1 86 DEVELOPMENT AND PURPOSE CHAP. 



absence of thought-out ethical grounds forces us back 

 upon an unethical mechanism of extraneous rewards and 

 punishments. 



We have said that this incompletely-ethical view is very 

 persistent. But in all the higher civilisations the content 

 as well as the form of the ethical judgment is greatly modi- 

 fied by the reflective systems of ethico-religious teaching 

 by which it is overlaid. If we would know what sort of 

 ethical order common sense elaborates for itself, we must 

 look back to the early civilisations and to the barbarian 

 ancestors of civilised society. 1 These codes, of course, 

 differ very greatly in detail. For our purposes it is 

 sufficient to remark that they are founded on and serve to 

 maintain the group-organisation of society, which they 

 carry to greater perfection and further elaboration than the 

 ethics of the first stage. Group-organisation becomes a 

 system of peace and, on the whole, co-operation as between 

 the members of a certain body, combined with indifference 

 and even hostility to those without this body. This 

 organisation dominates both the stages which have been 

 described. But (i) in the simplest forms of society the 

 effective group is that of the kinsfolk, who will stand by 

 one another for purposes of mutual defence. As society 

 advances the relations of different kindreds come under 

 more regular control, generally by the growth of the chief- 

 tainship, and though the blood feud is only suppressed by 

 slow steps, there arises gradually a certain order in a society 

 resting on other elements than either the tie of blood or 

 mutual fear. (2) In the simplest societies there is only 

 one great distinction, that between the fellow-member of 

 the community who has equal ' rights ' and the outsider 

 who in principle has no rights at all. This simple division 

 disappears as in the growth of society there arise within it 

 distinctions of class and rank and of rights in accordance 

 therewith. The class tends now to form a new sort of 

 group within the wider social group. Within it rights are 

 equal, and the inferior has fewer rights, and perhaps (if he 

 is a captured enemy or bought slave) none at all. All that 



1 Though these are in fact still heavily weighted with the ethics of the 

 blood feud. 



