298 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



been beings whose most natural impulse was to be 

 kind to others, and whose sympathies were as 

 far-reaching as feeling — terrestrial life would not 

 to-day present to the all-seeing understanding the 

 disheartening spectacle it does present, and the 

 long struggle for justice and amelioration would 

 not have been. 



The primary fact prompting and underlying the 

 exploitation of one being or set of beings by 

 another is, and has always been. Selfishness. 

 Whenever and wherever one people have ex- 

 ploited another — whether the exploiters have been 

 savages, Jews, Romans, Caucasians, or men — 

 they have done so primarily because the act of 

 exploitation was a convenience and pleasure to 

 them and in harmony with their natures. This 

 selfishness, in the case of civilised peoples, has 

 been acquired by them through inheritance from 

 the savage tribes from whom they have severally 

 evolved ; and the selfishness of the savage is a 

 legacy from the animal forms from whom the 

 savage has come. Human selfishness is simply 

 an eddy of an impulse that is universal — an im- 

 pulse that has been implanted in the nature of the 

 life-process of the earth by the manner in which 

 life has been evolved. 



But there is another fact which has generally, 

 if not always, contributed to every act of exploita- 

 tion in this world, and that is Ignorance — ignorance 

 on the part of those who have executed the ex- 

 ploitation : not ignorance of grammar or geography 

 or any other particular branch of human informa- 



