Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/576

558 The golden rule of conduct, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you," is strictly analogous to a mathematical definition; or, rather, it is the translation of such a definition into the language of morals. It is not only the formula of an equation, but it is precisely equivalent to the definition that we give of a right line when we say that only one such line can be drawn between two given points, and that to attempt to project another in reverse direction is only to repeat the first. It simply states the recognition of a corresponding fact—namely, that the line of right conduct projected from my "self" to another "self," which I have cognized, is such that no different line can be projected from that other self to me. What the line of right as projected to me from my fellow is, I am taught by my consciousness of the demands that exist in my own being.

In this way men first acquired, perhaps, the notions of right which produced a certain imperfect respect for life and liberty among them, and also a certain respect for property, according to the primitive idea of property, which was a narrow one. But, of course, these notions were restricted to the small social range within which the relations of human fellowship had become even indistinctly recognized. How limited that range was at the beginning, it is impossible to say; but our earliest knowledge of the human race finds it everywhere bounded by associations of kinship. The patriarchal family, the clan, the gens the tribe, seem to have always, at a certain stage in the development of humanity, circumscribed for each man his recognition of other men as human fellows, and his perception of the relations which he sustains to them as such. Within that close circle of recognized relationships, however, we can find in the primitive states of society almost as perfect a determination of moral rights and obligations, so far as many particulars of conduct are concerned, as we find in the civilized communities of the present day. We know that, among the Indian savages of our own time, theft and murder within the membership of a tribe are condemned as distinctly, almost, as they are among ourselves; but as between tribe and tribe, or between Indian and white man, neither killing nor stealing connects itself with any apparent sense of wrong. The fact seems to have been the same in all the earlier tribal forms of society, and when the succeeding form was reached, in the organization of the political state, the larger boundaries of that social corporation still circumscribed the moral notions of its citizens just as rigorously.

In the ancient Gentoo laws of India, which show admirable notions of honesty as between the subjects of the laws, we find prescriptions for dividing the booty of robbers who had plundered any contiguous but alien people. "If any thieves," says the ordinance, "by the command of the magistrate, and with his assistance, have committed depredations upon and brought booty from another province, the magistrate shall receive a share of one-sixth of the whole," etc.