populace; and the inmates of lunatic asylums, chained naked to the wall, were exhibited for money, and tormented for the amusement of visitors. Conversely, amongst ourselves a desire to diminish human misery is accompanied by a desire to ameliorate the condition of inferior creatures. Whilst the kindlier feeling of men is seen in all varieties of philanthropic effort, in charitable societies, in associations for improving the dwellings of the labouring classes, in anxiety for popular education, in attempts to abolish capital punishment, in zeal for temperance reformation, in ragged schools, in endeavours to protect climbing boys, in inquiries concerning " labour and the poor," in emigration funds, in the milder treatment of children, and so on, it also shows itself in societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, in acts of parliament to put down the use of dogs for purpose of draught, in the condemnation of steeplechases and battues, in the late inquiry why the pursuers of a stag should not be punished as much as the carter who maltreats his horse, and lastly, in vegetarianism. Moreover, to make the evidence complete, we have the fact that men, partially adapted to the social state, retrograde on being placed in circumstances which caU forth the old propensities. The barbarizing of colonists, who live under aboriginal conditions, is universally remarked. The back settlers of America, amongst whom unavenged murders, rifle duels, and Lynch law prevail — or, better stiU, the trappers, who leading a savage life have descended to savage habits, to scalping, and occasionally even to cannibalism — sufficiently exemplify it.
But, indeed, without collecting from so wide a field, illustrations of the truth that the behaviour of men to the lower animals and their behaviour to each other, bear a constant relationship, it becomes clear that such is the fact, on observing that the same impulses govern in either case. The blind desire to inflict suffering, distinguishes not between the creatures who exhibit that suffering, but obtains, gratification indifferentiy from the agonies of beast and human being — dehghts equally in worrying a brute, and in putting a prisoner to the rack. Conversely, the ' sympathy which prevents its possessor from inflictiag pain, that he may avoid pain himself, and which tempts him to give happiness that he may have happiness reflected back upon him, is similarly undistinguishing. As already said, its function is simply to reproduce in one heing the emotions exhibited by other beings; and every one must have noticed that it extracts pleasure from the fiiskiness of a newly-unchained dog, or excites pity for an ill-used beast of burden, as readily as it generates fellow feeling with the joys and sorrows of men.
So that only by giving us some utterly different mental constitution could the process of civiUzation have been altered. Assume that the creative scheme is to be wrought out by natural means, and it is necessai-y that the primitive man should be one whose happiness is obtained at the expense of the happiness of other beings. It is necessary that the ultimate man should be one who can obtain perfect happiness without deducting from the happiness of others. After accomplishing its appointed purpose, the first of these constitutions has to be moulded into the last. And the manifold evils which have filled the world for these thousands of years — the murders, enslavings, and robberies — the tyrannies of rulers, the oppressions of class, the persecutions of sect and party, the multiform embodiments of selfishness in unjust laws, barbarous customs, dishonest deahngs, exclusive manners, and the like — are simply instances of the disastrous working of this original and once needful constitution, now that mankind have grown into conditions for which it is not fitted — are nothing but svmptoms of the suffering attendant upon the adaptation of. humanity to its new circumstances.
But why, it may be asked, has this adaptation gone on so slowly? Judging from the rapidity with which habits are formed in the individual, and seeing how those habits, or rather the latent tendencies towards them, become hereditary, it would seem that the needful modification should have been completed long ago. How, then, are we to understand the delay?
The answer is that the new conditions to which adaptation has been taking place have themselves grown up but slowly. Only when a revolution in circumstances is at once both marked and permanent, does a decisive alteration of character follow. If the demand for increase of power in some particular faculty is great and unceasing, development will go on mth proportionate speed. And, conversely, there will be an appreciable dwindling in a faculty altogether deprived of exercise. But the conditions of human life have undergone no changes sudden enough to produce these immediate results.
