Abundant instances of this sentiment of social affection could be quoted from the mammalia. It is by no means confined to members of a species, but may extend to very unlike species. No one needs to be told of the warm affection so often shown by the dog for its master, a love which will lead it to dare wounds or death in his service, or in the protection of his property. This altruistic sentiment strongly exists in the monkeys. Examples of the ardent feeling of these animals for their fellows have been given in a preceding chapter, and many more might be quoted, if necessary. It must suffice here to quote a single further instance cited by Romanes, and relating to a small monkey which was taken ill on shipboard, where there were several others of different species.
"It had always been a favorite with the other monkeys, who seemed to regard it as the last born and the pet of the family; and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another. It was very tractable and gentle in its temper, and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it. From the moment it was taken ill, their attention and care of it redoubled; and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. A struggle often ensued between them for priority in these offices of affection; and some would steal one thing and some another, which they would carry to it untasted, however tempting it might be to their own palates. They would take it up gently in their forepaws, hug it to their breasts, and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child."
With the human race the love sentiment does not usually display the singleness of energy shown among the lower animals. It is affected and often checked in its development by an intricate series of influences, which act on savage and civilized man alike. The family formed the primitive human group, its linking elements being the sexual attraction between man and woman and the fervent affection between parents and children. These feelings, while strong in certain directions, were crude and uneven. In savage tribes to-day the wife is an ill-treated drudge. Yet the husband will protect his wife and children from danger at risk of his life. The maternal instinct seems still stronger. The mother often acts as if the child were an actual part of herself. Danger or injury to it produces in her a mental agony, the close equivalent of its fear or pain, and she will endure suffering and peril in its protection with an impulse beyond the control of reason.
This sentiment, in a weakened form, extended from the family to the group; and the success of man in gaining the mastery over the other animals was doubtless greatly aided by the strong bond of social affinity existing between the members of a group. They worked together in a fuller sense than any other animals except the ants and bees.
From the original social group another and closer community seems gradually to have developed, the group of kindred. This was a natural outgrowth from the family, whose bond of affection was extended to include more distant relatives, until there emerged the organized group of kindred known as the "Village Community," which seems everywhere to have preceded civilization. This bond of kindred gradually extended, combining men into larger and larger groups, until the clan, the horde, and the tribe emerged, their members all linked together by the reality or the fiction of common descent. Such was the form of organization that existed in Greece and Rome in their early days, and made its influence felt far down into their later history. It existed indeed, at some period, over almost all the earth.
As the group widened, the bond of sympathy weakened. Love in the family found its counterpart in fellow-feeling in the tribe, in patriotism in the nation. It is undoubtedly true that desire for personal protection is one of the strong influences which bind men into societies. The hope of advantage in other directions and the pleasure of social intercourse are other combining forces. Yet below these rational elements has always abided the emotional element, the sympathetic attraction which binds kindred closely together, and which exerts some degree of influence on all members of the same group or nation.
The development of the ethical principle in mankind is largely due to the extension of the sentiment of social sympathy. For ages it was confined to the immediate group. Such was the case even in civilized Greece, intellectually one of the most advanced of peoples, but morally very contracted. The Greeks were long divided into minor groups, with the warmest sentiment of patriotism uniting the members of each community, while their common origin bound all the Hellenes together. But this feeling failed to cross the borders of the narrow peninsula of Greece, all peoples beyond these borders being viewed as barbarians, in whose pleasures and pains no interest was felt, and whose misfortunes produced no stir of sympathy in the Grecian heart. Even Aristotle taught that Greeks owed no more duties to barbarians than to wild beasts, and a philosopher who declared that his affection extended to the whole people of Greece was thought to be remarkably sympathetic.
The Romans were equally narrow in their early days, and not until the empire extended to the outer borders of the civilized world did this narrowness give way to a more expanded sympathy. The brotherhood of mankind, indeed, was taught by Socrates, Cicero, and others of the ancient moral philosophers, yet these seeds of philosophy fell in very sterile soil and took root with discouraging slowness. Philosophers elsewhere taught the dogma of universal love,—Confucius among the Chinese, Gautama among the Hindoos,—but their teachings have borne little fruit in the great, stagnant peoples of Asia, in whom the narrowness of semicivilization prevails.
The teachings of Christ, whose code of morality was the intuitive one, "Love one another," have been far more effective. Christianity became the religion of Europe, since then the most progressive part of the world, and with every step of progress in civilization the Christ doctrine of charity and sympathy reached a higher and broader stage. To-day it has attained, in Europe and America, a wide degree of development, and the vast extension of human intercourse through the mediums of travel, commerce, and telegraphic communication is, for the first time in human history, beginning to lift the doctrine of the universal brotherhood of man from the plane of a philosophic dogma toward that of an established fact. The range of sympathy is narrow yet, selfishness predominates, the truly altruistic are the few, the feebly sympathetic and coldly selfish are the many; yet it must be admitted that there has been a great development of altruism during the nineteenth century, and the promise of the coming of Christ's kingdom on the earth is greater to-day than at any former period in the history of mankind.
The love principle is the innate moral element of the universe. Its rudimentary form is the attraction between atoms, which expands into the attraction between spheres. We see a development of it in the magnetic and electric attractions, and a higher one in the sexual attraction that exists in the lowest organisms. Its expansion continues until it reaches the high level of human love and social sympathy. But throughout its whole development consciousness takes no part in its origin. While conscious of its existence, we do not consciously call it into existence. Men and women "fall in love"; they do not reason themselves into affection. Those we love become in a measure a part of ourselves, we feel their sufferings and endure their afflictions, not through the nerves of the body, but through the finer ones of the mind,—a plexus of spiritual nerves which stretch unseen from soul to soul. So strong is this sympathetic affinity that Comte was induced to look upon mankind as an organism, and it gave rise in the mind of Leslie Stephens to the conception of a common "social tissue."