them fond of, and contract aversions from their dislikes." 1

We have already seen that sympathy springing from an altruistic sentiment may produce, not only disinterested resentment, but disinterested retributive kindly emotion as well. When taking a pleasure in the benefit bestowed on our neighbour, we naturally look with kindness upon the benefactor; and just as sympathetic resentment may be produced by the cognition of the outward signs of resentment, so sympathetic retributive kindly emotion may be produced by the signs of retributive kindliness. Language communicates emotions by terms of praise, as well as by terms of condemnation; and a reward, like a punishment, tends to reproduce the emotion from which it sprang. Moreover, men have disinterested likings, as they have disinterested dislikes, As an instance of such likings may be mentioned the common admiration of courage when felt irrespectively of the object for which it is displayed.

Having thus found the origin of disinterested retributive emotions, we have at the same time partly explained the origin of the moral emotions. But, as we have seen, disinterestedness is not the sole characteristic by which moral indignation and approval are distinguished from other retributive emotions: a moral emotion is assumed to be impartial, or, at least, is not knowingly partial, and it is coloured by the feeling of being publicly shared. However, the real problem which we have now to solve is not how retributive emotions may become apparently impartial and be coloured by a feeling of generality, but why disinterestedness, apparent impartiality, and the flavour of generality have become characteristics by which so-called moral emotions are distinguished from other retributive emotions. The solution of this problem lies in the fact that society is the birthplace of the moral consciousness; that the first moral judgments expressed, not the private emotions of isolated individuals, but emotions which were

1 Tucker, Light of Nature Pursued, i. 154.

felt by the society at large; that tribal custom was the earliest rule of duty.

Customs have been defined as public habits, as the habits of a certain circle, a racial or national community, a rank or class of society. But whilst being a habit, custom is at the same time something else as well. It not merely involves a frequent repetition of a certain mode of conduct, it is also a rule of conduct. As Cicero observes, the customs of a people "are precepts in themselves." We i say that "custom commands," or "custom demands," and speak of it as "strict" and "inexorable”; and even when custom simply allows the commission of a certain class of actions, it implicitly lays down the rule that such actions are not to be interfered with.

The rule of custom is conceived of as a moral rule, which decides what is right and wrong. "Les loix de la conscience," says Montaigne, "que nous disons naistre de nature, naissent de la coustume. Mr. Howitt once said to a young Australian native with whom he was speaking about the food prohibited during initiation, "But if you were hungry and caught a female opossum, you might eat it if the old men were not there." The youth replied, “ I could not do that; it would not be right"; and he could give no other reason than that it would be wrong to disregard the customs of his people. Mr. Bernau says of the British Guiana Indians :-"Their moral sense of good and evil is entirely regulated by the customs and practices inherited from their forefathers. What their predecessors believed and did must have been right, and they deem it the height of presumption to suppose that any could think and act otherwise." 5 The moral evil of the pagan Greenlanders "was all that was contrary to laws and customs, as

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regulated by the angakoks," and when the Danish missionaries tried to make them acquainted with their own moral conceptions, the result was that they "conceived the idea of virtue and sin as what was pleasing or displeasing to Europeans, as according or disaccording with their customs and laws."1 "The Africans, like most heathens," Mr. Rowley observes, "do not regard sin, according to their idea of sin, as an offence against God, but simply as a transgression of the laws and customs of their country. The Ba-Ronga call derogations of universally recognised custom yila, prohibited, tabooed.3 The Bedouins of the Euphrates "make no appeal to conscience or the will of God in their distinctions between right and wrong, but appeal only to custom.' According to the laws of Manu, the custom handed down in regular succession since time immemorial "is called the conduct of virtuous men.' The Greek idea of the customary, Tò vóμipov, shows the close connection between morality and custom; and so do the words "Oos, hos, and noixá, the Roman mos and moralis, the German Sitte and Sittlichkeit. Moreover, in early society, customs are not only moral rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of. The savage strictly complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private conscience. The following statement, which refers to the Tinnevelly Shanars, may be quoted as a typical example :-"Solitary individuals amongst them rarely adopt any new opinions, or any new course of procedure. They follow the multitude to do evil, and they follow the multitude to do good. They think in herds."7

Disobedience to custom evokes public indignation. In

1 Rink, Greenland, p. 201 sq.

2 Rowley, Religion of the Africans, P. 44.

3 Junod, Ba-Konga, p. 477.

Blunt, Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 224.

