens 
 to come in its way. Yet the vaster the social organism the 
 greater is the triumph when justice, kindled to new life, has 
 again sent a purified blood through its arteries. Its successes 
 are achieved for larger portions of mankind, and their basis is 
 wider and more secure. 
 
 But if our general conception of evolution is correct, the 
 further development of society will foUow a very different course 
 from its past history, in that it is destined to fall within the 
 scope of an organizing intelligence, and thereby to be removed 
 from the play of bhnd force to the sphere of rational order. 
 Such a change must be gradual and attended with many set- 
 backs. The very ideas which are to direct it are yet in their 
 infancy. Yet the social self-consciousness which gives them 
 birth, arrived at as it is by a blending of the moral, the scientific 
 and the rehgious spirit, is for us the culminating fact of ethical 
 evolution. But such an end can only be a beginning. Mind 
 grasps the conditions of its development that it may master and 
 make use of them in its further growth. Of the nature of that 
 growth, whither it tends and what new shapes it will evolve, we 
 as yet know httle. It is enough for the moment to reach the 
 idea of a self-conscious evolution of humanity, and to find therein 
 a meaning and an element of purpose for the historical process 
 which has led up to it. It is, at any rate, something to learn — 
 as, it our present conclusion is sound, we do learn — that this 
 slowly wrought out dominance of mind in things is the central 
 fact of evolution. For if this is true it is the germ of a reUgion 
 and an ethics which are as far removed from materiahsm as from 
 the optimistic teleology of the metaphysician, or the halt naive 
 creeds of the churches. It gives a meaning to human effort, 
 as neither the pawn of an overruhng Providence nor the sport 
 of bhnd force. It is a message of hope to the world, of suffering 
 lessened and strife assuaged, not by fleeing from reason to the 
 bosom of faith, but by the increasing rational control of things 
 by that collective wisdom, the els ^vos A.oyos, which is all that 
 we directly know of the Divine. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abortion, 468, 524 
 Adoption of prisoners, 238 
 Adultery, 186, 455 
 
 Punishment of, 74, 76, 89, 91, 
 
 119, 135, 150, 174, 181, 186, 
 
 192, 193, 195, 201, 205, 209, 
 
 222 
 
 Aged, treatment of, 340-1, 343, 
 
 345 
 Ainu, 166, 244, 339, 379, 432, 440 
 Alabaster, E., 62, 87, 109, 194-6 
 Aliens, 259, 297, 298, 338, 339 
 Altruism, 580 
 
 Ambrose, 214, 215, 262, 510, 620 
 Amaineau, 186, 247, 342, 343 
 America — 
 
 British Colonies in, 126 
 
 United States of, 127, 142 
 Amos, 490, 492, 495 
 Anabaptists, 522 
 Angels, 500-2 
 Ani, 186 
 Animals — 
 
 Duties to, 475 
 
 in human form, 484 
 
 Intelligence among, 7-10, 613-16 
 
 Parental affection among, 6, 10 
 
 Punishment of, 86, 87 
 
 Kegulation of behaviour among, 
 1-10 
 
 Social life of, 1, 6, 10 
 
 Worship of, 377, 407 
 Animatism, 374 
 
 Animism, 367-80, 383-7, 397, 406, 
 624 
 
 in early civilization, 406, 409, 
 412, 415 
 
 in relation to morality, 419, 
 424^30 
 Ansdm, 507 
 Anthropomorphism, 403—5, 407, 
 
 409, 414, 416, 426 
 Aniiathenes, 562 
 Apastamba, 189 
 Arabs, 373 
 Arbitration, 258, 267 
 
 Ariatippiis, 562 
 
 Aristotle, 65, 204, 206, 257, 258, 
 
 517, 554 seq., 565 
 Asceticism, 473, 524 
 Aaoka, 483 
 
 Association, right of, 361-4 
 Assyrians, 249 
 Atonement, 444, 445, 507 
 Augustine, 262, 263, 449-501, 509, 
 
 510, 520, 522, 582 
 
 Australians, 235, 241, 369, 370, 
 
 382, 390, 391, 395, 396, 419, 434 
 
 Szogamy among, 45, 46, 135, 143 
 
 Justice among, 75, 82, 89, 95-8, 
 
 103, 107, 117 
 Totemism among, 45 
 Tribal structure of, 45-6, 52, 136-8 
 Authority, principle of, 56 seq., 69 
 
 Babylon, ancient, 133, 248, 249, 
 
 380-2, 343, 406, 412-15, 441, 
 
 442, 450-2 
 Bancroft, B. H., 72, 73, 92, 96 
 Batchelor, J., 166, 244, 339, 379, 
 
 432, 440 
 Bavdhayana, 189, 344 
 Beneat of clergy, 123, 309 
 Benefit societies, 348 
 Benevolence, 343, 381-3, 488, 536, 
 
 538, 542 
 and Justice, 633 
 Bentham, J., 126, 587-90 
 Biot, 253 
 Birth-rate, 6 
 Blackatone, 219-22, 309 
 Blessing, 421 
 Blood-feud, 73 seq. 
 
 and composition, 76, 78 
 and retaliation, 73 
 Gradual suppression of, 99-102 
 Mitigation of, 100 seq. 
 Boaz, Dr. F., 50, 90, 92, 162, 322, 
 
