204 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. ii. 



oftenest called into play in the habitual occupations of life, 

 will be most active and will overbalance the altruistic feel- 

 ings. While, on the other hand, as the kindlier sympathies 

 are but nascent, even the altruistic feelings, such as they are, 

 will be strongly tinged with egoism. The highest emotion 

 attainable will be clannishness, and the highest rule of duty 

 will be that which enjoins loyalty to the tribal patriarch. 

 This is actually found to be the emotional and ethical condi- 

 tion of primitively organized communities, wherever they 

 have been attentively studied by competent observers. Such, 

 for example, has been the state of things existing from time 

 immemorial among the American Indians, among the Poly- 

 nesians, and among the Arabs of the desert ; and these 

 aspects of clan-society, in a somewhat later stage, among the 

 Scottish Higlilanders, are well pourtrayed in several of the 

 Waverley Novels. 



Now what is it that chiefly determines the slow develop- 

 ment of the altruistic feelings and the gradual atrophy of the 

 egoistic feelings ? Obviously it is the growth of the commu- 

 nity in size and complexity, — the gradual enlargement of the 

 area over which the altruistic feelings extend, and the gradual 

 increase in the number of social situations which demand 

 the exercise of those feelings. These conditions are partly 

 fulfilled when the tribal community grows to a vast size, 

 remaining structurally a tribe with a patriarchal head, — as 

 was the case in ancient Egypt, Assyria, Persia and India, and 

 as is still the case in China. But they are still better fulfilled 

 when the community increases in the complexity of its 

 internal relations, and, instead of remaining a tribe, becomes 

 a federation of civic bodies, as in ancient Greece, or a single 

 great civic body, uniting various tribal elements, as in aucient 

 Eome. In each of these cases, the increased power of self- 

 protection renders warfare less necessarj' and frequent, and 

 the partial supplanting of the primitive pied^'ory life by the 

 occupations of agriculture and trade be^jins to make men 



