The Human Origin of Morals/Chapter III

The scientific method of studying an idea or an institution is to examine earlier phases of it which are available; just as the scientific method of studying a star is to examine the earlier stages in the formation of a star which we find in the heavens. If you want to know how a man grows up, you do not guess. You study the babe, the boy, the adolescent. In the same way we understand the grown race, the adult civilization.

The earlier stages are, as I have said, seen in the ideas and institutions of savage and barbaric peoples. No educated person now supposes that their lowly character means that they have degenerated from a higher level: that some primitive curse laid on the race blighted its early promise and powers, and these fragments of it have not risen once more. These lower people are companies or regiments thrown off the human army, at one or other stage, as it marched through the ages toward the ideal civilization.

I fully explain this in The Origin of Religion (Little Blue Book No. 1008), and these booklets are so easily obtained, and the space in each so limited, that I desire to avoid overlapping and to assume that the other volumes of the series have been, or will be, read. Briefly, we look to the lowest peoples—they are not yet tribes—for the earliest phase of moral ideas. We next take tribes at a slightly higher level of culture (using every test of culture), then tribes at a still higher level, and so on.

I would almost claim a modest merit as a pioneer in this obvious scientific procedure, as I first systematically applied it in my Growth of Religion: the main conclusions of which are given in The Origin of Religion (Little Blue Book No. 1008). The general practice had been to string together a long list of "savage tribes" and their peculiar ways without paying attention to their great differences in culture. I at once reached a conclusion as to the origin of religion which differed entirely from the accepted view at the moment; but that view was founded only on speculation, helped out by references to tribes without noticing their stage of culture. I here apply the same indisputable method to the origin and growth of moral ideas.

On an earlier page I said that the great work of my friend Professor Westermarck—a Finn by origin, but one of the most learned sociologists in England—was the classic authority on the subject. It is the first large attempt to trace the origin of morality by studying savage peoples. But I differ to some extent from the conclusions of Professor Westermarck, and I am emboldened to oppose my opinion to that of so high an authority because he has followed the customary and erroneous practice which I have just noted. He makes no discrimination between the savage tribes he quotes according to their culture. It is quite easy to do so, and my friend Professor Haddon, one of our first ethnographers, confirmed me in my attempt.

The first sentence of Professor Westermarck's book is: "That the moral concepts are ultimately based on emotions either of indignation or approval is a fact which certain thinkers have in vain attempted to deny." This is a challenge, not merely to the philosophers and theologians, but to the Utilitarians. Morality is founded on emotions, not on a perception of utility, he says. Acts are deemed "good" or "bad" for the same reason that the sunshine is said to be hot and ice, cold. They excite certain emotions. Our moral ideas are therefore "generalizations of tendencies in certain phenomena (human acts) to call forth moral emotions." Fundamentally, it is sympathy and resentment that express themselves in these emotions.

But a moment's reflection will show that it is only a question of laying stress on a different syllable. Professor Westermarck says that it shows "confusion" on the part of Utilitarians that they look for the reasons why acts cause sympathy or resentment. Surely not. We want to know why an act causes resentment, and so is deemed bad. That seems to be of the very essence of the problem of the origin of morality. And Professor Westermarck, when he answers that question, does not differ in the least from me. He repeatedly says that the resentment of the savage who calls an act "bad" is a reaction "toward a cause of inflicted pain." From the first therefore the moral sentiment approves acts which give pleasure or service, and resents those which inflict pain or injury; and it is a truism to say that the fact of the action rendering service or inflicting pain must be perceived before the emotion can arise. When Professor Westermarck says that the recognition of different degrees (or "quantities") of badness by a savage proves his emotional theory, one is surprised. It shows only that the savage perceives some acts to be more injurious than others.

But we may to some extent reconcile the theories by admitting that in the mind of the lowest peoples there is no conscious recognition that certain classes of acts are good or bad. That is, in fact, a material part of my theory. Man is moral before he has morality. He resents an individual "bad" act before he has moral rules. He does not generalize. He does not make rules.

One would naturally expect this low and primitive type of mind in primitive peoples, but I am not merely speculating as to what probably took place. In the lowest peoples of today that is precisely what we find. These are, as I say in The Origin of Religion, the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego—not simply "the Fuegians," as is generally quoted, for there are three tribes on the island—the wild Veddahs (nearly extinct as a pure race), the Tasmanians (extinct), the Andamanese, the Bushmen (the highest of the group), the Aetas of the Philippine Islands, and a few less known fragments of the human family.