Thus, note in the first place, that the warfare between man and the creatures at enmity with Mm has continued up to the present time, and over a large portion of the globe is going on now. Note, further, that where the destructive propensities have almost fulfilled their purpose, and are on the eve of losing their gratification, they make to themselves an artificial sphere of exercise by game-preserving, and are so kept in - activity after they would otherwise have become dormant. But note, chiefly, that the old predatory disposition is in a certain sense self-maintained. For it generates between men and men a hostile relationship, similar to that which it generates bet^veen men and inferior animals; and by doing so provides itself a lasting source of excitement. This happens inevitably. The desires of the savage acting, as we have seen, indiscriminately, necessarily lead him to perpetual trespasses against his fellows, and, consequently, to endless antagonisms — to quarrels of individuals, to fightings of tribes, to feuds of clan with clan, to wars of nations. And thus being by their constitutions made mutual foes, as well as foes to the lower races, men keep ahve in each other the old propensities, after the original need for them has in great measure ceased.
Hitherto, then, human character has changed but slowly, because it has been subject to two conflicting sets of condi- GENEEAL CONSIDERATIONS. 415 tions. On the one hand, the discipline of the social state has been developing it into the sympathetic form; whilst on the other hand, the necessity for self-defence partly of man against brute, partly of man against man, and partly of societies against each other, has been maintaining the old unsympathetic form. And only where the influence of the first set of conditions has exceeded that of the last, and then only in proportion to the excess, has modification taken place. Amongst tribes who have kept each other's anti-social characteristics in fuU activity by constant conflict, no advance has been possible. But where warfare against man and beast has ceased to be continuous, or where it h&s become the employment of but a portion of the people, the effects of hving in the associated state have become greater than the effects of barbarizing antagonisms, and progress has resulted.
Eegarded thus, civilization no longer appears to be a regular unfolding after a specific plan; but seems rather a development of man's latent capabiHties under the action of favourable circumstances; which favourable circumstances, mark, were certain some time or other to occur. Those complex influences underlying the higher orders of natural phenomena, but more especially those underlying the organic world, work in subordination to the law of probabiHties. A plant, for instance, produces thousands of seeds. The greater part of these are destroyed by creatures that live upon them, or fall into places where they cannot germinate. Of the young plants produced by those which do germinate, many are smothered by their neighbours; others are bhghted by insects, or eaten up by animals; and in the average of cases, only one of them produces a perfect specimen of its species, which, escaping all dangers, brings to maturity seeds enough to continue the race. Thus is it also with every kind of creature. Thus is it also, as M. Quetelet has shown, with the phenomena of human hfe. And thus was it even widi the germination and growth of society. • The seeds of civilization existing in the aboriginal man, and distributed over the earth by his multiplication, were certain in the lapse of time to fall here and there into circumstances fit for their development; and, in spite of all blightings and uprootings, were certain, by sufficient repetition of these occun-ences, ultimately to originate a civilization which should outlive all disasters and arrive at perfection.
Whilst the continuance of the old predatory instinct after the fulfilment of its original purpose, has retarded civilization by giving rise to conditions at variance with those of social life, it has subserved civilization by clearing the earth of inferior races of men. The forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, taking no account of incidental sufiering, exterminate such sections of mankind as stand in their way, with the same sternness that they exterminate beasts of prey and herds of useless ruminants- Be he human being, or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of. Just as the savage has taken the place of lower creatures, so must he, if he have remained too long a savage, give place to his superior. And, observe, it is necessarily to his superior that, in the great majority of cases, he does give plaee. For what are the pre-requisites to a conquering race? Numerical strength, or an improved system of warfare; both of which are indications of advancement. Numerical strength implies certain ci^^lizing antecedents. Deficiency of game may have necessitated agricultural pursuits, and so made the existence of a larger population possible; or distance firom other tribes may have rendered war less. frequent, and so have prevented its perpetual decimations; or accidental superiority over neighbouring tribes, may have led to the final subjugation and enslaving of these: in any of wliich cases the comparatively peaceful condition resulting, must have allowed progress to commence. Evidently, therefore, firom the very beginning, the conquest of one people over another has been, in the main, the conquest of the social man over the anti-social GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 41 7" man; or, strictly speaking, of the more adapted over the less adapted.
In another mode, too, the continuance of the unsympathetic character has indirectly aided civilization -whilst it has directly hindered it; namely, by giving rise to slavery. It has heen observed — and, as it seems, truly enough — that only by such stringent coercion as is exercised over men held in bondage, could the needful power of continuous application have been developed. Devoid of this, as from his habits of life the aboriginal man necessarily veas (and as, indeed, existing specimens show), probably the severest discipline continued for many generations was required to make him submit contentedly to the necessities of his new state. And if so, the barbarous selfishness which maintained that discipline, must be considered as having worked a collateral benefit, though in itself so radically bad.
