A Review of the Systems of Ethics Founded on the Theory of Evolution Part 30

[169] As above, pp. 255, 256. The italics are mine.

[170] Ibid. p. 443.

[171] Ibid. p. 441. The italics are mine.

[172] Ibid. p. 236. The italics are mine.

[173] Ibid. p. 237.

[174] Ibid. p. 239. The italics are here also mine.

[175] "The Pathology of Mind," 102 _et seq._

[176] In this general and limited sense, but only in this general and limited sense, does Spencer's a.s.sertion that more moral conduct shows a greater adjustment of means to ends, correspond to the facts.

[177] See "The Science of Ethics," p. 62.

[178] "The Science of Ethics," pp. 375, 376.

[179] "The Science of Ethics," p. 300.

[180] "The Science of Ethics," p. 301.

[181] See Part I, this book, p. 117.

[182] "The Science of Ethics," p. 310.

CHAPTER VII

THE MORAL PROGRESS OF THE RACE AS SHOWN BY HISTORY

The necessity of the constant a.s.similation of savage tribes, of the peopling of thinly inhabited areas, renders social evolution as a whole exceedingly slow. Nor can there be, even in isolated peoples, any sudden leap from savagery to civilization; in other words the term "civilization" is not of absolute but of comparative, progressive, import. Nor can we suppose the social evolution to have been only outward; we cannot suppose that our cave-dwelling, man-eating, rude ancestors, if they could have been suddenly transported, in infancy even, into the midst of modern civilization by means of a Carlylean wis.h.i.+ng-cap, or by some method of projection in time similar to that by which men promise to "knock each other into the middle of next week,"

would have been able to equal modern men in mental and moral attainment.

We may gain some idea of the gentle manners and moral character of our early progenitors from the customs of savage peoples of the present day; although a very large number of these stand upon a higher plane than did the ancient savages known to geology. I insert a few extracts from Lubbock:--

"Mr. Galbraith, who lived for many years, as Indian agent, among the Sioux (North America), thus describes them: 'They are bigoted, barbarous, and exceedingly superst.i.tious. They regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder, are among them regarded as the means of distinction; and the young Indian from childhood is taught to regard killing as the highest of virtues. In their dances and at their feasts, the warriors recite their deeds of theft, pillage, and slaughter, as precious things; and the highest, indeed the only, ambition of a young brave is to secure "the feather," which is but a record of his having murdered or partic.i.p.ated in the murder, of some human being--whether man, woman, or child, it is immaterial; and after he has secured his first "feather," appet.i.te is whetted to increase the number in his cap, as an Indian brave is estimated by the number of his feathers.'"[183]

"'Conscience,' says Burton, 'does not exist in Eastern Africa, and "repentance" expresses regret for missed opportunities of mortal crime.

Robbery const.i.tutes an honorable man; murder--the more atrocious the midnight crime the better--makes the hero.'"[184]

"In Tahiti, the missionaries considered that 'not less than two-thirds of the children were murdered by their parents.' Mr. Ellis adds, 'I do not recollect having met with a female in the islands, during the whole period of my residence there, who had been a mother while idolatry prevailed, who had not imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring.'

Mr. Nott also makes the same a.s.sertion. Girls were more often killed than boys, because they were of less use in fis.h.i.+ng and in war."[185]

"Williams tells us that 'offences, in Fijian estimation, are light or grave according to the rank of the offender. Murder by a chief is less heinous than a petty larceny committed by a man of low rank.'"[186]

"Among the Khonds of Central India, human sacrifices prevailed until quite lately. 'A stout stake is driven into the soil and to it the victim is fastened, seated, and anointed with ghee, oil, and turmeric, decorated with flowers, and _wors.h.i.+pped_ during the day by the a.s.sembly.

At nightfall the licentious revelry is resumed, and on the third morning the victim gets some milk to drink, when the presiding priest implores the G.o.ddess to shower her blessings on the people. After the mock ceremony, nevertheless, the victim is taken to the grove where the sacrifice is to be carried out; and to prevent resistance, the bones of the arms and legs are broken, or the victim drugged with opium or datura, when the janni wounds his victim with the axe. This act is followed up by the crowd. A number now press forward to obtain a piece of his flesh, and in a moment he is stripped to the bones.'

