The Developing of Morals 



might makes right." The common rights of humanity 

 answered: "All men are created free and equal and have 

 the right of life, liberty and the pursuits of happiness; right 

 makes might." From the dawn of civilization, this struggle 

 between right and wrong, between the divine right of kings 

 and the common rights of humanity found a common battle- 

 ground In the institution of human slavery. 



Human slavery has existed from the beginning of his- 

 tory. In the early times, the men who were captured by an 

 opposing army were tortured and killed in the most fiendish 

 manner their conquerors could invent and their wives and 

 children were assimilated into the tribes. After centuries 

 of this fiendish butchery, the men who were taken as cap- 

 tives were kept as slaves for the king or state. The con- 

 quering kings learned that many of their captives possessed 

 knowledge which they did not have and that they were 

 more valuable than the common plunder of war. 



The ego of these early rulers became personified and 

 their ambition knew no bounds. They desired that their 

 subjects should look upon them as one possessing the power 

 of deity. In many of the early nations the only purpose of 

 the rulers was that of self-aggrandizement. They were 

 both mad for power and Intoxicated with power and their 

 subjects were forced to spend their lives on the fields of 

 battle or in unrequited toil in carrying out the schemes of 

 these rulers. 



The pages of history are replete with records of their 

 arrogance and cruelty. At Behlstun, Persia, bas-reliefs cut 

 on the face of a precipitous rock portray the scenes that 

 were enacted there 2,600 years ago at the direction of one 



[69] 



