This gradual elevation of moral standards, or growth in the recognition of the sacredness of life and the obligation to other individuals, can be traced historically as a long and confused process. There was a time, in the remote past, when no law was recognized except that of the strong arm. The man who wanted anything, took it, if he was strong enough, and others submitted to his superior force. Then follows an age when the family is the supreme social unit. Each member of the family group feels the pain or pleasure of all the others as something like his own, but all outside this circle are as the beasts. This is the condition among the Veddahs of Ceylon, studied so interestingly by Haeckel. Living in isolated family groups, scattered through the tropical wilderness: one man, one woman and their children forming the social unit: they as nearly represent primitive life as any other body of people now on the earth.
Then follows a long roll of ages when the tribe is the highest social unit. Each member of the tribe is conscious of the sacredness of life of all the other members and of some obligation toward them; but men of other tribes may be slain as freely as the beasts. Then comes a period when appreciation of the sacredness of life is extended over all those of the same race, tested generally by their speaking somewhat the same language. That was the condition in classic antiquity: it was "Jew and Gentile," "Greek and barbarian"—the very word "barbarous" coming from the unintelligible sounds, to the Greeks, of those who spoke other than the Hellenic tongue. Even Plato, with all his far-sighted humanism, says, in the Republic, that in the ideal state, "Greeks should deal with barbarians as Greeks now deal with one another." If one remembers what occurred in the Peloponnesian war—how Greek men voted to kill all the men of military age in a conquered Greek city and sell all the women and children into slavery—one will see that Plato's dream of humanity was not so very wide.
From that time on, there has been further extension of the appreciation of the sacredness of life and of the consciousness of moral obligation toward other human beings. We are far from the end of the path. Our sympathies are still limited by accidents of time and place, race and color; but we have gone far enough to see what the end would be, were we to reach it: a sympathy so wide, an appreciation of the sacredness of life so universal, that each of us would feel the joy or sorrow of every other human being, alive to-day or to be alive to-morrow, as something like his own. Moreover, in all civilized society, we have gone far enough to renounce the right to private vengeance and adjustment of quarrels: we live under established courts of law, with organized civil force to carry out their judgments. This gives relative peace and security, and a general, if imperfect, application of the moral law.
V
THE PRESENT STATE OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
The astounding anomaly of modern civilization is the way we have lagged behind in applying to groups and nations of men the moral laws, universally recognized as binding over individuals. For instance, about twenty years ago we coined and used widely the phrase, "soulless corporation," to designate our great combinations of capital in industry and commerce. Why was that phrase used so widely? The answer is illuminating: we took it for granted that an individual employer would treat his artisans to some extent as human beings and not merely as cog-wheels in a productive machine; but we also took it for granted that an impersonal corporation, where no individual was dominantly responsible, would regard its artisans merely as pieces of machinery, with no respect whatever for their humanity.
The supreme paradox, however, is in the relation of nations: it is there that we have most amazingly lagged behind in applying the moral laws universally accepted in the relations of individuals. For instance, long before this War began we heard it proclaimed, even proudly, by certain philosophers, in more than one nation, that the state is the supreme spiritual unit, that there is no law higher than its interest, that the state makes the law and may break it at will. When a great statesman in Germany, doubtless in a moment of intense anger and irritation, used the phrase that has gone all across the earth, "scrap of paper," for a sacred treaty between nations, he was only making a pungent practical application of the philosophy in question.
Do we regard self-preservation as the highest law for the individual? Distinctly not. Here is a crowded theater and a sudden cry of fire, with the ensuing panic: if strong men trample down and kill women and children, in the effort to save their own lives, we regard them with loathing and contempt. On the other hand, it is just this plea of national self-preservation that the German regime has used in cynical justification of its every atrocity—the initial violation of Belgium, the making war ruthlessly on civil populations, the atrocious spying and plotting in the bosom of neutral and friendly nations, the destruction of monuments of art and devastation of the cities, fields, orchards and forests of northern France, and finally the submarine warfare on the world's shipping. No civilized human being would, for a moment, think of using the plea of self-preservation to justify comparable conduct in individual life.
Consider international diplomacy: much of it has been merely shrewd and skillful lying. If you will review the list of the most famous diplomats of Europe for the last thousand years, you will find that a considerable portion of them won their fame and reputation by being a little more shrewd and successful liars than the diplomats with whom they had to deal in other lands. In other words, their conduct has been exactly on the plane that Ulysses represented in personal life, afar back in classic antiquity.
Take an illustration a little nearer home. If you were doing business on one side of the street and had two competitors in the same line, across the way, and a cyclone swept the town, destroying their establishments and sparing yours: you, as an individual, would be ashamed to take advantage of the disaster under which your rivals were suffering, using the time while they were out of business to lure their customers away from them and bind those customers to you so securely that your competitors would never be able to get them back. You would scorn such conduct as an individual; but when it comes to a relation of the nations: during the first two years of the War, from the highest government circles down to the smallest country newspaper, we were urged to take advantage of the disaster under which our European rivals were suffering, win their international customers away from them and bind those customers to us so securely that Europe would never be able to get them back. Not that we were urged to industry and enterprise—that is always right—but actually to seek to profit by the sufferings of others—conduct we would regard as utterly unworthy in personal life.