Let not the reader be alarmed. Let him not fear that these admissions will excuse new invasions and new oppressions. Nor let- any one who fancies himself called upon to take Nature's part in this matter, by providing discipline for idle negroes or others, suppose that these dealings of the past will serve for precedents. Eightly understood, they will do no such thing. That phase of civiHzation during which forcible supplantings of the weak by the strong, and systems of savage coercion, are on the- whole advantageous, is a phase which spontaneously and necessarily gives birth to these things. It is not in pursuance of any calmly-reasoned conclusions respecting nature's intention that men conquer and enslave their fellows — it is not that they smother their kindly feelings to subserve ci-vilization; but it is that as yet constituted they care little what suffering they inflict in the pursuit of gratification, and even think the achievement and exercise of mastery honourable.; As soon, however, as there arises a perception that these subjugations and tyrannies are not right — as soon as the sentunent to which they are repugnant becomes sufficiently powerful to suppress them, it is time for them to cease. The question altogether hinges upon the amount of moral sense possessed by men; or, in other -words, upon the degree of adaptation to the social state they have undergone. Unconsciousness that there is anything wrong in exterminating inferior races, or in reducing them to bondage, presupposes an almost rudiraentary state of men's sympathies and their sense of human rights. The oppressions they then inflict and submit to, are not, therefore, detrimental to their characters — do not retard in them the growth of the social sentiments, for these have not yet reached a development great enough to be offended by such doings. And hence the aids given to civihzation by clearing the earth of its least advanced inhabitants, and by forcibly compelling the rest to acquire industrial habits, are given without moral adaptation receiving any corresponding check. Quite otherwise is it, however, wlien the flagitiousness of these gross forms of injustice begins to be recognised. Then the times give proof that the old regime is no longjer fit.
Further progi-ess cannot be made until the newly-felt wrong has been done away or diminished. Were it possible under such circumstances to uphold past institutions and practices (which, happily, it is not), it would be at the expense of a continual searing of men's consciences. The feelings whose predominance gives possibiHty to an advanced social state would be constantiy repressed — kept down on a level with the old arrangements, to the stopping of aU further progress; and before those who have grown beyond one of these probationary states could re-iastitute it, they must resume that inferior character to which it was natural. Before a forced servitude could be again estabUshed for the industrial discipline of eight hundred thousand Jamaica blacks, the thirty miUions of English whites who established it would have to retrograde in all things — in truthfulness, fidehty, generosity, honesty, and even in material condition; for to diminish men's moral sense is to diminish their fitness for acting together, and, therefore to render the best producing and distributing organizations impracticable. Another illustration this of the perfect economy of Nature. Whilst the injustice of conquests and enslavings is not perceived, they are on the whole beneficial; but as soon as they ai'e felt to be at variance with the moral law, the continuance of them retards adaptation in one direction, more than it advances it in another: a fact which our new preacher of the old doctrine, that might is right, may profitably consider a little.
Contrasted as are their units, primitive communities and advanced ones must essentially differ in the principles of their structure. Like other organisms, the social organism has to pass in the course of its development through temporary forms, in which sundry of its functions are fulfiUed by appliances destined to disappear as fast as the ultimate appliances become efficient. Associated humanity has larval appendages analogous to those of individual creatures. As in the common Triton of our ponds, the external lungs or hranchise dwindle away when the internal lungs have grown to maturity; and as during the embryo stage of the higher vertebrata, temporary organs appear, serve their purpose awhile, and are subsequently re-absorbed, leaving only^igns of their having been; so, in the earlier forms of the body poUtic do there exist institutions which after answering their ends for a time are superseded and become extinct.
But deciduous institutions imply deciduous sentiments. Dependent as they are upon popular character, established political systems cannot die out until the feeling which upholds them dies out. Hence during man's apprenticeship to the social state there must predominate in him some impulse corresponding to the arrangements requisite; which impulse diminishes as the probationary organization made possible by it, merges into the ultimate organization. The nature and operation of this impulse now demand oui- attention.
