144 The Morality of Nature 



to something better than mortal circumstance permits, and 

 seeks to counterbalance the evil instead of removing it. 

 It is difficult to know which laws of nature are prevailing, 

 when in this erratic conduct of partly civilized man, dawning 

 reason thus intervenes, and instinct fails. There is however 

 one great law perceptibly triumphant in the chaos, and that 

 is the law of collective responsibility. Nature is seen com- 

 pensating the acts of associated conduct by consequences 

 visited upon the aggregate. In this the conduct unit, which 

 in earlier study we observed enlarged to cover families and 

 kinsfolk, is seen further extended. While the individual still 

 strives with others, and the lineal kin-life or clan struggles 

 with others of its like, yet in other acts all are bound together, 

 and are jointly responsible, as a tribe, in comparison with 

 other tribes. And barbaric tribal conduct, such as a destruc- 

 tive sacrifice of life, brings its retribution as well as com- 

 pensations to the tribe, and thus penalizes the actors as well 

 as the victims. 



It required many thousand generations of human reason 

 in barbaric form to raise it to humanity, but this long con- 

 tinued endurance of barbaric habit did not prove it to be 

 finally beneficial. In comparison with similarly primitive 

 conduct, it may show relative fitness, but this suggests only 

 a comparative benefit subject to correction. When we see 

 that later civilization finds barbaric conduct repulsive, and 

 see that in later codes and standards, early customs are 

 superseded, we may be assured that progress and advance- 

 ment are due to the later perceptions, and that the earlier 

 were successful only because they were not then tested in 

 comparison with the better. This may explain why the con- 



