AUSTRALIAN MORALITY 147 



AUSTRALIAN MOEALITY 



By Professor IRVING KING 



UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



ACCORDING to the earlier explorers and missionaries and the 

 careless travelers of even recent years, the morality of the 

 Australian ahorigines was of a very low grade. Almost all such 

 observers agreed in placing them in the very lowest stages of culture. 

 They were described as bestial in habits, naked, lacking all sense of 

 virtue; the men cruel to their children and wives. They were said 

 to be addicted to infanticide and cannibalism, were cruel in their 

 tastes, shiftless, lazy, stupid, deceitful, in fact were possessed of all 

 conceivable evil qualities; they were deaf to the lessons of religion and 

 civilization, ready at theft, and had almost no regard for the value of 

 human life. They were naturally, moreover, given up almost con- 

 stantly to destructive inter-tribal wars. 



The investigations of more recent students of the natural races 

 have thrown a somewhat different light upon the matter. It is now 

 recognized that morality is not to be judged by relationship to some 

 fixed and absolute standard, but rather that it is fundamentally related 

 to the system of social control which holds within the group. It is 

 consequently unjust to apply civilized standards of morality to such 

 peoples. The goodness or badness of an act must be adjudged accord- 

 ing to its place within some social context. It must, moreover, be 

 borne in mind that the " higher race," in its first contact with the 

 lower, seldom sees it at its best. Without doubt the ignorance and 

 brutality of many of the first white settlers and explorers of Australia 

 was constantly provocative of retaliation on the part of the natives. 

 The so-called treachery of the latter, their cunning and their dishon- 

 esty were merely reflexes of their treatment by the whites. Hence it 

 is impossible to judge of the morals of a race by the acts produced by 

 its contact with another race. It may be admitted that a savage will 

 do many things that a civilized man would not do, but mere difference 

 does not render either one or the other immoral. The morality of an 

 act can be determined only when it is known whether it conforms to 

 the standard recognized by the group. This does not, of course, pre- 

 clude the further inquiry as to whether some social standards are rela- 

 tively higher than others, but such an inquiry lies beyond the scope of 

 the present article. 