" I had so great a respect for the memory of Henry IV.," said the celebrated French robber and assassin, Cartouche, "that had a victim I was pursuing taken refuge under his statue on the Pont Neuf, I would have spared his life." An apt illustration, this, of the co-existence of profound hero-worship with the extremest savageness, and of the means heroworship affords whereby the savage may be ruled. The necessity for some such sentiment to bind men together whilst they are as yet unsympathetic, has been elsewhere shown. For the anti-social man to be transformed into the social man, he must live in the social state. But how can a society be maintained when, by the hypothesis, the aggressive desires of its members are destructive of it? Evidently its members must possess some counterbalancing tendency which shall keep them in the social state despite the incongruity — which shall make them submit to the restraint imposed — and which shall diminish as adaptation to the new circumstances renders restraint less needful. Such counterbalancing tendency we have in this same sentiment of hero-worship; a sentiment which leads men to prostrate themselves before any manifestation of power, be it in chief, feudal lord, king, or constitutional government, and makes them act in subordination to that power.
Facts illustrating this alleged connection between strength of hero-worship and strength of the aggressive propensities, together with other facts illustrating the simultaneous decline of both, were given when the matter was first discussed (p. 197). Now, however, we may appropriately examine the evidence in detail. The proposition is, that in proportion as the members of a community are barbarous, that is, in proportion as they show a lack of moral sense by seeking gratification at each other's expense, in the same proportion will they show depth of reverence for authority. What, now, are the several indications of deficient moral sense? First on the list stands disregard of human life; next, habitual violation of pereonal liberty; next to that, theft, and the dishonesty akin to it. Each of these, if the foregoing theory he true, we ought to find most prevalent where the awe of power is most profound.
Well, is it not a fact that grovelHng suhmission to despotic mle flourishes side hy side with the practice of human sacrifices, infanticide, and assassination? We find suttees and thuggee amongst a race who have ever heen abject slaves. In some of the Pacific isles, where the immolation of children to idols, and the burying of parents alive, are common, " so high is the reverence for hereditary chieftainship that it is often connected with the idea of Divine power." Complete absolutism uniformly co-exists with cannibalism. We read of human hecatombs in connection with the extremest prostration of subjects to rulers. In Madagascar, where men are put to death on the most trifling occasions, and where the coast is decorated with skulls stuck on poles, the people are governed on the severest maxims of feudal law, by absolute chieftains under an absolute monarch. The head-hunting Djaks of Borneo have petty tyrants over them. There is autocratic government, too, for the bloodthirsty Mongolian races. Both positive and negative proof of this association is given by Mr.
Grote, where he says, " In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilations, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, &c., or castration, or selling of children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of unlimited obedience towards one man; all of them customs, which might be pointed out as existing amongst the contemporary Carthaginians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians," &c. If we consult mediaeval history, there, along with loyalty strongly manifested, are the judicial combats, right of private war, constant wearing of arms, religious martyrdoms and massacres, &c., to prove that Ufe was held in less respect than now. Glancing over modem Europe, we find the assassinations of Italy, the cruelties of the Croats and Czecks, and the Austrian butcheries, illustrating the relationship. Whilst, amongst ourselves, diminished reverence for authority has occurred simultaneously with diminished sanguinariness in our criminal code.
That infringements of personal liberty are greatest where awe of power is greatest, is in some sort a truism, seeing that forced servitude, through which alone extensive violations of human liberty can be made, is impossible, unless the sentiment of powerworship is strong. Thus, the ancient Persians could never have allowed themselves to be considered the private property of their monarchs, had it not been for the overwhelming influence of this sentiment. But that such submission is associated with a defect of moral sense, is best seen in the acknowledged- truth that readiness to cringe is accompanied by an equal readiness to tyrannize. Satraps lorded it over the people as their king over them. The Helots were not more coerced by their Spartan masters than these in turn by their oligarchy. Of the servile Hindoos we are told that " they indemnify themselves for their passiveness to their superiors by their tyranny, cruelty, and violence to those in their power." During the feudal ages, whilst the people were bondsmen to the nobles, the nobles were vassals to their kings, their kings to the pope. In Eussia, at the present moment, the aristocracy are dictated to by their emperor much as they themselves dictate to their serfs.
