"The lowest races have no institution of marriage. True love is almost unknown among them, and marriage in its lowest phases is by no means a matter of affection and companionship.... In North America, the Tinné 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. Müller 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. Müller 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 gods. 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 assured 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 assimilation of immense races of savages,—the leavening of the whole of Europe. I believe that modern civilization has caught up to and surpassed 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 coöperation—truthfulness in word and honesty in act, and the gradual widening of concepts of justice from individual and class 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 classes 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 fashion. What can be more painfully affecting than the practice implied by Socrates, when he is comparing himself to a midwife (Theæt. 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 prostitutes, 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.