and it is from us that they have learnt that many forbidden things can be done with impunity, if they can only be kept secret." Justice is a virtue which always commands respect among the Bedouins, and "injustice on the part of those in power is almost impossible. Public opinion at once asserts itself; and the Sheykh, who should attempt to override the law, would speedily find himself deserted." 2

Much less conspicuous than the emotion of public re-. sentment is the emotion of public approval. These public emotions are largely of a sympathetic character, and, whilst a tendency to sympathetic resentment is always involved in the sentiment of social affection, a tendency to sympathetic retributive kindly emotion is not. Among the lower animals this latter emotion seems hardly to occur at all, and in men it is often deplorably defective. Resentment towards an enemy is itself, as a rule, a much stronger emotion than retributive kindly emotion towards a friend. And, as for the sympathetic forms of these emotions, it is not surprising that the altruistic sentiment is more readily moved by the sight of pain than by the sight of pleasure,3 considering that its fundamental object is to be a means of protection for the species. Moreover, sympathetic retributive kindliness has powerful rivals in the feelings of jealousy and envy, which tend to make the individual hostile both towards him who is the object of a benefit and towards him who bestows it. As an ancient writer observes, "many suffer with their friends when the friends are in distress, but are envious of them when they prosper." But though these circumstances are a hindrance to the rise of retributive kindly emotions of a sympathetic kind, they do not prevent public approval in a case when the whole society profits by a benefit, nor have they any bearing on those disinterested instinctive likings of which I have spoken above. I think, then, we may

1 Dieffenbach, Travels in New Zealand, ii. 106.

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

3 Cf. Jodl, Lehrbuch der Psychologie, p. 686.

Schmidt, Ethik der alten Griechen, i. 259.

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safely conclude that public praise and moral approval occurred, to some degree, even in the infancy of human society. It will appear from numerous facts recorded in following chapters, that the moral consciousness of modern savages contains not only condemnation, but praise.

CHAPTER VI

ANALYSIS OF THE PRINCIPAL MORAL CONCEPTS

We have assumed that the moral concepts are essentially generalisations of tendencies in certain phenomena to call forth moral emotions. We have further assumed that there are two kinds of moral emotions: indignation and approval. If these assumptions hold good, either indignation or approval must be at the bottom of every moral concept. That such is really the case will, I think, become evident from the present chapter, in which the principal of those concepts will be analysed.

Our analysis will be concerned with moral concepts formed by the civilised mind. Whilst the most representative of English terms for moral estimates have equivalents in the other European languages, I do not take upon myself to decide to what extent they have equivalents in non-European tongues. That all existing peoples, even the very lowest, have moral emotions is as certain as that they have customs, and there can be no doubt that they give expression to those emotions in their speech. But it is another question how far their emotions have led to such generalisations as are implied in moral concepts. Concerning the Fuegians M. Hyades observes, "Les idées abstraites sont chez eux à peu près nulles. Il est difficile de définir exactement ce qu'ils appellent un homme bon et un homme méchant; mais à coup sûr ils n'ont pas la notion de ce qui est bon ou mauvais, abstraction faite de l'individu ou de l'objet auquel ils appliqueraient l'un ou l'autre

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de ces attributs.” 1 The language of the Californian Karok, though rich in its vocabulary, is said to possess no equivalent for “virtue." 2 In the aboriginal tongues of the highlanders of Central India "there seem to be no expressions for abstract ideas, the few such which they possess being derived from the Hindí..... The nomenclature of religious ceremony, of moral qualities, and of nearly all the arts of life they possess, are all Hindí.” 3 On a strict examination of the language of the Tonga Islanders, Mariner could discover "no words essentially expressive of some of the higher qualities of human merit, as virtue, justice, humanity; nor of the contrary, as vice, injustice, cruelty, &c. They have indeed expressions for these ideas," he adds, but these expressions" are equally applicable to other things. To express a virtuous or good man, they would say, tangata lillé, a good man, or tangata loto lillé, a man with a good mind; but the word lillé, good (unlike our word virtuous), is equally applicable to an axe, canoe, or anything else." Of the Australian natives about Botany Bay and Port Jackson Collins wrote, "That they have ideas of a distinction between good and bad is evident from their having terms in their language significant of these qualities." A fish of which they never ate, was wee-re, or bad, whereas the kangaroo was bood-yer-re, or good; and these expressions were used not only for qualities which they perceived by their senses, but for all kinds of badness and goodness, and were the only terms they had for wrong and right. "Their enemies were wee-re; their friends bood-yer-re. On our speaking of cannibalism, they expressed great horror at the mention, and said it was wee-re. On seeing any of our people punished or reproved for ill-treating them, they expressed their approbation, and said it was bood-yer-re, it was right."

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Considering, moreover, that even the European languages make use of such general terms as "good" and "bad" for the purpose of expressing moral qualities, it seems likely that, originally, moral concepts were not clearly differentiated from other more comprehensive generalisations, and that they assumed a more definite shape only by slow degrees. At the same time we must not expect to find the beginning of this process reflected in the vocabularies of languages. There is every reason to believe that a savage practically distinguishes between the "badness" of a man and the "badness" of a piece of food, although he may form no clear idea of the distinction. As Professor Wundt observes, "the phenomena of language do not admit of direct translation back again into ethical processes: the ideas themselves are different from their vehicles of expression, and here as everywhere the external mark is later than the internal act for which it stands." Language is a rough generaliser; even superficial resemblance between different phenomena often suffices to establish linguistic identity between them. Compare the rightness of a line with the rightness of conduct, the wrongness of an opinion with the wrongness of an act. And notice the different significations given to the verb "ought" in the following sentences:-"They ought to be in town by this time, as the train left Paris last night;" "If you wish to be healthy you ought to rise early; "You ought always to speak the truth." Though it may be shown that in these statements the predicate "ought" signifies something which they all have in common-the reference to a rule,2-we must by no means assume that this constitutes the essence of the moral "ought," or gives us the clue to its origin.

Discarding all questions of etymology as irrelevant to our subject, we shall, in our analysis of moral concepts,

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1 Wundt, Ethik, p. 36 (English translation, p. 44).

Cf. Stephen, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, p. 343 sq.

3 The attempt to apply the philological method to an examination of

moral concepts has, in my opinion, proved a failure-which may be seen from Mr. Baynes' book on The Idea of God and the Moral Sense in the Light of Language.