The Evolution of Morality. 251 



ted from a picture making any pretensions to 

 completeness. But for a comparative study of 

 the ethics of the family the details already men 

 tioned will perhaps be sufficient. 



This survey, brief as it has been, can scarcely 

 have failed to generate a suspicion of the histori 

 cal character of those moral ideals which draw 

 their nourishment from the relations established 

 between the sexes. Were these relations every 

 where the same, our domestic morality would 

 seem as ultimate and as final as justice or benev 

 olence. But it is despoiled of its absoluteness 

 when the discovery is made that our own form 

 of marriage is but one of several competing 

 types, that the &quot;relations dear of father, son, 

 and brother&quot; have different foundations among 

 different peoples, and that chastity and fidelity 

 are so far from universal virtues that many peo 

 ples have no conception of them, and when they 

 have appeared they seem to have grown out of 

 rights in women as property adultery in Mada 

 gascar, e.g., having the same punishment as theft 

 and are consequently never, or seldom, required 

 of savage men. The rights, duties, virtues, and 

 sentiments associated with our idea of the family 

 cannot, therefore, be considered a part of the 

 content of the moral law universal. 



