THE CAUSES OF PERSECUTION 



of human society. But one of the deepest con- 

 siderations of all still remains to be treated. 



In the early stages of society, as illustrated 

 by such writers as Sir Henry Maine, the unit 

 of society is not the individual, but the family 

 or clan. In a tribe of primitive savages there is 

 no such thing as individual rights or individual 

 obligations, in the modern sense. It is the clan 

 as a whole that incurs obligations and asserts its 

 rights as far as it is concerned with adjacent 

 clans. Amid the pressing interests of the tribe, 

 in the fierce struggle for existence, the individ- 

 ual has no chance whatever for especial consid- 

 eration. The traces of this state of things con- 

 front us continually as we study ancient history, 

 where no fact is more conspicuous than the 

 utterly ruthless way in which the individual is 

 sacrificed to the state. The bearing of this state 

 of things upon the history of persecution goes 

 farther than anything else toward explaining 

 that dreadful history. In the early stages of 

 society, when only small political aggregates 

 have been formed, and when each little aggre- 

 gate is perpetually struggling for its life with 

 adjacent aggregates, the only kind of responsi- 

 bility known to the tribe is corporate respon- 

 sibility. The tribe, as a whole, is held to be 

 responsible corporately for the acts of each of 

 its members, and hence it is necessary that the 

 acts and beliefs of every one of the members 

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