THE ETHICS OF THE ANCIENT 259 



has had its own particular point of view, its own 

 bias, its own knot-hole, large or small, through 

 which it has looked at life and the world. This is 

 inevitable. It arises as a necessary sequence out 

 of the fact that all peoples above savages are 

 the descendants of savages, and as such have 

 inherited the limitations, mental and environ- 

 mental, of those from whom they have evolved. 



Aliens had no legal rights in ancient times — 

 none whatever. International cooperation, such 

 as exists among the political societies of Europe 

 and America to-day, was absolutely unknown. 

 International relations were everywhere those of 

 hostility. States and races looked upon each 

 other as foes, as objects of plunder and victim- 

 isation, not as friends. 



Caesar says of the ancient Germans that 

 depredations committed beyond the boundaries 

 of each state bore no infamy, and that stealing 

 from aliens was even encouraged as a means of 

 teaching their young men adroitness. 



The ancient Jews are an excellent illustration 

 of a narrow and self - centred people. Not- 

 withstanding their insignificance, politically an4 

 intellectually, as compared with the Egyptians, 

 Greeks, and Persians, the Jews believed them- 

 selves to be the only people of the first class 

 inhabiting the earth. They conceived that they 

 had been selected as favourites by the gods 

 themselves, and that around their little district 

 in half-arid Palestine revolved the interests of the 

 entire world. Their chief city was supposed to 



17—2 



