It is an observed fact that a man attaches himself to another rather in proportion to the services he renders than to those he receives from him. There is, in general, a stronger current of benevolence passing from the benefactor to his protégé than vice versâ. Common opinion considers this illogical: from the point of view of reason, it is so—not from that of feeling; and the preceding analysis even shows that it must be so, because the benefactor has put more of himself into the recipient of his bounty than the latter can do to him. Thus, in many persons, gratitude needs to be supported by reflection.
If we are ill-disposed towards any one, the best and surest remedy against this incipient aversion is to render him some service. Conversely, the person who refuses all our benefits and obstinately avoids them becomes an object of indifference, or even hatred.
“During the proscriptions of Marius and Sulla,” says Friedmann, “there were many sons who, out of fear, gave up their father, but it was never known that a father had denounced his son; a fact that somewhat startled the Roman moralists, who were unable to explain it.” The explanation is involved in the constitution of the Roman family, by which the father could confer many benefits on the son, whereas the son was entirely dependent on the father, and could do nothing for him.
Many other incidents might be cited to justify the accuracy of the preceding analysis. Such is the mechanism by means of which our emotional self succeeds in externalising, in alienating itself; but this could not be done were there not at the origin and starting-point a primary tendency, already studied under the name of tender emotion. It is clear, also, that beneficence is a generic term designating forms which vary according to circumstances: charity, generosity, devotion, etc.
The extension and heightening of the feeling of beneficence have taken place slowly, and owing to the work of certain men who deserve to be called discoverers in morals. This expression may sound strangely in some ears, because they are imbued with the theory of an innate and universal knowledge of good and evil imparted to all men at all times. If we admit, on the contrary,—as observation teaches us to do,—not a ready-made, but a growing morality, it must necessarily be the discovery of an individual or group of individuals. Every one admits the existence of inventors in geometry, in music, in the plastic and mechanical arts; but there have also been men in moral disposition far superior to their contemporaries, who have initiated or promoted reform in this department. Let us note (for this point is of the highest importance) that the theoretic conception of a higher moral ideal, of a step in advance, is not sufficient; it needs a powerful emotion leading to action, and, by contagion, communicating its own impulse to others. The onward march is proportioned to what is felt, not to what is understood.
Were the human race, in the beginning, cannibals? Some affirm this, others deny it. What is certain is that the custom of eating one’s fellow-men has existed in many places, and still exists in some. It has been explained by scarcity of food, by superstitious beliefs, by the intoxication of triumph in annihilating a vanquished enemy, by the idea of assimilating his strength and courage, and by a variety of other reasons; but it has not been sufficiently remarked that its extinction has not always been due to the intervention of superior races. It has sometimes taken place on the spot. In the Tahiti Islands it had disappeared shortly before the arrival of Bougainville; among the Redskins, and even among the Fijians, parties had been formed in order to suppress not only cannibalism, but the tortures inflicted on prisoners of war.[[180]] The promoters of this abolition, whether individuals or groups, were certainly inventors. The universality of human sacrifices is well known; they are found still existing during the historic period, from China to Judæa, from Greece to Gaul, from Carthage to Rome. How did they disappear? On this point we have nothing but ignorance or legends, but they could not have disappeared without the agency of man. Du Chaillu cites a case in which reform is, so to speak, caught in the act—that of an African chief who was the first to give orders that no slave should be killed at his tomb.[[181]] Among the Aztecs, with their bloodthirsty religion, a sect, formed before the arrival of the Spaniards, had placed itself under the protection of a deity who abhorred bloodshed. All the great ancient legislators, whether historical or legendary—Manes, Confucius, Moses, Buddha,—we might say all founders of religions, have been discoverers in morals; whether the discovery originated with themselves alone or with a collectivity as whose summary and embodiment they may be regarded, matters little.
It would be easy to continue this historical demonstration, but the above is sufficient to justify the term discoverers. From causes of which we are ignorant, but analogous to those which produce great poets or painters, there arise men of indisputable moral superiority who feel what others do not feel, just as a great poet does compared with ordinary men. And for one who has succeeded, how many have failed for want of a favourable environment! A St. Vincent de Paul among the Kanakas would be as impossible as a Mozart among the Fuegians.
In primitive societies there has been a long struggle between the strongest egoistic tendencies, with their dissolvent action, and the weaker and intermittent altruistic tendencies, which have progressed through the agency of some more enlightened individuals, and also with the help of force, of which we still have to speak.
II. Let us now examine the development of the moral sentiment under its negative and restrictive aspect—i.e., as the sense of justice. Here the intellectual element evidently preponderates, and its evolution involves the other.
“Justice,” says Littré, “has the same foundation as science.” One rests on the principle of identity which governs the region of speculation, the other rests on the principle of equivalence and rules the sphere of action. Justice, in its origin, is a compensation for damages. Its evolution starts from an instinctive semi-conscious manifestation, rising by progressive steps to a universalist conception. Let us mark the principal stages.