Ethics

by John Dewey · English · Gutenberg #39551 · 1,269,241 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Ethics

Author: John Dewey
James Hayden Tufts

Release date: April 28, 2012 [eBook #39551]

Language: English

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American Science Series

ETHICS

JOHN DEWEY
Professor of Philosophy in Columbia University

and

JAMES H. TUFTS
Professor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago

[Illustration]

New York
Henry Holt and Company
London: George Bell and Sons
1909

PREFACE

The significance of this text in Ethics lies in its effort to awaken
a vital conviction of the genuine reality of moral problems and the
value of reflective thought in dealing with them. To this purpose
are subordinated the presentation in Part I. of historic material;
the discussion in Part II. of the different types of theoretical
interpretation, and the consideration, in Part III., of some typical
social and economic problems which characterize the present.

Experience shows that the student of morals has difficulty in getting
the field objectively and definitely before him so that its problems
strike him as real problems. Conduct is so intimate that it is not easy
to analyze. It is so important that to a large extent the perspective
for regarding it has been unconsciously fixed by early training. The
historical method of approach has proved in the classroom experience of
the authors an effective method of meeting these difficulties. To follow
the moral life through typical epochs of its development enables
students to realize what is involved in their own habitual standpoints;
it also presents a concrete body of subject-matter which serves as
material of analysis and discussion.

The classic conceptions of moral theory are of remarkable importance in
illuminating the obscure places of the moral life and in giving the
student clues which will enable him to explore it for himself. But there
is always danger of either dogmatism or a sense of unreality when
students are introduced abruptly to the theoretical ideas. Instead of
serving as tools for understanding the moral facts, the ideas are
likely to become substitutes for the facts. When they are proffered
ready-made, their theoretical acuteness and cleverness may be admired,
but their practical soundness and applicability are suspected. The
historical introduction permits the student to be present, as it were,
at the social situations in which the intellectual instruments were
forged. He appreciates their relevancy to the conditions which provoked
them, and he is encouraged to try them on simple problems before
attempting the complex problems of the present. By assisting in their
gradual development he gains confidence in the ideas and in his power to
use them.

In the second part, devoted more specifically to the analysis and
criticism of the leading conceptions of moral theory, the aim
accordingly has not been to instill the notions of a school nor to
inculcate a ready-made system, but to show the development of theories
out of the problems and experience of every-day conduct, and to suggest
how these theories may be fruitfully applied in practical exigencies.
Aspects of the moral life have been so thoroughly examined that it is
possible to present certain principles in the confidence that they will
meet general acceptance. Rationalism and hedonism, for example, have
contributed toward a scientific statement of the elements of conduct,
even though they have failed as self-inclosed and final systems. After
the discussions of Kant and Mill, Sidgwick and Green, Martineau and
Spencer, it is possible to affirm that there is a place in the moral
life for reason and a place for happiness,--a place for duty and a place
for valuation. Theories are treated not as incompatible rival systems
which must be accepted or rejected _en bloc_, but as more or less
adequate methods of surveying the problems of conduct. This mode of
approach facilitates the scientific estimation and determination of the
part played by various factors in the complexity of moral life. The
student is put in a position to judge the problems of conduct for
himself. This emancipation and enlightenment of individual judgment is
the chief aim of the theoretical portion.

In a considerable part of the field, particularly in the political and
economic portions of Part III., no definitive treatment is as yet
possible. Nevertheless, it is highly desirable to introduce the student
to the examination of these unsettled questions. When the whole
civilized world is giving its energies to the meaning and value of
justice and democracy, it is intolerably academic that those interested
in ethics should have to be content with conceptions already worked out,
which therefore relate to what is least doubtful in conduct rather than
to questions now urgent. Moreover, the advantages of considering theory
and practice in direct relation to each other are mutual. On the one
hand, as against the _a priori_ claims of both individualism and
socialism, the need of the hour seems to us to be the application of
methods of more deliberate analysis and experiment. The extreme
conservative may deprecate any scrutiny of the present order; the ardent
radical may be impatient of the critical and seemingly tardy processes
of the investigator; but those who have considered well the conquest
which man is making of the world of nature cannot forbear the conviction
that the cruder method of trial and error and the time-honored method of
prejudice and partisan controversy need not longer completely dominate
the regulation of the life of society. They hope for a larger
application of the scientific method to the problems of human welfare
and progress. Conversely, a science which takes part in the actual work
of promoting moral order and moral progress must receive a valuable
reflex influence of stimulus and of test. To consider morality in the
making as well as to dwell upon values already established should make
the science more vital. And whatever the effect upon the subject-matter,
the student can hardly appreciate the full force of his materials and
methods as long as they are kept aloof from the questions which are
occupying the minds of his contemporaries.

Teachers who are limited in time will doubtless prefer to make their own
selections of material, but the following suggestions present one
possible line of choice. In Part I., of the three chapters dealing with
the Hebrew, Greek, and modern developments, any one may be taken as
furnishing an illustration of the method; and certain portions of
Chapter IX. may be found more detailed in analysis than is necessary for
the beginner. In Part II., Chapters XI.-XII. may be omitted without
losing the thread of the argument. In Part III., any one of the specific
topics--viz., the political state, the economic order, the family--may
be considered apart from the others. Some teachers may prefer to take
Parts in their entirety. In this case, any two may be chosen.

As to the respective shares of the work for which the authors are
severally responsible, while each has contributed suggestions and
criticisms to the work of the other in sufficient degree to make the
book throughout a joint work, Part I. has been written by Mr. Tufts,
Part II. by Mr. Dewey, and in Part III., Chapters XX. and XXI. are by
Mr. Dewey, Chapters XXII.-XXVI. by Mr. Tufts.

It need scarcely be said that no attempt has been made in the
bibliographies to be exhaustive. When the dates of publication of the
work cited are given, the plan has been in general to give, in the case
of current literature, the date of the latest edition, and in the case
of some classical treatises the date of original publication.

In conclusion, the authors desire to express their indebtedness to their
colleagues and friends Dr. Wright, Mr. Talbert, and Mr. Eastman, who
have aided in the reading of the proof and with other suggestions.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. INTRODUCTION 1

Sec. 1. _Definition and Method_:--Ethical and moral, specific
problem, 1; importance of genetic study, 3. Sec. 2. _Criterion
of the moral_:--The moral in cross section, the "what" and
the "how," 5; the moral as growth, 8. Sec. 3. _Divisions of the
treatment_, 13.

PART I

THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF MORALITY

II. EARLY GROUP LIFE 17

Sec. 1. _Typical facts of group life_:--Primitive unity and
solidarity, 17. Sec. 2. _Kinship and household groups_:--The
kinship group, 21; the family or household group, 23.
Sec. 3. _Kinship and family groups as economic and industrial
units_:--The land and the group, 24; movable goods, 25.
Sec. 4. _Kinship and family groups as political bodies_:--Their
control over the individual, 26; rights and responsibility, 27.
Sec. 5. _The kinship or household as a religious unit_:--Totem
groups, 30; ancestral religion, 31. Sec. 6. _Age and sex groups_,
32. Sec. 7. _Moral significance of the group_, 34.

III. THE RATIONALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCIES IN EARLY SOCIETY 37

Sec. 1. _Three levels of conduct_:--Conduct as instinctive and
governed by primal needs, regulated by society's standards,
and by personal standards, 37. Sec. 2. _Rationalizing agencies_:
Work, 40; arts and crafts, 41; war, 42. Sec. 3. _Socializing
agencies_:--Cooperation, 42; art, 45. Sec. 4. _Family life
as idealizing and socializing agency_, 47. Sec. 5. _Moral
interpretation of this first level_, 49.

IV. GROUP MORALITY--CUSTOMS OR MORES 51

Sec. 1. _Meaning, authority, and origin of customs_, 51.
Sec. 2. _Means of enforcing custom_:--Public approval, taboos,
rituals, force, 54. Sec. 3. _Conditions which render group
control conscious_:--Educational customs, 57; law and
justice, 59; danger or crisis, 64. Sec. 4. _Values and defects
of customary morality_:--Standards, motives, content,
organization of character, 68.

V. FROM CUSTOM TO CONSCIENCE; FROM GROUP MORALITY TO PERSONAL
MORALITY 73

Sec. 1. _Contrast and collision_, 73. Sec. 2. _Sociological
agencies in the transition_:--Economic forces, 76; science
and the arts, 78; military forces, 80; religious forces,
81. Sec. 3. _Psychological agencies_:--Sex, 81; private
property, 83; struggles for mastery and liberty, 84; honor
and esteem, 85. Sec. 4. _Positive reconstruction_, 89.

VI. THE HEBREW MORAL DEVELOPMENT 91

Sec. 1. _General character and determining principles_:--The
Hebrew and the Greek, 91; Political and economic factors, 92.
Sec. 2. _Religious agencies_:--Covenant, 94; personal law-giver,
95; cultus, 97; prophets, 99; the kingdom, 100. Sec. 3. _Moral
conceptions attained_:--Righteousness and sin, 102;
responsibility, 104; purity of motive, 105; the ideal of
"life," 107; the social ideal, 108.

VII. THE MORAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS 111

Sec. 1. _The fundamental notes_:--Convention versus nature, 111;
measure, 112; good and just, 113. Sec. 2. _Intellectual forces of
individualism_:--The scientific spirit, 114. Sec. 3. _Commercial
and political individualism_:--Class interests, 119; why obey
laws? 122. Sec. 4. _Individualism and ethical theory_:--The
question formulated, 124; individualistic theories, 126. Sec. 5.
_The deeper view of nature and the good, of the individual and
the social order_:--Aristotle on the natural, 127; Plato's
ideal state, 129; passion or reason, 131; eudaemonism and the
mean, 134; man and the cosmos, 135. Sec. 6. _The conception of
the ideal_:--Contrast with the actual, 136; ethical
significance, 138. Sec. 7. _The conception of the self, of
character and responsibility_:--The poets, 138; Plato and the
Stoics, 140.

VIII. THE MODERN PERIOD 142

Sec. 1. _The mediaeval ideals_:--Groups and class ideals, 143;
the church ideal, 145. Sec. 2. _Main lines of modern
development_, 147. Sec. 3. _The old and new in the beginnings
of individualism_, 149. Sec. 4. _Individualism in the progress
of liberty and democracy_:--Rights, 151. Sec. 5. _Individualism
as affected by the development of industry, commerce, and
art_:--Increasing power and interests, 153; distribution of
goods, 157; industrial revolution raises new problems,
159. Sec. 6. _The individual and the development of
intelligence_:--The Renaissance, 163; the Enlightenment, 165;
the present significance of scientific method, 167.

IX. A GENERAL COMPARISON OF CUSTOMARY AND REFLECTIVE MORALITY 171

Sec. 1. _Elements of agreement and continuity_:--Regime
of custom, 172; persistence of group morality, 173;
origin of ethical terms, 175. Sec. 2. _Elements of
contrast_:--Differentiation of the moral, 177; observing
_versus_ reflecting, 178; the higher law, 181; deepening of
meaning, 182. Sec. 3. _Opposition between individual and social
aims and standards_:--Withdrawal from the social order, 184;
individual emancipation, 186. Sec. 4. _Effects upon the
individual character_:--Increased possibilities of evil as well
as of good, 187. Sec. 5. _Moral differentiation and the social
order_:--Effects on the family, 193; on industry and government,
194; on religion, 195; general relation of religion to morality,
197.

PART II

THEORY OF THE MORAL LIFE

X. THE MORAL SITUATION 201

Distinguishing marks of the moral situation, 201; Traits of
voluntary activity, 202; The good and bad in non-voluntary
behavior, 203; Indifferent voluntary conduct, 205; The moral
is introduced when ends have conflicting values, 207;
Selection then depends upon, and influences, the nature
of the self, 209.

XI. PROBLEMS OF MORAL THEORY 212

Theory grows from practical problems, 212; Three typical
problems of reflective practice, 213; Corresponding problems
of theory, 214; Their historical sequence, 215; Growth of
individualism, 220; The two types of individualism, 221.

XII. TYPES OF MORAL THEORY 224

Sec. 1. _Typical divisions of theories_:--Teleological and
jural, 224; individual and institutional, 225; empirical and
intuitional, 226. Sec. 2. _Division of voluntary activity into
Inner and Outer_:--The "how" and the "what," 227; attitude
and consequences, 228; different types of each theory, 229;
bearing of each theory upon problems of knowledge and
of control, 231. Sec. 3. _General interpretation of these
theories_:--Ordinary view of disposition and of consequences,
232; advantages claimed for emphasis upon consequences, 234;
for emphasis upon disposition or attitude, 236; necessity of
reconciliation of these theories, 237.

XIII. CONDUCT AND CHARACTER 240

Problem of their relation, 240. Sec. 1. _The good will of
Kant_:--Emphasis upon motive, 241; motive with or without
consequences, 242; necessity of effort, 243; overt action
required to prove motive, 245. Sec. 2. _The "Intention" of the
Utilitarians_:--Emphasis upon consequences, 246; distinction
of intention from motive, 247; they are really identical,
248; motive as blind and as intelligent, 249; practical
importance of insistence upon consequences, 251; foresight
of consequences depends upon motive, 252. Sec. 3. _Conduct and
character_:--The nature of disposition, 254; partial and
complete intention, 256; complexity of motives, 257. Sec. 4.
_Morality of acts and of agents_:--Subjective and objective
morality, 259; the doer and his deed, 260; summary, 261.

XIV. HAPPINESS AND CONDUCT: THE GOOD AND DESIRE 263

Residence and nature of goodness, 263; happiness as the
good, 264; love of happiness as the evil, 265; ambiguity in
conception of happiness, 266. Sec. 1. _The Object of
Desire_:--Is it pleasure? 269; desire presupposes instinctive
appetites, 270; and objects of thought, 271; happiness and
desire, 272; need for standard, 274. Sec. 2. _The Conception
of Happiness as a Standard_:--Utilitarian method, 275;
Difficulty of measuring pleasure, 276; character determines
the value of a pleasure, 277; Mill's introduction of
quality of pleasure, 279. Sec. 3. _The constitution of
happiness_:--Pleasures depend upon objects, 281; they are
qualitative, 282; they vary with disposition, 283; happiness
as the moral good, 284.

XV. HAPPINESS AND SOCIAL ENDS 286

Utilitarianism aims at social welfare, 286; value as a theory
of social reform, 287; its aim conflicts with its hedonistic
theory of motive, 289; Bentham's method of reconciling
personal and general happiness, 291; Mill's method, 293;
sympathy and the social self, 298; the distinctively moral
interest, 300; equation of virtue and happiness, 301; moral
democracy, 303.

XVI. THE PLACE OF REASON IN THE MORAL LIFE: MORAL KNOWLEDGE 306

Sec. 1. _Problem of reason and desire_:--Nature of a reasonable
act, 306; theories about moral knowledge, 307. Sec. 2. _Kant's
theory of practical reason_:--Traits of morality, 309; reason
as _a priori_ and formal, 310; true meaning of generalization,
313; the general and the social, 314. Sec. 3. _Moral sense
intuitionalism_:--Function of reason, 317; habit and sense,
319; invalid intuitions, 321; deliberation and intuition, 322;
the good man's judgment, 324. Sec. 4. _The place of general
rules_:--Their value, 325; casuistry, 326; and its dangers,
327; secondary ends of utilitarianism, 329; empirical rules
and customs, 330; distinction of rules and principles, 333;
sympathy and reasonableness, 334.

XVII. THE PLACE OF DUTY IN THE MORAL LIFE: SUBJECTION TO
AUTHORITY 337

Conflict of the rational with the attractive end, 337. Sec. 1.
_The subjection of desire to law_, 339; cause of conflict of
desire and thought, 342; demand for transformation of desire,
343; social character of duties, 345; the social self is the
"universal" self, 346. Sec. 2. _Kantian theory_:--Accord with
duty versus from duty, 346; the two-fold self of Kant, 347;
criticism of Kant, 348; emphasis falls practically on
political authority, 351; "Duty for duty's sake," 351.
Sec. 3. _The Utilitarian theory of duty_:--The hedonistic
problem, 353; Moral sanctions, 354; they are too external,
355; Bain's account, 356; Spencer's account, 358; such
views set up a fictitious non-social self, 361. Sec. 3. _Final
statement_:--Growth requires disagreeable readjustments, 362.

XVIII. THE PLACE OF THE SELF IN THE MORAL LIFE 364

Problems regarding the self, 364. Sec. 1. _The doctrine of
self-denial_:--Explanation of its origin, 365; four objections
to doctrine, 366. Sec. 2. _Self-assertion_:--Ethical dualism,
369; "naturalistic" ethics, 369; false biological basis, 371;
misinterprets nature of efficiency, 373. Sec. 3. _Self-love
and benevolence; or egoism and altruism_:--The "crux"
of ethical speculation, 375; are all motives selfish? 376;
ambiguity of term selfish, 377; are results selfish? 379;
self-preservation, 380; rational regard for self, 382;
regard for others, 384; the existence of "other-regarding"
impulses, 385; altruism may be immoral, 387; social
justice necessary to moral altruism, 389. Sec. 4. _The
good as self-realization_:--Self-realization an ambiguous
idea, 391; true and false consideration of the self, 393;
equation of personal and general happiness, 395.

XIX. THE VIRTUES 399

Introductory--virtue defined, 399; natural ability and
virtue, 400; evolution of virtues, 401; responsibility
for moral judgment, 402; futility of cataloguing virtues,
402; their cardinal aspects, 403. Sec. 1. _Temperance_:--Greek,
Roman, and Christian conceptions, 405; negative and positive
aspects, 407; pleasure and excitement, 408. Sec. 2. _Courage
or persistent vigor_:--Dislike of the disagreeable, 410;
"dimensions" of courage, 411; optimism and pessimism, 412.
Sec. 3. _Justice_:--Three meanings of, 414; justice and
love, 415; justice and punishment, 416. Sec. 4. _Wisdom or
conscientiousness_:--Importance of intelligent interest, 418;
Greek and modern ideas of moral wisdom, 419; ideals and
thoughtfulness, 420; ideals and progress, 422.

PART III

THE WORLD OF ACTION

XX. SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND THE INDIVIDUAL 427

Object of discussion, 427. Sec. 1. _Growth of individuality
through social organizations_:--Emancipation from custom,
428; double movement towards individuality and complex
associations, 429; morality and legality, 432; two-fold
contribution of social environment to individual morality,
433; moral value of the state, 434. Sec. 2. _Responsibility
and freedom_:--Liability, 436; freedom as exemption and as
power, 437; legal and moral freedom, 438. Sec. 3. _Rights and
obligations_:--Their definition, 439; they are correlative,
440; physical rights, 442; limitations put upon them by war
and punishment, 443; by poverty, 444; mental rights, 445;
limitations to freedom of thought and expression, 446;
education, 448.

XXI. CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE POLITICAL STATE 451

Sec. 1. _Civil rights and obligations_:--Their definition, 451;
their classes, 452; significance of established remedies for
wrongs, 454. Sec. 2. _Development of civil rights_:--Contrast
with savage age justice, 456; social harm versus metaphysical
evil, 457; recognition of accident and intent, 459; of
character and circumstances, 460; of mental incapacity, 462;
significance of negligence and carelessness, 464; conflict of
substantial and technical justice, 465; relations of the legal
and moral, 467; reform of criminal procedure necessary, 468;
also of punitive methods, 470; and of civil administration,
471. Sec. 3. _Political rights and obligations_:--Significance
of the state, 473; distrust of government, 474; indifference to
politics, 476; political corruption, 477; reform of partisan
machinery, 478; of governmental machinery, 479; constructive
social legislation, 480; a federated humanity, 481. Sec. 4. _The
moral criterion of political activity_:--Its statement, 482;
the individualistic formula, 483; the collectivistic formula,
484.