 323, 390, 394, 395, 426, 432, 
 
 434, 441 
 Book of the Dead, 185, 341, 443, 
 
 450, 452-6 
 
 639 
 
640 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Brahmanism, 459, 461, 470 seq. 
 Doctrine of austerity, 472 
 Doctrine of charity, 472 
 Doctrine of penance, 472 
 Ethical conceptions, 472-7 
 Theory of reality, 477 
 Theory of the self, 470, 471 
 Breasted, J. H., 108, 109, 328, 410, 
 
 411, 457 
 Bridges, J. H., 593 
 British Empire, 228, 229 
 Brown, W. Adams, 498-9, 503, 506 
 Bruns, G. J., 90, 206-8, 236, 425 
 Bryce, Lord, 207, 208, 210, 217, 
 
 230 
 Buddhism, 127, 459, 477 seq., 
 514-18 
 Doctrine of Karma, 478, 479 
 Doctrine of Nirvana, 478 
 Ethical conceptions, 475, 479 seq. 
 Buddhist Suttas, 479, 480, 482-3 
 Budge, E. A., 185, 341, 443, 452 
 BuaoU, G., 54, 204, 205, 206, 257-9, 
 295, 296, 298, 340 
 
 Calvin, 502-3, 508, 512, 521 
 Cambridge expedition, 150, 155, 
 
 173, 328, 437 
 Cambridge Natural History, 4 
 Cannibahsm, 239, 240-2 
 
 and human sacrifice, 408, 409, 
 464 
 Canon law, 113, 144, 148, 213 seq., 
 262, 263, 508, 509, 510, 513, 
 514, 620-2, 581, 582 
 Carpenter, Dr. J. E., 490, 495 
 Caste, 57, 271, 272, 474 
 Criticism of, 292 
 in India, 290-2, 344 
 in modern civilization, 309, 315 
 in the uncivilized world, 274 
 Categories, 545, 618-20 
 Gatlin, G., 29, 167, 236, 238, 239, 
 
 339, 340, 341, 392 
 Charity, 341, 463, 466, 467 
 Chastity, 172-4, 192, 193, 243, 481 
 Children, 238, 260, 257, 260, 338-9 
 China — 
 
 Ethical conceptions, 58, 86-7, 
 109, 127, 133, 253 seq.. Part II, 
 ch. V. 
 Family, 193-7 
 Law and custom, 293, 343 
 Magical conceptions, 383 
 Religious conceptions, 368, 379 
 Christianity, 221, 262-4, 279, 301 
 seq., 312, 313, 348 
 See Monotheism. 
 
 Church — 
 
 and state, 568 
 
 and the world, 519 seq. 
 
 Influence of, 213 seq., 262, 301 
 
 Primitive, 519 
 Cicero, 210 
 Citizenship, Principle of, 43, 60 seq., 
 
 559, 560 
 Clan system, 47-9, 51 
 Class distinctions. Part I, ch. vii, 
 
 in modern Eijrope, 318 seq., 543 
 Classification — 
 
 Difficulties of, 31 seq. 
 
 of the simpler peoples, 38 seq. 
 Codes, multiplicity of, 23, 24 
 Codrington, 163, 167, 345, 398, 421, 
 
 434 
 Common good, 539 
 Communism, 322 seq. 
 Comparative ethics — 
 
 Difficulties of, 25 seq. 
 
 Method of, 25 seq. 
 
 Scope of, 18, 19, 23-6, 35, 36 
 Compurgation, 115 
 Concubinage, 133, 180, 182, 185, 
 
 194, 198, 203, 205, 207 
 Confession, 441, 474 
 Confucius, 127, 617, 528-36, 543 
 Conquered communities, treatment 
 
 of, 260, 261 
 Conscience, 571 
 Conservatism, 493 
 Constantine, 216, 623 
 Contract, in early law, 333-4 
 Contract labour, 314 
 Cornish, C, 6 
 
 Council of Trent, 508, 510, 611, 614 
 Criticism, 546, 546 
 
 Philosophic, 620, 621 
 Curr, E. M., 75, 95, 440 
 Curses, magical effect of, 421, 427 
 Custom, 1, 539, 624, 630, 631 
 
 and habit, 12 
 
 and law, 61 
 
 and tradition 12 
 
 Factors in growth of, 12-14, 30, 
 402, 446, 616, 617 
 
 Sanctity of, among primitive 
 man, 17, 18 
 
 Penalty for breach of, 420 seq. 
 Cynics, 662 
 
 DaUon, E., 170, 394, 395, 432, 436 
 Da/nks, 143 
 
 Dareste, R., 86, 202, 281 
 Debt, punishment of, 75, 82 
 De Groot, J. J. H., 196, 368, 369, 
 370, 371, 372, 383, 485, 638 
 
INDEX 
 
 641 
 
 Deity, conception of, 248-60, 260 
 See Monotheism and Polytheism. 
 Democracy, 66 
 Demons, 412, 464-7 
 Desire, 598-600, 615-16 
 Determinism, 603-5 
 Deuteronomy, 198, 199, 236, 250, 
 
 261, 288, 346, 490, 493 
 Dhammapada, 483-5 
 Dicey, Prof., 608 
 Dm, Prof., 211, 348 
 Diodorus, 183, 283, 286, 319, 378 
 Dionysus, 206, 207 
 Divorce. See Marriage. 
 Dorsey, J. A., 79, 99, 157, 326, 388, 
 
