EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



see if there has not existed a state of society in 

 which it may have been desirable that all the 

 members of the community should think alike, 

 on religious as well as on other subjects. 



Toward the close of my paper on u The 

 Causes of Persecution," I called attention to 

 the intense feeling of corporate responsibility 

 which pervaded all the life of ancient society, 

 and which, no doubt, goes farther than any- 

 thing else toward explaining the genesis of per- 

 secution. To understand the origin and meaning 

 of this notion of corporate responsibility, we 

 must carry our thoughts back to that primitive 

 state of society when there are no political ag- 

 gregates more extensive than the clan^ or, at 

 any rate, than the tribe> formed by the coales- 

 cence of kindred clans. In this lowest stage of 

 human progress, blood-relationship furnishes 

 the only possible bond by which any concert of 

 action among men can be secured. The ideas 

 of right and duty, in so far as recognized at all 

 by the dim intelligence of nascent humanity, are 

 recognized only within the limits of ascertaina- 

 ble blood-relationship. The comparative study 

 of institutions, among civilized people and 

 among savages, has established beyond doubt 

 that this was the social condition of mankind at 

 the beginning of its distinctively human career. 

 I have myself shown that the very same coop- 

 crating processes which originated the family, 

 226 



