The Human Origin of Morals/Chapter V

Preachers still shudderingly refer to one of the "abominations" of ancient Babylon. They tell how the women had to go to the temple and have commerce with a man before they could marry; how little crowds of the less pretty women might be seen at the door soliciting the interest of casual sailors and other men of little taste and much feeling. As Frazer strangely repeats this in his Golden Bough, there is some excuse for the preacher. But, as we see in Morals in Ancient Babylon (No. 1076) we now know that it is an entire falsification of life in the city of Babylon. There were, however, temples (and probably an old one in Babylonia) where this was done, and where there were sacred prostitutes.

From the last part of the last chapter the reader will now begin to have an idea of the meaning of this strange perversion of religion and ethics. These were relies of the middle stage of man's religious evolution. The spirit of generation, in man and in nature, was just as likely to he deified as the sun and moon. The act of generation then became in a sense a religious act. The god or goddess was interested in its happening, not in its prohibition.

Moreover, it was socially a very desirable thing. The army wanted men: the men wanted wives and slaves. Disease and war wrought terrible havoc, and population was urgently needed. The development of polygamy, which is not a primitive institution, was scarcely enough. Concubines were allowed. It suited the masculine nature.

On the other hand, it came to be believed that human copulation could influence the fertility of the earth, by a sort of sympathetic magic. When scientific men find drawings of deer in a prehistoric cavern, they tell the whole world. It was magic. The artist believed he could bring the animals nearer and have a profitable hunt. When the same scientific men find a drawing of a male organ, or a woman with an exaggerated pubic part carved out of a bit of mammoth's tusk, they say, "How naughty," and shut it away. Why not the same magic?

At all events it is certain—the belief and practices based upon it lingered in Europe in the Middle Ages—that men came to believe that by human generation they prompted the fertility of mother earth. This easily led to what we call license or promiscuity. The great nature-festivals were marked by orgies of sex-pleasure; especially as there was prodigious eating and drinking. Priests of the goddess discovered, to their advantage, that it was particularly fortunate for women to have commerce with them. Priestesses were not likely to avoid the act of which their goddess was the presiding genius. Large carvings of the sex-organs stood unblushingly in the temples: until Englishmen and Americans came along in the nineteenth century.

All this is a very long and fascinating story—so much so that it has been given a special Little Blue Book, Phallic Elements in Religion (Little Blue Book No. 1079)—and we shall find startling traces of it even in the Old Testament. Here I can only show in a general way that the eccentricities of conscience in this connection are part of a quite natural development.

Just as natural and intelligible-that is to say, from the evolutionary point of view, and no other—is another very large category of perversions of conscience which, perhaps, are the greatest causes of people's contempt of their lowly relatives. In science "savage" means a being at a low stage of intellect and culture. To the general public it means a blood-thirsty, cruel, scalp-seeking or head-hunting monster.

Savagery in this sense is not a primitive quality of man. Those lowest fragments of the human race to which I have often referred are not at all "savage." The Tasmanians, it is true, were so wicked as to fight for their land when Europeans wanted it. The Maoris, Red Indians, and others were equally wicked. But at the most primitive level man is peaceful and honest. We saw that.

At that level man is neither a hunter (except in a very small way) nor an agriculturist. He has no "tribes." And, to cut a long story short—a process to which I am becoming sadly resigned in these little books—(I wish they were three times as long)—the development of hunting gave man a taste for blood, and the crystallizing of human groups into distinct tribes, with rival hunting grounds, gave men a great taste for each other's blood. The peaceful Yahgan type was succeeded by the less peaceful (but not bad) Australian type, and this by the fierce South American Indian, the Dyak head-hunter, the Fiji cannibal, the terrible Zulu, and so on.

Under this heading I must not quote. The list would be endless. But you see the principle. Tribal organization and hunting involve conflicts about encroachments on each other's grounds or areas. Conflicts lead to wars. "Savagery" becomes a social quality. The tribe, in self-defense, wants fierce and ruthless warriors. Spies and prisoners must be tortured and killed. The world begins to run with blood. And since conscience is the interpreter of custom, of the interests of the tribe, it sanctions everything.

The growth of society while man is still so imperfect helps this. Men accumulate "property," and other men steal it. A prettily carved stick or a deadly spear tempts a neighbor. With the growth of Animism, these things are believed to have "medicine" or "manu" or some supernatural force. A man can't make that. He steals it. And, as justice is still slow and imperfect, the victim retaliates. Murder is more common, and murder leads to blood-feuds, all over the earth. Revenge becomes a terrible and legitimate passion (as there is no electric chair).

Here religion or superstition enters, and makes things worse. One great root of these moral eccentricities is that the spirit of the murdered man has to be appeased. It may, otherwise, make itself very unpleasant. The murderer must die, if he can be found; if not, somebody belonging to him must die. In fact, the Loucheux Indians used to lacerate themselves after a funeral, to appease the spirit of the dead man. Some of the California Indians would kill the murderer's best friend, not the murderer, on the idea that it inflicted more pain. The Maoris, Aetas, and others would, after a murder, go out and kill the first man they met. Others would kill the first animal they met. Thousands of such aberrations of conscience are easily understood.

But graver evil is done, and worse eccentricities arise, by the transfer of the care of law from living society to the spirits. I do not envy the man who some day will try to answer the question: Has religion done more good or harm to the race? Believe me, it will require a ledger as large as the ''Encyclopaedia Britannica. ''Let me give here one illustration out of hundreds.