XXII. THE ETHICS OF THE ECONOMIC LIFE 486

Sec. 1. _General analysis_:--The economic in relation to
happiness, 487; relation to character, 488; social aspects,
491. Sec. 2. _The problem set by the new economic
order_:--Collective and impersonal organizations, 495;
readjustments required, 496. Sec. 3. _The agencies for carrying
on commerce and industry_:--Early agencies, 497; the business
enterprise, 498; the labor union, 499; reversion to group
morality, 500; members and management, 500; employer and
employed, 501; relations to the public, 502; to the law, 503.
Sec. 4. _The methods of production, exchange, and
valuation_:--The machine, 507; basis of valuation, 508. Sec. 5.
_The factors which aid ethical reconstruction_:--Principles
more easily seen, 511.

XXIII. SOME PRINCIPLES IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER 514

1. Wealth subordinate to personality, 514. 2. Wealth and
activity, 514. 3. Wealth and public service, 515. 4. A change
demanded from individual to collective morality, 517. 5.
Personal responsibility, 519. 6. Publicity and legal control,
520. 7. Democracy and distribution, 521.

XXIV. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER 523

Sec. 1. _Individualism and socialism_:--General statement, 523;
equal opportunity, 526. Sec. 2. _Individualism or free contract
analyzed; its values_:--Efficiency, 527; initiative, 527;
regulation of production, 528. Sec. 3. _Criticisms upon
individualism_:--It does not secure real freedom, 528; nor
justice, 530; competition tends to destroy itself, 531;
position of the aristocratic individualists, 532.

XXV. UNSETTLED PROBLEMS IN THE ECONOMIC ORDER (CONTINUED) 536

Sec. 4. _The theory of public agency and control_, 536. Sec.
5. _Society as agency of production_:--Charges against private
management, 537; corruption, 538; conditions of labor, 540;
collective agency not necessarily social, 544. Sec. 6.
_Theories of just distribution_:--Individualistic theory, 546;
equal division, 547; a working programme, 548. Sec. 7.
_Ownership and use of property_:--Defects in the present
system, 551. Sec. 8. _Present tendencies_:--Individualistic
character of the Constitution, 554; increased recognition of
public welfare, 555; social justice through economic, social,
and scientific progress, 557. Sec. 9. _Three special
problems_:--The open versus the closed shop, 559; the
capitalization of corporations, 561; the unearned increment,
564. Appendix: Prof. Seager's programme of social legislation,
566.

XXVI. THE FAMILY 571

Sec. 1. _Historical antecedents of the modern family_:--Maternal
type, 572; paternal type, 572; influence of the church, 576.
Sec. 2. _The psychological basis of the family_:--Emotional and
instinctive basis, 578; common will, 580; parenthood, 581;
social and religious factors, 582; the children, 582. Sec. 3.
_General elements of strain in family relations_:--Differences
between the sexes in temperament and occupation, 584; in
attitude toward the family, 587; differences between parents
and children, 589. Sec. 4. _Special conditions which give rise to
present problems_:--The economic factors, 590; cultural and
political factors, 593. Sec. 5. _Unsettled problems_:--Economic
problems, 594; the dilemma between the domestic life and
occupations outside the home, 595; the family as consumer,
598. Sec. 6. _Unsettled problems_:--Political problems, authority
within the family, 599; equality or inequality, 600; isolation
not the solution, 602; authority over the family, divorce,
603; general law of social health, 605; conclusion, 605.

* * * * *

ETHICS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Sec. 1. DEFINITION AND METHOD

=Provisional Definition.=--The place for an accurate definition of a
subject is at the end of an inquiry rather than at the beginning, but a
brief definition will serve to mark out the field. Ethics is the science
that deals with conduct, in so far as this is considered as right or
wrong, good or bad. A single term for conduct so considered is "moral
conduct," or the "moral life." Another way of stating the same thing is
to say that Ethics aims to give a systematic account of our judgments
about conduct, in so far as these estimate it from the standpoint of
right or wrong, good or bad.

=Ethical and Moral.=--The terms "ethics" and "ethical" are derived from
a Greek word _ethos_ which originally meant customs, usages, especially
those belonging to some group as distinguished from another, and later
came to mean disposition, character. They are thus like the Latin word
"moral," from _mores_, or the German _sittlich_, from _Sitten_. As we
shall see, it was in customs, "ethos," "mores," that the moral or
ethical began to appear. For customs were not merely habitual ways of
acting; they were ways approved by the group or society. To act contrary
to the customs of the group brought severe disapproval. This might not
be formulated in precisely our terms--right and wrong, good and
bad,--but the attitude was the same in essence. The terms ethical and
moral as applied to the conduct of to-day imply of course a far more
complex and advanced type of life than the old words "ethos" and
"mores," just as economics deals with a more complex problem than "the
management of a household," but the terms have a distinct value if they
suggest the way in which the moral life had its beginning.

=Two Aspects of Conduct.=--To give a scientific account of judgments
about conduct, means to find the principles which are the basis of these
judgments. Conduct or the moral life has two obvious aspects. On the one
hand it is a life of purpose. It implies thought and feeling, ideals and
motives, valuation and choice. These are processes to be studied by
psychological methods. On the other hand, conduct has its outward side.
It has relations to nature, and especially to human society. Moral life
is called out or stimulated by certain necessities of individual and
social existence. As Protagoras put it, in mythical form, the gods gave
men a sense of justice and of reverence, in order to enable them to
unite for mutual preservation.[1] And in turn the moral life aims to
modify or transform both natural and social environments, to build a
"kingdom of man" which shall be also an ideal social order--a "kingdom
of God." These relations to nature and society are studied by the
biological and social sciences. Sociology, economics, politics, law, and
jurisprudence deal particularly with this aspect of conduct. Ethics must
employ their methods and results for this aspect of its problem, as it
employs psychology for the examination of conduct on its inner side.

=The Specific Problem of Ethics.=--But ethics is not merely the sum of
these various sciences. It has a problem of its own which is created by
just this twofold aspect of life and conduct. It has to relate these two
sides. It has to study the inner process _as determined by the outer
conditions or as changing these outer conditions_, and the outward
behavior or institution _as determined by the inner purpose, or as
affecting the inner life_. To study choice and purpose is psychology; to
study choice as affected by the rights of others and to judge it as
right or wrong by this standard is ethics. Or again, to study a
corporation may be economics, or sociology, or law; to study its
activities as resulting from the purposes of persons or as affecting the
welfare of persons, and to judge its acts as good or bad from such a
point of view, is ethics.

=Genetic Study.=--When we deal with any process of life it is found to
be a great aid for understanding the present conditions if we trace the
history of the process and see how present conditions have come about.
And in the case of morality there are four reasons in particular for
examining earlier stages. The first is that we may begin our study with
a simpler material. Moral life at present is extremely complex.
Professional, civic, domestic, philanthropic, ecclesiastical, and social
obligations claim adjustment. Interests in wealth, in knowledge, in
power, in friendship, in social welfare, make demand for recognition in
fixing upon what is good. It is desirable to consider first a simpler
problem. In the second place, this complex moral life is like the human
body in that it contains "rudiments" and "survivals." Some of our
present standards and ideals were formed at one period in the past, and
some at another. Some of these apply to present conditions and some do
not. Some are at variance with others. Many apparent conflicts in moral
judgments are explained when we discover how the judgments came to be
formed in the first instance. We cannot easily understand the moral life
of to-day except in the light of earlier morality. The third reason is
that we may get a more objective material for study. Our moral life is
so intimate a part of ourselves that it is hard to observe impartially.
Its characteristics escape notice because they are so familiar. When we
travel we find the customs, laws, and moral standards of other peoples
standing out as "peculiar." Until we have been led by some such means to
compare our own conduct with that of others it probably does not occur
to us that our own standards are also peculiar, and hence in need of
explanation. It is as difficult scientifically as it is personally "to
see ourselves as others see us." It is doubtless true that to see
ourselves merely as others see us would not be enough. Complete moral
analysis requires us to take into our reckoning motives and purposes
which may perhaps be undiscoverable by the "others." But it is a great
aid to this completer analysis if we can sharpen our vision and awaken
our attention by a comparative study. A fourth reason for a genetic
study is that it emphasizes the dynamic, progressive character of
morality. Merely to examine the present may easily give the impression
that the moral life is not a life, a moving process, something still in
the making--but a changeless structure. There is moral progress as well
as a moral order. This may be discovered by an analysis of the very
nature of moral conduct, but it stands out more clearly and impressively
if we trace the actual development in history. Before attempting our
analysis of the present moral consciousness and its judgments, we shall
therefore give an outline of the earlier stages and simpler phases.

=Theory and Practice.=--Finally, if we can discover ethical principles
these ought to give some guidance for the unsolved problems of life
which continually present themselves for decision. Whatever may be true
for other sciences it would seem that ethics at least ought to have some
practical value. "In this theater of man's life it is reserved for God
and the angels to be lookers on." Man must act; and he must act well or
ill, rightly or wrongly. If he has reflected, has considered his conduct
in the light of the general principles of human order and progress, he
ought to be able to act more intelligently and freely, to achieve the
satisfaction that always attends on scientific as compared with
uncritical or rule-of-thumb practice. Socrates gave the classic
statement for the study of conduct when he said, "A life unexamined,
uncriticized, is not worthy of man."

Sec. 2. CRITERION OF THE MORAL

It is not proposed to attempt at this point an accurate or minute
statement of what is implied in moral conduct, as this is the task of
Part II. But for the purposes of tracing in Part I. the beginnings of
morality, it is desirable to have a sort of rough chart to indicate to
the student what to look for in the earlier stages of his exploration,
and to enable him to keep his bearings on the way.

Certain of the characteristics of the moral may be seen in a
cross-section, a statement of the elements in moral conduct at a given
time. Other characteristics come out more clearly by comparing later
with earlier stages. We give first a cross-section.

=1. Characteristics of the Moral Life in Cross-section.=--In this
cross-section the first main division is suggested by the fact that we
sometimes give our attention to _what_ is done or intended, and
sometimes to _how_ or _why_ the act is done. These divisions may turn
out to be less absolute than they seem, but common life uses them and
moral theories have often selected the one or the other as the important
aspect. When we are told to seek peace, tell the truth, or aim at the
greatest happiness of the greatest number, we are charged to do or
intend some definite act. When we are urged to be conscientious or pure
in heart the emphasis is on a kind of attitude that might go with a
variety of acts. A newspaper advocates a good measure. So far, so good.
But people may ask, what is the motive in this? and if this is believed
to be merely selfish, they do not credit the newspaper with having
genuine interest in reform. On the other hand, sincerity alone is not
enough. If a man advocates frankly and sincerely a scheme for enriching
himself at the public expense we condemn him. We say his very frankness
shows his utter disregard for others. One of the great moral
philosophers has indeed said that to act rationally is all that is
necessary, but he at once goes on to claim that this implies treating
every man as an end and not merely a means, and this calls for a
particular kind of action. Hence we may assume for the present purpose a
general agreement that our moral judgments take into account both what
is done or intended, and how or why the act is done. These two aspects
are sometimes called the "matter" and the "form," or the "content" and
the attitude. We shall use the simpler terms, the What and the How.

=The "What" as a Criterion.=--If we neglect for the moment the How and
think of the What, we find two main standpoints employed in judging: one
is that of "higher" and "lower" within the man's own self; the other is
his treatment of others.

The distinction between a higher and lower self has many guises. We
speak of a man as "a slave to his appetites," of another as possessed by
greed for money, of another as insatiately ambitious. Over against these
passions we hear the praise of scientific pursuits, of culture, of art,
of friendship, of meditation, or of religion. We are bidden to think of
things [Greek: semna], nobly serious. A life of the spirit is set off
against the life of the flesh, the finer against the coarser, the nobler
against the baser. However misguided the forms in which this has been
interpreted, there is no doubt as to the reality of the conflicting
impulses which give rise to the dualism. The source is obvious. Man
would not be here if self-preservation and self-assertion and sex
instinct were not strongly rooted in his system. These may easily
become dominant passions. But just as certainly, man cannot be all that
he may be unless he controls these impulses and passions by other
motives. He has first to create for himself a new world of ideal
interests before he finds his best life. The appetites and instincts may
be "natural," in the sense that they are the beginning; the mental and
spiritual life is "natural," as Aristotle puts it, in the sense that
man's full nature is developed only in such a life.

The other aspect of the What, the treatment of others, need not detain
us. Justice, kindness, the conduct of the Golden Rule are the right and
good. Injustice, cruelty, selfishness are the wrong and the bad.

=Analysis of the How: the Right and the Good.=--We have used right and
good as though they might be used interchangeably in speaking of
conduct. Perhaps this may in the end prove to be true. If an act is
right, then the hero or the saint may believe that it is also good; if
an act is good in the fullest sense, then it will commend itself as
right. But right and good evidently approach conduct from two different
points of view. These might have been noted when speaking of the content
or the What, but they are more important in considering the How.

It is evident that when we speak of conduct as _right_ we think of it as
before a judge. We bring the act to a standard, and measure the act. We
think too of this standard as a "moral law" which we "ought" to obey. We
respect its authority and hold ourselves responsible. The standard is
conceived as a control over our impulses and desires. The man who
recognizes such a law and is anxious to find and to do his duty, we call
conscientious; as governing his impulses, he has self-control; as
squaring his conduct strictly by his standard, he is upright and
reliable.

If I think of "_good_," I am approaching conduct from the standpoint of
value. I am thinking of what is desirable. This too is a standard, but
it is a standard regarded as an end to be sought rather than as a law. I
am to "choose" it and identify myself with it, rather than to control
myself by it. It is an "ideal." The conscientious man, viewed from this
standpoint, would seek to discover the true good, to value his ends, to
form ideals, instead of following impulse or accepting any seeming good
without careful consideration. In so far as impulses are directed by
ideals the thoroughly good man will be straightforward, "sincere": that
is, he will not be moved to do the good act by fear of punishment, or by
bribery, just as the upright man will be "governed by a sense of duty,"
of "respect for principles."

=Summary of the Characteristics of the Moral.=--To sum up the main
characteristics of the moral life viewed in cross-section, or when in
full activity, we may state them as follows:

On the side of the "what," there are two aspects:

(a) The dominance of "higher," ideal interests of knowledge, art,
freedom, rights, and the "life of the spirit."

(b) Regard for others, under its various aspects of justice, sympathy,
and benevolence.

On the side of the "how" the important aspects are:

(a) The recognition of some standard, which may arise either as a
control in the guise of "right" and "law," or as measure of value in the
form of an ideal to be followed or good to be approved.

(b) A sense of duty and respect for the law; sincere love of the good.

(a) and (b) of this latter division are both included under the
"conscientious" attitude.

=2. The Moral as a Growth.=--The psychologists distinguish _three
stages_ in conduct: (a) Instinctive activity. (b) Attention; the stage
of conscious direction or control of action by imagery; of
deliberation, desire, and choice. (c) Habit; the stage of unconscious
activity along lines set by previous action. Consciousness thus
"occupies a curious middle ground between hereditary reflex and
automatic activities upon the one hand and acquired habitual activities
upon the other." Where the original equipment of instincts fails to meet
some new situation, when there are stimulations for which the system has
no ready-made response, consciousness appears. It selects from the
various responses those which suit the purpose, and when these responses
have become themselves automatic, habitual, consciousness "betakes
itself elsewhere to points where habitual accommodatory movements are as
yet wanting and needed."[2] To apply this to the moral development we
need only to add that this process repeats itself over and over. The
starting-point for each later repetition is not the hereditary instinct,
but the habits which have been formed. For the habits formed at one age
of the individual's life, or at one stage of race development, prove
inadequate for more complex situations. The child leaves home, the
savage tribe changes to agricultural life, and the old habits no longer
meet the need. Attention is again demanded. There is deliberation,
struggle, effort. If the result is successful new habits are formed, but
upon a higher level. For the new habits, the new character, embody more
intelligence. The first stage, purely instinctive action, we do not call
moral conduct. It is of course not _im_moral; it is merely _un_moral.
The second stage shows morality in the making. It includes the process
of transition from impulse, through desire to will. It involves the
stress of conflicting interests, the processes of deliberation and
valuation, and the final act of choice. It will be illustrated in our
treatment of race development by the change from early group life and
customs to the more conscious moral life of higher civilization. The
third stage, well-organized character, is the goal of the process. But
it is evidently only a relative point. A good man has built up a set of
habits; a good society has established certain laws and moral codes. But
unless the man or society is in a changeless world with no new
conditions there will be new problems. And this means that however good
the habit was for its time and purpose there must be new choices and new
valuations. A character that would run automatically in every case would
be pretty nearly a mechanism. It is therefore the second stage of this
process that is the stage of active moral consciousness. It is upon this
that we focus our attention.

Moral growth from the first on through the second stage may be described
as a process in which man becomes more _rational_, more _social_, and
finally more _moral_. We examine briefly each of these aspects.

=The Rationalizing or Idealizing Process.=--The first need of the
organism is to live and grow. The first instincts and impulses are
therefore for food, self-defence, and other immediate necessities.
Primitive men eat, sleep, fight, build shelters, and give food and
protection to their offspring. The "rationalizing" process will mean at
first greater use of intelligence to satisfy these same wants. It will
show itself in skilled occupations, in industry and trade, in the
utilizing of all resources to further man's power and happiness. But to
rationalize conduct is also to introduce new ends. It not only enables
man to get what he wants; it changes the kind of objects that he wants.
This shows itself externally in what man makes and in how he occupies
himself. He must of course have food and shelter. But he makes temples
and statues and poems. He makes myths and theories of the world. He
carries on great enterprises in commerce or government, not so much to
gratify desires for bodily wants as to experience the growth of power.
He creates a family life which is raised to a higher level by art and
religion. He does not live by bread only, but builds up gradually a
life of reason. Psychologically this means that whereas at the beginning
we want what our body calls for, we soon come to want things which the
mind takes an interest in. As we form by memory, imagination, and reason
a more continuous, permanent, highly-organized self, we require a far
more permanent and ideal kind of good to satisfy us. This gives rise to
the contrast between the material and ideal selves, or in another form,
between "the world" and "the spirit."

=The Socializing Process.=--The "socializing" side of the process of
development stands for an increased capacity to enter into relations
with other human beings. Like the growth of reason it is both a means
and an end. It has its roots in certain instincts--sex, gregariousness,
parental instincts--and in the necessities of mutual support and
protection. But the associations thus formed imply a great variety of
activities which call out new powers and set up new ends. Language is
one of the first of these activities and a first step toward more
complete socialization. Cooperation, in all kinds of enterprises,
interchange of services and goods, participation in social arts,
associations for various purposes, institutions of blood, family,
government, and religion, all add enormously to the individual's power.
On the other hand, as he enters into these relations and becomes a
"member" of all these bodies he inevitably undergoes a transformation in
his interests. Psychologically the process is one of building up a
"social" self. Imitation and suggestion, sympathy and affection, common
purpose and common interest, are the aids in building such a self. As
the various instincts, emotions, and purposes are more definitely
organized into such a unit, it becomes possible to set off the interests
of others against those interests that center in my more individual
good. Conscious egoism and altruism become possible. And in a way that
will be explained, the interests of self and others are raised to the
plane of rights and justice.

=What is Needed to Make Conduct Moral.=--All this is not yet moral
progress in the fullest sense. The progress to more rational and more
social conduct is the indispensable condition of the moral, but not the
whole story. What is needed is that the more rational and social conduct
should itself be valued as good, and so be chosen and sought; or in
terms of control, that the law which society or reason prescribes should
be consciously thought of as right, used as a standard, and respected as
binding. This gives the contrast between the higher and lower, as a
conscious aim, not merely as a matter of taste. It raises the collision
between self and others to the basis of personal rights and justice, of
deliberate selfishness or benevolence. Finally it gives the basis for
such organization of the social and rational choices that the progress
already gained may be permanently secured, while the attention, the
struggle between duty and inclination, the conscious choice, move
forward to a new issue. Aristotle made these points clear:

"But the virtues are not in this point analogous to the arts. The
products of art have their excellence in themselves, and so it is
enough if when produced they are of a certain quality; but in the
case of the virtues, a man is not said to act justly or
temperately (or like a just or temperate man) if what he does
merely be of a certain sort--he must also be in a certain state of
mind when he does it: i.e., first of all, he must know what he is
doing; secondly, he must choose it, and choose it for itself; and,
thirdly, his act must be the expression of a formed and stable
character."

