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THURSDAY, AUGUST i6, 1906. 



ANTHROPOLOGICAL ETHICS. 



Till- Origin a)id Development of the Moral Ideas. 

 Hv Dr. Edward Westcrmarck. Vol. i. Pp. xxi + 

 710. (London : Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1906.) 

 Price 14s. net. 



IN one engaging paragraph of this work, its author 

 describes how, whilst living in the North of 

 Morocco — where he spent four years studying folk- 

 lore- he was described as a person with " propitious 

 anklis," because the village where he stayed was 

 frequently visited by favoured and distinguished 

 guests. Propitiousncss is not with us the most 

 familiar term in such a conte.xt, but the ankles of 

 Dr. Westcrmarck 's intellectual endeavour are certainly 

 sturdy. The readers of his " History of Human 

 Marriage " — all of them his debtors — were doubtless 

 prepared for the vast array of footnotes, the excellent 

 way in which long series of facts are arranged, the 

 clearness of the style, the sanity and reasonableness 

 of a work which certainly was needed to keep ethical 

 theory abreast of anthropological research, and which 

 will add greatly to its author's reputation. 



This first volume divides itself into two parts. In 

 the earlier the author states his theory of moral judg- 

 ments, and discusses generally the nature of the 

 phenomena which tend to evoke moral blame or 

 moral praise. In the later part he examines the 

 particular modes of conduct which are subject to 

 moral valuation, and considers how these are judged 

 by different peoples and in different ages. 



The chief topics dealt with in the later part are 

 homicide, human sacrifice, hospitality, the subjection 

 of children, and the subjection of wives. It is 

 certainly a great benefit to have the facts so clearly 

 stated on which inductions may be based, and to 

 discover, too, how far generalisations are possible ; 

 to be told, for example, that there does exist a moral 

 rule among mankind forbidding people to kill members 

 of their own society, but " that the stringency of this 

 rule is subject to variations, depending on the special 

 relationship in which persons stand to one another, 

 or on their social status, and that there are cases to 

 which it does not apply at all." It is profitable, too, 

 to have certain lingering prejudices corrected. Tlie 

 subjection of wives is a case in point. Dr. Westcr- 

 marck discusses the apparently cruel custom which 

 ordains (e.g. among the Panama Indians) that 

 " Ihe woman should be burdened with a heavy load, 

 while the man walks before her carrying nothing 

 but his weapons. But a little reflection will make 

 it plain that the man has good reason for keeping 

 himself free and mobile. The little caravan is sur- 

 rounded with dangers : the man must be on the 

 alert and ready in an instant to catch his arms to 

 defend himself and his family against the aggressor." 



Or, again, he contests the frequently repeated state- 

 ment that a people's civilisation may be measured by 

 the position held by the women. 



" So far at least as the earlier stages of culture 

 are concerned, this opinion is not supported by facts. 

 NO. 1920, VOL. 74] 



Among several of the lowest races, including peoples 

 like the Veddahs, .Andaman Islanders, and Bushmans, 

 the female sex is treated with far higher consideration 

 than among many of the higher savages and bar- 

 barians. Travellers have not seldom noticed that of 

 two neighbouring tribes the less cultured one sets, in 

 this respect, an example to the other." 



The theoretical part of the work calls for a more 

 detailed criticism. Dr. Westermarck interprets his 

 subject — the origin of moral ideas — very literally, and 

 steadily refuses to discuss validity; in fact, he does 

 not even suggest that there is room or need for a 

 larger investigation, a metaphysic of some sort, such 

 as a work on so-called scientific ethics may perhaps 

 be allowed to omit. His theory is that the moral 

 judgments are based entirely on emotions either of 

 indignation or approval. Consequently there is no 

 objective standard; neither the utilitarian principle 

 that actions are right in proportion as they tend to 

 promote happiness, nor the " practical " or " moral " 

 reason, nor any other standard that may be suggested. 

 " If moral judgments differ from any others that are 

 rooted in the subjective sphere of experience, it is 

 largely a difference in degree rather than in kind." 

 No doubt morality may be in a much greater degree 

 than beauty a subject of instruction and of profitable 

 discussion, but the emotional constitution of man is 

 not so uniform as the human intellect. Such uni- 

 formity as there is certainly suggests objectivity ; and 

 we are further tempted to objectivise our moral judg- 

 ments by the fact that authority is so widely ascribed 

 to moral rules. But all this presumed objectivity of 

 moral judgments is a chimsera : for the moral con- 

 cepts are based upon emotions, and the contents of 

 an emotion fall entirely outside the category of truth. 

 All that can come under the category of truth, all that 

 can be stated as a proposition objectively valid, is that 

 a given mode of conduct has a tendency to evoke in 

 us moral indignation or moral approval. 



To all this there are very serious objections. Our 

 author's position is, of course, very natural for one 

 to occupy who is able from the serene heights of 

 anthropology to survey the many contradictions that 

 exist among moral judgments, and to doubt the 

 possibility of unity and objectivity among them. But 

 is moral judgment the only sphere in which such 

 difficulty is found? Truth is objective, says Dr. 

 Westermarck. But, not to out-Pilate Pilate, when 

 have we got truth? and has the long labour of 

 science revealed no astonishing contrariety of judg- 

 ments even in matters where emotions, moral or 

 other, have no place? Man constructs one aspect of 

 experience into knowledge and science : is this intel- 

 lectual system less liable to error, is it more certainly 

 correct and true than his construction of another 

 aspect into morality and ethics? 



Some sentences of Dr. Westermarck seem an elab- 

 orate parrying of the point. The best treatment of 

 objectivity in morals is probably that of the late Pro- 

 fessor Sidgwick, who argued that there would be 

 general agreement in morals, if only the moral con- 

 sciousness of men were ,sufiliciently developed. But 

 our author replies, " We may speak of an intellect as 



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