The spirits or gods, who are gradually credited with concern for conduct, are the counterparts of living men. Heaven is always a feeble reflection of earth: of the hunting grounds of the Indian, the harem of the Asiatic, or the dull intellectual world of the Christian philosopher. In the early stages the active, spirits or demi-gods are even worse than men. They are generally devils. At the best, they follow the character of living humanity, and we saw how this develops. Man smites the offender or, if he cannot find him, smites his wife, children, and relatives. Then he smites the family and relatives as well as the man. He visits the sins of the father on the children and on all his kin.

He comes to believe that this is just; and the priests approve it everywhere. In early Chinese law all male relatives of an offender were responsible. The Catholic Inquisition wrought terrible harm to the families of heretics: and for sordid reasons, as we see in another book. Mexican law enslaved the children of a traitor to the fourth generation. Athenian law—law generally, in fact—banished the family with the father. Plato and Confucius were the first to condemn this principle.

It was a ghastly stage in the evolution of thought when this was transferred to the gods. Very early it led to human sacrifices. "Off with his head" was the refrain constantly on the lips of kings; and the spiritual kings were believed to be just as bloodthirsty. Somebody had to die to appease them. The larger the number of victims, the more the gods would smile. Thousands of victims in a day were sometimes ripped open in Mexico. In ancient Europe and nearly all over the earth the gods' altars stank with human blood.

The advance of humanity—the reform never came from the priests—led to some curious modifications of this. In Peru, where the priests wanted the blood of children for the sacrament, they were in the end only permitted to punch the children's noses. In ancient Rome dolls were strung on little trees at mid-winter instead of the old human sacrifices. In China paper images of men were burned. Generally, animals were substituted for men; but there was a peculiar development in the "scapegoat."

Sin began to be treated as a sort of unpleasant commodity that you could unload on some other person; Just as an Arab will bend down when you are cursing him and let the curse fly over his head. That was in part the meaning of the human sacrifice. And as the gods wanted something good, not any shabby old thing, kings and king's sons and daughters had to die. This, in conjunction with another idea which we see elsewhere, led to "sons of God" taking the sins of the world upon themselves.

But every variety of scapegoat is known. The Hebrews (Leviticus, xvi) had the childish idea that they could unload the sins of the people upon a goat, which was driven into the wilderness. The "inspiration" was quite common. The Maoris transferred their annual accumulation of sins to a fern, which floated on the river out to sea. The Badagas of India prefer a calf, which is driven into the jungle (and is probably happy ever afterwards). The Egyptians chose a bull. The Iroquois Indians transferred all the sins of the tribe once a year to a white dog, which they (more prudently) burned. The Peruvians washed their sins off in the river, as the Hindus do in the Ganges today, and the spiritual animalculae were supposed to float out to sea.

Much less amusing was the development in the direction with which we are more familiar. Where there was only a very dim idea about the future life, the prosperity of the wicked was always a terrible problem. Why Shamash, or Jupiter', or Zeus, or Jahveh, permitted so much injustice, no one could say; for the Babylonians, Romans, Greeks, and Hebrews had no definite ideas of the life beyond the grave. Other peoples had no problem. They invented hell. Their gods would pass the record of the most ferocious torturing kings that had ever been. They would keep their victims alive for all eternity and torture them all the time.

I am not concerned here with the agony that this awful belief has caused, or with the religious persecutions, witch-burnings, and Inquisitions it inspired. I am noting it as one of the most awful aberrations of man's moral instinct under the influence of religion. It so got into the blood of men that people who considered themselves highly intellectual and refined in modern times could see no harm in it. Gladstone and Roosevelt believed in hell! (I tried hard to think of two other eminent men not politicians or theologians, but could not.)

And another aberration of the moral sense under the influence of superstition was cannibalism. No doubt it was sometimes due to primitive lack of humanity, sometimes to economic pressure (as the killing of the aged often is), but it was very largely "sacramental." You got the strength or virtue of the eaten man. This led, in mystic ways, to the rather common religious practice of eating the god, or communion; though there is another root to this, as we shall see. Head-hunting was another perversion inspired by religious beliefs.

Probably the largest and most eccentric moral aberrations were due to religion in precisely the field where it claims its highest service.

One great human tendency which we have seen made for sex license. There were others, however, which made for the restriction of sex. The menstrual trouble of women was one. They were periodically "unclean." In childbirth, the superior male thought, they were again unclean. All sorts of tabus grew up, and the sex act began, over large areas, to be regarded with suspicion. Priests and priestesses were forbidden it. Sacred seasons were not to be contaminated with it. Men and women began to believe that one became wonderfully wise and enlightened if one avoided copulation; and others became wonderfully holy. Out of it all arose, also', the contempt of woman, of which Egypt and Babylon knew nothing.

But about these and scores of other eccentricities of conscience a very large and absorbing volume could be written. I can only here give a few general ideas which may enable the reader to understand hundreds of the weird ideas and practices about which he reads in works on savage (if not civilized) peoples. We talk about "the human comedy" today. What about the last hundred thousand years, so vividly represented to us by the savage tribes which linger in the various phases through which the whole race has passed during that period? It is no mystery to us from the evolutionary point of view. You see how easily we introduce order into the chaos of facts. But what about it from the point of view of the philosopher who thinks moral law an august and eternal reality, or the theologian who thinks moral law the supreme concern of a God who complacently looked down upon this long wandering of the spirit of man?