Naturally conflicts arise between right and morals, and such struggles lead to further development and progress.
The late appearance of ideas of morality proves that ethical considerations were originally foreign to the god-conceptions. The spirits, fetiches, and world-creators of different beliefs are at first neutral so far as morals are concerned; myths and legends are invented partly from creation theories, partly from historic data, and partly through efforts of the imagination. In primitive beliefs there is no trace of an attempt to conceive of deities as being good in the highest—or even in a lower—sense; and it would not be in accordance with scientific ethnology to appraise, or to wish to pass judgment on, religions according to the point of view of ethics. Not until the importance of morality in life is realised, and the profound value of a life of moral purity recognised, do men seek in their religious beliefs for higher beings of ethical significance, for morally perfect personalities among the gods.
Underwood & Underwood
THE EMBLEM OF A TRIBE: ALASKAN INDIAN TOTEM
This mysterious “totem” distinguishes a family or tribe of the old Hydah Indians and is erected at Wrangel in Alaska.
Different elements of civilisation vary greatly in their development in different civilised districts; one race may have a greater tendency toward intellectual, another toward material culture. No race has approached the Hindoos in philosophic speculation, yet they are as children in their knowledge of natural science. One people may develop commerce to the highest extent, another poetry and music, a third the freedom of the individual. The language of the American Indians is in many respects richer and more elegant than English. Therefore nothing is farther from the truth than to say that, in case one institution of civilised life is found to exist in a hunting people, another in an agricultural race, or the one in an otherwise higher, and the other in an otherwise lower nation or tribe, the institution in question must have reached a state of perfection corresponding with the general development of the people possessing it. According to this, the monogamic uncivilised races were further advanced than the polygamous Aryans of India and the Mohammedans; and the Polynesians, with their skill in the industrial arts and their dramatic dances, perhaps in a higher state of civilisation than Europeans!
Development fulfils itself in communities of men. Except in a human aggregate it cannot come to pass; for the germs of development which are brought forth by the potentiated activity of the many may exist only in a society of individuals.
It has therefore been a significant fact that from the very beginning men have joined together in social aggregates, partly on account of an instinctive impulse, partly because of the necessity for self-defence. Thus it came about that primitive men lived together in wandering, predatory hordes, or packs. The individuals were bound to one another very closely; there was no private life; and the sex-relationships were promiscuous. Men not only dwelt together in groups, but the groups themselves assimilated with one another, inasmuch as marriages were reciprocally entered into by them. So far as we are able to determine, one of the earliest of social institutions was that of group-marriage. Individuals did not first unite in pairs, and then join together in groups—such would soon have fallen asunder; on the contrary, group-marriage itself created the bond that held the community together; the most violent instinct of mankind not only united the few but the many, indeed, complete social aggregates.