THE ETHICS OF TRIBAL SOCIETY. 291 



for oxen, a frontier fortress, or a community of monks ; and cliris- 

 ten a cliild George, Albert, or Alexander without intending him 

 to be a tiller of the soil, or wishing to imply that he is of noble 

 birth, or will distinguish himself as a defender of men. All such 

 proper names denote particular places or persons, but have wholly 

 ceased to connote, as the scholastic philosophers were wont to say, 

 the qualities or attributes which were at first associated with them 

 and brought them into use. 



The Chinese call their country the middle realm {Chung-hue) 

 or the flower of the middle (Chang-Jiua), thus characterizing it as 

 the central and choicest portion of the earth, in distinction from the 

 savage wastes inhabited by savage men outside of the Great Wall 

 {Wan-li-cJiang-cJiing). The Jews looked upon themselves as the 

 chosen people, set apart as Yisrdel, or champions of the true God, 

 and lumped all other tribes of men together as go'im, gentiles, 

 poor pagan folks, who had no rights which a child of Abraham 

 was bound to respect. The Greeks divided all mankind into two 

 classes, Hellenes and barbarians ; the latter were also called ayAwr- 

 Tot i. e., tongueless because they did not speak Greek. Aristoph- 

 anes applied the term (Sapftapoi even to birds, on account of the 

 inarticulateness and unintelligibleness of their chirpings and chat- 

 terings. It is from Greek usage that we have come to designate 

 any corruption of our own language by the introduction of for- 

 eign or unfit words as a barbarism. The persistence of this primi- 

 tive tribal conceit is shown by the fact that a people in many 

 respects so cosmopolitan as the English can pronounce no severer 

 censure and condemnation of the manners, customs, and opinions 

 of other nations than to call them un-English, and really fancy 

 that an indelible stigma attaches itself to this epithet. Not long 

 since several British tourists in Italy actually protested against 

 some foolish, perhaps, but otherwise harmless features of the Ro- 

 man carnival, and demanded their suppression on the ground that 

 they were "thoroughly un-English," thus virtually assuming that 

 no amusements should be tolerated on the Tiber which were not 

 customary on the Thames. It is due to the same feeling that the 

 word " outlandish " has gradually grown obsolete in its original 

 sense, and is now used exclusively as an expression of contempt. 

 Slavonic (slovene) is derived from slovo (speech), and means peo- 

 ple with articulate language ; whereas the Slavic nations call the 

 Germans Nemlci, which signifies speechless, dumb, and therefore 

 barbarian. 



Geocentric astronomy and ethnocentric geography have been 

 relegated long ago to that " limbo large and broad " which is the 

 predestined receptacle of all exploded errors and illusions engen- 

 dered by human vanity and ignorance ; but from the bondage of 

 ethnocentric ethics, manifesting itself in national prejudices and 



