Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 5.djvu/783

 THE GENESIS OF ETHICAL ELEMENTS 767

It is just this selection which explains the snug fit of early ethical elements to the needs of the group that develops them. Many of our modern moral notions have been generalized till they are out of relation to the welfare of any particular group. They prescribe a certain conduct toward all tnen. But all primi- tive ethics exhibits a strange double standard. Thus and thus must you treat your clansman, but on the stranger you may wreak your will. Now, if the judgments of rude men about con- duct spring from faintly stirring instincts of right, from a dim sense of the good, why is there an abrupt change at the frontier of the group ? If in these standards of dealing with clansmen we have the gropings of a half-awake conscience, what becomes of this conscience when the stranger appears ?

But if they develop very naturally by a process of uncon- scious adaptation out of the mental contacts and long intercourse of associates, it is the most natural thing in the world that these ethical elements should have a short radius of operation. The Tscherkesses of the Caucasus have developed an ideal that includes prowess in cow-lifting and is a great formative influence in the lives of the young Tscherkesses. But the cows it is so fine and noble to lift are never Tscherkess cows, but always the cows of the plainsmen. Whence this limitation ? Clearly it is not the voice of the natural conscience. It is rather the outcome of unconscious adaptation. However the clansmen regard each other's stock, they cannot make a cult and a glory of lifting each other's cows. The only ideal that could possibly take root and grow up was the stealing of strange cows. The radius of the moral taboo is in very truth a function of association. If any section of the clan moves away, they can no longer keep the taboo wide enough to protect their cattle. If newcomers associate freely with the clansmen, they can probably widen the taboo till it covers their herds. For each element in a body of associates is able to iiifluence the trend of the selections in the group- mind, a7id to modify thereby the ethical equipment of the group to its own advantage.

If we understand by ethos a body of related standards, ideals, and valuations, then we can say that a social ethos distinct from