=Summary of the Characteristics of the Moral as Growth.=--The full cycle
has three stages:

(a) Instinctive or habitual action.

(b) Action under the stress of attention, with conscious intervention
and reconstruction.

The advance from (a) to and through (b) has three aspects.

(a) It is a rationalizing and idealizing process. Reason is both a means
to secure other ends, and an element in determining what shall be
sought.

(b) It is a socializing process. Society both strengthens and transforms
the individual.

(c) It is a process in which finally conduct itself is made the
conscious object of reflection, valuation, and criticism. In this the
definitely moral conceptions of right and duty, good and virtue appear.

Sec. 3. DIVISIONS OF THE TREATMENT

PART I., after a preliminary presentation of certain important aspects
of group life, will first trace the process of moral development in its
general outlines, and then give specific illustrations of the process
taken from the life of Israel, of Greece, and of modern civilization.

PART II. will analyze conduct or the moral life on its inner, personal
side. After distinguishing more carefully what is meant by moral action,
and noting some typical ways in which the moral life has been viewed by
ethical theory, it will examine the meaning of right and good, of duty
and virtue, and seek to discover the principles underlying moral
judgments and moral conduct.

PART III. will study conduct as action in society. But instead of a
general survey, attention will be centered upon three phases of conduct
which are of especial interest and importance. Political rights and
duties, the production, distribution, and ownership of wealth, and
finally the relations of domestic and family life, all present unsettled
problems. These challenge the student to make a careful examination, for
he must take some attitude as citizen on the issues involved.

LITERATURE

The literature on specific topics will be found at the beginning of each
Part, and at the close of the several chapters. We indicate here some of
the more useful manuals and recent representative works, and add some
specific references on the scope and methods of ethics. Baldwin's
_Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology_ has selected lists (see
especially articles, _Ethical Theories_, _Ethics_, _Worth_) and general
lists (Vol. III.). Runze, _Ethik_, 1891, has good bibliographies.

ELEMENTARY TEXTS: Mackenzie, _Manual of Ethics_, 3rd ed., 1900;
Muirhead, _Elements of Ethics_, 1892; Seth, _A Study of Ethical
Principles_, 6th ed., 1902; Thilly, _Introduction to Ethics_, 1900.

REPRESENTATIVE BOOKS AND TREATISES IN ENGLISH: Green, _Prolegomena to
Ethics_, 1883 (Idealism); Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_, 1885,
3rd ed., 1891 (Intuitionism); Sidgwick's _Methods of Ethics_, 1874, 6th
ed., 1901 (Union of Intuitionist and Utilitarian Positions with careful
analysis of common sense); Spencer, _The Principles of Ethics_, 1892-3
(Evolution); Stephen's _Science of Ethics_, 1882; The comprehensive work
of Paulsen (_System der Ethik_, 1889, 5th ed., 1900) has been translated
in part by Thilly, 1899; that of Wundt (_Ethik_, 1886, 3rd ed., 1903),
by Titchener, Gulliver, and Washburn, 1897-1901. Among the more recent
contributions, either to the whole field or to specific parts, may be
noted: Alexander, _Moral Order and Progress_, 1889; 2nd ed., 1891;
Dewey, _Outlines of Ethics_, 1891, and _The Study of Ethics, A
Syllabus_, 1894; Fite, _An Introductory Study of Ethics_, 1903;
Hoeffding, _Ethik_ (German tr.), 1887; Janet, _The Theory of Morals_
(Eng. tr.), 1884; Ladd, _The Philosophy of Conduct_, 1902; Mezes,
_Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_, 1900; Moore, _Principia Ethica_,
1903; Palmer, _The Field of Ethics_, 1902, _The Nature of Goodness_,
1903; Taylor, _The Problem of Conduct_, 1901; Rashdall, _The Theory of
Good and Evil_, 1907; Bowne, _The Principles of Ethics_, 1892; Rickaby,
_Moral Philosophy_, 1888.

HISTORIES OF ETHICS: Sidgwick, _History of Ethics_, 3rd ed., 1892;
Albee, _A History of English Utilitarianism_, 1902; Stephen, _The
Utilitarians_, 1900; Martineau, _Types of Ethical Theory_; Whewell,
_Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England_, 1852, 1862;
Koestlin, _Geschichte der Ethik_, 2 vols., 1881-92 (ancient theories);
Jodl, _Geschichte der Ethik_, 2 vols., 1882-89 (modern); Wundt, _Ethik_,
Vol. II.; the histories of philosophy by Windelband, Hoeffding, Erdmann,
Ueberweg, Falckenberg.

SCOPE AND METHOD OF ETHICS: See the opening chapters in nearly all the
works cited above, especially Palmer (_Field of Ethics_), Moore,
Stephen, Spencer, Paulsen, and Wundt (_Facts of the Moral Life_); see
also Ritchie, _Philosophical Studies_, 1905, pp. 264-291; Wallace,
_Lectures and Essays on Natural Theology and Ethics_, 1898, pp. 194 ff.;
Dewey, _Logical Conditions of a Scientific Treatment of Morality_
(_University of Chicago Decennial Publications_, 1903); Stuart, _The
Logic of Self-realization_, in University of California Publications:
_Philosophy_, I., 1904; Small, _The Significance of Sociology for
Ethics_, 1902; Hadley, Article _Economic Theory_ in Baldwin's _Dict._

RELATION OF THEORY TO LIFE: Green, _Prolegomena_, Book IV.; Dewey,
_International Journal of Ethics_, Vol. I., 1891, pp. 186-203; James,
same journal, Vol. I., 330-354; Mackenzie, same journal, Vol. IV., 1894,
pp. 160-173.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Plato, _Protagoras_, 320 ff.

[2] Angell, _Psychology_, p. 59.

* * * * *

PART I

THE BEGINNINGS AND GROWTH OF MORALITY

GENERAL LITERATURE FOR PART I

Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, 2 vols., 1906.

Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of Moral Ideas_, Vol. I., 1906.

Sutherland, _The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, 2 vols.,
1898.

Wundt, _Facts of the Moral Life_, 1902; also _Ethik_, 3rd ed., 1903,
Vol. I., pp. 280-523.

Paulsen, _A System of Ethics_, 1899, Book I.

Sumner, _Folkways_, 1907.

Bergmann, _Ethik als Kulturphilosophie_, 1904.

Mezes, _Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory_, Part I.

Dewey, _The Evolutionary Method as Applied to Morality_, Philos. Review,
XI., 1902, pp. 107-124, 353-371.

Adam Smith, _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, 1759.

Baldwin, _Social and Ethical Interpretations_, 1902.

Taylor, _The Problem of Conduct_, 1901, chap. iii.

Spencer, _Data of Ethics_, 1879; _Psychology_, 1872, Part IX., chs.
v.-viii.

Ihering, _Der Zweck im Recht_, 3rd ed., 1893.

Steinthal, _Allgemeine Ethik_, 1885.

CHAPTER II

EARLY GROUP LIFE

To understand the origin and growth of moral life, it is essential to
understand primitive society. And while there is much that is uncertain,
there is one fact of capital importance which stands out clearly. This
is _the dominant influence of group life_. It is not asserted that all
peoples have had precisely the same type of groups, or the same degree
of group solidarity. It is beyond question that the ancestors of modern
civilized races lived under the general types of group life which will
be outlined, and that these types or their survivals are found among the
great mass of peoples to-day.

Sec. 1. TYPICAL FACTS OF GROUP LIFE

Consider the following incident as related by Dr. Gray:

"A Chinese aided by his wife flogged his mother. The imperial
order not only commanded that the criminals should be put to
death; it further directed that the head of the clan should be put
to death; that the immediate neighbors each receive eighty blows
and be sent into exile; that the head or representatives of the
graduates of the first degree (or B.A.) among whom the male
offender ranked should be flogged and exiled; that the granduncle,
the uncle, and two elder brothers should be put to death; that the
prefect and the rulers should for a time be deprived of their
rank; that on the face of the mother of the female offender four
Chinese characters expressive of neglect of duty towards her
daughter should be tattooed, and that she be exiled to a distant
province; that the father of the female offender, a bachelor of
arts, should not be allowed to take any higher literary degrees,
and that he be flogged and exiled; that the son of the offenders
should receive another name, and that the lands of the offender
for a time remain fallow." (J. H. GRAY, _China_, Vol. I., pp.
237 f.)

Put beside this the story of Achan:

Achan had taken for his own possession certain articles from the
spoil of Jericho which had been set apart or "devoted" to Jehovah.
Israel then suffered a defeat in battle. When Achan's act became
known, "Joshua and all Israel with him took Achan, the son of
Zerah, and the mantle, and the wedge of gold, and his sons and his
daughters, and his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his
tent, and all that he had.... And all Israel stoned him with
stones; and they burned them with fire and stoned them with
stones." (JOSHUA vii: 24, 25.)

The converse of these situations is brought out in the regulations of
the Kumi, a Japanese local institution comprising five or more
households:

"As members of a Kumi we will cultivate friendly feelings even
more than with our relatives, and will promote each other's
happiness as well as share each other's grief. If there is an
unprincipled or lawless person in a Kumi, we shall all share the
responsibility for him." (SIMMONS and WIGMORE, _Transactions,
Asiatic Society of Japan_, xix., 177 f.)

For another aspect of the group take Caesar's description of landholding
among the Germans:

"No one possesses privately a definite extent of land; no one has
limited fields of his own; but every year the magistrates and
chiefs distribute the land to the clans and the kindred groups
(_gentibus cognationibusque hominum_) and to those (_other_
groups) who live together." (_De Bell. Gall._, VI., 22.)

Of the Greeks, our intellectual ancestors, as well as fellow Aryans, it
is stated that in Attica, even to a late period, the land remained to a
large degree in possession of ideal persons, gods, phylae (tribes) or
phratries, kinships, political communities. Even when the superficies of
the land might be regarded as private, mines were reserved as
public.[3] The basis on which these kinship groups rested is thus stated
by Grote:[4]

"All these phratric and gentile associations, the larger as well
as the smaller, were founded upon the same principles and
tendencies of the Grecian mind--a coalescence of the idea of
worship with that of ancestry, or of communion in certain special
religious rites with communion of blood, real or supposed."
"The god or hero, to whom the assembled members offered their
sacrifices, was conceived as the primitive ancestor to whom they
owed their origin."

Coulanges gives a similar statement as to the ancient family group:[5]

"The members of the ancient family were united by something more
powerful than birth, affection, or physical strength; this was the
religion of the sacred fire, and of dead ancestors. This caused
the family to form a single body both in this life and in the
next."

Finally, the following passage on clanship among the Kafirs brings out
two points: (1) That such a group life implies feelings and ideas of a
distinctive sort; and (2) that it has a strength rooted in the very
necessities of life.

"A Kafir feels that the 'frame that binds him in' extends to the
clan. The sense of solidarity of the family in Europe is thin and
feeble compared to the full-blooded sense of corporate union of
the Kafir clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the rights
of the individual. The system of tribal solidarity, which has
worked so well in its smoothness that it might satisfy the utmost
dreams of the socialist, is a standing proof of the sense of
corporate union of the clan. In olden days a man did not have any
feeling of personal injury when a chief made him work for white
men and then told him to give all, or nearly all of his wages to
his chief; the money was kept within the clan, and what was the
good of the clan was the good of the individual and _vice versa_.
The striking thing about this unity of the clan is that it was
not a thought-out plan imposed from without by legislation upon an
unwilling people, but it was a _felt-out_ plan which arose
spontaneously along the line of least resistance. If one member of
the clan suffered, all the members suffered, not in sentimental
phraseology, but in real fact." (DUDLEY KIDD, _Savage Childhood_,
pp. 74 f.)

The above passages refer to Aryan, Semitic, Mongolian, and Kafir
peoples. They could be matched by similar statements concerning nearly
every people. They suggest a way of living, and a view of life very
different from that of the American or of most Europeans.[6] The
American or European belongs to groups of various kinds, but he "joins"
most of them. He of course is born into a family, but he does not stay
in it all his life unless he pleases. And he may choose his own
occupation, residence, wife, political party, religion, social club, or
even national allegiance. He may own or sell his own house, give or
bequeath his property, and is responsible generally speaking for no
one's acts but his own. This makes him an "individual" in a much fuller
sense than he would be if all these relations were settled for him. On
the other hand, the member of such groups as are referred to in our
examples above, has all, or nearly all, his relations fixed when he is
born into a certain clan or family group. This settles his occupation,
dwelling, gods, and politics. If it doesn't decide upon his wife, it at
least usually fixes the group from which she must be taken. His
conditions, in the words of Maine, are thus of "status," not of
"contract." This makes a vast difference in his whole attitude. It will
help to bring out more clearly by contrast the character of present
morality, as well as to see moral life in the making, if we examine more
carefully this group life. We shall find, as brought out in the
passages already quoted, that the most important type of group is at
once a kindred or family, an economic, a political, a religious, and a
moral unit. First, however, we notice briefly the most important types
of groups.

Sec. 2. KINSHIP AND HOUSEHOLD GROUPS

=1. The Kinship Group.=--The kinship group is a body of persons who
conceive of themselves as sprung from one ancestor, and hence as having
in their veins one blood. It does not matter for our study whether each
group has actually sprung from a single ancestor. It is highly probable
that the contingencies of food-supply or of war may have been an
original cause for the constitution of the group, wholly or in part. But
this is of no consequence for our purpose. The important point is that
the members of the group regard themselves as of one stock. In some
cases the ancestor is believed to have been an animal. Then we have the
so-called totem group, which is found among North American Indians,
Africans, and Australians, and was perhaps the early form of Semitic
groups. In other cases, some hero or even some god is named as the
ancestor. In any case the essential part of the theory remains the same:
namely, that one blood circulates in all the members, and hence that the
life of each is a part of the common life of the group. There are then
no degrees of kindred. This group, it should be noted, is not the same
as the family, for in the family, as a rule, husband and wife are of
different kinship groups, and continue their several kinship relations.
Among some peoples marriage ceremonies, indeed, symbolize the admission
of the wife into the husband's kinship, and in this case the family
becomes a kinship group, but this is by no means universally the case.

The feeling that one is first and foremost a member of a group, rather
than an individual, is furthered among certain kin groups by a scheme of
class relationship. According to this system, instead of having one
definite person whom I, and I alone, regard and address as father or
mother, grandfather, uncle, brother, sister, I call any one of a given
group or class of persons mother, grandfather, brother, sister. And any
one else who is in the same class with me calls the same persons,
mother, grandfather, brother, or sister.[7] The simplest form of such a
class system is that found among the Hawaiians. Here there are five
classes based upon the generations corresponding to what we call
grandparents, parents, brothers and sisters, children, and
grandchildren, but the words used to designate them do not imply any
such specific parentage as do these words with us. Bearing this in mind,
we may say that every one in the first class is equally grandparent to
every one in the third; every one in the third is equally brother or
sister to every other in the third, equally father or mother to every
one in the fourth, and so on. In Australia the classes are more numerous
and the relationships far more intricate and complicated, but this does
not, as might be supposed, render the bond relatively unimportant; on
the contrary, his relationship to every other class is "one of the most
important points with which each individual must be acquainted"; it
determines marital relations, food distribution, salutations, and
general conduct to an extraordinary degree. A kinship group was known as
"tribe" or "family" (English translation) among the Israelites; as
genos, phratria, and phyle among the Greeks, gens and curia among the
Romans; clan in Scotland; sept in Ireland; Sippe in Germany.

=2. The Family or Household Group.=--Two kinds of families may be noted
as significant for our purpose. In the _maternal family_ the woman
remains among her own kin, and the children are naturally reckoned as
belonging to the mother's kin. The husband and father is more or less a
guest or outsider. In a blood feud he would have to side with his own
clan and against that of his wife if his clan quarreled with hers. Clan
and family are thus seen to be distinct. In the _paternal_, which easily
becomes the _patriarchal_ family the wife leaves her relatives to live
in her husband's house and among his kin. She might then, as at Rome,
abjure her own kindred and be formally adopted into her husband's gens
or clan. The Greek myth of Orestes is an illustration of the clashing of
these two conceptions of father kin and mother kin, and Hamlet's sparing
of his mother under similar circumstances, shows a more modern point of
view.

It is evident that with the prevalence of the paternal type of family,
clan and household ties will mutually strengthen each other. This will
make an important difference in the father's relation to the children,
and gives a much firmer basis for ancestral religion. But in many
respects the environing atmosphere, the pressure and support, the group
sympathy and group tradition, are essentially similar. The important
thing is that every person is a member of a kindred, and likewise, of
some family group, and that he thinks, feels, and acts accordingly.[8]

Sec. 3. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS ARE ALSO ECONOMIC AND INDUSTRIAL
UNITS

=1. The Land and the Group.=--In land, as a rule, no individual
ownership in the modern sense was recognized. Among hunting and pastoral
peoples there was, of course, no "ownership" by any group in the strict
sense of modern law. But none the less, the group, large or small, had
its fairly well-defined territory within which it hunted and fished; in
the pastoral life it had its pasture range and its wells of water. With
agriculture a more definite sense of possession arose. But possession
was by the tribe or gens or household, not by the individual:

"The land belonged to the clan, and the clan was settled upon the
land. A man was thus not a member of the clan, because he lived
upon, or even owned, the land; but he lived upon the land, and had
interests in it, because he was a member of the clan."[9]

Greek and German customs were quoted at the outset. Among the Celts the
laws of ancient Ireland show a transitional stage. "The land of the
tribe consisted of two distinct allotments, the 'fechfine' or tribeland,
and the 'orta' or inheritance land. This latter belonged as individual
property to the men of the chieftain groups."[10] The Hindoo
joint-family and the house-community of the Southern Slavonians are
present examples of group ownership. They are joint in food, worship,
and estate. They have a common home, a common table. Maxims of the Slavs
express their appreciation of community life: "The common household
waxes rich"; "The more bees in the hive, the heavier it weighs." One
difficulty in the English administration of Ireland has been this
radical difference between the modern Englishman's individualistic
conception of property and the Irishman's more primitive conception of
group or clan ownership. Whether rightly or not, the Irish tenant
refuses to regard himself as merely a tenant. He considers himself as a
member of a family or group which formerly owned the land, and he does
not admit the justice, even though he cannot disprove the legality, of
an alienation of the group possession. For such a clan or household as
we have described is not merely equivalent to the persons who compose it
at a given time. Its property belongs to the ancestors and to the
posterity as well as to the present possessors; and hence in some groups
which admit an individual possession or use during life, no right of
devise or inheritance is permitted. The property reverts at death to the
whole gens or clan. In other cases a child may inherit, but in default
of such an heir the property passes to the common possession. The right
to bequeath property to the church was long a point on which civil law
and canon law were at variance. The relations of the primitive clan or
household group to land were therefore decidedly adapted to keep the
individual's good bound up with the good of the group.

=2. Movable Goods.=--In the case of movable goods, such as tools,
weapons, cattle, the practice is not uniform. When the goods are the
product of the individual's own skill or prowess they are usually his.
Tools, weapons, slaves or women captured, products of some special craft
or skill, are thus usually private. But when the group acts as a unit
the product is usually shared. The buffalo and salmon and large game
were thus for the whole Indian group which hunted or fished together;
and in like manner the maize which was tended by the women belonged to
the household in common. Slavic and Indian house communities at the
present day have a common interest in the household property. Even women
and children among some tribes are regarded as the property of the
group.

