History as past ethics; an introduction to the history of morals

by P. V. N. Myers

In nothing perhaps does primitive society differ more widely from modern than in the fact that the competition or struggle for existence is between communities and not between individuals. Within the kinship group life is almost wholly communistic. There is practically no competition between the individuals of the community such as characterizes societies advanced in civilization. The only real competition is that between communities. And here the struggle for existence or for superiority is generally habitual and ruthless, often being carried to the point of the complete destruction of one of the competing communities.

These conditions of existence have vast significance for morality. Just as the individual competition in cultured societies molds an essential part of their moral code, so does the group competition of races still in the clan or tribal stage of civilization determine what qualities of character shall be developed among them. As we shall see in a moment, it makes them strong in the clan virtues.

II. Essential Facts of Kinship or Intratribal Morality

The life of primitive peoples largely unmoral

As students of morals our chief interest in primeval man as he emerges from the obscurity of prehistoric times is not concerning the degree of skill he has developed in making his weapons or in constructing for himself a shelter, nor concerning what advance he has made in the arts of weaving and pottery, nor yet concerning what kind of social arrangements he has worked out; our main interest in this primeval man as he appears on the threshold of the historic day is not concerning these or any like things, but rather respecting what kind of a conscience has grown up within him during those long prehistoric ages of struggle, privation, watch and ward.

The first fact that compels our notice here is that the life of the savage is largely unmoral.[31] His activities to secure food, shelter, and clothing arise from purely animal impulses, such as hunger and cold. Into all of these activities, however, there enters as time passes an ethical element.[32] The economic life, in a word, comes more and more under the dominance of moral feelings and motives.[33] Conscience becomes more and more involved in all these matters. This gradual moralization of these at first nonmoral activities of primitive man constitutes one of the most important phases of the moral evolution of the race.

The “goodness” of uncivilized races largely a negative goodness

A second fact in the moral life of savages that claims our attention is that much that is counted unto them for “goodness” is a purely negative goodness. Failure in discrimination here often results in a wrong estimate of their morality as compared with that of advanced communities. Thus in portraying the manners and customs of primitive peoples, some writers, like Tacitus in his account of the early German folk, laud their morals as superior to those of civilized men. This opinion is based rather on the absence among such peoples of the usual vices and crimes of civilized societies than on the practice by them of the higher positive virtues.[34] But the absence of the vices which characterize civilization is to be explained, of course, by the simpler organization of society and the fewer temptations to wrongdoing. Thus the single circumstance that the institution of individual property has not yet come into existence, or at least has not as yet received any great extension, accounts for the comparative absence of crimes against property, which constitute probably the greater number of criminal acts in civilized society.

The true starting point of the historic ethical development

But notwithstanding that so much of the life of primitive man is lived on the nonmoral plane, and that much which is reckoned unto him for goodness is merely negative goodness, still in certain of his activities growing out of his clan relationships we discover the beginnings of all human morality. For as we have already said, the true starting point of the moral evolution of mankind is to be sought in the altruistic sentiments nourished in the atmosphere of the kinship group. There is scarcely an ethical sentiment which does not appear here at least in a rudimentary form. Out of the most sacred and intimate relationships of the group we find springing up the maternal virtues of patience, tenderness, and self-denial,[35] and the filial virtues of love, obedience, and reverence; out of the fellowship of the men in hunting and in war[36] we see developing the manly virtues of courage, fortitude, self-control, and, above all, self-devotion to the common good; out of the hearth worship of ancestors[37] we observe springing up many of those religious-ethical feelings and sentiments which form one of the chief moral forces in civilization; out of the sacrificial meal shared with the gods and the spirits of the dead through offerings of portions of the food and drink, we see forming customs of incalculable moral value in the ethical training of the race.[38] A great part of the history of morals consists in the record of how these earliest forms of social virtues, first nourished by the customs, habits, and practices of the kinship group, have been gradually refined and developed into wider and richer forms of ethical sentiment and feeling.