NATURE 



THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CONDUCT. 

 The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas. 

 By E. Westermarck. In 2 vols. Vol. ii. Pp. xv+ 

 S52. (London : Macniillan and Co., Ltd., igoS.) 

 Price 14X. net. 



THE present volume completes Prof. Wester- 

 marck 's work, which is likely to remain for a 

 long time a standard repertory of facts, which the 

 moralists of every school will, no doubt, set them- 

 selves to interpret, each after his own fashion. Hie 

 liber est in quo quaeret sua dogmata quisque, and it is 

 as a tribute to the author's erudition and fulness of 

 matter that I hasten to add that the second half of 

 the distich is also likely to be fulfilled ; there are few- 

 schools of moralists who will not find something to 

 their taste in this vast repertory of information about 

 the moral codes and practices of mankind. The prac- 

 tices and beliefs of difTerent races and ages with 

 respect to the rights and duties of property, regard 

 for the truth, concern for the general happiness, 

 suicide, sexual relations, religion, and the supernatural 

 generally, such are only a few of the topics with which 

 Prof. Westermarck deals, and he deals with none of 

 them without producing masses of significant fact 

 for which, apart from his aid, the student of moral 

 ideas and institutions would have to search hopelessly 

 through the whole literature of anthropology. Merely 

 to have done so much, even if Prof. Westermarck had 

 gone no further, would have been to establish an 

 inextinguishable claim on the gratitude of his readers, 

 but it need not be said of the author of the " History 

 of Human Marriage " that he has attempted to do 

 much more. His aim, at least, is not merely to record 

 the facts and classify them, but to offer a philosophical 

 interpretation of them, to put forward a definite theory 

 of the "origin " and " development " of the ethical 

 side of human thought. It is quite out of the question 

 for a single reviewer, who is not even an anthropo- 

 logist, to presume to pronounce a summary judgment 

 upon the success with which the task has been exe- 

 cuted, and the present writer would therefore be 

 understood to be attempting nothing more than the 

 utterance of one or two of the reflections suggested to 

 one interested reader by Prof. Westermarck 's book. 



In one respect, the work before us, even if attention 

 were confined to the present volume alone, is less 

 fortunate than the book by which the author made his 

 great reputation as an anthropologist years ago. The 

 "History of Human Marriage" was not merely a 

 great collection of interesting facts; it had a very 

 definite thesis, which was kept in view from the verj' 

 first, and of which the reader was never allowed to 

 lose sight for long, and that thesis had the further 

 attraction of being, in the then state of anthropological 

 speculation, a novel one. The present work has also, 

 of course, its thesis, but it is one which is, for the 

 greater part of the time, obscured by the very masses 

 of detailed fact which are marshalled in support of it. 

 Perhaps there never was a book in which it was 

 harder to see the wood for the trees, or from which 

 XO. 2052, VOL. 79] 



it would be easier to carve out whole monographs 

 on connected groups of moral practices which seem 

 to have no special bearing on the author's or any 

 other man's theory of the fundamental character of 

 moral action and the moral judgment. The main 

 thesis, when one reaches it, is, perhaps, also a little 

 disappointing. In essentials, it seems to contain 

 nothing which is not already familiar to the student 

 of so old-established a moralist as Hume, except, 

 perhaps, the employment of the expression " altru- 

 istic " sentiment, in the sense of pleasure or pain 

 awakened by our consciousness of the pleasure or 

 pain of others, and this, again, is familiar to us from 

 Comtism. Briefly put, the author's position is that 

 the moral concepts (good, bad, right, wrong, and the 

 rest) are based on " moral emotions," and that moral 

 emotions (the sense of approval and censure) are retri- 

 butive in character, censure being akin to revenge, 

 approval to gratitude. These emotions themselves are 

 things which " have been acquired by means of natural 

 selection in the struggle for existence." A censorious 

 critic would probably remark that, so far as regards 

 the " origin " of the moral judgment, this theory 

 leaves us just where it found us. " Natural selection," 

 even if we allow it all the significance which has been 

 claimed for it by the ultra-Darwinians, can, at best, 

 account for the preservation of a favourable variation 

 when it presents itself. Prof. Westermarck almost 

 seems to invoke it to account for the variations it 

 preserves. It is more to my purpose, however, to 

 urge that the reduction of all moral judgments to the 

 expression of " retributive " emotion seems only 

 possible if we confine morality to the class of acts 

 which are directly approved or blamed on account of 

 their effect on some being other than the agent. If 

 we do this, we are led at once into a breach with 

 unsophisticated moral opinion. E.g. such opinion 

 would pronounce it absurd to hold that a prudential 

 regard for one's own future, a devotion to one's own 

 physical and mental improvement, are not valuable 

 moral qualities. 



I note that Prof. Westermarck seems at times 

 inclined to admit these, and even more startling, 

 paradoxes. He habitually distinguishes between 

 " prudential " and moral considerations, as if the 

 same set of reasons for choosing a line of conduct . 

 might not fall under both heads at once, and, in one 

 place, he even seems to suggest that we have no right 

 to condemn two adults who choose to commit sodomy, 

 on the ground that their behaviour hurts no one but 

 themselves. (At least, he writes sympathetically of this 

 doctrine, p. 483.) The example suggests a further 

 criticism on the author's general philosophical stand- 

 point. As it sufficiently shows, he really leaves no 

 place in his system for a reasoned desire to promote 

 the good of others, as distinct from an amiable 

 tendency to enjoy witnessing their pleasure. Now it 

 seems undeniable th t the actual production of pleasure 

 in others is only a very subordinate element in the 

 kind of good which persons of ardent philanthropic 

 zeal, without any preconceived theory of ethics, 

 believe it their duty to promote. Just as I am con- 

 scious that pleasure, as such, is only a minor element 



