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Ethics


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of the literature at the close of Chapters II. and III., particularly the works of Spencer and Gillen and Schurtz, belongs here also. Schoolcraft, Indian Tribes, 1851–57; Eastman, Indian Boyhood, 1902. Papers on various cults of North American Indians in reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, by Stevenson, 8th, 1886–87; Dorsey, 11th, 1889–90; Fewkes, 15th, 1893–94, 21st, 1899–1900; Fletcher, 22nd, 1900–01; Stevenson, 23d, 1901–02; Kidd, Savage Childhood, 1906; The Essential Kaffir, 1904; Skeat, Malay Magic, 1900; N. W. Thomas, general editor of Series, The Native Races of the British Empire, 1907-; Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, 1902; Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 1903; Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 2 vols., 1905; Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3 vols., 1900; Marett, Is Taboo Negative Magic? in Anthropological Essays, presented to E. B. Tylor, 1907; Crawley, The Mystic Rose, 1902; Spencer, Sociology, 1876–96; Clifford, On the Scientific Basis of Morals in Lectures and Essays, 1886; Maine, Early History of Institutions, 1888; Early Law and Custom, 1886; Post, Die Grundlagen des Rechts und die Grundzüge seiner Entwicklungsgeschichte, 1884; Ethnologische Jurisprudenz, 1894–95; Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, 1899; Steinmetz, Ethnologische Studien zur ersten Entwicklung der Strafe, 1894.

      FOOTNOTES:

      [23] W. G. Sumner, Folkways.

      [24] Sumner, Folkways, p. 6.

      [25] Ibid., p. 11.

      [26] Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 103.

       FROM CUSTOM TO CONSCIENCE; FROM GROUP MORALITY TO PERSONAL MORALITY

       Table of Contents

      § 1. CONTRAST AND COLLISION

      1. What the Third Level Means.—Complete morality is reached only when the individual recognizes the right or chooses the good freely, devotes himself heartily to its fulfillment, and seeks a progressive social development in which every member of society shall share. The group morality with its agencies of custom set up a standard, but one that was corporate rather than personal. It approved and disapproved, that is it had an idea of good, but this did not mean a good that was personally valued. It enlisted its members, but it was by drill, by pleasure and pain, and by habit, rather than by fully voluntary action. It secured steadiness by habit and social pressure, rather than by choices built into character. It maintained community of feeling and action, but of the unconscious rather than the definitely social type. Finally it was rather fitted to maintain a fixed order than to promote and safeguard progress. Advance then must (1) substitute some rational method of setting up standards and forming values, in place of habitual passive acceptance; (2) secure voluntary and personal choice and interest, instead of unconscious identification with the group welfare, or instinctive and habitual response to group needs; (3) encourage at the same time individual development and the demand that all shall share in this development—the worth and happiness of the person and of every person.

      2. Collisions Involved.—Such an advance brings to consciousness two collisions. The oppositions were there before, but they were not felt as oppositions. So long as the man was fully with his group, or satisfied with the custom, he would make no revolt. When the movement begins the collisions are felt. These collisions are:

      (1) The collision between the authority and interests of the group, and the independence and private interests of the individual.

      (2) The collision between order and progress, between habit and reconstruction or reformation.

      It is evident that there is a close connection between these two collisions; in fact, the second becomes in practice a form of the first. For we saw in the last chapter that custom is really backed and enforced by the group, and its merely habitual parts are as strongly supported as those parts which have a more rational basis. It would perhaps be conceivable that a people should move on all together, working out a higher civilization in which free thought should keep full reverence for social values, in which political liberty should keep even pace with the development of government, in which self-interest should be accompanied by regard for the welfare of others, just as it may be possible for a child to grow into full morality without a period of "storm and stress." But this is not usual. Progress has generally cost struggle. And the first phase of this struggle is opposition between the individual and the group. The self-assertive instincts and impulses were present in group life, but they were in part undeveloped because they had not enough stimulus to call them out. A man could not develop his impulse for possession to its full extent if there was little or nothing for him to possess.