 391 
 Douglas, E. K., 194, 195, 196, 379, 
 
 639 
 Driver, 8. R., 199, 490 
 Dualism, 470 
 
 Duel, Judicial, 59, 112, 113, 116 
 Non-judicial, 113 
 of abuse, 96 
 Duncker, M., 128, 188, 262, 263, 
 
 291 
 Durkheim, Prof., 400, 401 
 Duty, 570 
 Dyaks, 26, 376 
 
 Ecclesiasticus, Book of, 200, 289 
 Egoism, 578 
 Egyptians, 144 
 
 Ethical conceptions, 28, 68, 341- 
 
 3, 463-8 
 Family, 183 seq. 
 Law and custom, 150, 179, 282-6, 
 
 319 
 Religious conceptions, 369, 406- 
 
 12, 438, 441, 443-4 
 Warfare among, 247-8 
 Ellis, A. B., 83, 143, 151, 167, 
 166, 240, 273, 402, 403, 425, 
 431 
 Elmira system, 127 
 Endogamy, 142 seq. 
 England, 508 
 Family in, 228 
 
 Justice in Anglo-Saxon, 82, 86 
 Justice in mediseval, 76 seq., 86, 
 101, 118 seq., 121 seq., 320-1, 
 360 
 Modem law, 123 seq., 144, 325, 
 351 
 Epictetus, 617, 664, 665 
 Erinnys, 369, 427-9 
 Erman, A., 187, 248, 283, 284, 
 
 342 
 Eamein, A., 120 
 TT 
 
 Ethical conceptions — 
 Development of, 618 seq. 
 Difficulties of comparing, 27, 28 
 in early culture, 446, 623-5 
 in oriental civilization, 449-58, 
 
 462-9 
 Rationalist, 544 
 
 Ethical consciousness, 449 
 
 Ethics as regulation of life, 613 
 
 Evangelicals, 125 
 
 Evil, 495, 496, 499-603, 634 
 
 Evolution, self-conscious, 637 
 
 Exodus, Book of, 287, 320, 345, 
 491 
 
 Exogamy, 50, 51, 136, 142 seq. 
 
 Experience, 386-7 
 
 Animals learning by, 613 seq. 
 Correlation of, 613 seq. 
 
 Ezekiel, 494, 496 
 
 Factory Acts, 335 
 Faith, 508, 513-15, 626 
 Family — 
 Joint, 49 
 
 Patriarchal, 49, 53. See Father- 
 right; Mother-right; Marriage. 
 Famell, L. R., 413, 429, 430 
 Father-right, 47, 51, 143, 159 seq., 
 
 168, 178-9 
 Feudalism, 56, 67 
 Flinders Petrie, W. M., 41, 186, 
 
 247, 248, 283, 455-7 
 Food, magic influence on, 381 
 Forgiveness, 483, 484, 518, 533, 
 
 534, 625 
 Fornication, 185, 477 
 forbidden, 201, 213, 215 
 Punishment of, 194, 209, 216, 
 
 222 
 Fowle, T. W., 360, 361 
 France — 
 
 The famUy, 224, 225, 226 
 Law and custom, 87, 120-2, 126, 
 
 306, 307, 310 
 Franciscus d Victoria, 263, 267 
 Frazer, J. G., 242, 367, 368, 372, 
 
 376, 377, 378, 381, 383, 403 
 
 404, 439-41 
 Free-will, 600 seq. 
 French Revolution, 585, 586 
 Friediander, L., 211, 348 
 Friends, Society of, 125, 267, 313, 
 
 523 
 Future judgment, 626 
 life, 431 seq., 441, 468, 474 
 
 Gains, 209 
 Gambling, 538 
 
642 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Gardiner, 108, 109, 183-4, 187, 411, 
 
 455, 458 
 Gautama, 192 
 General will, 61 
 
 Qeneais, Book of, 197, 198, 490 
 Germans, 76, 91, 101, 112, 122, 
 142, 161, 165, 178, 213, 218, 
 220, 226, 300, 311, 340 
 Girard,P. P., 52, 207, 209, 210, 298, 
 
 299, 321, 330, 333 
 Goddard, P. E., 95 
 Godden, Gertrude, 79, 142, 151, 
 
 242, 243, 274, 319, 394 
 Good, conception of, 19, 544, 551 
 seq. 
 affected by non-moral causes, 19 
 affected by religious ideas, 19, 20 
 affected by social changes, 20';22 
 The common, 60, 62, 63 
 Government, 60, 61, 67, 68 
 
 Duties of, 539-40 
 Grace, 509, 513 
 Gratian. See Canon law. 
 Great Man, the, 530, 536 
 Great Spirit, 393 
 Greek Church, 225 
 — Greeks, ancient. 111, 135, 160, 
 346-7 
 Ethical conceptions, 548 
 Family among, 203-6 
 Law and custom of, 256-8, 295-8 
 Magical conceptions of, 421 
 Philosophy of, 258, 259, 299, 
 417, 544 seq., 569, 575, 601, 
 604 
 Religious conceptions of, 373, 
 415-17, 427-30, 438 
 Griffith, F. LI, 183-7, 286, 343, 
 
 412, 444, 452, 453, 455-6 
 Grote, <?., 135 
 
 Grotius, 259-64, 267, 302, 582 
 Group — 
 , Marriage. See Marriage. 
 Morality, Part I, ohs. vi, vii, 
 