Sec. 4. THE KINSHIP AND FAMILY GROUPS WERE POLITICAL BODIES

In a modern family the parents exercise a certain degree of control over
the children, but this is limited in several respects. No parent is
allowed to put a child to death, or to permit him to grow up in
ignorance. On the other hand, the parent is not allowed to protect the
child from arrest if a serious injury has been done by him. The _State_,
through its laws and officers, is regarded by us as the highest
authority in a certain great sphere of action. It must settle
conflicting claims and protect life and property; in the opinion of many
it must organize the life of its members where the cooperation of every
member is necessary for some common good. In early group life there may
or may not be some political body over and above the clan or family, but
in any case the _kin or family is itself a sort of political State_. Not
a State in the sense that the political powers are deliberately
separated from personal, religious, and family ties; men gained a new
conception of authority and rose to a higher level of possibilities when
they consciously separated and defined government and laws from the
undifferentiated whole of a religious and kindred group. But yet this
primitive group was after all a State, not a mob, or a voluntary
society, or a mere family; for (1) it was a more or less permanently
organized body; (2) it exercised control over its members which they
regarded as rightful authority, not as mere force; (3) it was not
limited by any higher authority, and acted more or less effectively for
the interest of the whole. The representatives of this political aspect
of the group may be chiefs or sachems, a council of elders, or, as in
Rome, the House Father, whose _patria potestas_ marks the extreme
development of the patriarchal family.

The control exercised by the group over individual members assumes
various forms among the different peoples. The more important aspects
are a right over life and bodily freedom, in some cases extending to
power of putting to death, maiming, chastising, deciding whether newly
born children shall be preserved or not; the right of betrothal, which
includes control over the marriage portion received for its women; and
the right to administer property of the kin in behalf of the kin as a
whole. It is probable that among all these various forms of control, the
control over the marriage relations of women has been most persistent.
One reason for this control may have been the fact that the group was
bound to resent injuries of a member of the group who had been married
to another. Hence this responsibility seemed naturally to involve the
right of decision as to her marriage.

=It is Membership in the Group Which Gives the Individual Whatever
Rights He Has.=--According to present conceptions this is still largely
true of legal rights. A State may allow a citizen of another country to
own land, to sue in its courts, and will usually give him a certain
amount of protection, but the first-named rights are apt to be limited,
and it is only a few years since Chief Justice Taney's dictum stated the
existing legal theory of the United States to be that the negro "had no
rights which the white man was bound to respect." Even where legal
theory does not recognize race or other distinctions, it is often hard
in practice for an alien to get justice. In primitive clan or family
groups this principle is in full force. Justice is a privilege which
falls to a man as belonging to some group--not otherwise. The member of
the clan or the household or the village community has a claim, but the
stranger has no standing. He may be treated kindly, as a guest, but he
cannot demand "justice" at the hands of any group but his own. In this
conception of rights within the group we have the prototype of modern
civil law. The dealing of clan with clan is a matter of war or
negotiation, not of law; and the clanless man is an "outlaw" in fact as
well as in name.

=Joint Responsibility= and mutual support, as shown in the blood feud,
was a natural consequence of this fusion of political and kindred
relations. In modern life States treat each other as wholes in certain
respects. If some member of a savage tribe assaults a citizen of one of
the civilized nations, the injured party invokes the help of his
government. A demand is usually made that the guilty party be delivered
up for trial and punishment. If he is not forthcoming a "punitive
expedition" is organized against the whole tribe; guilty and innocent
suffer alike. Or in lieu of exterminating the offending tribe, in part
or completely, the nation of the injured man may accept an indemnity in
money or land from the offender's tribe. Recent dealings between British
and Africans, Germans and Africans, France and Morocco, the United
States and the Filipinos, the Powers and China, illustrate this. The
State protects its own members against other States, and avenges them
upon other States. Each opposes a united body to the other. The same
principle carried out through private citizens as public agents, and
applied to towns, is seen in the practice which prevailed in the Middle
Ages. "When merchants of one country had been defrauded by those of
another, or found it impossible to collect a debt from them, the former
country issued letters of marque and reprisal, authorizing the plunder
of any citizens of the offending town until satisfaction should be
obtained." Transfer the situation to the early clan or tribe, and this
solidarity is increased because each member is related to the rest by
blood, as well as by national unity. The Arabs do not say "The blood of
M. or N. has been spilt," naming the man; they say, "Our blood has been
spilt."[11] The whole group, therefore, feels injured and regards every
man in the offender's kin as more or less responsible. The next of kin,
the "avenger of blood," stands first in duty and privilege, but the rest
are all involved in greater or less degree.

=Within the Group= each member will be treated more or less fully as an
individual. If he takes his kinsman's wife or his kinsman's game he will
be dealt with by the authorities or by the public opinion of his group.
He will not indeed be put to death if he kills his kinsman, but he will
be hated, and may be driven out. "Since the living kin is not killed for
the sake of the dead kin, everybody will hate to see him."[12]

When now a smaller group, like a family, is at the same time a part of a
larger group like a phratry or a tribe, we have the phase of solidarity
which is so puzzling to the modern. We hold to solidarity in war or
between nations; but with a few exceptions[13] we have replaced it by
individual responsibility of adults for debts and crimes so far as the
civil law has jurisdiction. In earlier times the higher group or
authority treated the smaller as a unit. Achan's family all perished
with him. The Chinese sense of justice recognized a series of degrees in
responsibility dependent on nearness of kin or of residence, or of
occupation. The Welsh system held kinsmen as far as second cousins
responsible for insult or injury short of homicide, and as far as fifth
cousins (seventh degree of descent) for the payment in case of homicide.
"The mutual responsibility of kinsmen for _saraal_ and _galanas_ (the
Wergild of the Germans), graduated according to nearness of kin to the
murdered man and to the criminal, reveals more clearly than anything
else the extent to which the individual was bound by innumerable meshes
to his fixed place in the tribal community."[14]

Sec. 5. THE KINSHIP OR HOUSEHOLD GROUP WAS A RELIGIOUS UNIT

The kinship or household group determined largely both the ideas and the
cultus of primitive religion; conversely religion gave completeness,
value, and sacredness to the group life. Kinship with unseen powers or
persons was the fundamental religious idea. The kinship group as a
religious body _simply extended the kin to include invisible as well as
visible members_. The essential feature of religion is not unseen beings
who are feared, or cajoled, or controlled by magic. It is rather
_kindred_ unseen beings, who may be feared, but who are also reverenced
and loved. The kinship may be physical or spiritual, but however
conceived it makes gods and worshippers members of one group.[15]

=1. Totem Groups.=--In totem groups, the prevailing conception is that
one blood circulates in all the members of the group and that the
ancestor of the whole group is some object of nature, such as sun or
moon, plant or animal. Perhaps the most interesting and intelligible
account of the relation between the animal ancestor and the members of
the group is that which has recently been discovered in certain
Australian tribes who believe that every child, at its birth, is the
reincarnation of some previous member of the group, and that these
ancestors were an actual transformation of animals and plants, or of
water, fire, wind, sun, moon, or stars. Such totem groups cherish that
animal which they believe to be their ancestor and ordinarily will not
kill it or use it for food. The various ceremonies of religious
initiation are intended to impress upon the younger members of the group
the sacredness of this kindred bond which units them to each other and
to their totem. The beginnings of decorative art frequently express the
importance of the symbol, and the totem is felt to be as distinctly a
member of the group as is any of the human members.

=2. Ancestral Religion.=--At a somewhat higher stage of civilization,
and usually in connection with the patriarchal households or groups in
which kinship is reckoned through the male line, the invisible members
of the group are the _departed ancestors_. This ancestor worship is a
power to-day in China and Japan, and in the tribes of the Caucasus. The
ancient Semites, Romans, Teutons, Celts, Hindoos, all had their kindred
gods of the household. The Roman genius, lares, penates, and manes,
perhaps the Hebrew teraphim,--prized by Laban and Rachel, kept by David,
valued in the time of Hosea,--were loved and honored side by side with
other deities. Sometimes the nature deities, such as Zeus or Jupiter,
were incorporated with the kinship or family gods. The Greek Hestia and
Roman Vesta symbolized the sacredness of the hearth. The kinship tie
thus determined for every member of the group his religion.

=Religion Completes the Group.=--Conversely, this bond of union with
unseen, yet ever present and powerful kindred spirits completed the
group and gave to it its highest authority, its fullest value, its
deepest sacredness. If the unseen kin are nature beings, they symbolize
for man his dependence upon nature and his kinship in some vague fashion
with the cosmic forces. If the gods are the departed ancestors, they are
then conceived as still potent, like Father Anchises, to protect and
guide the fortunes of their offspring. The wisdom, courage, and
affection, as well as the power of the great heroes of the group, live
on. The fact that the gods are unseen enhances tremendously their
supposed power. The visible members of the group may be strong, but
their strength can be measured. The living elders may be wise, yet they
are not far beyond the rest of the group. But the invisible beings
cannot be measured. The long-departed ancestor may have inconceivable
age and wisdom. The imagination has free scope to magnify his power and
invest him with all the ideal values it can conceive. The religious bond
is, therefore, fitted to be the bearer, as the religious object is the
embodiment in concrete form, of the higher standards of the group, and
to furnish the sanction for their enforcement or adoption.

Sec. 6. GROUPS OR CLASSES ON THE BASIS OF AGE AND SEX

While the kindred and family groups are by far the most important for
early morality, other groupings are significant. The division by ages is
widespread. The simplest scheme gives three classes: (1) children, (2)
young men and maidens, (3) married persons. Puberty forms the bound
between the first and second; marriage that between the second and
third. Distinct modes of dress and ornament, frequently also different
residences and standards of conduct, belong to these several classes. Of
groups on the basis of sex, the _men's clubs_ are especially worthy of
note. They flourish now chiefly in the islands of the Pacific, but there
are indications, such as the common meals of the Spartans, of a wide
spread among European peoples in early times. The fundamental idea[16]
seems to be that of a common house for the unmarried young men, where
they eat, sleep, and pass their time, whereas the women, children, and
married men sleep and eat in the family dwelling. But in most cases all
the men resort to the clubhouse by day. Strangers may be entertained
there. It thus forms a sort of general center for the men's activities,
and for the men's conversation. As such, it is an important agency for
forming and expressing public opinion, and for impressing upon the young
men just entering the house the standards of the older members. Further,
in some cases these houses become the center of rites to the dead, and
thus add the impressiveness of religious significance to their other
activities.

Finally, _secret societies_ may be mentioned as a subdivision of sex
groups, for among primitive peoples such societies are confined in
almost all cases to the men. They seem in many cases to have grown out
of the age classes already described. The transition from childhood to
manhood, mysterious in itself, was invested with further mysteries by
the old men who conducted the ceremonies of initiation. Masks were worn,
or the skulls of deceased ancestors were employed, to give additional
mystery and sanctity. The increased power gained by secrecy would often
be itself sufficient to form a motive for such organization, especially
where they had some end in view not approved by the dominant
authorities. Sometimes they exercise strict authority over their
members, and assume judicial and punitive functions, as in the Vehm of
the Middle Ages. Sometimes they become merely leagues of enemies to
society.

Sec. 7. MORAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KINDRED AND OTHER GROUPS

The moral in this early stage is not to be looked for as something
distinct from the political, religious, kindred, and sympathetic aspects
of the clan, family, and other groups. The question rather is, _How far
are these very political, religious, and other aspects implicitly
moral_? If by moral we mean a conscious testing of conduct by an inner
and self-imposed standard, if we mean a freely chosen as contrasted with
a habitual or customary standard, then evidently we have the moral only
in germ. For the standards are group standards, rather than those of
individual conscience; they operate largely through habit rather than
through choice. Nevertheless they are not set for the individual by
outsiders. They are set by a group of which he is a member. They are
enforced by a group _of which he is a member_. Conduct is praised or
blamed, punished or rewarded by the group of which he is a member.
Property is administered, industry is carried on, wars and feuds
prosecuted for the common good. What the group does, each member joins
in doing. It is a reciprocal matter: A helps enforce a rule or impose a
service on B; he cannot help feeling it fair when the same rule is
applied to himself. He has to "play the game," and usually he expects to
play it as a matter of course. Each member, therefore, is practicing
certain acts, standing in certain relations, maintaining certain
attitudes, just because he is one of the group which does these things
and maintains these standards. And he does not act in common with the
group without sharing in the group emotions. It is a grotesque
perversion to conceive the restraints of gods and chiefs as purely
external terrors. The primitive group could enter into the spirit
implied in the words of the Athenian chorus, which required of an alien
upon adoption

"To loathe whate'er our state does hateful hold,
To reverence what it loves."[17]

The gregarious instinct may be the most elemental of the impulses which
bind the group together, but it is reinforced by sympathies and
sentiments growing out of common life, common work, common danger,
common religion. The morality is already implicit, it needs only to
become conscious. The standards are embodied in the old men or the gods;
the rational good is in the inherited wisdom; the respect for sex, for
property rights, and for the common good, is embodied in the system--but
it is there. Nor are the union and control a wholly objective affair.
"The corporate union was not a pretty religious fancy with which to
please the mind, but was so truly felt that it formed an excellent basis
from which the altruistic sentiment might start. Gross selfishness was
curbed, and the turbulent passions were restrained by an impulse which
the man felt welling up within him, instinctive and unbidden. Clannish
camaraderie was thus of immense value to the native races."[18]

LITERATURE

The works of Hobhouse, Sumner, Westermarck contain copious references to
the original sources. Among the most valuable are:

FOR SAVAGE PEOPLE: Waitz, _Anthropologie der Naturvoelker_, 1859-72;
Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 1903; Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes
of Central Australia_, 1899, and _The Northern Tribes of Central
Australia_, 1904; Howitt and Fison, _Kamilaroi and Kurnai_, 1880;
Howitt, _The Native Tribes of S. E. Australia_, 1904; N. Thomas,
_Kinship, Organization and Group Marriages in Australia_, 1906; Morgan,
_Houses and House-life of the American Aborigines_, 1881, _The League of
the Iroquois_, 1851, _Systems of Consanguinity, Smithsonian
Contributions_, 1871, _Ancient Society_, 1877. Many papers in the
_Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology_, especially by Powell in 1st,
1879-80; Dorsey in 3rd, 1881-82, Mendeleff in 19th, 1893-94.

FOR INDIA, CHINA, AND JAPAN: Lyall, _Asiatic Studies, Religious and
Social_, 1882; Gray, _China_, 1878; Smith, _Chinese Characteristics_,
1894; _Village Life in China_, 1899; Nitobe, _Bushido_, 1905; L. Hearn,
_Japan_, 1904.

FOR SEMITIC AND INDO-GERMANIC PEOPLES: W. R. Smith, _Kinship and
Marriage in Early Arabia_, 1885; _The Religion of the Semites_, 1894; W.
Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, 1879; Coulanges, _The Ancient City_, 1873;
Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, 1895, and _Tribal Custom in
Anglo-Saxon Law_, 1902; Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch der Suedslaven_, 1885.

GENERAL: Grosse, _Die Formen der Familie und die Formen der
Wirthschaft_, 1896; Starke, _The Primitive Family_, 1889; Maine,
_Ancient Law_, 1885; McLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, 1886;
Rivers, _On the Origin of the Classificatory System of Relationships_,
in Anthropological Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Ratzel,
_History of Mankind_, 1896-98; Kovalevsky, _Tableau des origines et de
l'Evolution de la Famille et de la Propriete_, 1890; Giddings,
_Principles of Sociology_, 1896, pp. 157-168, 256-298; Thomas, _Relation
of Sex to Primitive Social Control_ in Sex and Society, 1907; Webster,
_Primitive Secret Societies_, 1908; Simmel, _The Sociology of Secrecy
and of Secret Societies_, American Journal Sociology, Vol. XI., 1906,
pp. 441-498. See also the references at close of Chapters VI., VII.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Wilamowitz-Moellendorf, _Aristotle und Athen_, II. 93, 47.

[4] _History of Greece_, III., 55.

[5] _The Ancient City_, p. 51.

[6] Russian mirs, South Slavonian "joint" families, Corsican clans with
their vendettas, and tribes in the Caucasus still have the group
interest strong, and the feuds of the mountaineers in some of the border
states illustrate family solidarity.

[7] "In all the tribes with whom we are acquainted all the terms
coincide without any exception in the recognition of relationships, all
of which are dependent on the existence of a classificatory system, the
fundamental idea of which is that the women of certain groups marry the
men of others. Each tribe has one term applied indiscriminately to the
man or woman whom he actually marries and to all whom he might lawfully
marry, that is, who belong to the right group: One term to his actual
mother and to all the women whom his father might lawfully have
married."--SPENCER and GILLEN, _Native Tribes of Central Australia_, p.
57.

[8] The fact that primitive man is at once an individual and a member of
a group--that he has as it were two personalities or selves, an
individual self and a clan-self, or "tribal-self," as Clifford called
it,--is not merely a psychologist's way of stating things. The Kafir
people, according to their most recent student, Mr. Dudley Kidd, have
two distinct words to express these two selves. They call one the
_idhlozi_ and other the _itongo_. "The _idhlozi_ is the individual and
personal spirit born with each child--something fresh and unique which
is never shared with any one else--while the _itongo_ is the ancestral
and corporate spirit which is not personal but tribal, or a thing of the
clan, the possession of which is obtained not by birth but by certain
initiatory rites. The _idhlozi_ is personal and inalienable, for it is
wrapped up with the man's personality, and at death it lives near the
grave, or goes into the snake or totem of the clan; but the _itongo_ is
of the clan, and haunts the living-hut; at death it returns to the
tribal _amatongo_ (ancestral spirits). A man's share in this clan-spirit
(_itongo_) is lost when he becomes a Christian, or when he is in any way
unfaithful to the interests of the clan, but a man never loses his
_idhlozi_ any more than he ever loses his individuality."--_Savage
Childhood_, pp. 14 f.

[9] Hearn, _The Aryan Household_, p. 212.

[10] MacLennan, _Studies in Ancient History_, p. 381.

[11] Robertson Smith, _Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia_, p. 23.

[12] Cited from the Gwentian Code. Seebohm, _The Tribal System in
Wales_, p. 104.

[13] E.g., certain joint responsibilities of husband and wife.

[14] Seebohm, _The Tribal System in Wales_, pp. 103 f.

[15] "From the earliest times, religion, as distinct from magic or
sorcery, addresses itself to kindred and friendly beings, who may indeed
be angry with their people for a time, but are always placable except to
the enemies of their worshippers or to renegade members of the
community. It is not with a vague fear of unknown powers, but with a
loving reverence for known gods who are knit to their worshippers by
strong bonds of kinship, that religion in the only true sense of the
word begins."--ROBERTSON SMITH, _Religion of the Semites_, p. 54.

[16] Schurtz, _Altersklassen und Maennerbuende_.

[17] _Oedipus at Colonus_, vv. 186 f.

[18] Dudley Kidd, _Savage Childhood_, pp. 74 f.

CHAPTER III

THE RATIONALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCIES IN EARLY SOCIETY

Sec. 1. THREE LEVELS OF CONDUCT

A young man may enter a profession thinking of it only as a means of
support. But the work requires foresight and persistence; it broadens
his interests; it develops his character. Like Saul, he has gone to
search for asses, he has found a kingdom. Or he may marry on the basis
of emotional attraction. But the sympathies evoked, the cooperation made
necessary, are refining and enlarging his life. Both these cases
illustrate agencies which are moral in their results, although not
carried on from a consciously moral purpose.

Suppose, however, that children are born into the family. Then the
parent consciously sets about controlling their conduct, and in
exercising authority almost inevitably feels the need of some standard
other than caprice or selfishness. Suppose that in business the partners
differ as to their shares in the profits, then the question of fairness
is raised; and if one partner defaults, the question of guilt. Or
suppose the business encounters a law which forbids certain operations,
the problem of justice will come to consciousness. Such situations as
these are evidently in the moral sphere in a sense in which those of the
preceding paragraph are not. They demand some kind of judgment, some
approval or disapproval. As Aristotle says, it is not enough to do the
acts; it is necessary to do them in a certain way,--not merely to get
the result, but to intend it. The result must be thought of as in some
sense good or right; its opposite as in some sense bad or wrong.

