the latter enthusiastically and poetically described
by Maeterlinck in his delightful Life of the Bees.
The stern requirements of obedience to the unwritten
laws of the herd, which make powerful so many species
of animals individually weak, are graphically, though
of course with exaggeration, set forth by Kipling
in his Jungle Book. Many sorts of animals, such
as deer and antelopes, might long ago have been exterminated
but for their mutual cooperation and service.
Affection and sympathy in high degree are evident in
some sub-human species. When we come to man,
we find his earliest recorded life based upon a social
morality which, if crude, was in some respects stricter
than that of today. It is a mistake to think of
the savage as Rousseau imagined him, a freehearted,
happy-go-lucky individualist, only by a cramping civilization
bowed under the yoke of laws and conventions.
Savage life is essentially group-life; the individual
is nothing, the tribe everything. The gods are
tribal gods, warfare is tribal warfare, hunting, sowing,
harvesting, are carried on by the community as a whole.
There are few personal possessions, there is little
personal will; obedience to the tribal customs, and
mutual cooperation, are universal. [Footnote:
As an example of the solidarity of barbarous tribes,
note how Abimelech, seeking election as king, says
to “all the men of Shechem”: “Remember
that I am your bone and your flesh.” (Judges
ix, 2.) Later, “all the tribes of Israel”
say to David, “Behold, we are thy bone and thy
flesh.” (2 Sam. V, 1.) Of savage life as
observed in modern times we have many reports like
this: “Many strange customs and laws obtain
in Zululand, but there is no moral code in all the
world more rigidly observed than that of the Zulus.”
(R. H. Millward, quoted by Myers, History as Past
Ethics, p. 11.) Compare this: “A Kafir
feels that the ‘frame that binds him in’
extends to the clan. The sense of solidarity of
the family in Europe is thin and feeble compared to
the full-blooded sense of corporate union of the Kafir
clan. The claims of the clan entirely swamp the
rights of the individual.” (Kidd, Savage Childhood,
p. 74.) An elaborate and stern social morality, then,
long preceded verbally formulated laws; it was a matter
of instinct and emotion long before it was a matter
of calculation or conscience. The most primitive
men acknowledge a duty to their neighbors; and the
subsequent advance of social morality has consisted
simply in more and more comprehensive answers to the
questions, What is my duty? and Who is my neighbor?
At first, the neighbor was the fellow tribesman only,
all outsiders being deemed fair prey. Every member
of the clan instinctively arose to avenge an injury
to any other member, and rejoiced in triumphs over
their common foes. We still have survivals of
this primitive code in the Corsican vendettas and
Kentucky feuds. With the growth of nations, the
cooperative spirit came to embrace wider and wider