 356, 547, 623-5 
 Organization and government, 
 
 45 seq. 
 Relationship, 47 
 
 Hagen, B., 43, 44, 95, 140, 436 
 
 Hall, W. E., 263 
 
 Hammurabi, 48, 74, 77, 82, 86, 
 
 109, 180-3, 281, 287, 321, 327 
 Happiness, 555, 563, 571, 572, 580, 
 
 597, 600 
 Hamack, 498, 507, 509, 510, 511 
 HarHson, J. E., 415-17, 421, 428 
 Hartley, 572 
 
 Hawes, il 
 
 Head-hunting, 26, 242-3, 245 
 
 Hebrew Prophets, 251, 252, 345, 
 
 490 seq. 
 Hebrews — 
 
 Ethical development of, 492 seq. 
 Family life, 197-200 
 Law and custom, 84-5, 88, 90, 
 101, 118, 144, 148, 155, 167, 
 250-2, 286-9, 320, 330, 345 
 Religious development, 90, 250-2, 
 489 seq. 
 Hedonism, 562 
 Hegel, 590, 594, 595 
 HeracUtus, 549 
 Heredity — 
 
 Effect upon behaviour, 3, 5, 6, 
 
 7, 8, 613-14, 635, 636 
 and character, 10-12 
 in man, 11 
 Herodotus, 65, 138, 204, 235, 257-8, 
 
 295, 430 
 Hesiod, 346 
 Hobbes, 571, 584 
 Homer, 29, 203, 256, 295 
 Homicide, 75, 76, 84-6, 94, 99, 107, 
 
 110, 111 
 Hospitality, 236, 338-9, 342, 344 
 Howard, G. E., 124, 125, 134, 148, 
 149, 150, 151, 153, 212, 213, 
 214, 215, 217, 222, 223, 230 
 HowiM, A. W., 44-6, 74-5, 90-1, 
 95, 97, 103, 157, 174, 325, 
 391-2, 395-6, 425, 436 
 Hughes, T. P., 200, 201, 293-4 
 Humanitarianism, 609-612 
 Humanity, 268, 316, 317, 356-7, 
 360, 364, 543, 590 seq., 606-8, 
 626-7 
 Human sacrifice, 240, 242, 247, 
 
 274, 
 Hume, 572 
 Humility, 483, 566 
 Huth, A. H, 144, 145 
 
 Idealism, 527 seq., 574, 626 
 Ideals, varying effect of, upon con- 
 duct, 23-5 
 Ihering, B. von, 52, 91 
 Impulse and desire, 9, 598-600, 
 
 614-15 
 India — 
 
 Family life, 48, 49, 135, 142, 143, 
 
 161, 188-93 
 Law and custom, 252-3, 289-93, 
 
 344 
 Religious conceptions, 461-4, 
 470 seq. 
 
INDEX 
 
 643 
 
 Individual and society, 569, 570 
 Indulgences, 611 
 Infanticide, 206, 218, 339, 340 
 Ingram, J. K., 300, 310-14 
 Inquest, 119 
 Instinct, 4-6, 145-6 
 
 in man, 11, 15 
 Intelligence, growth of, 614 seq. 
 
 Human, 616 
 International law, 257, 264, 265 
 
 right, 266-9 
 Intuitionism, 572 
 Isaiah, Book of, 252, 493-5 
 Islam, 200-2, 293-5 
 
 Japan, 86, 87, 119, 133, 168 
 
 Jaatrow, M., 412-15, 442 
 
 Jenks, E., 118 
 
 Jeremiah, Book of, 288, 493, 496 
 
 Jerome, 520 
 
 Jewne, Sir F., 209 
 
 Jevons, F. B., 373, 398, 421 
 
 Johns, G. H. If., 180, 181 
 
 Joint family, 79 
 
 Judges, Book of, 251, 489 
 
 Justice, phases in the development 
 of, 70 seq., 550, 552 seq. 
 Blood-feud, the, 73 seq., 81 seq., 
 
 130 
 Composition, 75seq^l30 
 Early procedure. 111 seq. 
 Execution of sentence, 118 
 Growth of public, 88 seq., 354-5 
 Influence of Central Authority, 
 
 94, 97, 101 
 Influence of rank, 77, 78 
 inside the clan, 79, 80, 103 
 inside the family, 79 
 in the modem state, 124 seq. 
 Outside the clan, 79, 80, 103 
 Period of severity, 122-4 
 Principle of collective responsi- 
 bility, 81-3, 87, 88 
 
 Juatin/la/n, 623 
 
 Kant, 573 seq. 
 
