The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
‘In many cases, as a measure of precaution, the slaves were forced
to work in chains and to sleep in subterranean prisons. The feeling
entertained toward this unfortunate class in the later republican
period is illustrated by Varro’s classification of slaves as
“vocal agricultural implements,” and by Cato the Elder’s
recommendation that old and worn-out slaves be sold, as a matter of
economy. Sick and hopelessly infirm slaves were taken to an island
in the Tiber, and there left to die of starvation and
exposure’.[3] Slaves were practically without any rights whatever
to the world in which they lived. A Roman could take the life of his
Gallic slave with as complete impunity as an American can slay his
bovine servant to-day. Romans, in short, looked upon and treated
non-Romans about as human beings to-day look upon and treat
non-humans—_as mere prey_.
1. Spencer: _Principles of Ethics_, vol. i.; New York, 1893.
2. Myers: _Ancient History_, part i.; Boston, 1899.
3. Myers: _Ancient History_, part ii.; Boston, 1899.
4. Preston and Dodge: _The Private Life of the Romans_; Boston, 1896.∂
V. Modern Ethics.
But the peoples of the ancient world are not the only human beings
who have suffered from the psychological bequests of savages. Modern
states and peoples, notwithstanding their far-flung professions of
righteousness, manifest, though in a somewhat weakened form, the
same ethnic prejudices and the same senseless antipathies as those
displayed by the ancients. Remnants of the primitive tribal morality
are found in the moral habits and conceptions of every people,
however emancipated they may imagine themselves to be. Many a person
who would not think of swindling one of his neighbours will not
hesitate to swindle a foreigner, especially if the foreigner happens
to be of a nationality much removed in language, colour, manners, or
interests from his own. Morality is genetic. It is not a consistent
something—something reasoned out and framed according to the
facts. It has grown up. It is essentially tribal—whether it is
confined to a family, as is done by some, to a corporation or trade,
to a nation, to an artificial fraternity, or to a species. We are,
in fact, all of us, even the broadest and most illuminated, simply
savages more or less leafed out. We all suffer, as men have always
suffered, from the over-vividness of the presentative powers of the
mind (sensation and perception) compared with the representative
powers (memory and imagination). We all exaggerate out of their
proper perspective in the phenomena of a universe the things that
are around us and about us—the events we witness or take part in,
the things that are ours, and the affairs of the street, city,
state, neighbourhood, world, and time, in which we live. Every human
being (the sage less than the savage, but the sage to some extent)
is inclined to lump together as foreign to him, and as more or less
useless and shadowy in themselves, the things, beings, and events
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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