But notice that the judgments in these cases may follow either of two
methods: (1) The parent or business man may teach his child, or practice
in business, what tradition or the accepted standard calls for; or (2)
he may consider and examine the principles and motives involved. Action
by the first method is undoubtedly moral, in one sense. It is judging
according to a standard, though it takes the standard for granted.
Action by the second method is moral in a more complete sense. It
examines the standard as well. The one is the method of "customary"
morality, the other that of reflective morality, or of conscience in the
proper sense.

=The Three Levels and Their Motives.=--We may distinguish then three
levels of conduct.

1. Conduct arising from instincts and fundamental needs. To satisfy
these needs certain conduct is necessary, and this in itself involves
ways of acting which are more or less rational and social. The conduct
may be _in accordance with_ moral laws, though not directed by moral
judgments. We consider this level in the present chapter.

2. Conduct regulated by _standards of society_, for some more or less
conscious end involving the social welfare. The level of custom, which
is treated in Chapter IV.

3. Conduct regulated by a standard which is both social and rational,
which is examined and criticized. The level of conscience. Progress
toward this level is outlined in Chapters V. to VIII.

The motives in these levels will show a similar scale. In (1) the
motives are external to the end gained. The man seeks food, or position,
or glory, or sex gratification; he is forced to practice sobriety,
industry, courage, gentleness. In (2) the motive is to seek some good
which is social, but the man acts for the group mainly because he is
_of_ the group, and does not conceive his own good as distinct from
that of the group. His acts are only in part guided by intelligence;
they are in part due to habit or accident. (3) In full morality a man
not only intends his acts definitely, he also values them as what he can
do "with all his heart." He does them _because_ they are right and good.
He chooses them freely and intelligently. Our study of moral development
will consider successively these three levels. They all exist in present
morality. Only the first two are found in savage life. If (1) existed
alone it was before the group life, which is our starting-point in this
study. We return now to our consideration of group life, and note the
actual forces which are at work. We wish to discover the process by
which the first and second levels prepare the way for the third.

=The Necessary Activities of Existence Start the Process.=--The prime
necessities, if the individual is to survive, are for food, shelter,
defense against enemies. If the stock is to survive, there must be also
reproduction and parental care. Further, it is an advantage in the
struggle if the individual can master and acquire, can outstrip rivals,
and can join forces with others of his kind for common ends. To satisfy
these needs we find men in group life engaged in work, in war or blood
feuds, in games and festal activities, in parental care. They are
getting food and booty, making tools and houses, conquering or enslaving
their enemies, protecting the young, winning trophies, and finding
emotional excitement in contests, dances, and songs. These all help in
the struggle for existence. But the workmen, warriors, singers, parents,
are getting more. They are forming certain elements of character which,
if not necessarily moral in themselves, are yet indispensable requisites
for full morality. We may say therefore that nature is doing this part
of moral evolution, without the aid of conscious intention on man's
part. To use the terms of Chapter I., we may call this a rationalizing
and socializing process, though not a conscious moral process. We notice
some of the more important agencies that are operative.

Sec. 2. RATIONALIZING AGENCIES

=1. Work.=--The earlier forms of occupation, hunting and fishing, call
for active intelligence, although the activity is sustained to a great
degree by the immediate interest or thrill of excitement, which makes
them a recreation to the civilized man. Quickness of perception,
alertness of mind and body, and in some cases, physical daring, are the
qualities most needed. But in the pastoral life, and still more with the
beginning of agriculture and commerce, the man who succeeds must have
foresight and continuity of purpose. He must control impulse by reason.
He must organize those habits which are the basis of character, instead
of yielding to the attractions of various pleasures which might lead him
from the main purpose. To a certain extent the primitive communism acted
to prevent the individual from feeling the full force of improvidence.
Even if he does not secure a supply of game, or have a large enough
flock to provide for the necessities of himself and his immediate
family, the group does not necessarily permit him to starve. The law
"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap" does not press upon
him with such relentless grasp as in the modern individualistic struggle
for existence. Nevertheless it would be an entirely mistaken view of
primitive group life to suppose that it is entirely a lazy man's
paradise, or happy-go-lucky existence. The varying economic conditions
are important here as measuring the amount of forethought and care
required. It is the shepherd Jacob whose craft outwits Esau the hunter;
and while the sympathy of the modern may be with Esau, he must remember
that forethought like other valuable weapons may be used in a social as
well as a selfish fashion. The early Greek appreciation of craft is
probably expressed in their deification of theft and deception in
Hermes. Agriculture and commerce, still more than preceding types of
occupation, demand thoughtfulness and the long look ahead.

The _differentiation of labor_ has been a powerful influence for
increasing the range of mental life and stimulating its development. If
all do the same thing, all are much alike, and inevitably remain on a
low level. But when the needs of men induce different kinds of work,
slumbering capacities are aroused and new ones are called into being.
The most deeply-rooted differentiation of labor is that between the
sexes. The woman performs the work within or near the dwelling, the man
hunts or tends the flocks or ranges abroad. This probably tends to
accentuate further certain organic differences. Among the men, group
life in its simplest phases has little differentiation except "for
counsel" or "for war." But with metal working and agricultural life the
field widens. At first the specializing is largely by families rather
than by individual choice. Castes of workmen may take the place of mere
kinship ties. Later on the rules of caste in turn become a hindrance to
individuality and must be broken down if the individual is to emerge to
full self-direction.

=2. The Arts and Crafts.=--Aside from their influence as work, the arts
and crafts have a distinctly elevating and refining effect. The
textiles, pottery, and skilfully made tools and weapons; the huts or
houses when artistically constructed; the so-called free or fine arts of
dance and music, of color and design--all have this common element: they
give some visible or audible embodiment for order or form. The artist or
craftsman must make definite his idea in order to work it out in cloth
or clay, in wood or stone, in dance or song. When thus embodied, it is
preserved, at least for a time. It is part of the daily environment of
the society. Those who see or hear are having constantly suggested to
them ideas and values which bring more meaning into life and elevate its
interests. Moreover, the order, the rational plan or arrangement which
is embodied in all well-wrought objects, as well as in the fine arts in
the narrow sense, deserves emphasis. Plato and Schiller have seen in
this a valuable preparation for morality. To govern action by law is
moral, but it is too much to expect this of the savage and the child as
a conscious principle where the law opposes impulse. In art as in play
there is direct interest and pleasure in the act, but in art there is
also order or law. In conforming to this order the savage, or the child,
is in training for the more conscious control where the law, instead of
favoring, may thwart or oppose impulse and desire.

=3. War.=--War and the contests in games were serving to work out
characteristics which received also a definite social reenforcement:
namely, courage and efficiency, a sense of power, a consciousness of
achievement. All these, like craft, may be used for unmoral or even
immoral ends, but they are also highly important as factors in an
effective moral personality.

Sec. 3. SOCIALIZING AGENCIES

=Cooperation and Mutual Aid.=[19]--Aside from their effects in promoting
intelligence, courage, and ideality of life, industry, art, and war have
a common factor by which they all contribute powerfully to the social
basis of morality. They all require cooperation. They are socializing as
well as rationalizing agencies. Mutual aid is the foundation of
success. "Woe to him who stands alone, e'en though his platter be never
so full," runs the Slav proverb. "He that belongs to no community is
like unto one without a hand." Those clans or groups which can work
together, and fight together, are stronger in the struggle against
nature and other men. The common activities of art have value in making
this community of action more possible. Cooperation implies a common
end. It means that each is interested in the success of all. This common
end forms then a controlling rule of action, and the mutual interest
means sympathy. Cooperation is therefore one of nature's most effective
agencies for a social standard and a social feeling.

=1. Cooperation in Industry.=--In industry, while there was not in
primitive life the extensive exchange of goods which expresses the
interdependence of modern men, there was yet much concerted work, and
there was a great degree of community of property. In groups which lived
by hunting or fishing, for instance, although certain kinds of game
might be pursued by the individual hunter, the great buffalo and deer
hunts were organized by the tribe as a whole. "A hunting bonfire was
kindled every morning at daybreak at which each brave must appear and
report. The man who failed to do this before the party set out on the
day's hunt was harassed by ridicule."[20] Salmon fishery was also
conducted as a joint undertaking. Large game in Africa is hunted in a
similar fashion, and the product of the chase is not for the individual
but for the group. In the pastoral life the care of the flocks and herds
necessitates at least some sort of cooperation to protect these flocks
from the attacks of wild beasts and from the more dreaded forays of
human robbers. This requires a considerable body of men, and the
journeying about in company, the sharing together of watch and ward, the
common interest in the increase of flocks and herds, continually
strengthens the bonds between the dwellers in tents.

In the agricultural stage there are still certain forces at work which
promote the family or tribal unity, although here we begin to find the
forces which make for individuality at work until they result in
individual ownership and individual property. Just as at the pastoral
stage, so in this, the cattle and the growing grain must be protected
from attacks by man and beast. It is only the group which can afford
such protection, and accordingly we find the Lowland farmer always at
the mercy of the Highland clan.

=2. Cooperation in War.=--War and the blood feud, however divisive
between groups, were none the less potent as uniting factors within the
several groups. The members must not only unite or be wiped out, when
the actual contest was on, but the whole scheme of mutual help in
defense or in avenging injuries and insults made constant demand upon
fellow feeling, and sacrifice for the good of all. To gain more land for
the group, to acquire booty for the group, to revenge a slight done to
some member of the group, were constant causes for war. Now although any
individual might be the gainer, yet the chances were that he would
himself suffer even though the group should win. In the case of blood
revenge particularly, most of the group were not individually
interested. Their resentment was a "sympathetic resentment," and one
author has regarded this as perhaps the most fundamental of the sources
of moral emotion. It was because the tribal blood had been shed, or the
women of the clan insulted, that the group as a whole reacted, and in
the clash of battle with opposing groups, was closer knit together.

"Ally thyself with whom thou wilt in peace, yet know
In war must every man be foe who is not kin."

"Comrades in arms" by the very act of fighting together have a common
cause, and by the mutual help and protection given and received become,
for the time at least, one in will and one in heart. Ulysses counsels
Agamemnon to marshal his Greeks, clan by clan and "brotherhood (phratry)
by brotherhood," that thus brother may support and stimulate brother
more effectively; but the effect is reciprocal, and it is indeed very
probable that the unity of blood which is believed to be the tie binding
together the members of the group, is often an afterthought or pious
fiction designed to account for the unity which was really due
originally to the stress of common struggle.

=3. Art as Socializing Agency.=--Cooperation and sympathy are fostered
by the activities of art. Some of these activities are spontaneous, but
most of them serve some definite social end and are frequently organized
for the definite purpose of increasing the unity and sympathy of the
group. The hunting dance or the war dance represents, in dramatic form,
all the processes of the hunt or fight, but it would be a mistake to
suppose that this takes place purely for dramatic purposes. The dance
and celebration after the chase or battle may give to the whole tribe
the opportunity to repeat in vivid imagination the triumphs of the
successful hunter or warrior, and thus to feel the thrill of victory and
exult in common over the fallen prey. The dance which takes place before
the event is designed to give magical power to the hunter or warrior.
Every detail is performed with the most exact care and the whole tribe
is thus enabled to share in the work of preparation.

In the act of song the same uniting force is present. To sing with
another involves a contagious sympathy, in perhaps a higher degree than
is the case with any other art. There is, in the first place, as in the
dance, a unity of rhythm. Rhythm is based upon cooperation and, in turn,
immensely strengthens the possibility of cooperation. In the
bas-reliefs upon the Egyptian monuments representing the work of a large
number of men who are moving a stone, we find the sculptured figure of a
man who is beating the time for the combined efforts. Whether all rhythm
has come from the necessities of common action or whether it has a
physiological basis sufficient to account for the effect which rhythmic
action produces, in any case when a company of people begin to work or
dance or sing in rhythmic movement, their efficiency and their pleasure
are immensely increased. In addition to the effect of rhythm we have
also in the case of song the effect of unity of pitch and of melody, and
the members of the tribe or clan, like those who to-day sing the
Marseillaise or chant the great anthems of the church, feel in the
strongest degree their mutual sympathy and support. For this reason, the
Corroborees of the Australian, the sacred festivals of Israel, the
Mysteries and public festivals of the Greeks, in short, among all
peoples, the common gatherings of the tribe for patriotic or religious
purposes, have been attended with dance and song. In many cases these
carry the members on to a pitch of enthusiasm where they are ready to
die for the common cause.

Melodic and rhythmic sound is a unifying force simply by reason of form,
and some of the simpler songs seem to have little else to commend them,
but at very early periods there is not merely the song but the recital,
in more or less rhythmic or literary form, of the history of the tribe
and the deeds of the ancestors. This adds still another to the unifying
forces of the dance and song. The kindred group, as they hear the
recital, live over together the history of the group, thrill with pride
at its glories, suffer at its defeats; every member feels that the
clan's history is his history and the clan's blood his blood.

Sec. 4. FAMILY LIFE AS AN IDEALIZING AND SOCIALIZING AGENCY

Family life, so far as it is merely on the basis of instinct, takes its
place with other agencies favored by natural selection which make for
more rational and social existence. Various instincts are more or less
at work. The sex instinct brings the man and the woman together. The
instinct of jealousy, and the property or possessing instinct, may
foster exclusive and permanent relations. The parental instinct and
affection bind the parents together and thus contribute to the formation
of the social group described in the preceding chapter. Considering now
the more immediate relations of husband and wife, parents and children,
rather than the more general group relations, we call attention to some
of the most obvious aspects, leaving fuller treatment for Part III. The
idealizing influences of the sex instinct, when this is subject to the
general influences found in group life, is familiar. Lyric song is a
higher form of its manifestation, but even a mute lover may be
stimulated to fine thoughts or brave deeds. Courtship further implies an
adaptation, an effort to please, which is a strong socializing force. If
"all the world loves a lover," it must be because the lover is on the
whole a likable role. But other forces come in. Sex love is intense, but
so far as it is purely instinctive it may be transitory. Family life
needed more permanence than sex attraction could provide, and before the
powerful sanctions of religion, society, and morals were sufficient to
secure permanence, it is probable that the property interest of the
husband was largely effective in building up a family life, requiring
fidelity to the married relation on the part of the wife.

But the most far-reaching of the forces at work in the family has been
the parental instinct and affection with its consequences upon both
parents and children. It contributes probably more than any other
naturally selected agency to the development of the race in sympathy; it
shares with work in the development of responsibility. It is indeed one
of the great incentives to industry throughout the higher species of
animals as well as in human life. The value of parental care in the
struggle for existence is impressively presented by Sutherland.[21]
Whereas the fishes which exercise no care for their eggs preserve their
species only by producing these in enormous numbers, certain species
which care for them maintain their existence by producing relatively
few. Many species produce hundreds of thousands or even millions of
eggs. The stickleback, which constructs a nest and guards the young for
a few days, is one of the most numerous of fishes, but it lays only from
twenty to ninety eggs. Birds and mammals with increased parental care
produce few young. Not only is parental care a valuable asset, it is an
absolute necessity for the production of the higher species. "In the
fierce competition of the animated forms of earth, the loftier type,
with its prolonged nervous growth, and consequently augmented period of
helplessness, can never arise but with concomitant increases of parental
care." Only as the emotional tendency has kept pace with the nerve
development has the human race been possible. The very refinements in
the organism which make the adult a victor would render the infant a
victim if it were without an abundance of loving assistance.[22]

Whether, as has been supposed by some, the parental care has also been
the most effective force in keeping the parents together through a
lengthened infancy, or whether other factors have been more effective in
this particular, there is no need to enlarge upon the wide-reaching
moral values of parental affection. It is the atmosphere in which the
child begins his experience. So far as any environment can affect him,
this is a constant influence for sympathy and kindness. And upon the
parents themselves its transforming power, in making life serious, in
overcoming selfishness, in projecting thought and hope on into the
future, cannot be measured. The moral order and progress of the world
might conceivably spare some of the agencies which man has devised; it
could not spare this.

Sec. 5. MORAL INTERPRETATION OF THIS FIRST LEVEL

On this first level we are evidently dealing with forces and conduct,
not as moral in purpose, but as valuable in result. They make a more
rational, ideal, and social life, and this is the necessary basis for
more conscious control and valuation of conduct. The forces are
biological or sociological or psychological. They are not that
particular kind of psychological activities which we call moral in the
proper sense, for this implies not only getting a good result but aiming
at it. Some of the activities, such as those of song and dance, or the
simpler acts of maternal care, have a large instinctive element. We
cannot call these moral in _so far as_ they are purely instinctive.
Others imply a large amount of intelligence, as, for example, the
operations of agriculture and the various crafts. These have purpose,
such as to satisfy hunger, or to forge a weapon against an enemy. But
the end is one set up by our physical or instinctive nature. So long as
this is merely _accepted_ as an end, and not compared with others,
valued, and _chosen_, it is not properly moral.

The same is true of emotions. There are certain emotions on the
instinctive level. Such are parental love in its most elemental form,
sympathy as mere contagious feeling, anger, or resentment. So far as
these are at this lowest level, so far as they signify simply a bodily
thrill, they have no claim to proper moral value. They are tremendously
important as the source from which strong motive forces of benevolence,
intelligent parental care, and an ardent energy against evil may draw
warmth and fire.

Finally, even the cooperation, the mutual aid, which men give, so far as
it is called out purely by common danger, or common advantage, is not in
the moral sphere in so far as it is instinctive, or merely give and
take. To be genuinely moral there must be some thought of the danger as
touching others and _therefore_ requiring our aid; of the advantage as
being common and _therefore_ enlisting our help.

But even although these processes are not consciously moral they are
nevertheless fundamental. The activities necessary for existence, and
the emotions so intimately bound up with them, are the "cosmic roots" of
the moral life. And often in the higher stages of culture, when the
codes and instruction of morality and society fail to secure right
conduct, these elementary agencies of work, cooperation, and family life
assert their power. Society and morality take up the direction of the
process and carry it further, but they must always rely largely on these
primary activities to afford the basis for intelligent, reliable, and
sympathetic conduct.

LITERATURE

Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, 1890; Buecher, _Industrial Evolution_,
Eng. tr., 1901, _Arbeit und Rythmus_, 3rd ed., 1901; Schurtz,
_Urgeschichte der Kultur_, 1900; Fiske, _Cosmic Philosophy_, Vol. II.,
_The Cosmic Roots of Love and Self-sacrifice_ in Through Nature to God,
1899; Dewey, _Interpretation of the Savage Mind_, Psychological Review,
Vol. IX., 1892, pp. 217-230; Durkheim, _De la Division du Travail
Social_, 1893; P. Kropotkin, _Mutual Aid, a Factor in Evolution_, 1902;
ROSS, _Foundations of Society_, 1905, Chap. VII.; Baldwin, Article
_Socionomic Forces_ in his Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology;
Giddings, _Inductive Sociology_, 1901; Small, _General Sociology_, 1906;
Tarde, _Les Lois de l'Imitation_, 1895; W. I. Thomas, _Sex and Society_,
1907, pp. 55-172; Gummere, _The Beginnings of Poetry_, 1901; Hirn, _The
Origin of Art_, 1900.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] P. Kropotkin, _Mutual Aid a Factor in Evolution_; Bagehot, _Physics
and Politics_.

[20] Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_.

[21] _The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_, Chs. II.-V.

[22] _Ibid._, p. 99.

