268 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



one of his neighbours will not hesitate to swindle 

 a foreigner, especially if the foreigner happens to 

 be of a nationality much removed in language, 

 colour, manners, or interests from his own. 

 Morality is genetic. It is not a consistent some- 

 thing — something reasoned out and framed accord- 

 ing to the facts. It has grown up. It is essentially 

 tribal — whether it is confined to a family, as is 

 done by som.e, to a corporation or trade, to a 

 nation, to an artificial fraternity, or to a species. 

 We are, in fact, all of us, even the broadest and 

 most illuminated, simply savages more or less 

 leafed out. We all suffer, as men have alvv^ays 

 suffered, from the over-vividness of the presenta- 

 tive powers of tlie mind (sensation and perception) 

 compared with the representative powers (memory 

 and imagination). We all exaggerate out of their 

 proper perspective in the phenomena of a universe 

 the things that are around us and about us — the 

 events we witness or take part in, the things that 

 are ours, and the affairs of the street, city, state, 

 neighbourhood, world, and time, in which we live. 

 Every human being (the sage less than the savage, 

 but the sage to some extent) is inclined to lump 

 together as foreign to him, and as more or less 

 useless and shadowy in themselves, the things, 

 beings, and events that are distant, and to con- 

 sider them, of less reality than those with which 

 he is directly concerned, and of which his know- 

 ledge is im.mediate. The evolution of consciousness 

 in its social and ethical aspects consists in the evolution 

 of the ability to make real and vivid the phenomena 