And when to these facts we add the significant one elsewhere dwelt upon (pp. 161 and 178), that the treatment of women by tbeir husbands, and children by their parents, has been tyrannical in proportion as the seixihty of subjects to rulers has been extreme, we have sufficient proof that hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.
Equally abundant evidence exists that the prevalence of theft is similarly associated with a predominance of the loyalty-producing faculty. Books of travels give proof that amongst uncivilized races pilfering and the irresponsible power of chiefs co-exist. The same association of dishonesty and submissiveness is found amongst more advanced peoples. It is so with the Handoos, with the Cinghalese, and with the inhahitants of Madagascar. The piracy of the Malays, and of the Chinese, and the long- continued predatory hahits of tlie Arah races, hoth on land and sea, exist in conjunction with obedience to despotic rule. " One quaUty," says Kohl, "which the Lettes show, with all enslaved tribes, is a great disposition to thieving." The Eiussians, to whom worship of their emperor is a needful luxury, confess openly that they are cheats, and laugh over the confession. The Poles, whose servile salutation is, " I throw myself under your feet," and amongst whom nobles are cringed to by the Jews and citizens, and these again by the people, axe certainly not noted for probity. Turning to the superior races, we find that they, too, have passed through phases in which this same relationship of characteristics was strongly marked. Thus, the times when fealty of serfs to feudal barons was strongest, were times of universal rapine. " In Germany a very large proportion of the rural nobility lived by robbeiy; " their castles being built with a special view to this occupation, and that even by ecclesiastics '^. Burghers were fleeced, towns were now and then sacked, and Jews were tortured for their money. Kings were as much thieves as the rest. They laid violent hands upon the goods of their vassals, like John of England and PliiUp Augustus of France; they cheated their creditors by debasing the coinage; they impressed men's horses without paying for them; and they seized the goods of traders, sold them, and pocketed a large part of the proceeds. Meantime, whilst freebooters overran the land, pirates covered the sea, the Cinque Ports and St. Maloe's being the head quarters of those infesting the English Channel.
Between these days and ours, the gradual decline of loyalty — as shown in the extinction of feudal relationships, in tlie abandon- » " An Archbishop of Cologne having built a fortress of this kind, the goTemor inquired how he was to maintain himself, no revenue having been assigned for that purpose. The prelate only desired him to remark, that the castle was situated near the junction of four cross roads." — TlaUamss Middle Ages.
43-1 GENEKAL CONSIDERATIONS.
ment of di\'iue right of kings, in the reduction of monarchical power, and in the comparative leniency with which treason is now punished — has accompanied an equally gradual increase of honesty, and of regard for people's lives and liberties. By how much men are still deficient in respect for each other's rights, by so much are they still penetrated with respect for authority; and we may even trace in existing parties the constant ratio presei-ved between these characteristics. It has been shown, for instance, that the unskilled labourers of the metropolis, who, instead of entertaining violently democratic opinions, appear to have no poUtical opinions whatever, or, if they think at all, rather lean towards the maintenance of " things as they are," and part of whom (the coalwhippers) are extremely proud of their having turned out to a man on the 10th of April, 1848, and become special constables for the "maintenance of law and order" on the day of the great Chardst Demonstration, — it has been sho'UTi that these same unskilled labourers constitute the most immoral class. The Criminal-Eetums prove them to be nine times as dishonest, five times as drunken, and nine times as savage (shown by the assaults), as the rest of the community. Of like import is the observation respecting convicts, quoted and confirmed by Captain Maconochie, that " a good prisoner {«'. e. a submissive one) is usually a bad man."* If, again, we turn over the newspapers which circulate amongst court satellites, and chronicle the movements of the haut-ion, which ascribe national calamities to the omission of a royal title from a new coin, and which apologise for continental despots; we read in them excuses for war and standing armies, sneeiiags at " peace-mongers," defences of capital punishment, condemnations of popular enfranchisement, diatribes against freedom of exchange, rejoicings over territoiial robberies, and vindications of church-rate seizures: showing that, where belief in the sacredness of authority most lingei-s, belief in the sacredness of life, of hberty, and of property, is least displayed.