"An almost identical custom prevails among the Marimos, a tribe of South Africa much resembling the Bechuanas.... Schoolcraft mentions a...

sacrifice to the 'Spirit of Corn' among the p.a.w.nees. The victim was first tortured by being suspended over a fire. 'At a given signal, a hundred arrows were let fly, and her whole body was pierced. These were immediately withdrawn, and her flesh cut from her bones in small pieces which were put into baskets and carried into the cornfield, where the grain was being planted, and the blood squeezed out on each hill.'"[187]

"Human sacrifices occurred in Guinea, and Burton saw 'at Benin City a young woman lashed to a scaffolding upon the summit of a tall blasted tree, and being devoured by the turkey-buzzards. The people declared it to be a "fetich" or charm for bringing rain.'...

"Captain Cook describes human sacrifices as prevalent among the islanders of the Pacific, and especially in the Sandwich group.... War captives were frequently sacrificed in Brazil."[188]

"The lowest races have no inst.i.tution of marriage. True love is almost unknown among them, and marriage in its lowest phases is by no means a matter of affection and companions.h.i.+p.... In North America, the Tinne Indians had no word for 'dear' and 'beloved'; and the Algonquin language is stated to have contained no verb meaning 'to love,' so that when the Bible was translated by the missionaries into that language it was necessary to invent a word for the purpose."[189]

"The position of women in Australia seems, indeed, to be wretched in the extreme. They are treated with the utmost brutality, beaten and speared in the limbs on the most trivial provocation. 'Few women,' says Eyre, 'will be found, upon examination, to be free from frightful scars upon the head or the marks of spear-wounds upon the body. I have seen a young woman who, from the number of these marks, appeared to have been almost riddled with spear-wounds.'"[190]

"Collins thus describes the manner in which the natives about Sydney used to procure wives: 'The poor wretch is stolen upon in the absence of her protectors. Being first stupefied with blows, inflicted with clubs or wooden swords, on the head, back, and shoulders, every one of which is followed by a stream of blood, she is then dragged through the woods by one arm, with a perseverance and violence that it might be supposed would displace it from its socket. This outrage is not resented by the relations of the female, who only retaliate by a similar outrage when they find an opportunity.'"[191]

"Indeed," says Lubbock, "I do not remember a single instance in which a savage is recorded as having shown any symptoms of remorse; and almost the only case I can call to mind, in which a man belonging to one of the lower races has accounted for an act by saying explicitly that it was right, was when Mr. Hunt asked a young Fijian why he had killed his mother."[192]

We have direct evidence, in many present or recent customs, of so-called civilized or half-civilized nations, that the barbarous customs described in "The Origin of Civilization," and in the books of many travellers, are not the original and special inventions of modern savages merely, but that similar customs prevailed among our progenitors. Lubbock notices many of these. The marriage ceremonies of many peoples are particularly suggestive of a time when violent capture was the means of obtaining a wife, and cruelty of treatment was her usual portion.[193] Human sacrifices were common among many peoples of ancient Europe; and the cancellation of responsibility for murder with fines (often nominal in the case of the murder of a man of lower rank) was a widely spread custom. "In Russia," writes Lubbock, "as in Scandinavia, human sacrifices continued down to the introduction of Christianity. In Mexico and Peru they seem to have been peculiarly numerous. Muller has suggested that this may have partly arisen from the fact that these nations were not softened by the possession of domestic animals.[194] Various estimates have been made of the number of human victims annually sacrificed in the Mexican temples. Muller thinks 2500 is a moderate estimate; and in one year it appears to have exceeded 100,000." "In Northern Europe, human sacrifices were not uncommon. The Yarl of the Orkneys is recorded to have sacrificed the son of the King of Norway to Odin in the year 893. In 993, Hakon Yarl sacrificed his own son to the G.o.ds. Donald, King of Sweden, was burnt by his people as a sacrifice to Odin, in consequence of a severe famine. At Upsala was a celebrated temple, round which an eye-witness a.s.sured Adam of Bremen that he had seen the corpses of seventy-two victims hanging up at one time."[195]

