The World in Chains | Page 3

that theology necessarily or always
deliberately limits the domain of morality: but because the extension of
moral relations and the relegation of anthropomorphic theology are
co-ordinate steps in human advancement.
§ 4
The Philosopher looks at Society

The philosopher is apt to explain the growth and interrelation of ideas
by tabulating them in an historical form, which may not be narrowly,
chronologically, or "historically" true. The notion of the Social
Contract may be philosophically true, though we are not to imagine the
citizens of Rousseau's State coming together on a certain day to vote by
show of hands, like the members of the Bognor Urban District Council.
So we may illustrate a theory of moral or social evolution by a sort of
historical pageant, which will not be journalistically exact, but will give
a true picture of an ideal development, every scene of which can be
paralleled by some actually known or inferred form of human life.
§ 5
Homo Homini Lupus
Our imagination, working subconsciously on a number of laboriously
accumulated hints, a roomful of chipped or polished stones, the sifted
debris of Swiss palafittes, a few pithecoid jawbones, some painted
rocks from Salamanca, produces a fairly definite picture of the earliest
essentially human being on earth: and we recognise a man not unlike
one of ourselves; with a similar industry interrupted from time to time
by the arbitrary stirrings of a similar artistic impulse; so close to us
indeed that some of his habits still survive among us. Some of us at
least have made a recreation of his necessity, and still go hunting wild
or hypothetically wild animals for food. But when this primeval hunter
emerged from his lair in the forest or his valley-cave, he was prepared
to attack at sight any man he happened to meet: and he thought himself
a fine fellow if he succeeded in cracking the skull of a possible rival in
love or venery. This was the age of preventive aggression with a
vengeance. We still feel a certain satisfaction in a prompt and crushing
blow, and in the simplicity of violence. But we no longer attack our
neighbour in the street, as dogs fight over a bone or over nothing at all:
though some of us reserve the right to snarl.
§ 6
Tribe against Tribe

But this fighter's paradise was too exciting to last long; and indeed it is
hard to visualise steadily the feral solitary man who lived without any
social organisation at all.[2] Consideration like an angel came and did
not indeed drive the offending devil out of him but taught him to guide
it into more profitable channels, by co-operating with his neighbour.
When a man first made peace with the hunter in the next cave in order
to go out with him against the bear at the head of the valley, or even to
have his assistance in carrying off a couple of women from the family
down by the lake, on that day the social and moral unit was constituted,
the sphere of morality, destined, who knows how soon, to include the
whole of mankind in one beneficent alliance, began with what
Professor McDougal has called "the replacement of individual by
collective pugnacity." The first clear stage in this progress is the tribe
or clan, the smallest organised community, sometimes no larger than
the self-contained village or camp, which can still be found in the wild
parts of the earth. Tribe against tribe is the formula of this order of
civilisation. Within the limits of the community man inhibits his natural
impulses and settles his personal disputes according to the rules laid
down by the headman or chief. But once outside the stockade he can
kill and plunder at will, though owing to the similarly strong
organisation of the next village he will usually reserve his predatory
exploits for the official and collective raids of village against village
and tribe against tribe.
Of course the family is a step leading up to the tribal stage of morality,
and it may be that the idea of incest marks the social stage in which the
moral sphere was conterminous with the family, corresponding to the
institution of exogamy in the moral system of the tribe.
It may be added that even in the modern family the feeling which
unites the members often consists less, very much less, of affection
than of a sort of obligation to hang together for mutual defence.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Cf. Plato's myth of Protagoras (Prot. 322 B ff.).]
§ 7

The City State
The City State, self-contained, self-supporting, truly democratic, is
marked by a similar pugnacity. Only full citizenship conferred full
moral rights, and any ferocity could be justified in war against another
city. Athens wore herself out in the long struggle with Sparta,