CHAPTER IV

GROUP MORALITY--CUSTOMS OR MORES

We have seen how the natural forces of instinct lead to activities which
elevate men and knit them together. We consider next the means which
society uses for these purposes, and the kind of conduct which goes
along with the early forms of society's agencies. The organization of
early society is that of group life, and so far as the individual is
merged in the group the type of conduct may be called "group morality."
Inasmuch as the agencies by which the group controls its members are
largely those of custom, the morality may be called also "customary
morality." Such conduct is what we called at the opening of the previous
chapter "the second level." It is "ethical" or "moral" in the sense of
conforming to the _ethos_ or _mores_ of the group.

Sec. 1. MEANING, AUTHORITY, AND ORIGIN OF CUSTOMS

=Meaning of Customs or Mores.=--Wherever we find groups of men living as
outlined in Chapter II., we find that there are certain ways of acting
which are common to the group--"folkways." Some of these may be due
merely to the fact that the members are born of the same stock, just as
all ducks swim. But a large part of human conduct, in savage as truly as
in civilized life, is not merely instinctive. There are _approved_ ways
of acting, common to a group, and handed down from generation to
generation. Such approved ways of doing and acting are customs, or to
use the Latin term, which Professor Sumner thinks brings out more
clearly this factor of approval, they are _mores_.[23] They are
habits--but they are more. They imply the judgment of the group that
they are to be followed. The welfare of the group is regarded as in some
sense imbedded in them. If any one acts contrary to them he is made to
feel the group's disapproval. The young are carefully trained to observe
them. At times of special importance, they are rehearsed with special
solemnity.

=Authority Behind the Mores.=--The old men, or the priests, or medicine
men, or chiefs, or old women, may be the especial guardians of these
customs. They may modify details, or add new customs, or invent
explanations for old ones. But the authority back of them is the group
in the full sense. Not the group composed merely of visible and living
members, but the larger group which includes the dead, and the kindred
totemic or ancestral gods. Nor is it the group considered as a
collection of individual persons. It is rather in a vague way the whole
mental and social world. The fact that most of the customs have no known
date or origin makes them seem a part of the nature of things. Indeed
there is more than a mere analogy between the primitive regard for
custom and that respect for "Nature" which from the Stoics to Spencer
has sought a moral standard in living "according to nature." And there
is this much in favor of taking the world of custom as the standard: the
beings of this system are like the person who is expected to behave like
them; its rules are the ways in which his own kin have lived and
prospered, and not primarily the laws of cosmic forces, plants, and
animals.

=Origin of Customs; Luck.=--The origin of customs is to be sought in
several concurrent factors. There are in the first place the activities
induced by the great primitive needs and instincts. Some ways of acting
succeed; some fail. Man not only establishes habits of acting in the
successful ways; he remembers his failures. He hands successful ways
down with his approval; he condemns those that fail.

This attitude is reenforced by the views about good luck and bad luck.
Primitive man--and civilized man--is not ruled by a purely rational
theory of success and failure. "One might use the best known means with
the greatest care, yet fail of the result. On the other hand, one might
get a great result with no effort at all. One might also incur a
calamity without any fault of his own."[24] "Grimm gives more than a
thousand ancient German apothegms, dicta, and proverbs about
'luck.'"[25] Both good and bad fortune are attributed to the unseen
powers, hence a case of bad luck is not thought of as a mere chance. If
the ship that sailed Friday meets a storm, or one of thirteen falls
sick, the inference is that this is sure to happen again. And at this
point the conception of the group welfare as bound up with the acts of
every member, comes in to make individual conformity a matter for group
concern--to make conduct a matter of mores and not merely a private
affair. One most important, if not the most important, object of early
legislation was the enforcement of lucky rites to prevent the individual
from doing what might bring ill luck on all the tribe. For the
conception always was that the ill luck does not attach itself simply to
the doer, but may fall upon any member of the group. "The act of one
member is conceived to make all the tribe impious, to offend its
particular god, to expose all the tribe to penalties from heaven. When
the street statues of Hermes were mutilated, all the Athenians were
frightened and furious; they thought they should all be ruined because
some one had mutilated a god's image and so offended him."[26] "The
children were reproved for cutting and burning embers, on the ground
that this might be the cause for the accidental cutting of some member
of the family."[27] In the third place, besides these sources of custom,
in the usefulness or lucky character of certain acts, there is also the
more immediate reaction of individuals or groups to certain ways of
acting according "as things jump with the feelings or displease
them."[28] An act of daring is applauded, whether useful or not. The
individual judgment is caught up, repeated, and plays its part in the
formation of group opinion. "Individual impulse and social tradition are
thus the two poles between which we move." Or there may even be a more
conscious discussion analogous to the action of legislatures or
philosophic discussion. The old men among the Australians deliberate
carefully as to each step of the initiation ceremonies. They make
customs to be handed down.

Sec. 2. MEANS OF ENFORCING CUSTOMS

The most general means for enforcing customs are public opinion, taboos,
ritual or ceremony, and physical force.

=Public Approval= uses both language and form to express its judgments.
Its praise is likely to be emphasized by some form of art. The songs
that greet the returning victor, the decorations, costumes, and tattoos
for those who are honored, serve to voice the general sentiment. On the
other hand ridicule or contempt is a sufficient penalty to enforce
compliance with many customs that may be personally irksome. It is very
largely the ridicule of the men's house which enforces certain customs
among the men of peoples which have that institution. It is the ridicule
or scorn of both men and women which forbids the Indian to marry before
he has proved his manhood by some notable deed of prowess in war or
chase.

=Taboos.=--Taboos are perhaps not so much a means for enforcing custom,
as they are themselves customs invested with peculiar and awful
sanction. They prohibit or ban any contact with certain persons or
objects under penalty of danger from unseen beings. Any events supposed
to indicate the activity of spirits, such as birth and death, are likely
to be sanctified by taboos. The danger is contagious; if a Polynesian
chief is taboo, the ordinary man fears even to touch his footprints. But
the taboos are not all based on mere dread of the unseen.

"They include such acts as have been found by experience to
produce unwelcome results.--The primitive taboos correspond to the
fact that the life of man is environed by perils: His food quest
must be limited by shunning poisonous plants. His appetite must be
restrained from excess. His physical strength and health must be
guarded from dangers. The taboos carry on the accumulated wisdom
of generations which has almost always been purchased by pain,
loss, disease, and death. Other taboos contain inhibitions of what
will be injurious to the group. The laws about the sexes, about
property, about war, and about ghosts, have this character. They
always include some social philosophy." (SUMNER, _Folkways_, pp.
33 f.)

They may be used with conscious purpose. In order to have a supply of
cocoanuts for a religious festival the head men may place a taboo upon
the young cocoanuts to prevent them from being consumed before they are
fully ripe. The conception works in certain respects to supply the
purpose which is later subserved by ideas of property. But it serves
also as a powerful agency to maintain respect for the authority of the
group.

=Ritual.=--As taboo is the great negative guardian of customs, ritual is
the great positive agent. It works by forming habits, and operates
through associations formed by actually doing certain acts, usually
under conditions which appeal to the emotions. The charm of music and
of orderly movement, the impressiveness of ordered masses in
processions, the awe of mystery, all contribute to stamp in the meaning
and value. Praise or blame encourages or inhibits; ritual secures the
actual doing and at the same time gives a value to the doing. It is
employed by civilized peoples more in the case of military or athletic
drill, or in training children to observe forms of etiquette, so that
these may become "second nature." Certain religious bodies also use its
agency. But in primitive life it is widely and effectively used to
insure for educational, political, and domestic customs obedience to the
group standards, which among us it secures to the codes of the army, or
to those of social etiquette. Examples of its elaborate and impressive
use will be given below under educational ceremonies.

=Physical Force.=--When neither group opinion, nor taboo, nor ritual
secures conformity, there is always in the background physical force.
The chiefs are generally men of strength whose word may not be lightly
disregarded. Sometimes, as among the Sioux, the older braves constitute
a sort of police. Between different clans the blood feud is the accepted
method of enforcing custom, unless a substitute, the wergeld, is
provided. For homicide within a clan the remaining members may drive the
slayer out, and whoever meets such a Cain may slay him. If a man
murdered his chief of kindred among the ancient Welsh he was banished
and "it was required of every one of every sex and age within hearing of
the horn to follow that exile and to keep up the barking of dogs, to the
time of his putting to sea, until he shall have passed three score hours
out of sight."[29] It should be borne in mind, however, that physical
pains, either actual or dreaded, would go but a little way toward
maintaining authority in any such group as we have regarded as typical.
Absolutism, with all its cruel methods of enforcing terror, needs a more
highly organized system. In primitive groups the great majority support
the authority of the group as a matter of course, and uphold it as a
sacred duty when it is challenged. Physical coercion is not the rule but
the exception.

Sec. 3. CONDITIONS WHICH BRING OUT THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP STANDARDS AND
RENDER GROUP CONTROL CONSCIOUS

Although customs or mores have in them an element of social approval
which makes them vehicles of moral judgment, they tend in many cases to
sink to the level of mere habits. The reason--such as it was--for their
original force--is forgotten. They become, like many of our forms of
etiquette, mere conventions. There are, however, certain conditions
which center attention upon their importance and lift them to the level
of conscious agencies. These conditions may be grouped under three
heads. (1) The education of the younger, immature members of the group
and their preparation for full membership. (2) The constraint and
restraint of refractory members and the adjustment of conflicting
interests. (3) Occasions which involve some notable danger or crisis and
therefore call for the greatest attention to secure the favor of the
gods and avert disaster.

=1. Educational Customs.=--Among the most striking and significant of
these are the initiation ceremonies which are so widely observed among
primitive peoples. They are held with the purpose of inducting boys into
the privileges of manhood and into the full life of the group. They are
calculated at every step to impress upon the initiate his own ignorance
and helplessness in contrast with the wisdom and power of the group; and
as the mystery with which they are conducted imposes reverence for the
elders and the authorities of the group, so the recital of the
traditions and performances of the tribe, the long series of ritual
acts, common participation in the mystic dance and song and decorations,
serve to reenforce the ties that bind the tribe.

Initiation into the full privileges of manhood among the tribes of
Central Australia, for instance, includes three sets of ceremonies which
occupy weeks, and even months, for their completion. The first set,
called "throwing up in the air," is performed for the boy when he has
reached the age of from ten to twelve. In connection with being thrown
up in the air by certain prescribed members of his tribe, he is
decorated with various totem emblems and afterward the septum of his
nose is bored for the insertion of the nose-bone. At a period some three
or four years later a larger and more formidable series of ceremonies is
undertaken, lasting for ten days. A screen of bushes is built, behind
which the boy is kept during the whole period, unless he is brought out
on the ceremonial ground to witness some performance. During this whole
period of ten days, he is forbidden to speak except in answer to
questions. He is decorated with various totem emblems, for which every
detail is prescribed by the council of the tribal fathers and tribal
elder brothers. He is charged to obey every command and never to tell
any woman or boy what he may see. The sense that something out of the
ordinary is to happen to him helps to impress him strongly with a
feeling of the deep importance of compliance with the tribal rules, and
further still, with a strong sense of the superiority of the older men
who know and are familiar with the mysterious rites of which he is about
to learn the meaning for the first time. At intervals he watches
symbolic performances of men decorated like various totem animals, who
represent the doings of the animal ancestors of the clan; he hears
mysterious sounds of the so-called bull-roarers, which are supposed by
the women and uninitiated to be due to unseen spirits; and the whole
ends with the operation which symbolizes his induction into young
manhood. But even this is not all; when the young man has reached the
age of discretion, when it is felt that he can fully comprehend the
traditions of the tribe, at the age of from twenty to twenty-five, a
still more impressive series of ceremonies is conducted, which in the
instance reported lasted from September to January. This period was
filled up with dances, "corroborees," and inspection of the churinga or
sacred emblems--stones or sticks which were supposed to be the dwellings
of ancestral spirits and which are carefully preserved in the tribe,
guarded from the sight of women and boys, but known individually to the
elders as the sacred dwelling-place of father or grandfather. As these
were shown and passed around, great solemnity was manifest and the
relatives sometimes wept at the sight of the sacred object. Ceremonies
imitating various totem animals, frequently of the most elaborate sort,
were also performed. The young men were told the traditions of the past
history of the tribe, and at the close of the recital they felt added
reverence for the old men who had been their instructors, a sense of
pride in the possession of this mysterious knowledge, and a deeper unity
because of what they now have in common. One is at a loss whether to
wonder most at the possibility of the whole tribe devoting itself for
three months to these elaborate functions of initiation, or at the
marvelous adaptability of such ceremonies to train the young into an
attitude of docility and reverence. A tribe that can enforce such a
process is not likely to be wanting in one side, at least, of the moral
consciousness, namely, reverence for authority and regard for the social
welfare.[30]

=2. Law and Justice.=--The occasions for some control over refractory
members will constantly arise, even though the conflict between group
and individual may need no physical sanctions to enforce the authority
of the group over its members. The economic motive frequently prompts an
individual to leave the tribe or the joint family. There was a constant
tendency, Eastman states, among his people, when on a hunting expedition
in the enemy's country, to break up into smaller parties to obtain food
more easily and freely. The police did all they could to keep in check
those parties who were intent on stealing away. Another illustration of
the same tendency is stated by Maine with reference to the joint
families of the South Slavonians:

"The adventurous and energetic member of the brotherhood is always
rebelling against its natural communism. He goes abroad and makes
his fortune, and as strenuously resists the demands of his
relatives to bring it into the common account. Or perhaps he
thinks that his share of the common stock would be more profitably
employed by him as capital in a mercantile venture. In either case
he becomes a dissatisfied member or a declared enemy of the
brotherhood."[31]

Or covetousness might lead to violation of the ban, as with Achan. Sex
impulse may lead a man to seek for his wife a woman not in the lawful
group. Or, as one of the most dangerous offenses possible, a member of
the group may be supposed to practice witchcraft. This is to use
invisible powers in a selfish manner, and has been feared and punished
by almost all peoples.

In all these cases it is of course no abstract theory of crime which
leads the community to react; it is self-preservation. The tribe must be
kept together for protection against enemies. Achan's sin is felt to be
the cause of defeat. The violation of sex taboos may ruin the clan. The
sorcerer may cause disease, or inflict torture and death, or bring a
pestilence or famine upon the whole group. None the less all such cases
bring to consciousness one aspect of moral authority, the social
control over the individual.

And it is a _social_ control--not an exercise of brute force or a mere
terrorizing by ghosts. For the chief or judge generally wins his
authority by his powerful service to his tribesmen. A Gideon or Barak or
Ehud or Jephthah judged Israel because he had delivered them. "Three
things, if possessed by a man, make him fit to be a chief of kindred:
That he should speak on behalf of his kin and be listened to, that he
should fight on behalf of his kin and be feared, and that he should be
security on behalf of his kin and be accepted."[32] If, as is often the
case, the king or judge or chief regards himself as acting by divine
right, the authority is still _within the group_. It is the group
judging itself.

In its _standards_ this primitive court is naturally on the level of
customary morality, of which it is an agent. There is usually neither
the conception of a general principle of justice (our Common Law), nor
of a positive law enacted as the express will of the people. At first
the judge or ruler may not act by any fixed law except that of upholding
the customs. Each decision is then a special case. A step in advance is
found when the heads or elders or priests of the tribe decide cases, not
independently of all others, but in accordance with certain precedents
or customs. A legal tradition is thus established, which, however
imperfect, is likely to be more impartial than the arbitrary caprice of
the moment, influenced as such special decisions are likely to be by the
rank or power of the parties concerned.[33] A law of precedents or
tradition is thus the normal method at this level. The progress toward a
more rational standard belongs under the next chapter, but it is
interesting to note that even at an early age the myths show a
conception of a divine judge who is righteous, and a divine judgment
which is ideal. Rhadamanthus is an embodiment of the demand for justice
which human collisions and decisions awakened.

The conscious authority of the group is also evoked in the case of feuds
or disputes between its members. The case of the blood feud, indeed,
might well be treated as belonging under war and international law
rather than as a case of private conflict. For so far as the members of
the victim's clan are concerned, it is a case of war. It is a patriotic
duty of every kinsman to avenge the shed blood. The groups concerned
were smaller than modern nations which go to war for similar reasons,
but the principle is the same. The chief difference in favor of modern
international wars is that since the groups are larger they do not fight
so often and require a more serious consideration of the possibility of
peaceable adjustment. Orestes and Hamlet feel it a sacred duty to avenge
their fathers' murders.

But the case is not simply that of clan against clan. For the smaller
group of kin, who are bound to avenge, are nearly always part of a
larger group. And the larger group may at once recognize the duty of
vengeance and also the need of keeping it within bounds, or of
substituting other practices. The larger group may see in the murder a
pollution, dangerous to all;[34] the blood which "cries from the
ground"[35] renders the ground "unclean" and the curse of gods or the
spirits of the dead may work woe upon the whole region. But an unending
blood feud is likewise an evil. And if the injured kin can be appeased
by less than blood in return, so much the better. Hence the wergeld, or
indemnity, a custom which persisted among the Irish until late, and
seemed to the English judges a scandalous procedure.

For lesser offenses a sort of regulated duel is sometimes allowed. For
example, among the Australians the incident is related of the treatment
of a man who had eloped with his neighbor's wife. When the recreant
parties returned the old men considered what should be done, and finally
arranged the following penalty. The offender stood and called out to the
injured husband, "I stole your woman; come and growl." The husband then
proceeded to throw a spear at him from a distance, and afterwards to
attack him with a knife, although he did not attempt to wound him in a
vital part. The offender was allowed to evade injury, though not to
resent the attack. Finally the old men said, "Enough." A curious form of
private agencies for securing justice is also found in the Japanese
custom of hara-kiri, according to which an injured man kills himself
before the door of his offender, in order that he may bring public odium
upon the man who has injured him. An Indian custom of Dharna is of
similar significance, though less violent. The creditor fasts before the
door of the debtor until he either is paid, or dies of starvation. It
may be that he thinks that his double or spirit will haunt the cruel
debtor who has thus permitted him to starve to death, but it also has
the effect of bringing public opinion to bear.

In all these cases of kindred feuds there is little personal
responsibility, and likewise little distinction between the accidental
and intentional. These facts are brought out in the opening quotations
in Chapter II. The important thing for the student to observe is that
like our present practices in international affairs they show a _grade_
of morality, a limited social unity, whether it is called kinship
feeling or patriotism; complete morality is not possible so long as
there is no complete way of settling disputes by justice instead of
force.[36]

=3. Occasions Which Involve Some Special Danger or Crisis.=--Such
occasions call for the greatest attention to secure success or avoid
disaster. Under this head we note as typical (a) the occasions of birth,
marriage, death; (b) seed time and harvest, or other seasons important
for the maintenance of the group; (c) war; (d) hospitality.

=(a) Birth and Death Customs.=--The entrance of a new life into the
world and the disappearance of the animating breath (_spiritus_,
_anima_, _psyche_), might well impress man with the mysteries of his
world. Whether the newborn infant is regarded as a reincarnation of an
ancestral spirit as with the Australians, or as a new creation from the
spirit world as with the Kafirs, it is a time of danger. The mother must
be "purified,"[37] the child, and in some cases the father, must be
carefully guarded. The elaborate customs show the group judgment of the
importance of the occasion. And the rites for the dead are yet more
impressive. For as a rule the savage has no thought of an entire
extinction of the person. The dead lives on in some mode, shadowy and
vague, perhaps, but he is still potent, still a member of the group,
present at the tomb or the hearth. The preparation of the body for
burial or other disposition, the ceremonies of interment or of the pyre,
the wailing, and mourning costumes, the provision of food and weapons,
or of the favorite horse or wife, to be with the dead in the unseen
world, the perpetual homage paid--all these are eloquent. The event, as
often as it occurs, appeals by both sympathy and awe to the common
feeling, and brings to consciousness the unity of the group and the
control exercised by its judgments.