A peculiar confusion as to the definition of morality sometimes gives rise to such vagaries of theory as the defence of murder committed by savages, and other cruelties practised, on the ground that these things are not considered sins in the moral code of the peoples among which they are practised; murder is thus excused on the plea that _wrecking is also looked upon as permissible_;[196] and Wallace thinks that savages live up to their "simple moral code" as well as civilized human beings to their elaborate one, so that they are, in reality, as moral as these latter. It should not be forgotten, however, that the moral code is itself the product of the tribe and represents its moral sentiment.

Lubbock remarks that if a man's simple moral code permits him to rob and murder, the code is at least an unfortunate one for the victims.[197] On the other hand, Lubbock himself defends human sacrifice as the result of "deep and earnest religious feeling."[198] But if sympathy were strong, such sacrifices would be impossible, and the religious code would be altered just as the religious code of Christians is altered to keep up with social progress. Opinion and feeling are not two separable things, one of which may advance while the other remains behind; when feeling becomes strong enough, the opinion arises that this or that custom before practised is wrong. As long as man is cruel by nature, however, conscience will not torment him for cruelty, and it is possible for him to regard it as wholly justifiable.

But I am of the opinion that moral progress has been made not only since the time of our savage ancestors, but even also since the time of the great ancients, in spite of the obstacles to such advancement presented in the necessity of the moral a.s.similation of immense races of savages,--the leavening of the whole of Europe. I believe that modern civilization has caught up to and surpa.s.sed the ancient. The knowledge we have of ancient peoples is necessarily most imperfect; nevertheless, we may, I believe, discover considerable evidence of general moral inferiority to the present day. Any advance that has been made will be likely to be most observable in those general virtues which lie at the foundation of all social cooperation--truthfulness in word and honesty in act, and the gradual widening of concepts of justice from individual and cla.s.s privilege and race prejudice, to the inclusion of mankind as a whole. And the growth of sympathy will be most noticeable in the treatment of those cla.s.ses of beings which possess least physical means of compelling respect for their rights--animals, children, women, the poor, and ignorant, and sick, and aged.

We may begin with the children. The Lacedemonian custom of giving over the weak and defective children to destruction is familiar to us all.

Before Solon, children were often sold by Athenian parents for debt; and even during the ages of greatest culture, the exposure of children seems to have been a common Athenian practice, regarded with little or no disapproval by the general public. Mahaffy writes: "The cool way in which Plato in his Republic speaks of exposing children, shows that, as we should expect, with the increase of luxury, and the decay of the means of satisfying it, the destruction of infants came more and more into the fas.h.i.+on. What can be more painfully affecting than the practice implied by Socrates, when he is comparing himself to a midwife (Theaet.

151 B.). 'And if I abstract and expose your first-born, because I discover that the conception you have formed is a vain shadow, do not quarrel with me, _as the manner of women is, when their first children are taken from them_. For I have actually known some men ready to bite me when first I have deprived them of a darling folly.'"[199] That the exposure of children is generally mentioned only incidentally by Greek writers, is perhaps the strongest argument of all that the custom was regarded with indifference by the majority. A considerable number of the exposed children seem to have been rescued to be brought up as prost.i.tutes, but many must have perished miserably. We have reason for doubting whether the average Greek would have shown an equal sympathy to that of Mr. Stephen's modern pickpockets, in the supposed case of danger to a child on the race-course;[200]--unless, indeed, the child were an especially fine bit of animal flesh.

The same narrow sort of expediency in morals which permitted the exposure of children is exhibited, again, in the lack of regard for the aged shown by the Athenians at all periods of their history;--in Sparta the old men were treated with some considerable respect. Says Mahaffy: "The strongest case against the Periclean Greeks, and one which marks their parentage most clearly from their Homeric ancestors, is the treatment of their old men. For here it is no inferior cla.s.s, but their equals, nay even those to whom they directly owed their greatness, whom they cast aside with contempt when their days of usefulness had pa.s.sed by.... The Greek lawgivers were accordingly most explicit in enjoining upon children the nurture and support of aged parents who could otherwise expect little from the younger generation. The Attic law alone added a qualification, that the children were to be without responsibility if their parents had neglected to educate them."

