292 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



prepossessions, and often posing as a paragon of virtue in the 

 guise of patriotism, even the most advanced and enlightened peo- 

 ples have not yet fully emancipated themselves. The Hebrews 

 thought they were doing the will of their tribal god (the personi- 

 fication of the tribal conscience) by borrowing jewels and fine 

 raiment from their too-obliging Egyptian acquaintances and then 

 running away with them. That this mean abuse of neighborly 

 confidence and civility was not a mere momentary freak of f raud- 

 ulence or sudden succumbing to temptation, but the outcome of 

 settled principles of morality and a general rule of policy, is evi- 

 dent from the approval with which it is recorded, as well as from 

 the laws subsequently enacted, which permitted them to take 

 usury of aliens and to sell murrain meat to the strangers in their 

 gates. 



This is the kind of ethics which finds expression in the legis- 

 lation of all barbaric and semi-civilized races, from the Eskimos 

 to the Hottentots. The Balantis of Africa punish with death a 

 theft committed to the detriment of a tribesman, but encourage 

 and reward thievery from other tribes. According to Caesar's 

 statement (De Bello Gallico, lib. vi, c. 23), the Germans did not 

 deem it infamous to steal outside of the precincts of their own 

 village, but rather advocated it as a means of keeping the young 

 men of the community in training and rendering them vigilant 

 and adroit. But we need not go to African kraals or American 

 wigwams or primeval Teutonic forests for illustrations of this 

 rule of conduct. Quite recently a Frenchman succeeded as com- 

 mis-voyageur in swindling a number of German tradesmen out 

 of large sums of money, and was applauded for his exploit by Pa- 

 risian shopkeepers, who readily condoned his similar but slighter 

 offenses against themselves on account of the satisfaction they de- 

 rived from the more serious injury done to their hereditary foes 

 on the Rhine. This incident proves how easy it is for the primi- 

 tive feeling of clanship, euphemistically styled patriotic senti- 

 ment, to put in abeyance all the acquisitions of culture and set the 

 most elementary principles of honesty and morality at defiance. 

 International conscience is a product of modern civilization, but 

 it is still a plant of very feeble growth a sickly shrub, whose 

 fruits are easily blasted, and for the most part drop and decay 

 before they ripen. 



Sir Henry Sumner Maine, in his Lectures on the Early History 

 of Institutions, has shown with admirable force and suggestive- 

 ness that rude and savage tribes uniformly regard consanguinity 

 as the only basis of friendship and moral obligation and the sole 

 cement of society. The original human horde was held together 

 by the same tie of blood-relationship that produces and preserves 

 the consciousness of unity in the animal herd or causes ants and 