 Kidd, B., 595 
 
 Kings, Book of, 251, 286, 489 
 
 Kingsley, Mary, 370, 371 
 
 Kinship — 
 
 AfSnity as basis of, 143 
 Classifioatory, 137, 143 
 Society based on, 43 seq., 53-4 
 
 KoUer, J., 78, 82, 89, 90, 133, 138, 
 139, 149, 150, 163, 165, 167, 
 168, 171, 175, 180, 326 
 
 KoUer and Peiaer, 48, 182, 183 
 
 Koran, 202, 261, 339, 346, .497, 
 
 508 
 Kovalevaky, M, 138, 330 
 Kropotkin, Prince, 416 
 Kuenen, 491 
 
 Labourer, position of, in England, 
 
 308-10, 349-51 
 La Cour and Appel, 41 
 Laffitte, P., 343 
 Lao-Taze, 475, 485 seq., 516 
 Law, 61, 65 
 
 Basis of, 550, 551. See Justice. 
 Lecky, W. E. H., 221, 523 
 Legge, G., 194, 253, 293, 343, 638 
 Leisl, B. W., 203, 204, 425, 428, 
 
 431 
 Letoumeau, C, 134, 151, 157, 170, 
 
 173, 204, 235, 242, 245, 246, 
 
 259, 260, 273-5, 279, 280, 300 
 Levirate, The, 157, 193 
 Leviticus, Book of, 199, 288, 34^5 
 Liberty, 67, 68, 358-60, 586 seq. 
 Life, sanctity of, 475, 480 
 Lloyd-Morgan, C, 2, 6 
 Loch, C. S., 345-51 
 Locke, 583 
 Luther, 608, 512 
 Lyall, A., 373 
 
 Magic, 380-7, 397, 408, 409 
 
 and morals, 243, 318, 420-3, 
 
 445, 467, 473 
 and mjrsticism, 485, 486 
 and religion, 397-8, 401, 424, 
 439, 444, 445, 468, 491, 492 
 Maine, H. S., 161, 333-4 
 Malays, 47-9, 78, 81, 151, 166, 168, 
 
 172 368 
 Man, e'.H., 71, 143, 239, 340 
 Mana, 242, 387 
 
 Manu, 48, 52, 109, 161, 189-93, 
 253, 290, 291, 334, 344, 364, 
 472, 474-6 
 Marcus Aurelius, 517, 568 
 Marett, S. R., 374, 388, 389 
 Marriage, by capture, 152, 153, 
 163, 164, 189 
 by consent, 152, 156-8, 190, 194, 
 
 209, 213 
 by consideration rendered, 152, 
 
 154, 164 
 by exchange, 156 
 by go-betweens, 194 
 by purchase, 154, 167, 165, 180, 
 
 188, 189, 197 
 by service, 155, 197 
 contracts, 182, 183, 185 
 
644 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Marriage — 
 
 Dissolution of (Law of divorce), 
 
 in European civilization, 204, 
 
 207, 208, 210, 211, 214-17, 
 
 222, 225-31 
 
 in oriental civilization, 180-1, 
 
 184, 191, 195, 197, 198-9, 200 
 
 in uncivilized world, 147 seq., 
 
 172, 178 
 under varying conditions, 147 
 seq., 225-31 
 Group, 135-8 
 Law and custom relating to. 
 
 Part I, ohs. iv, v. 
 Monogamous, 133, 140, 141 
 Polyandrous, 134, 135, 141, 176, 
 
 178 
 Polygamous, 133, 139, 140, 141, 
 172, 178, 181, 185, 188, 194, 
 200, 201 
 Polygynous, 133 
 Promiscuous, 138, 178 
 Questions concerning, 133 
 Keligious conception of, 159 
 Restrictions on, 52, 53, 142 seq. 
 Varying relations of husband and 
 wife, 159, 167 seq., 179, 183, 
 
 188, 195-7, 199-200, 203, 208- 
 10, 218 seq. 
 
 Married Women's Property Acts, 
 
 223 
 MaHin, E., 43, 44, 140, 391 
 Maspero, G., 58, 185, 282-4, 318, 
 
 342, 406-10, 420 
 Materialism, 493 
 Matriarchy, 47, 159, 187 
 Max Muller, W., 144, 185, 187, 
 
 283 
 Mayne, J. D., 48, 49, 52, 135, 161, 
 
 189, 327, 330 
 Mazdaism, 364, 374, 467, 468 
 Meissner, B., 48, 182, 280, 281, 
 
 282 
 Melanesians, 383, 387, 420 
 Mencius, 255-6, 531, 535-41 
 Middle Ages, 112, 113, 120, 121, 
 
 212 seq., 301-8, 310, 311 
 Influence of Church in, 112, 120, 
 
 128, 131, 144, 568 
 Mill, J., 572 
 
 Mill, John Stuart, 572, 589 
 Modem ethics, 568 seq. 
 Mohammed, 80, 200-2 
 Mohammedanism, 261-2, 278-9, 
 
 498, 503, 508, 515 
 Mohammedan law, 82, 86, 110, 133, 
 
 144 
 Mommsen, T., 52, 112, 2R1 
 
 Monogamy, 524 
 
 in early civilization, 185 
 in European civilization, 215 
 in oriental civilization, 198 
 in uncivilized world, 133, 140-1 
 Monotheism — 
 
 Approaches to, 489 
 
 Conception of the deity, 496 seq. 
 
 Effect of ethical teaching, 522 
 
 Ethical, 496 seq. 
 