In estimating the significance of these I have, fortunately, the invaluable support of Professor Haddon, who says, in his genial way, of the whole group: "They do not recognize virtue, but they do not practice vice." They have no moral laws or codes, but their social conduct is generally excellent. They are almost entirely strict monogamists, yet know nothing of "chastity." A Khond chief from. the hills of India was taken to Ceylon and asked to admire how a Veddah was faithful to his one wife. "Pooh," he said, in disgust, "that is how the monkeys live." In point of fact, most of the apes are monogamous, and—in spite of a constant statement to the contrary of sociologists (except Westermarck)—it is highly probable that monogamy was man's first "institution," except that it was not instituted, but grew up at the animal level as a mere custom.

As to the Yahgans, I have, in The Origin of Religion (Little Blue Book No. 1008), quoted the missionary Bridges saying that they know "neither God nor good nor evil." A more scientific student, Yhades, is quoted by Professor Westermarck, and I may translate the passage:

The Tasmanians are said by Professor Westermarck to have been "without any moral views, or impressions," and the Aetas and other peoples of this group had none. A writer on the Andamanese says of them:

Considering that Andaman Islands are on the way of the ships in the Indian Ocean, and have long been in contact with higher races, this is feeble enough. But when the same writer attributes to them a belief in a supreme being, who will judge them after death, we see clearly that he has not allowed for the influence of missionaries.

In short, these peoples at the lowest level have no moral rules or ideas, yet they rarely steal, lie, or murder. They are kindly to the widow and aged. They live peacefully. They observe the decalogue better than more advanced tribes, but they have no decalogue.

It may be difficult for the reader to imagine such a state of things, but he must remember that we are dealing here with men at the mental level of the early Old Stone Age. In most cases they are incapable of abstract ideas, and therefore they cannot draw up rules. They have good customs, as many species of social animals have, but they are incapable of saying to themselves: "That is the custom" or "That is a good custom." They think only of individual acts.

My theory of their condition, which the reader may or may not accept, is that their good habits or social ways of behavior were, as amongst social animals (beavers, apes, baboons, etc.), developed by natural selection, just like good teeth. At all events, these men no more reflect on their ways and the utility of them than apes do. They are unconsciously moral, if you like; but moral law is a conscious law. They have no consciences: no consciousness of law.

And the next step in man's onward march would obviously be for him to perceive, as his mind developed, that his customs were good, and set them up as standards of conduct. "Morals" is from the Roman words for customs or ways. "Ethics" is from the Greek word for the same. It is a clue; and the next higher peoples in the human scale correspond to it.

The Australian tribes are at the next level. But there are many different tribes in that vast continent, and many of them have been for a long time influenced by the ideas of white settlers and missionaries. Some travelers will tell you how a tribe believes in a supreme being who punishes and rewards after death. Benjil, the "All-Father" of one tribe, "very frequently sent his sons to destroy bad men and bad women," they said. Daramulum, the "Father" of another tribe, was said to be "very angry when they do things they ought not to do." Boorala, another name for him, had a very drastic hell and a very nice heaven.

Westermarck and all others rightly see in these statements a confused repetition of the sermons of missionaries. Eyre, who knew the Australians well, said that they had "no moral sense of what is just and equitable in the abstract." Spencer and Gillen, the highest living authorities on them, say (Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 491) that they "have not the vaguest idea of a personal individual other than an actual living member of the tribe who approves or disapproves of their conduct, so far as anything like what we call morality is concerned." Yet the same authorities say of other tribes of Central Australia that they have a "code" and their conduct is "governed" by it. These are comparatively untainted" tribes.

Now all this is not confusing. It is instructive. The Australians generally behave well, and they have a code. During one of my visits to Australia a policeman was conveying a black murderer across country to be tried. A swollen river washed the policeman off his horse, and the black could have escaped. Instead, he took the policeman's clothing in his teeth—he was swimming with hands tied—and saved him.

Compare the story in Westermarck of an Australian youth, forbidden to eat certain meat during his initiation period, and asked if he would eat it if nobody saw him. "I could not do that," he said, "it would not be right." By "right" he meant, he said, against the custom.

That is the root of the matter. The bad act is against custom. Westermarck goes on to show that custom is the lawgiver, the tyrant, of primitive peoples. I do not follow him altogether, because his quotations confuse tribes at all levels: Bantu, Eskimo, Bedouins, Indians, and Maoris. But the quotations from lower tribes are consistent. "How can I tell?" says a Kafir asked why he behaves in a certain way: "It has always been done." "The old Inuits did it," says the Eskimo. "The Alcheringa [legendary ancestors] order it," says the Australian.

It is the dawn of conscience: of an inner voice, put into the individual by education, by the social group. Man has perceived the utility of his customs. They are now rules; though the idea is still so vague that many observers deny that they have morality. That is just what we expect. The sun is not up, but the light has dawned. There is no "morality" in one sense, and there is in another. Is it day or night at dawn? It is neither. It is transition: and evolution means transitions.