Aristophanes describes the treatment of the aged in his "Wasps,"--"where he declares that the only chance of respect or even safety is to retain the power of acting as a juryman, so extorting homage from the accused and supporting himself by his pay without depending on his children.

When he comes home with his fee, they are glad to see him, in fact he is able to support a second wife and younger children, as the pa.s.sage plainly implies, whereas otherwise the father must look towards his son and his son's steward to give him his daily bread, 'uttering imprecations and mutterings lest he knead me a deadly cake,' a dark insinuation which opens to us terrible suspicions."[201]

The women of Greece were comparatively well cared for, as might be expected in a nation and country peculiarly susceptible to the influence of grace and beauty; they were consequently of a comparatively admirable type. However, we are fond, I think, of indulging in this respect, our preference for believing the romantic; so that we usually select carefully the best instances and infer that the standard of all Greece was on this plane. The reasons for this are manifold. We have the habit of imagining, from Greek art, that all Greek women were beautiful; and it is unpleasant to a.s.sociate moral inferiority with great beauty, or to imagine its being treated with unkindness or disrespect. Again, we are pleased at discovering examples of love and faithfulness even in the far-away ages, and the pleasure of the discovery exalts the few instances with which Greek literature provides us to a disproportionate importance and significance. Disappointed at not finding their perfect ideal in their own age and nation, men have pleased themselves with the imagination of perfection in an object belonging to another age, with regard to which no sordid reality of every-day relation and common, vulgar needs could intervene to check enthusiasm. Furthermore, it is safer to admire those distant from us in time and place, since we are secure from any demand of faithfulness and self-sacrifice from their side. Poets and artists have a.s.sisted us in this license of agreeable fancy. So we dwell, with special emphasis, on the beauty of Penelope's character, which is not at all exceptionally faithful as measured by modern standards; we warm over the story of Antigone while we pa.s.s by, without special enthusiasm, a thousand instances as admirable in our own day and within our own observation; and we read, with delight, the tale of the Greek who encouraged his ignorant child-wife by gentle treatment until she overcame her timidity, became "tame and docile," and was persuaded to discard cosmetics and high-heeled shoes and devote herself to her household duties; though the most of us would regard the forced marriage of such a child, if it occurred in our own day, as no more than child-barter, and the conduct of the husband (doubtless not worsened by his representation of it) as but a moderate exhibition of common decency. Mahaffy says of the Greeks of the Homeric age: "There is ample evidence that the lower-cla.s.s women, the slaves and even the free servants, were subjected to the hardest and most distressing sorts of work, the carrying of water, and the grinding of hand-mills; in fact we see them standing to men-servants nearly in the same relation that the North-American squaw stands to her husband--over-taxed, slave-driven, worn out even with field-work, while he is idling, or smoking, or sleeping."[202] The wives of Athens of all periods were little more than a higher cla.s.s of household servants, with almost no share, by education, in either the science or the art that was the delight of their nation and made its superiority. The position of the hetairai was better in some respects; but the apparently widely spread preference of the Greeks of the cultured cla.s.ses for what we term unnatural crime argues against any considerable degree of education even in their case.

Women were sometimes found in the Greek schools of philosophy, but these were evidently isolated cases. The pa.s.sage from the Theaetetus above quoted shows us the unhappy and subservient position of Athenian women in one respect; and many other pa.s.sages of Plato throw an unfavorable light upon their lot; though we have, perhaps, to remember that the central figure of the Dialogues had some personal reason for being a woman-hater. "The outcasts from society as we call them were not the immoral and the profligate, but the honorable and virtuous.