 Ethical conceptions of, 497, 506 
 
 seq., 515 seq. 
 exclusive salvation, 508 
 in early Judaism, 489 seq. 
 Tendency to, in early religions, 
 391-6, 409-12, 415, 460, 463, 
 489 seq. 
 Montefiore, C. G., 200, 489, 491, 
 
 495, 496 
 Morality — 
 
 Conditions of advance in, 18, 31 
 Instinctive elements in, 14 
 Relation to S3anpathy, 15 
 Moral sanctions in early thought, 
 419 seq., 508, 547 
 Moral standard, 31, 558 seq. 
 affected by reciprocity, 16 
 affected by self-interest, 16 
 based on human character, 14-16 
 Fundamental uniformity of, 28 
 related to social conditions, 16-18 
 
 22, 31, 33 seq. 
 Varying effectiveness of, 23-25 
 Morgan, L. H., 49, 50, 78, 141, 170, 
 
 326, 338, 339, 441 
 Morice, 49, 323, 329 
 Mother, respect for, 186 
 Mother-right, 47, 49, 51, 159-61, 
 
 167 seq., 179, 187, 197 
 Muir, T., 188, 290, 292, 462, 463, 
 
 464 
 Mysticism, 416, 417, 470-3, 485 
 
 seq. 
 Myth-making, 389 seq. 
 
 Natural rights, 584 seq. 
 Natural selection, 5 
 Nature, 518, 550 
 as foundation of virtue, 530, 
 536-8, 542, 553 seq., 558, 562, 
 569, 571, 583 
 Law of, 264, 562 seq., 571, 581 
 seq., 627 
 Nationalism, 362 
 Niyoga, custom of, 193 
 Non-resistance, 262, 267 
 North American Indians, 49, 50, 79, 
 89, 90, 92, 134, 139, 141, 142, 
 
INDEX 
 
 645 
 
 149, 157, 167, 169, 170, 172, 
 
 175, 236, 238, 241, 242, 245, 
 
 275, 319, 326, 338-41, 376, 
 
 390, 392, 394, 420, 424, 432, 
 434, 441 
 
 Nombers, Book of, 199, 250, 330, 
 491 
 
 Oath, 115, 116, 131 
 
 Obligation, 555, 575 seq., 623, 628 
 
 OU, W. G., 485-7 
 
 Omnipotence, 499-506, 627 
 
 Oppert, O., 282 
 
 Ordeals, 97, 116, 117 
 
 Owen, R., 214 
 
 Paine, Tom, 584-6 
 Palmer, R. H., 81, 417, 498, 508 
 Pantheism, 410, 459, 498 
 Parents, duty to, 538, 
 
 Bights of, 183 
 Parlcer, Mrs. K. L., 117, 150, 156, 
 
 395, 434 
 Paternity, 163 
 Patriarchate, 47, 149, 159, 183, 188, 
 
 195, 197, 203, 206, 212, 462 
 Payne, E. J., 32, 342, 370, 438 
 Peace, Ideal of, 252 seq., 267, 495 
 Peasantry, in modern Europe, 311 
 Pelagiits, 500 
 Penance, 509 seq. 
 Perfection, 483, 485 
 Personality, 193, 358 seq., 560 
 
 Transference of, 238 
 Pharisaism, 423 
 Philosophic life, 560, 561 
 Pike, L. O., 124 
 Plato, 16, 205, 258, 296, 517, 552 
 
 seq., 556, 557, 568 
 Pleasure and pain, 8, 572, 596, 
 
 599, 600 
 Pollock and Maitland, 74, 76, 77, 
 
 86, 101, 115, 119, 121, 128, 
 
 218, 219, 302, 307, 319, 320, 
 
 520 
 Polyandry, 134, 135, 205 
 Polygamy, 33, 132-4, 139-41, 178, 
 
 181, 182, 185, 188, 192, 198, 
 
 200, 201, 213 
 in European civilization, 215 
 Polytheism; 402-6, 409, 416-18, 
 
 428-30, 459, 490 
 Poor — 
 in classical civilizations, 346-8 
 in Middle Ages, 348-50 
 in modern Europe, 350-3 
 in oriental civilizations, 341-6 
 Popular Sovereignty, 360 
 
 Post, A. H., 48, 52, 74, 76, 78, 79, 
 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 101, 116, 
 119, 133, "142, 148, 149, 150, 
 151, 155, 157, 160, 165, 166, 
 167, 173-5, 239, 245, 273, 279, 
 319, 326, 333, 424 
 Powdl, J. W., 48, 103 
 Prnvera, S., 91, 139, 149, 175, 239, 
 
 394 435 
 Prayer, ' 413-15, 426, 442, 443, 
 
 450-2, 468 
 Predestination, 500 seq. 
 Primitive thought, 27 
 -Prisoners, treatment of, 237 seq. 
 Private judgment, 570 
 Progress, 30, 36, 634 seq. 
 Promiscuity, 133, 138 
 Property, Part I, ch. viii, 447, 
 
 522, 608 
 Protestantism, 144, 222. See Calvin 
 
 and Luther. 
 Proverbs, Book of, 198 
 Ptah-Hotep, 185, 186, 527 
 Punishment, by branding, 126 
 by imprisonment, 126, 127 
 by mutilation, 128 
 by transportation, 126 
 Capital, 126-8, 635 
 Eternal, 500 seq. 
 Future, 431 seq., 626 
 Growth of severity in, 122-4 
 PubUc, 89, 90, 100, 104, seq. 
 Reform of, in modern times, 124» 
 
 seq. 
 Rational conception of, 124 seq. 
 Purification, 476 
 Purpose, 2-3 
 
 Quarter, 244, 245, 249, 252, 253, 
 258, 260, 262 
 Refused, 237, 239 seq., 249, 253, 
 256, 259, 262 
 
 Ransom, 257 
 
 Rationalism, 572 seq., 607, 611, 
 626-7 
 
 Rationalists, 125 
 
 Ratzel, 26, 151, 167, 172, 274, 275 
 
 Reality, 546, 596, 622 
 
 Reason and desire, 672 seq. 
 
