252 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



against others is a significant fact in the analysis 

 and understanding of the ethical phenomena of 

 the earth. To this fact is due the restricted and 

 illogical character of all altruism. The ethical 

 systems of all peoples are, and have always been, 

 to a greater or less extent, provincial and contra- 

 dictory. Ethical feeling and practice are not 

 extended universally — that is, to all beings — but 

 are maintained only among those associating 

 more or less closely as a group, and having 

 interests that are more or less nearly the same. 

 Among men of primitive mind, morality is a thing 

 to be practised toward only a few thousand or 

 even a few hundred individuals, and then in a 

 very half-awake and half-hearted manner. But 

 as the perceptions sharpen and vivify and the 

 horizon of knowledge widens — as commerce and 

 imagination cause the mind to overflow the narrow 

 bounds of the community into larger dimensions 

 of time and space — as the myriad influences 

 operating as race experience and race selection 

 enable men to realise the wider and wider oneness 

 of their origin, natures, interests, and destiny — 

 an increasing consistency characterises the con- 

 duct among the members of the group, and an 

 increasingly larger number of individuals are 

 admitted to ethical consideration and kinship. 



III. The Ethics of the Savage. 



The ethics of the savage is, almost without 

 exception, purely tribal in its extent. A marked 

 distinction is everywhere made by primitive peoples 



