[30] Before this stage in civilization has been reached, religion is a hindrance to the widening of the moral sympathies; for in earlier stages “a man is held answerable to his god [only] for wrong done to a member of his own kindred or political community; ... he may deceive, rob, or kill an alien without offense to religion; the deity cares only for his own kinsfolk” (W. Robertson Smith, _The Religion of the Semites_, 2d ed., pp. 53 f.). [31] It should be carefully noted that this is very different from saying that his life is _im_moral. To pronounce it immoral would be like pronouncing immoral the life of the child, in whom the sense of right and wrong has not yet arisen. The savage is a child not only in intellect but also in moral feeling. As Bagehot says, “We may be certain that the morality of prehistoric man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason” (_Physics and Politics_ (1873), p. 115). [32] “At the beginning of the developmental series stands the bare animal impulse, stripped of all moral motives; at the end we have the complete interpenetration of organic requirement and moral idea.”--WUNDT, _Ethics: the Facts of the Moral Life_ (1908), p. 191. [33] See II, The Ethics of Industrialism, Chapter XVIII. [34] Respecting certain Brazilian tribes the naturalist Bates remarks: “The goodness of these Indians, like that of most others amongst whom I lived, consisted perhaps more in the absence of active bad qualities than in the possession of good ones; in a word, it was negative rather than positive” (_The Naturalist on the River Amazon_). Cf. Edward Howard Griggs, _The New Humanism_, 6th ed., pp. 103 f. [35] For the relation of motherhood and infancy to the beginnings of morality, see Fiske, _Cosmic Philosophy_ (1875), vol. ii, pp. 340 ff. [36] “The spring of virtuous action is the social instinct, which is set to work by the practice of comradeship.”--CLIFFORD, _Lectures and Essays_ (1901), vol. ii, p. 253. Cf. Peabody, _The Approach to the Social Question_ (1909), p. 149. [37] “This family worship (long-forgotten precursor of our modern family prayers) was always offered to the ancestors at the domestic hearth.”--HELEN BOSANQUET, _The Family_ (1906), p. 18. Cf. Wundt, _Ethics: the Facts of the Moral Life_ (1908), p. 171. [38] The blessing offered at the daily family meal is presumptively a survival from the consecrated communal meal of the primitive kinship group. [39] When such an individual arises he becomes, if circumstances favor, a lawgiver, and the age of law supersedes the age of custom. Morality now consists in obedience to the law. [40] Westermarck, _The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas_ (1906), vol. i, chap. ii, and passim. [41] “In early times the solidarity of the kinship is such that it does not occur to the individual to regard as unjust a suffering which he endures in behalf of, or along with, his people.”--EDWARD CAIRD, _The Evolution of Religion_ (1894), p. 37.