 Reclus, E., 134, 135, 144, 151, 171, 
 234, 236, 244, 275, 340, 341, 
 376, 377, 419, 421, 431, 432 
 
 Reflex action, 2, 3, 613 
 
 Regicide, 541 
 
 Relativity, 606-9 
 
 Religion, 398, 459, 460 
 as ground of social union, 43 
 
646 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Religion — 
 
 Development of, 619 seq. 
 
 Relation to ethics, 591 seq. 
 See Animism, Polytheism, Mo- 
 notheism, etc. 
 Remorse, 422, 423 
 Repentance, 474, 492 
 Responsibility, 83 seq. 
 
 Collective, 81, 82 
 
 Individual, 128, 129 
 
 vicarious, 81 
 Retaliation. See Justice. 
 Retribution, 469 
 Rhys Davids, T. W., 475, 480-3 
 Rightlessness, 273, 277, 285, 286, 
 
 295, 297, 299 
 Rights — 
 
 Gradation of, 272, 277-80, 291, 
 301, 305, 309, 
 
 in modern state, 130, 131 
 
 in primitive and advanced 
 thought, 129, 60 
 
 Personal, 60 seq. 
 Robertson Smith, 118, 345, 444 
 Roman Jurists, 299, 566 
 Rome — 
 
 Early conditions, 59, 259-61 
 
 Family life, 148, 178, 206-12, 340 
 
 Government, 90, 110, 122 
 
 Law and custom, 298-300, 321, 
 330, 347-8 
 
 Religions conceptions, 373, 429 
 Roth, W. E., 47, 98, 103, 107, 166, 
 
 395, 436 
 Roumania, 225 
 Rousseau, 584, 585 
 Russia, 225, 311 
 
 Sacrifice, 409, 444, 464, 492 
 Samuel, Book of, 489, 491 
 Satan, 496 
 Saussaye, P. de la, 373, 393-4, 404 
 
 How far comparable to primitive 
 
 men, 25 
 Moral qualities of, 25, 26, 27 
 Sayce, A. H., 248, 249, 342 
 Scandinavia, 227 
 Scape-goat, 439 
 Schmidt, 144, 150, 163, 165, 245, 
 
 275, 340 
 Schoolcraft, 92, 141, 149, 159, 238, 
 
 243, 275, 326, 339-41, 394, 
 
 420 
 Schooleraft-Drake, 149, 239, 243, 
 
 319, 339, 394, 420 
 SchrSder, R., 77, 91, 101, 115, 120, 
 
 122, 301-3, 315, 306, 333, 340 
 
 Science, 633 
 Scotland, 228 
 Self, 470, 471 
 
 assertion, 515, 624 
 
 denial, 524 
 
 development, 561, 629 
 
 interest, 16 
 
 sacrifice, 570 
 
 suppression, 561, 615, 629 
 Seligmann, C. G., 43, 44, 140, 171, 
 
 324, 396, 400, 425, 437, 438 
 Serfdom, 57, 271, 278, 279, 283, 
 284, 296, 297, 300, 304 seq., 350 
 Servia, 225 
 
 She-King, 194-7, 253, 254, 293, 343 
 Shoo-King, 254, 343 
 Sidgwick, A., 428 
 Sidgwick, H., 65 
 
 " Simpler Peoples," 39, 54, 76, 78, 
 83, 105, 117, 153, 162, 166, 
 171, 174, 175, 177, 234, 238, 
 244, 275, 329, 340 
 Sin, 507 
 
 purging, 439, 442 
 Slavery, 122 
 
 Abolition of, 312 seq. 
 
 and forced labour, 314 
 
 Conditions of, 57, 59, 66, 244, 272 
 
 Criticism of, 229 
 
 for debt, 277, 280, 281, 296, 299 
 
 General conception of, 271, 272 
 
 Grades of, 277, 278 
 
 Hereditary, 277 
 
 in Oriental civilization, 280-95 
 
 in uncivilized world, 272-80 
 
 Modem Negro, 312-14 
 
 of co-religionists forbidden, 293, 
 294 
 
 Question of, 258-9 
 Slaves — 
 
 Domestic and foreign, 286-9 
 
 Duty to, 344 
 
 Manumission of, encouraged, 
 
 294, 303, 310 
 
 Position of, in England, 308 
 
 Prohibition to recruit from cap- 
 tives, 261-3, 301, 302 
 
 Protection of, 198, 277-81, 286-9, 
 293, 296 
 
 recruited from captives, 239, 
 244 seq., 250, 256, 257, 260, 
 262, 273, 274, 275, 277, 282, 
 
 295, 296 
 Slave-trade, 280, 293, 302, 
 
 Abolition of, 313, 314 
 Social changes, 20-2 
 Socialists, 522 
 Social organization, 43 seq. 
 
INDEX 
 
 647 
 
 Social reform, 493, 633 
 
 Socrates, 544, 551, 555 
 
 Sophists, 549. 550 
 
 Sorcerers, Punishment of, 81, 89 
 
 Soul, 317 seq. 
 