The regulations for marriage are scarcely less important; indeed, they
are often seemingly the most important of the customs. The phrases
"marriage by capture" and "marriage by purchase," are quite misleading
if they give the impression that in early culture any man may have any
woman. It is an almost universal part of the clan system that the man
must marry out of his own clan or totem (exogamy), and it is frequently
specified exactly into what other clan he must marry. Among some the
regulations are minute as to which of the age classes, as well as to
which of the kin groups, a man of specific group must choose from. The
courtship may follow different rules from ours, and the relation of the
sexes in certain respects may seem so loose as to shock the student, but
the regulation is in many respects stricter than with us, and punishment
of its violation often severer. There can be no doubt of the meaning of
the control, however mistaken some of its features. Whether the
regulations for exogamy, which provide so effectually for avoiding
incest, are reinforced by an instinctive element of aversion to sex
relations with intimates, is uncertain; in any case, they are enforced
by the strongest taboos. Nor does primitive society stop with the
negative side. The actual marriage is invested with the social values
and religious sanctions which raise the relation to a higher level. Art,
in garments and ornament, in dance and epithalamium, lends ideal values.
The sacred meal at the encircled hearth secures the participation of the
kindred gods.

=(b) Certain Days or Seasons Important for the Industrial Life.=--Seed
time and harvest, the winter and summer solstices, the return of spring,
are of the highest importance to agricultural and pastoral peoples, and
are widely observed with solemn rites. Where the rain is the center of
anxiety, a whole ritual may arise in connection with it, as among the
Zuni Indians. Ceremonies lasting days, involving the preparation of
special symbols of clouds and lightning, and the participation of
numerous secret fraternities, constrain the attention of all. Moreover,
this constraint of need, working through the conception of what the
gods require, enforces some very positive moral attitudes:

"A Zuni must speak with one tongue (sincerely) in order to have
his prayers received by the gods, and unless his prayers are
accepted no rains will come, which means starvation. He must be
gentle, and he must speak and act with kindness to all, for the
gods care not for those whose lips speak harshly. He must observe
continence four days previous to, and four days following, the
sending of breath prayers through the spiritual essence of plume
offerings, and thus their passions are brought under control."
(MRS. M. C. STEVENSON in 23d Report, _Bureau of Ethnology_.)

Phases of the moon give other sacred days. Sabbaths which originally are
negative--the forbidding of labor--may become later the bearers of
positive social and spiritual value. In any case, all these festivals
bring the group authority to consciousness, and by their ritual promote
the intimate group sympathy and consciousness of a common end.

=(c) War.=--War as a special crisis always brings out the significance
and importance of certain customs. The deliberations, the magic, the war
paint which precede, the obedience compelled by it to chiefs, the
extraordinary powers exercised by the chief or heads at such crises, the
sense of danger which strains the attention, all insure attention. No
carelessness is permitted. Defeat is interpreted as a symbol of divine
anger because of a violated law or custom. Victory brings all together
to celebrate the glory of the clan and to mourn in common the warriors
slain in the common cause. Excellence here may be so conspicuous in its
service, or in the admiration it calls out, as to become a general term
for what the group approves. So the _aret[=e]_ of the Greeks became
their general term, and the Latin _virtus_, if not so clearly military,
was yet largely military in its early coloring. The "spirit of Jehovah,"
the symbol of divine approval and so of group approval, was believed to
be with Samson and Jephthah in their deeds of prowess in Israel's
behalf.

=(d) Hospitality.=--To the modern man who travels without fear and
receives guests as a matter of almost daily practice, it may seem
strained to include hospitality along with unusual or critical events.
But the ceremonies observed and the importance attached to its rites,
show that hospitality was a matter of great significance; its customs
were among the most sacred.

"But as for us," says Ulysses to the Cyclops, "we have lighted
here, and come to these thy knees, if perchance they will give us
a stranger's gift, or make any present, as is the due of
strangers. Nay, lord, have regard to the gods, for we are thy
suppliants, and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and sojourners,
Zeus, the god of the stranger, who fareth in the company of
reverend strangers."

The duty of hospitality is one of the most widely recognized.
Westermarck has brought together a series of maxims from a great variety
of races which show this forcibly.[38] Indians, Kalmucks, Greeks,
Romans, Teutons, Arabs, Africans, Ainos, and other peoples are drawn
upon and tell the same story. The stranger is to be respected sacredly.
His person must be guarded from insult even if the honor of the daughter
of the house must be sacrificed.[39] "Jehovah preserveth the
sojourners," and they are grouped with the fatherless and the widow in
Israel's law.[40] The Romans had their _dii hospitales_ and the "duties
toward a guest were even more stringent than those toward a
relative"--_primum tutelae_, _delude hospiti_, _deinde clienti_, _tum
cognato_, _postea affini_.[41] "He who has a spark of caution in him,"
says Plato, "will do his best to pass through life without sinning
against the stranger." And there is no doubt that this sanctity of the
guest's person was not due to pure kindness. The whole conduct of group
life is opposed to a general spirit of consideration for those outside.
The word "guest" is akin to _hostis_, from which comes "hostile." The
stranger or the guest was looked upon rather as a being who was
specially potent. He was a "live wire." He might be a medium of
blessing, or he might be a medium of hurt. But it was highly important
to fail in no duty toward him. The definite possibility of entertaining
angels unawares might not be always present to consciousness, but there
seems reason to believe that the possibility of good luck or bad luck as
attending on a visitor was generally believed in. It is also plausible
that the importance attached to sharing a meal, or to bodily contact, is
based on magical ideas of the way in which blessing or curse may be
communicated. To cross a threshold or touch a tent-rope or to eat
"salt," gives a sacred claim. In the right of asylum, the refugee takes
advantage of his contact with the god. He lays hold of the altar and
assumes that the god will protect him. The whole practice of hospitality
is thus the converse of the custom of blood revenge. They are alike
sacred--or rather the duty of hospitality may protect even the man whom
the host is bound to pursue. But, whereas the one makes for group
solidarity by acts of exclusive and hostile character, the other tends
to set aside temporarily the division between the "we-group" and the
"others-group." Under the sanction of religion it keeps open a way of
communication which trade and other social interchange will widen. It
adds to family and the men's house a powerful agency in maintaining at
least the possibility of humaneness and sympathy.

Sec. 4. VALUES AND DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY

These have been suggested, in the main, in the description of the nature
of custom and its regulation of conduct. We may, however, summarize
them as a preparation for the next stage of morality.

=1. The Forming of Standards.=--There is a standard, a "good," a
"right," which is to some degree rational and to some degree social. We
have seen that custom rests in part on rational conceptions of welfare.
It is really nothing against this that a large element of luck enters
into the idea of welfare. For this means merely that the actual
conditions of welfare are not understood. The next generation may be
able to point out as equally absurd our present ignorance about health
and disease. The members of the group embodied in custom what they
thought to be important; they were approving some acts and forbidding or
condemning others; they were using the elders, and the wisdom of all the
past, in order to govern life. So far, then, they were acting morally.
They were also, to a degree, using a rational and social standard when
they made custom binding on all, and conceived its origin as immemorial.
When further they conceived it as approved by the gods, they gave it all
the value they knew how to put into it.

The standards and valuations of custom are, however, only partly
rational. Many customs are irrational; some are injurious. But in them
all the habitual is a large, if not the largest, factor. And this is
often strong enough to resist any attempt at rational testing. Dr.
Arthur Smith tells us of the advantage it would be in certain parts of
China to build a door on the south side of the house in order to get the
breeze in hot weather. The simple and sufficient answer to such a
suggestion is, "We don't build doors on the south side."

An additional weakness in the character of such irrational, or partly
rational standards, is the misplaced energy they involve. What is merely
trivial is made as important and impressive as what has real
significance. Tithing mint, anise, and cummin is quite likely to
involve neglect of the weightier matters of the law. Moral life
requires men to estimate the value of acts. If the irrelevant or the
petty is made important, it not only prevents a high level of value for
the really important act, it loads up conduct with burdens which keep it
back; it introduces elements which must be got rid of later, often with
heavy loss of what is genuinely valuable. When there are so many ways of
offending the gods and when these turn so often upon mere observance of
routine or formula, it may require much subsequent time and energy to
make amends. The morals get an expiatory character.

=2. The Motives.=--In the motives to which it appeals, custom is able to
make a far better showing than earlier writers, like Herbert Spencer,
gave it credit for. It doubtless employs fear in its taboos; it
doubtless enlists the passion of resentment in its blood feuds. Even
these are modified by a social environment. For the fear of violating a
taboo is in part the fear of bringing bad luck on the whole group, and
not merely on the violator. We have, therefore, a quasi-social fear, not
a purely instinctive reaction. The same is true in perhaps a stronger
degree of the resentments. The blood revenge is in a majority of cases
not a personal but a group affair. It is undertaken at personal risk and
for others' interest--or rather for a common interest. The resentment is
thus a "_sympathetic resentment_."[42] Regarded as a mere reaction for
self-preservation this instinctive-emotional process is unmoral. As a
mere desire to produce pain it would be immoral. But so far as it
implies an attitude of reacting from a general point of view and to aid
others, it is moral. Aside from the passions of fear and resentment,
however, there is a wide range of motives enlisted. Filial and parental
affection, some degree of affection between the sexes over and above sex
passion, respect for the aged and the beings who embody ideals however
crude, loyalty to fellow clansmen,--all these are not only fostered but
actually secured by the primitive group. But the motives which imply
reflection--reverence for duty as the imperious law of a larger life,
sincere love of what is good for its own sake--cannot be brought to full
consciousness until there is a more definite conception of a moral
authority, a more definite contrast between the one great good and the
partial or temporary satisfactions. The development of these conceptions
requires a growth in individuality; it requires conflicts between
authority and liberty, and those collisions between private interests
and the public welfare which a higher civilization affords.

=3. The Content.=--When we consider the "what" of group and customary
morality we note at once that the factors which make for the idealizing
and expansion of interests are less in evidence than those which make
for a common and social interest and satisfaction. There is indeed, as
we have noted, opportunity for memory and fancy. The traditions of the
past, the myths, the cultus, the folk songs--these keep up a mental life
which is as genuinely valued as the more physical activities. But as the
mode of life in question does not evoke the more abstractly rational
activities--reasoning, selecting, choosing--in the highest degree, the
ideals lack reach and power. It needs the incentives described in the
following chapters to call out a true life of the spirit. The social
aspects of the "what," on the other hand, are well rooted in group
morality. It is unnecessary to repeat what has been dwelt upon in the
present and preceding chapters so fully. We point out now that while the
standard is social, it is unconsciously rather than consciously social.
Or perhaps better: it is a standard of society but not a standard which
each member deliberately makes his own. He takes it as a matter of
course. He is in the clan, "with the gang"; he thinks and acts
accordingly. He cannot begin to be as selfish as a modern
individualist; he simply hasn't the imagery to conceive such an
exclusive good, nor the tools with which to carry it out. But he cannot
be as broadly social either. He may not be able to sink so low as the
civilized miser, or debauchee, or criminal, but neither can he conceive
or build up the character which implies facing opposition. The moral
hero achieves full stature only when he pits himself against others,
when he recognizes evil and fights it, when he "overcomes the world."

=4. Organization of Character.=--In the organization of stable character
the morality of custom is strong on one side. The group trains its
members to act in the ways it approves and afterwards holds them by all
the agencies in its power. It forms habits and enforces them. Its
weakness is that the element of habit is so large, that of freedom so
small. It holds up the average man; it holds back the man who might
forge ahead. It is an anchor, and a drag.

LITERATURE

Much of the literature at the close of Chapters II. and III.,
particularly the works of Spencer and Gillen and Schurtz, belongs here
also. Schoolcraft, _Indian Tribes_, 1851-57; Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_,
1902. Papers on various cults of North American Indians in reports of
the _Bureau of Ethnology_, by Stevenson, 8th, 1886-87; Dorsey, 11th,
1889-90; Fewkes, 15th, 1893-94, 21st, 1899-1900; Fletcher, 22nd,
1900-01; Stevenson, 23d, 1901-02; Kidd, _Savage Childhood_, 1906; _The
Essential Kaffir_, 1904; Skeat, _Malay Magic_, 1900; N. W. Thomas,
general editor of Series, _The Native Races of the British Empire_,
1907-; Barton, _A Sketch of Semitic Origins_, 1902; Harrison,
_Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion_, 1903; Reinach, _Cultes,
Mythes et Religions_, 2 vols., 1905; Frazer, _The Golden Bough_, 3
vols., 1900; Marett, _Is Taboo Negative Magic?_ in Anthropological
Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Crawley, _The Mystic Rose_,
1902; Spencer, _Sociology_, 1876-96; Clifford, _On the Scientific Basis
of Morals_ in Lectures and Essays, 1886; Maine, _Early History of
Institutions_, 1888; _Early Law and Custom_, 1886; Post, _Die Grundlagen
des Rechts und die Grundzuege seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte_, 1884;
_Ethnologische Jurisprudenz_, 1894-95; Pollock and Maitland, _History of
English Law_, 1899; Steinmetz, _Ethnologische Studien zur ersten
Entwicklung der Strafe_, 1894.

FOOTNOTES:

[23] W. G. Sumner, _Folkways_.

[24] Sumner, _Folkways_, p. 6.

[25] _Ibid._, p. 11.

[26] Bagehot, _Physics and Politics_, p. 103.

[27] Eastman, _Indian Boyhood_, p. 31.

[28] Hobhouse, _Morals in Evolution_, Part I., p. 16. Hume pointed out
this twofold basis of approval.

[29] Seebohm, _The Tribal System of Wales_, p. 59.

[30] The account is based on Spencer and Gillen, _The Native Tribes of
Central Australia_, chs. vii.-ix.

[31] Maine's _Early Law and Custom_, p. 264.

[32] _Welsh Triads_, cited by Seebohm, op. cit., p. 72.

[33] Post, _Grundlagen des Rechts_, pp. 45 ff.

[34] Deuteronomy 21:1-9; Numbers 35:33, 34.

[35] Genesis 4:10-12; Job 16:18.

[36] On the subject of early justice Westermarck, _The Origin and
Development of Moral Ideas_, ch. vii. ff.; Hobhouse, _Morals in
Evolution_, Part I., ch. ii.; Pollock and Maitland, _History of English
Law_.

[37] Leviticus, ch. xii.

[38] "The Influence of Magic on Social Relationships" in _Sociological
Papers_, II., 1905. Cf. also Morgan, _House-life_.

[39] Genesis 19:8; Judges 19:23, 24.

[40] Psalms 146:9; Deuteronomy 24:14-22.

[41] Gellius, in Westermarck, op. cit., p. 155.

[42] Westermarck regards this as one of the fundamental elements in the
beginnings of morality.

CHAPTER V

FROM CUSTOM TO CONSCIENCE; FROM GROUP MORALITY TO PERSONAL MORALITY

Sec. 1. CONTRAST AND COLLISION

=1. What the Third Level Means.=--Complete morality is reached only when
the individual recognizes the right or chooses the good freely, devotes
himself heartily to its fulfillment, and seeks a progressive social
development in which every member of society shall share. The group
morality with its agencies of custom set up a standard, but one that was
corporate rather than personal. It approved and disapproved, that is it
had an idea of good, but this did not mean a good that was personally
valued. It enlisted its members, but it was by drill, by pleasure and
pain, and by habit, rather than by fully voluntary action. It secured
steadiness by habit and social pressure, rather than by choices built
into character. It maintained community of feeling and action, but of
the unconscious rather than the definitely social type. Finally it was
rather fitted to maintain a fixed order than to promote and safeguard
progress. Advance then must (1) substitute some rational method of
setting up standards and forming values, in place of habitual passive
acceptance; (2) secure voluntary and personal choice and interest,
instead of unconscious identification with the group welfare, or
instinctive and habitual response to group needs; (3) encourage at the
same time individual development and the demand that all shall share in
this development--the worth and happiness of the person and of _every_
person.

=2. Collisions Involved.=--Such an advance brings to consciousness two
collisions. The oppositions were there before, but they were not felt as
oppositions. So long as the man was fully with his group, or satisfied
with the custom, he would make no revolt. When the movement begins the
collisions are felt. These collisions are:

(1) The collision between the authority and interests of the group, and
the independence and private interests of the individual.

(2) The collision between order and progress, between habit and
reconstruction or reformation.

It is evident that there is a close connection between these two
collisions; in fact, the second becomes in practice a form of the first.
For we saw in the last chapter that custom is really backed and enforced
by the group, and its merely habitual parts are as strongly supported as
those parts which have a more rational basis. It would perhaps be
conceivable that a people should move on all together, working out a
higher civilization in which free thought should keep full reverence for
social values, in which political liberty should keep even pace with the
development of government, in which self-interest should be accompanied
by regard for the welfare of others, just as it may be possible for a
child to grow into full morality without a period of "storm and stress."
But this is not usual. Progress has generally cost struggle. And the
first phase of this struggle is opposition between the individual and
the group. The self-assertive instincts and impulses were present in
group life, but they were in part undeveloped because they had not
enough stimulus to call them out. A man could not develop his impulse
for possession to its full extent if there was little or nothing for him
to possess. In part they were not developed because the group held them
back, and the conditions of living and fighting favored those groups
which did keep them back. Nevertheless they were present in some
degree, always contending against the more social forces. Indeed what
makes the opposition between group and individual so strong and so
continuous is that both the social and the individual are rooted in
human nature. They constitute what Kant calls the _unsocial
sociableness_ of man. "Man cannot get on with his fellows and he cannot
do without them."

=Individualism.=--The assertion by the individual of his own opinions
and beliefs, his own independence and interests, as over against group
standards, authority, and interests, is known as individualism. It is
evident that such assertion will always mark a new level of conduct.
Action must now be personal and voluntary. It is also evident that it
may be either better or worse than the level of custom and group life.
The first effect is likely to be, in appearance at least, a change for
the worse. The old restraints are tossed aside; "creeds outworn" no
longer steady or direct; the strong or the crafty individual comes to
the fore and exploits his fellows. Every man does what is "right in his
own eyes." The age of the Sophists in Greece, of the Renaissance in
Italy, of the Enlightenment and Romantic movement in western Europe, and
of the industrial revolution in recent times illustrate different phases
of individualism. A people, as well as an individual, may "go to pieces"
in its reaction against social authority and custom. But such one-sided
individualism is almost certain to call out prophets of a new order;
"organic filaments" of new structures appear; family, industry, the
state, are organized anew and upon more voluntary basis. Those who
accept the new conditions and assume responsibility with their freedom,
who direct their choices by reason instead of passion, who "aim at
justice and kindness" as well as at happiness, become moral persons and
gain thereby new worth and dignity. While, then, the general movement is
on the whole a movement of individualism, it demands just as
necessarily, if there is to be moral progress, a _reconstructed
individual_--a person who is individual in choice, in feeling, in
responsibility, and at the same time social in what he regards as good,
in his sympathies, and in his purposes. Otherwise individualism means
progress toward the immoral.

Sec. 2. SOCIOLOGICAL AGENCIES IN THE TRANSITION

The agencies which bring about the change from customary and group
morality to conscious and personal morality are varied. Just as
character is developed in the child and young man by various means,
sometimes by success, sometimes by adversity or loss of a parent,
sometimes by slow increase in knowledge, and sometimes by a sudden
right-about-face with a strong emotional basis, so it is with peoples.
Some, like the Japanese at the present, are brought into sudden contact
with the whole set of commercial and military forces from without. Among
others, as with the Greeks, a fermentation starts within, along
intellectual, economic, political, and religious lines. Or again,
national calamities may upset all the old values, as with the Hebrews.
But we may note four typical agencies which are usually more or less
active.