5 Laws of Manu, ii. 18.

6 For the history of these words, see Wundt, op. cit. p. 19 sqq. For other instances illustrating the moral character

of custom, see Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws and Customs, p. 34 (Amaxosa); Macpherson, Memorials of Service in India, p. 94 (Kandhs); Kubary, Ethnographische Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Karolinischen Inselgruppe, i. 73 (Pelew Islanders); Smith, Chinese Characteristics, p. 119.

7 Caldwell, Tinnevelly Shanars, p. 69.

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the lower stages of civilisation, especially, custom is a tyrant who binds man in iron fetters, and who threatens the transgressor, not only with general disgrace, but often with bodily suffering. "To believe that man in a savage state is endowed with freedom either of thought or action," says Sir G. Grey, "is erroneous in the highest degree"; and this statement is corroborated by an array of facts from all quarters of the savage world. Now, as the rule of custom is a moral rule, the indignation aroused by its transgression is naturally a moral emotion. Moreover, where all the duties incumbent on a man are expressed in the customs of the society to which he belongs, it is obvious that the characteristics of moral indignation are to be sought for in its connection with custom. The most salient feature of custom is its generality. Its transgression calls forth public indignation; hence the flavour of generality which characterises moral disapproval. Custom is fixed once for all, and takes no notice of the preferences of individuals. By recognising the validity of a custom, I implicitly admit that the custom is equally binding for me and for you and for all the other members of the society. This involves disinterestedness; I admit that a breach of the custom is equally wrong whether I myself am immediately concerned in the act or not. It also involves apparent impartiality; I assume that my condemnation of the act is independent of the relationship in which the parties concerned in it stand to me personally, or, at least, I am not aware that my condemnation is influenced by any

1 Grey, Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 217.

Tylor, 'Primitive Society,' in Contemporary Review, xxi. 706. Idem, Anthropology, P. 408 sq. Avebury, Origin of Civilisation, p. 466 sqq. Eyre, Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia, ii. 384, 385, 388. Curr, The Australian Race, i. 51. Mathew, 'Australian Aborigines,' in Jour. and Proceed. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, xxiii. 398. Idem, Eaglehawk and Crow, P. 93. Taplin, Narrinyeri,' in Woods, Native Tribes of South Australia, pp.

35, 136 sq. Hawtrey, Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco," in Jour. Anthr. Inst. xxxi. 292. Murdoch, 'Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,' in Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethn. ix. 427 sq. (Point Barrow Eskimo). Holm, Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,' in Meddelelser om Grönland, x. 85. Nansen, First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 295. Johnston, British Central Africa, p. 452. New, Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 110 (Wanika). Scott Robertson, Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 183

sq.

such relationship. And this holds good whatever be the origin of the custom. Though customs are very frequently rooted in public sympathetic resentment or in public disinterested aversions, they may have a selfish and partial origin as well. At first the leading men of the society may have prohibited certain acts because they found them disadvantageous to themselves, or to those with whom they particularly sympathised. Where custom is an oppressor of women, this oppression may certainly be traced back to the selfishness of men. Where custom sanctions slavery, it is certainly not impartial to the slaves. Yet in the one case as in the other, I assume custom to be in the right, irrespectively of my own station, and I even expect the women and slaves themselves to be of the same opinion. Such an expectation is by no means a chimera. Under normal social conditions, largely owing to men's tendency to share sympathetically the resentment of their superiors, the customs of a society are willingly submitted to, and recognised as right, by the large majority of its members, whatever may be their station. Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, says Marsden, " a man without property, family, or connections, never, in the partiality of self-love, considers his own life as being of equal value with that of a man of substance."1 However selfish, however partial a certain rule may be, it becomes a true custom, a moral rule, as soon as the selfishness or the partiality of its makers is lost sight of.

It will perhaps be argued that, by deriving the characteristics of moral indignation from its connection with custom, we implicitly contradict our initial assumption that moral emotions lie at the bottom of all moral judgments. But it is not so. Custom is a moral rule only on account of the indignation called forth by its transgression. In its ethical aspect it is nothing but a generalisation of emotional tendencies, applied to certain modes of conduct, and transmitted from generation to generation. Public indignation lies at the bottom of it. In its capacity

1 Marsden, History of Sumatra, p. 247.