Accordingly, when we consult the literature of the day, we find women treated either with contemptuous ridicule in comedy, or with still more contemptuous silence in history."[203]

Human sacrifices were not unknown to the earlier Greeks. Of the later days, of Athenian culture, Mahaffy says: "Plutarch tells us that Themistocles was forced by the acclamations of the army to sacrifice three Persian prisoners of distinction brought in just before the battle of Salamis, though he was greatly affected at the terrible nature of the sacrifice, so that it appears to have been then unusual. But Aristophanes, long after, makes allusions to what he calls [Greek: pharmakoi], as still remembered at Athens, if not still in use (Ran.

732), and which the scholiasts explain, chiefly from Hipponax, as a sort of human scapegoat, chosen for ugliness or deformity (a very Greek standpoint) and sacrificed for the expiation of the state in days of famine and pestilence, or of other public disaster. I think that Aristophanes alludes to the custom as bygone, though the scholiasts do not think so; but its very familiarity to his audience shows a disregard of human life strange enough in so advanced a legal system as that of democratic Athens."[204]

Mahaffy calls attention to the exceeding cruelty practised by the Greeks in the Peloponnesian war, and adds: "It was not merely among Corcyreans, or among Thracian mercenaries, but among the leaders of Greece that we find this disgusting feature. The Spartans put to death in cold blood 225 prisoners whom they took in Plataea after a long and heroic defence.... But this is a mere trifle when we hear from Plutarch that Lysander, after the battle of aegospotami, put to death 3000 prisoners (_Alcib._ c. 37 cp. the details in his _Lysander_, c. 13),... Athenians, men of education and of culture.... The unfortunate Athenian general, according to Theophrastus (Plut. _Lys._ 13), submits with dignified resignation to a fate which he confesses would have attended the Lacedemonians had they been vanquished.

"For the Athenians, with their boasted clemency and culture, were very nearly as cruel as their enemies. In the celebrated affair of the Mitylenaeans, which Thucydides tells at length in his third book, the first decree of the Athenians was to ma.s.sacre the whole male population of the captured city. They repented of this decree, because Diodotus proved to them, not that it was inhuman, but that it was inexpedient."

Mahaffy argues, in opposition to Grote, that there was no real sentiment of sympathy in the repentance of the Athenians in this affair, for "how could the _imagined details_ of the ma.s.sacre of 6000 men in _Lesbos_ have been a motive, when the Athenians did, at the same time, have the ringleaders executed _at Athens_, and _they were more than 1000 men_ (Thuc. III. 30)." These were "_executed together, by the hands of Athenians_, not with fire-arms but with swords and knives. A few years after, the inhabitants of Melos, many hundreds in number, were put to the sword, when conquered after a brave resistance (Thuc. V. 116), and here, I fear, merely for the purpose of making way for a colony of Athenian citizens, who went out to occupy the houses and lands of their victims."[205]

The practice of torturing witnesses in court was common in Periclean Athens. On this point, Mahaffy writes: "Our best authorities on this question are, of course, the early orators, especially Antiphon, in whose speeches on cases of homicide this feature constantly recurs. It is well known that in such cases the accused might offer his own slaves to be tortured, in order to challenge evidence against himself; and it was thought a weak point in his case if he refused to do so when challenged. It is also well known that the accusers were bound to make good any permanent injury, such as maiming, done to these slaves.

"But there were both restrictions and extensions of this practice as yet but little noticed. It was not the custom to torture slaves who gave evidence to a fact, but only if they denied any knowledge, or appeared to suppress it in the interest of their master (Antiphon, Tetral. A, [Greek: g]). On the other hand, _it was common enough to torture female slaves and also free men_....

... "Almost all the orators speak of it as an infallible means of ascertaining the truth. Demosthenes says it has never been known to fail."[206] The restrictions on certain extremities of torture in court diminish in importance when we consider that the poor slave stood, in reality, in all cases, between two alternatives of suffering, that inflicted by the court and that likely to be inflicted by his master in case his evidence displeased the latter. That he was a piece of property of some value was doubtless no more a safeguard to the Greek slave under the hands of his master than it has been in any modern slave-holding country; the Greek was doubtless at least as liable as the man of to-day to forget ultimate loss in the rage of present anger and the malevolent pleasure of revenge.