=1. Economic Forces.=--The action of economic forces in breaking up the
early kinship group or joint family may be noticed in the history of
many peoples. The clan flourishes in such conditions of hunting life or
of simple agriculture as were found among Australians and Indians, or
among the Celts in Ireland and the Scottish Highlands. It cannot survive
when a more advanced state of agriculture prevails. A certain amount of
individualism will appear wherever the advantage for the individual lies
in separate industry and private ownership. If buffalo was to be hunted
it was better to pool issues, but for smaller game the skilful or
persistent huntsman or shepherd will think he can gain more by working
for himself. This is intensified when agriculture and commerce take the
place of earlier modes of life. The farmer has to work so hard and long,
his goal is so far in the future, that differences of character show
themselves much more strongly. Hunting and fishing are so exciting, and
the reward is so near, that even a man who is not very industrious will
do his part. But in agriculture only the hard and patient worker gets a
reward and he does not like to share it with the lazy, or even with the
weaker. Commerce, bargaining, likewise puts a great premium on
individual shrewdness. And for a long time commerce was conducted on a
relatively individual basis. Caravans of traders journeyed together for
mutual protection but there was not any such organization as later
obtained, and each individual could display his own cunning or ability.
Moreover commerce leads to the comparison of custom, to interchange of
ideas as well as goods. All this tends to break down the sanctity of
customs peculiar to a given group. The trader as well as the guest may
overstep the barriers set up by kin. The early Greek colonists, among
whom a great individualistic movement began, were the traders of their
day. The parts of Europe where most survives of primitive group life are
those little touched by modern commerce.

But we get a broader view of economic influences if we consider the
methods of organizing industry which have successively prevailed. In
early society, and likewise in the earlier period of modern
civilization, the family was a great economic unit. Many or most of the
industries could be advantageously carried on in the household. As in
the cases cited above (p. 60) the stronger or adventurous member would
be constantly trying to strike out for himself. This process of constant
readjustment is, however, far less thoroughgoing in its effects on mores
than the three great methods of securing a broader organization of
industry. In primitive society large enterprises had to be carried on by
the co-operation of the group. Forced labor as used by the Oriental
civilizations substituted a method by which greater works like the
pyramids or temples could be built, but it brought with it the overthrow
of much of the old group sympathies and mutual aid. In Greece and Rome
slavery did the drudgery and left the citizens free to cultivate art,
letters, and government. It gave opportunity and scope for the few. Men
of power and genius arose, and at the same time all the negative forces
of individualism asserted themselves. In modern times capitalism is the
method for organizing industry and trade. It proves more effective than
forced labor or slavery in securing combination of forces and in
exploiting natural resources. It likewise gives extraordinary
opportunities for the rise of men of organizing genius. The careers of
"captains of industry" are more fascinating than those of old-time
conquerors because they involve more complex situations, and can utilize
the discoveries and labors of more men. But modern capitalism has been
as destructive to the morality of the Middle Ages, or even of a hundred
years ago, as was forced labor or slavery to the group life and mores
which they destroyed.

=2. The Progress of Science and the Arts.=--The effect of the progress
of science and intelligence upon the mores is direct. Comparisons of the
customs of one people with those of another bring out differences, and
arouse questions as to the reasons for such diversity. And we have seen
that there is more or less in the customs for which no reason can be
given. Even if there was one originally it has been forgotten. Or again,
increasing knowledge of weather and seasons, of plants and animals, of
sickness and disease, discredits many of the taboos and ceremonials
which the cruder beliefs had regarded as essential to welfare. Certain
elements of ritual may survive under the protection of "mysteries," but
the more enlightened portion of the community keeps aloof. Instead of
the mores with their large infusion of the accidental, the habitual,
and the impulsive, increasing intelligence demands some rational rule of
life.

And science joins with the various industrial and fine arts to create a
new set of interests for the individual. Any good piece of workmanship,
any work of art however simple, is twice blest. It blesses him that
makes and him that uses or enjoys. The division of labor, begun in group
life, is carried further. Craftsmen and artists develop increasing
individuality as they construct temples or palaces, fashion statues or
pottery, or sing of gods and heroes. Their minds grow with what they do.
Side by side with the aspect of art which makes it a bond of society is
the aspect which so frequently makes the skilled workman the critic, and
the artist a law to himself. In the next place note the effect on those
who can use and enjoy the products of the arts. A new world of
satisfaction and happiness is opened which each person can enter for
himself. In cruder conditions there was not much out of which to build
up happiness. Food, labor, rest, the thrill of hunt or contest, the
passion of sex, the pride in children--these made up the interests of
primitive life. Further means of enjoyment were found chiefly in society
of the kin, or in the men's house. But as the arts advanced the
individual could have made for him a fine house and elaborate clothing.
Metal, wood, and clay minister to increasing wants. A permanent and
stately tomb makes the future more definite. The ability to hand down
wealth in durable form places a premium on its acquirement. Ambition has
more stuff to work with. A more definite, assertive self is gradually
built up. "Good" comes to have added meaning with every new want that
awakes. The individual is not satisfied any longer to take the group's
valuation. He wants to get his own good in his own way. And it will
often seem to him that he can get his own good most easily and surely
either by keeping out of the common life or by using his fellow men to
his own advantage. Men of culture have frequently shown their
selfishness in the first way; men of wealth in the second. An
aristocracy of culture, or birth, or wealth may come to regard the whole
process of civilization as properly ministering to the wants of the
select few. Nearly every people which has developed the arts and
sciences has developed also an aristocracy. In the ancient world slavery
was a part of the process. In modern times other forms of exploitation
may serve the purpose better. Individualism, released from the ties
which bound up the good of one with the good of all, tends to become
exclusive and selfish; civilization with all its opportunities for
increasing happiness and increasing life has its moral risks and
indirectly, at least, its moral evils.

These evils may appear as the gratification of sense and appetite and
thus may be opposed to the higher life of the spirit, which needs no
outer objects or luxuries. Or they may appear as rooted in selfishness,
in the desire for gratifying the exclusive self of material interests or
ambition, as over against sympathy, justice, and kindness, which mark a
broadly human and social life. In both cases serious men have sought to
overcome by some form of "self-denial" the evils that attend on
civilization, even if they are not due to it.

=3. Military Forces.=--The kinship group is a protection so long as it
has to contend only with similar groups. The headlong valor and tribal
loyalty of German or Scottish clans may even win conflicts with more
disciplined troops of Rome or England. But permanent success demands
higher organization than the old clans and tribes permitted.
Organization means authority, and a single directing, controlling
commander or king. As Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia show their strength
the clans of Israel cry, "Nay, but we will have a king over us; that we
may also be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go
out before us, and fight our battles."[43] Wars afford the opportunity
for the strong and unscrupulous leader to assert himself. Like commerce
they may tend also to spread culture and thus break down barriers of
ancient custom. The conquests of Babylon and Alexander, the Crusades and
the French Revolution, are instances of the power of military forces to
destroy old customs and give individualism new scope. In most cases, it
is true, it is only the leader or "tyrant" who gets the advantage. He
uses the whole machinery of society for his own elevation. Nevertheless
custom and group unity are broken for all. Respect for law must be built
new from the foundation.

=4. Religious Forces.=--While in general religion is a conservative
agency, it is also true that a new religion or a new departure in
religion has often exercised a powerful influence on moral development.
The very fact that religion is so intimately bound up with all the group
mores and ideals, makes a change in religion bear directly on old
standards of life. The collision between old and new is likely to be
fundamental and sharp. A conception of God may carry with it a view of
what conduct is pleasing to him. A doctrine as to the future may require
a certain mode of life. A cultus may approve or condemn certain
relations between the sexes. Conflicting religions may then force a
moral attitude in weighing their claims. The contests between Jehovah
and Baal, between Orphic cults and the public Greek religion, between
Judaism and Christianity, Christianity and Roman civilization,
Christianity and Germanic religion, Catholicism and Protestantism, have
brought out moral issues. We shall notice this factor especially in
Chapters VI. and VIII.

Sec. 3. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AGENCIES

The psychological forces which tend toward individualism have been
already stated to be the self-assertive instincts and impulses. They are
all variations of the effort of the living being first to preserve
itself and then to rise to more complicated life by entering into more
complex relations and mastering its environment. Spinoza's "_sui esse
conservare_," Schopenhauer's "will to live," Nietzsche's "will to
power," the Hebrew's passionate ideal of "life", and Tennyson's "More
life, and fuller" express in varying degree the meaning of this
elemental bent and process. Growing intelligence adds to its strength by
giving greater capacity to control. Starting with organic needs, this
developing life process may find satisfactions in the physical world in
the increasing power and mastery over nature gained by the explorer or
the hunter, the discoverer, the craftsman, or the artist. It is when it
enters the world of persons that it displays a peculiar intensity that
marks the passions of individualism _par excellence_. We note four of
these tendencies toward self-assertion.

=1. Sex.=--The sex instinct and emotion occupies a peculiar position in
this respect. On the one hand it is a powerful socializing agency. It
brings the sexes together and is thus fundamental to the family. But on
the other hand it is constantly rebelling against the limits and
conventions established by the social group for its regulation. The
statutes against illicit relations, from the codes of Hammurabi and
Moses to the latest efforts for stricter divorce, attest the collision
between the individual's inclination and the will of the group.
Repeatedly some passion of sex has broken over all social, legal, and
religious sanctions. It has thus been a favorite theme of tragedy from
the Greeks to Ibsen. It finds another fitting medium in the romance. It
has called into existence and maintains in every large city an outcast
colony of wretched creatures, and the evils which attend are not limited
in their results to those who knowingly take the risks. It has worked
repeated changes in the structure of the family authorized by society.
Its value and proper regulation were points at issue in that
wide-reaching change of mores attendant upon the Reformation, and
apparently equilibrium has not yet been reached.

=2. The Demand for Possession and Private Property.=--In the primitive
group we have seen that there might be private property in tools or
weapons, in cattle or slaves. There was little private property in land
under the maternal clan; and indeed in any case, so long as the arts
were undeveloped, private property had necessary limits. The demand for
private property is a natural attendant upon individual modes of
industry. As we have said, it was a common principle that what the group
produced was owned by the group, and what the individual made or
captured was treated as his. When individual industry came to count for
more, the individual claimed more and more as private possession.

The change from the maternal clan to the paternal family or household
was a reenforcement to the individual control of property. The father
could hand down his cattle or his house to his son. The joint family of
India is indeed a type of a paternal system. Nevertheless the tendency
is much stronger to insist on individual property where the father's
goods pass to his son than where they go to his sister's children.

The chiefs or rulers were likely to gain the right of private property
first. Among certain families of the South Slavs to-day, the head has
his individual eating utensils, the rest share. Among many people the
chiefs have cattle which they can dispose of as they will; the rest have
simply their share of the kin's goods. The old Brehon laws of Ireland
show this stage.

But however it comes about, the very meaning of property is, in the
first place, exclusion of others from some thing which I have. It is
therefore in so far necessarily opposed to group unity, opposed to any
such simple solidarity of life as we find in group morality. As the
American Indian accepts land in severalty, the old group life, the
tribal restraints and supports, the group custom and moral unity that
went with it, are gone. He must find a new basis or go to pieces.

=3. Struggles for Mastery or Liberty.=--In most cases these cannot be
separated from economic struggles. Masters and slaves were in economic
as well as personal relations, and nearly all class contests on a large
scale have had at least one economic root, whatever their other sources.
But the economic is not their only root. There have been wars for glory
or for liberty as well as for territory or booty or slaves. As the
struggle for existence has bred into the race the instinct of
self-defense with its emotion of anger, the instinct to rivalry and
mastery, and the corresponding aversion to being ruled, so the progress
of society shows trials of strength between man and man, kin and kin,
tribe and tribe. And while, as stated in the preceding chapter, the
cooperation made necessary in war or feud is a uniting force, there is
another side to the story. Contests between individuals show who is
master; contests between groups tend to bring forward leaders. And while
such masterful men may serve the group they are quite as likely to find
an interest in opposing group customs. They assert an independence of
the group, or a mastery over it, quite incompatible with the solidarity
of the kinship clan, although the patriarchal type of household under a
strong head may be quite possible. There comes to be one code for rich
and another for poor, one for Patricians and another for Plebs, one for
baron and another for peasant, one for gentry and another for the common
folk. For a time this may be accepted patiently. But when once the rich
become arrogant, the feudal lord insolent, the bitter truth is faced
that the customs have become mere conventions. They no longer hold. All
the old ties are cast off. The demand for freedom and equality rises,
and the collision between authority and liberty is on.

Or the contest may be for intellectual liberty--for free thought and
free speech. It is sometimes considered that such liberty meets its
strongest opponent in the religious or ecclesiastical organization.
There is no doubt a conservative tendency in religion. As we have
pointed out, religion is the great conservator of group values and group
standards. Its ritual is most elaborate, its taboos most sacred.
Intellectual criticism tends to undermine what is outgrown or merely
habitual here as elsewhere. Rationalism or free thought has set itself
in frequent opposition likewise to what has been claimed to be "above
reason." Nevertheless it would be absurd to attribute all the
individualism to science and all the conservatism to religion.
Scientific dogmas and "idols" are hard to displace. Schools are about as
conservative as churches. And on the other hand the struggle for
religious liberty has usually been carried on not by the irreligious but
by the religious. The prophet Amos found himself opposed by the
religious organization of his day when he urged social righteousness,
and the history of the noble army of martyrs is a record of appeal to
individual conscience, or to an immediate personal relation to God, as
over against the formal, the traditional, the organized religious
customs and doctrines of their age. The struggle for religious
toleration and religious liberty takes its place side by side with the
struggles for intellectual and political liberty in the chapters of
individualism.

=4. The Desire for Honor, or Social Esteem.=--James, in his psychology
of the self, calls the recognition which a man gets from his mates his
"social self." "We are not only gregarious animals, liking to be in
sight of our fellows, but we have an innate propensity to get ourselves
noticed, and noticed favorably by our kind. No more fiendish punishment
could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one
should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all
the members thereof."[44] From such a punishment "the cruelest bodily
tortures would be a relief; for this would make us feel that however bad
might be our plight, we had not sunk to such depth as to be unworthy of
attention at all."[45] Honor or fame is a name for one of the various
"social selves" which a man may build up. It stands for what those of a
given group may think or say of him. It has a place and a large place in
group life. Precedence, salutations, decorations in costume and bodily
ornament, praises in song for the brave, the strong, the cunning, the
powerful, with ridicule for the coward or the weakling are all at work.
But with the primitive group the difference between men of the group is
kept within bounds. When more definite organization of groups for
military or civil purposes begins, when the feudal chief gathers his
retainers and begins to rise above the rest of the community in
strength, finally when the progress of the arts gives greater means for
display, the desire for recognition has immensely greater scope. It is
increased by the instinct of emulation; it often results in envy and
jealousies. It becomes then a powerful factor in stimulating
individualism.

But while desires for honor and fame provoke individualism, they carry
with them, like desires for property and power, elements that make for
reconstruction of the social on a higher level. For honor implies some
common sentiment to which the individual can make appeal. Group members
praise or blame what accords with their feeling or desire, but they do
not act as individuals merely, praising what pleases them as
individuals. They react more or less completely from the group point of
view; they honor the man who embodies the group-ideal of courage, or
other admirable and respected qualities. And here comes the motive which
operates to force a better ideal than mere desire of praise. No group
honors the man who is definitely seeking merely its applause rather
than its approval--at least not after it has found him out. The force of
public opinion is therefore calculated to elicit a desire to be _worthy_
of honor, as well as to be honored. This means a desire to act as a true
social individual, for it is only the true member of the group,--true
clansman,--true patriot,--true martyr,--who appeals to the other members
when they judge as members, and not selfishly. When now the group whose
approval is sought is small, we have class standards, with all the
provincialism, narrowness, and prejudice that belong to them. As the
honor-seeker is merely after the opinion of his class, he is bound to be
only partly social. So long as he is with his kin, or his set, or his
"gang," or his "party," or his "union," or his "country"--regardless of
any wider appeal--he is bound to be imperfectly rational and social in
his conduct. The great possibilities of the desire for honor, and of the
desire to be worthy of honor, lie then in the constant extension of the
range. The martyr, the seeker for truth, the reformer, the neglected
artist, looks for honor from posterity; if misjudged or neglected, he
appeals to mankind. He is thus forming for himself an ideal standard.
And if he embodies this ideal standard in a personal, highest possible
judging companion, his desire to be worthy of approval takes a religious
form. He seeks "the honor that is from God." Though "the innermost of
the empirical selves of a man is a self of the _social_ sort, it yet can
find its only adequate _socius_ in an ideal world."[46]

The moral value of these three forces of individualism was finely stated
by Kant:

"The means which nature uses to bring about the development of all
the capacities she has given man is their _antagonism_ in society,
in so far as this antagonism becomes in the end a cause of social
order. Men have an inclination to _associate_ themselves, for in a
social state they feel themselves more completely men: i.e., they
are conscious of the development of their natural capacities. But
they have also a great propensity to _isolate_ themselves, for
they find in themselves at the same time this unsocial
characteristic: each wishes to direct everything solely according
to his own notion, and hence expects resistance, just as he knows
that he is inclined to resist others. It is just this resistance
which awakens all man's powers; this brings him to overcome his
propensity to indolence, and drives him through the lust for
honor, power, or wealth to win for himself a rank among his
fellowmen. Man's will is for concord, but nature knows better what
is good for the species, and she wills discord. He would like a
life of comfort and pleasure; nature wills that he be dragged out
of idleness and inactive content, and plunged into labor and
trouble in order that he may find out the means of extricating
himself from his difficulties. The natural impulses which prompt
this effort, the sources of unsociableness and of the mutual
conflict from which so many evils spring, are then spurs to a more
complete development of man's powers."[47]

We have spoken of the "forces" which tend to break down the old unity of
the group and bring about new organization. But of course these forces
are not impersonal. Sometimes they seem to act like the ocean tide,
pushing silently in, and only now and then sending a wave a little
higher than its fellows. Frequently, however, some great personality
stands out preeminent, either as critic of the old or builder of the
new. The prophets were stoned because they condemned the present; the
next generation was ready to build their sepulchers. Socrates is the
classic example of the great man who perishes in seeking to find a
rational basis to replace that of custom. Indeed, this conflict--on the
one hand, the rigid system of tradition and corporate union hallowed by
all the sanctions of religion and public opinion; upon the other, the
individual making appeal to reason, or to his conscience, or to a
"higher law"--is the tragedy of history.

Sec. 4. POSITIVE RECONSTRUCTION

It must not be supposed that the moral process stops at the points
indicated under the several divisions of this last section. As already
stated, if the people really works out a higher type of conscious and
personal morality, it means not only a more powerful individual, but a
reconstructed individual and a reconstructed society. It means not only
the disintegration of the old kinship or family group, which is an
economic, political, and religious unity as well. It means the
construction of a new basis for the family; new moral principles for
business; a distinct political state with new means for government, new
conceptions of authority and liberty; finally, a national or universal
religion. And the individual must on this higher level choose all these
voluntarily. More than this: as he chooses in the presence of the new
conflicting ends presented by individualism, he sets up or adopts a
standard for himself. He thinks definitely of what is "good" and
"right." As he recognizes its claim, he is responsible as well as free.
As he identifies himself heartily with it, he becomes sincerely and
genuinely moral. Reverence, duty, and love for what is good become the
quickening emotions. Thoughtfulness, self-control, aspiration toward an
ideal, courageous venturing in its achievement, kindness and justice,
become the dominant temper, or at least are recognized as the temper
that should be dominant. The conception of moral character and moral
personality is brought to consciousness. The development of the Hebrews
and Greeks will show how these positive values emerge.

LITERATURE

_Kant's Principles of Politics_, tr. by Hastie, 1891, especially the
essay _The Idea of a Universal Cosmopolitical History_; Hegel,
_Philosophy of History_, tr. by Sibree, 1881; Darwin, _The Descent of
Man_, 1871, 1882-87; Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_, 1888;
Seth, _The Evolution of Morality_, Mind, XIV., 1889, pp. 27-49;
Williams, _A Review of Systems of Ethics founded on the Theory of
Evolution_, 1893; Harris, _Moral Evolution_, 1895; Tufts, _On Moral
Evolution_, in S

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