The Soul of Democracy | Page 5

of the universe--one range of moral as of
physical law. For instance, the law of gravitation--simplest of physical
principles--holds the last star in the abyss of space, rounds the
dew-drop on the petal of a spring violet and determines the symmetry
of living organisms; but it is one and unchanging, a fundamental pull in
the nature of matter itself. So with moral laws: they are not superadded
to life by some divine or other authority. They are simply the
fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we must obey
to grow and be happy.
If the moral order is one and unchanging, man does change in relation
to it, and moral standards are relative to the stage of his growth. History
is filled with illustrations of this relativity of ethical standards.
For instance: human slavery doubtless began as an act of beneficence
on the part of some philanthropist well in advance of his age. The first
man who, in the dim dawn of history, said to the captive he had made
in war, "I will not kill you and eat you; I will let you live and work for
me the rest of your life": that man instituted human slavery; but it was
distinctly a step upward, from something that had been far worse.
Homer represents Ulysses as the favorite pupil of Pallas Athena,
goddess of wisdom: why? Baldly stated, because Ulysses was the
shrewdest and most successful liar in classic antiquity. If Ulysses were
to appear in a society of decent men to-day, he would be excluded from
their companionship, and for the same reason that led Homer to glorify
him as the favorite pupil of the goddess of wisdom. Thus what is a
virtue at one stage of development becomes a vice as man climbs to
higher recognition of the moral order.
Just because the moral standard is relative, it is absolutely binding
where it applies. In other words, if you see the light shining on your
path, you owe obedience to the light; one who does not see it, does not
owe obedience in the same way. If you do not obey your light, your
punishment is that you lose the light--degenerate to a lower plane, and
it is the worst punishment imaginable.
Thus the same act may be for the undeveloped life, non-moral, for the
developed, distinctly immoral. Before the instincts of personal modesty
and purity were developed, careless sex-promiscuity meant something
entirely different from what a descent to it means in our society. When
a man of some primitive tribe went out and killed a man of another

tribe, the action was totally different morally from .the murder by a
man of one community of a citizen of a neighboring town to-day.
This gradual elevation of moral standards, or growth in the recognition
of the sacredness of life and the obligation to other individuals, can be
traced historically as a long and confused process. There was a time, in
the remote past, when no law was recognized except that of the strong
arm. The man who wanted anything, took it, if he was strong enough,
and others submitted to his superior force. Then follows an age when
the family is the supreme social unit. Each member of the family group
feels the pain or pleasure of all the others as something like his own,
but all outside this circle are as the beasts. This is the condition among
the Veddahs of Ceylon, studied so interestingly by Haeckel. Living in
isolated family groups, scattered through the tropical wilderness: one
man, one woman and their children forming the social unit: they as
nearly represent primitive life as any other body of people now on the
earth.
Then follows a long roll of ages when the tribe is the highest social unit.
Each member of the tribe is conscious of the sacredness of life of all
the other members and of some obligation toward them; but men of
other tribes may be slain as freely as the beasts. Then comes a period
when appreciation of the sacredness of life is extended over all those of
the same race, tested generally by their speaking somewhat the same
language. That was the condition in classic antiquity: it was "Jew and
Gentile," "Greek and barbarian"--the very word "barbarous" coming
from the unintelligible sounds, to the Greeks, of those who spoke other
than the Hellenic tongue. Even Plato, with all his far-sighted humanism,
says, in the Republic, that in the ideal state, "Greeks should deal with
barbarians as Greeks now deal with one another." If one remembers
what occurred in the Peloponnesian war--how Greek men voted to kill
all the men of military age in a conquered Greek city and sell all the
women and children into slavery--one will see that