 Spencer, H., 168 
 
 Spencer and GiUen, Messrs., 45, 46, 
 75, 86, 89, 136, 1S7, 163, 164, 
 175, 235, 241, 322, 370, 377, 
 
 381, 389-91, 393, 419, 420, 425 
 Spirit, 471 
 
 in evolution, 506, 594 seq., 621, 
 622, 629 seq. 
 Spirits, 278, 279, 391-6, 424, 461, 
 464 
 
 appeasing, 444 
 
 punish immoral actions, 440 
 Spiritual religion, 487, 488, 628 
 Starcke, C. M., 144, 173 
 State, 60 seq. 88 
 
 The City, 64 seq. 
 
 The modern, 67 seq., 130, 131, 
 357 seq. 
 
 Theory of, 586 seq. 
 Steinmetz, M., 81, 88, 167, 327 
 Stoics, 303, 562 seq. 
 Supernatural, 518 
 Sutherland, 4., 88 
 SwarUon, J. JR., 80, 322, 329, 434 
 Sympathy, 15 
 
 Taboo, 55, 88 seq., 146, 318, 378, 
 
 387, 420-21, 423, 440, 446 
 Tacitus, 83, 259, 326 
 Taoism, 460, 485 seq. 
 Taylor, 120, 602 
 
 Theft, punishment of, 76, 319 seq. 
 Thomas Aquinas, 349, 498 
 Thucydides, 256-8, 296, 550 
 Torture, 121-3, 238, 239, 249, 253 
 Totemism, 45, 46, 143, 144, 377, 
 
 382, 397, 401 
 Trade guilds, 348 
 Trade unionism, 361 
 Tradition, 12-14, 616, 617, 635 seq. 
 Traditional morality, 547, 549, 
 
 617, 623, 624 
 Transmigration, 369, 474 
 Treaties, 248 
 Tribal union, 49 seq. 
 Tribute, 251 
 Truth, 466, 476 
 Tylor, E. B., 82, 143, 153, 164, 318, 
 
 367-9, 371, 376, 392, 426, 431, 
 
 432 
 
 Ulpian, 209, 210, 299 
 United States, 229, 230 
 
 Universalism, 261, 303, 316, 495, 
 
 517, 543, 564 
 Upanishads, 344, 470-73 
 Usury, 345, 346, 477 
 Utilitarianism, 125, 572, 587 seq. 
 
 Validity, 576, 577 
 
 Vedas, 252, 462, 463, 470 
 
 Vengeance, 72 seq., 309 
 
 Vice, 556-7 
 
 Vineya texts, 482, 484 
 
 Vinogradov, Prof., 52, 161, 216, 
 
 303, 306, 307, 308 
 Viollet, P., 209, 214-16, 218, 221, 
 
 224, 301, 302, 312, 313, 330 
 Virtue for its own sake, 485, 528, 
 
 551 seq. 
 
 Wace and Buchheim, 508 
 Wailing for the dead, 368 
 Waitz, G., 76, 83, 213 
 Waitz, T., 45, 75, 78, 81, 83, 142, 
 151, 166-8, 170, 173, 235-7, 
 239-46, 273-5, 281, 319, 320, 
 338, 431, 438, 440, 441 
 Wallace, A. R., 5 
 War, 234 seq. 
 
 Chivaby in, 236, 253, 264 
 Ethics of, 476 
 
 in classical civilization, 266-61 
 in early oiviUzation, 246 seq. 
 in uncivilized world JgL,234 seq. 
 in Western Europe, '262 seq. 
 Just and unjust, 262, 276, 267 
 unknown among some savages, 
 234 
 Wergild, 77, 78, 300 
 Westermarch, E., 52, 87, 135, 144, 
 148, 155, 166, 167, 171-6, 263, 
 338, 340, 419 
 Widow, position of, 188, 195 
 WiUmumitz-Mdllendorf, U. von, 
 
 203, 205, 297, 330 
 Wilcox, W. F., 230 
 WiU, 599-600, 616 
 Wine^, F. H., 125-7 
 Wisdom literature, 495 
 Wissowa, 404, 429 
 Witchcraft, 84, 89, 117, 409, 413 
 WoUstonecraft, Mary, 223 
 Women, 476, 481, 484, 485 
 
 Attitude to, 199, 200, 202, 203, 
 
 205, 211, 212, 221, 222, 232 
 Equality with men, 186-8 
 Position of, 31, 132 seq., 203 seq., 
 
 355 
 among uncivilized races, 71, 
 167 seq. 
 
648 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Women — 
 
 in English law, 219 seq. 
 in oriental civilization, 179 seq., 
 183-8, 190, 191, 195-6, 199-202 
 in relation to marriage-law, 
 
 132, 159 seq. . 
 
 Bights of unmarried, m Middle 
 
 Ages, 219 
 Bights of unmarried, in modem 
 
 period, 220 
 Treatment of, in war, 237, 243-4, 
 248, 250, 252, 256-7, 259 
 
 Xenophon, 206, 257 
 Yahveh, 405, 489 seq. 
 
 Zechariah, 495 
 
 Zend Aveata, 86, 464-9 
 
 Zeno, 549 
 
 Zeus, 403-5, 416 
 
 Zimmem, A. E., 205, 206, 297 
 
 Zvmnmrn, H., 442, 450 
 
 Zulus, 371 
 
 Fbinted in Great Britaik by Richard* Clay & Sons, Limited, 
 brunswick st., 8tamfobd st., s.e,, and bungay, suffolk.