640 POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



others, as is implied by the diminution of aggressions upon 

 them and the multiplication of efforts for their welfare. 



To prevent misapprehension it seems needful, before closing, 

 to explain that these traits are to be regarded less as the 

 immediate results of industrialism than as the remote results 

 of non-militancy. It is not so much that a social life passed 

 in peaceful occupations is positively moralizing, as that a 

 social life passed in war is positively demoralizing. Sacrifice 

 of others to self is in the one incidental only ; while in the 

 other it is necessary. Such aggressive egoism as accom 

 panies the industrial life is extrinsic ; whereas the aggressive 

 egoism of the militant life is intrinsic. Though generally 

 unsympathetic, the exchange of services under agreement is 

 now, to a considerable extent, and may be wholly, carried on 

 with a due regard to the claims of others may be constantly 

 accompanied by a sense of benefit given as well as benefit 

 received ; but the slaying of antagonists, the burning of their 

 houses, the appropriation of their territory, cannot but be 

 accompanied by vivid consciousness of injury done them, 

 and a consequent brutalizing effect on the feelings an effect 

 wrought, not on soldiers only, but on those who employ them 

 and contemplate their deeds with pleasure. The last form of 

 social life, therefore, inevitably deadens the sympathies and 

 generates a state of mind which prompts crimes of trespass ; 

 while the first form, allowing the sympathies free play if it 

 does not directly exercise them, favours the growth of altru 

 istic sentiments and the resulting virtues. 



NOTE. This reference to the natural genesis of a higher moral nature, 

 recalls a controversy some time since carried on. In a &quot; Symposium &quot; pub 

 lished in the Nineteenth Century for April aiid May, 1877, was discussed 

 &quot; the influence upon morality of a decline in religious belief: &quot; the question 

 eventually raised being whether morality can exist without religion. Not 

 much difficulty in answering this question will be felt by those who, from 

 the conduct of the rude tribes described in this chapter, turn to that of 

 Europeans during a great part of the Christian era ; with its innumerable and 

 immeasurable public and private atrocities, its bloody aggressive wars, ita 

 ceaseless family-vendettas, its bandit barons and fighting bishops, its massa 

 cres, political and religious, its torturings and burnings, its all-pervading crim 



