VIII. Humanity

CHAPTER VIII. HUMANITY. § 150. The division between the subject-matter of this chapter and that of the last chapter, is in large measure artificial, and defensibl~ only for convenience sake. Kind ness, pity, mercy, which we here group under the general head of humanity, are closely allied to generosity; though less liable than it to be simulated by 10'wer feelings. They are all altruistic sentiments, and have for their common root, sYlnpathy. Hence we may expect to find, as we shall find, that in respect of their relations to other traits of nature, and to type of social life, much the same may be said of them as may be said of generosity. It may also be said of them, as of generosity, that while in their developed forms they are mainly pron1pted by mental representations of the pains or pleasures of other beings, they usually contain to the last, as they contain in chief measure at first, the parental feeling-the feeling which is excited by the consciousness of relative incapacity or help lessness-the pleasure felt in taking care of something 'which tacitly appeals for aid. And the mixed nature of these sentiments hence resulting, adds, as in the case of gener-· osity, to the difficulty of generalizing.

A further difficulty, 'which is indeed a sequence of the last, results from the incongruous emotions which many types of men, and especially inferior types, display. Thus, 392 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS. while ~Ioffat says "the Bushmen will kill their children without remorse," and while Lichtenstein tells us that no other savages betray" so high a degree of brutal ferocity;" Moffat, speaking of their attentions to him when he was ill, says :-" I ·was deeply affected by the synlpathy of these poor Bus}nnen, to whom we were utter strangers." Agreeing vdth Burchell, J{olben describes the Hottentots as friendly, liberal, benevolent; and yet, from Kolben, as from Sparrman, we learn that they frequently bury infants alive, and leave their aged to die in solitary places. It is so, too, with the Australians. While they abandon their aged to perish, and often destroy their infants, they are represented as fond and indulgent parents, and as often showing kind feelings to tra vellers. More strange still is the contrast exhibited in Borneo, where, according to Boyle, a Dyak has often been seen rushing" through a captured village, clasping in his arms a young child as tenderly as possible, without relaxing his grasp of its father's gory head."

In face of such facts it seems unlikely that our inductions concerning the relations of hUlnane feeling to type of man, and to social type, can be more than rudely approximate. § 151. We may fitly begin with illustrations of entire lack of sympathy, now taking the negative shape of simple in difference to others' suffering, and no·w taking the positive shape of delight in their suffering. Of the Karens Mason says :" I have stood over an old woman dying alone in a miserable shed, and tried in vain to induce her children and grandchildren, ('lose by, to come to help her." The lack of feeling shovvn by the Honduras people in Herrera's day, he illustrates by the refusal of a wife to kill a hen for her sick husband, because, as she said, "her husband would die, and then she should lose him and the hen too." Various Negro races furnish kindred examples. While, concerning' the natives of Loando, Monteiro says HUMANITY. 393 that "the negro is not cruelly inclined " [not actively cruel] yet "he/has not the slightest idea of mercy, pity, or. compassion ":- .

"A fellow-creature, or animal, writhing in pain or torture, is to him a sight highly provocative of merriment and enjoyment." Duncan and Burton agree in saying that the Dahomans, who" are void either of sympathy or gratitude, even in their own faluilies," are "in point of parental affection, inferior to brutes." And then the Ashantees show us this indifference forlllulated as a principle of conduct. Two of their proverbs, as rendered by Burton, run thus :--" If an other suffers pain, (to you) a piece of wood suffers." " The distress of others is no concern of yours; do not trouble yourself about it." Passing from negative to positive cruelty, we find in the Damaras illustrations of both. Baines says of thenl:- ~ " Everybody knows that in other tribes the aged and helpless are left to perish, but that a.mother should refuse to pull a few bundles of grass to close up a sleeping hut for her sick daughter .•.. is almost beyond belief."

And, according to Galton, a sick man " is pushed out of his hut by his relations away frorn the fire into the cold; they do all they can to expedite his death." So ,vith the negative inhumanity of the Dahomans above named may be joined their positive inhumanity; shown, for instance, in the " annual customs" at which numbers of victims are slaugh tered to supply a dead king "with fresh, attendants in the shadowy world," and again shown by decorating their buildings with great numbers of human skulls, which they make war to obtain. Of kindred testimonies Holub yielqs one concerning the J\'Iarutse, asserting that "a brutal cruelty is one of the· predominant failings of these people;" and another is yielded by Lord Wolseley, who says that" the love of bloodshedand of watching human bodily suffering in any shape is a real natural pleasure to the negroes of West Africa." To these cases of positive inhumanity, may be added those displayed by the predatory tribes of North America 394 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS.

who, while they discipline their young men by subjecting them to tortures, also torture their enelnies. " W 01yes of women borne," as the Prairie Indians are called, hand over" an old lnan or V\Toman" for torture, "to the squa,vs and papooses, pour les amuser." Burton who tells us this, says of the Y utahs that they are "as cruel as their limited intellects allow them to be." From another authority we learn that the squaws alllong the Oomanches are crueller than the men, and delight in torturing the male prisoners. § 152. How often misused words generate misleading thoughts! Savage, originally meaning rude, wild, uncul tured, ""vas consequently applied to aboriginal peoples. Behaving treacherously and cruelly to voyagers, as some of them did in retaliation, this trait was regarded as a universal trait; and "savage" came to Inean ferocious. Hence the baseless belief that savageness in this sense, characterizes the uncivilized in contrast with the civilized.

But the inhurnanity which has been shown by the races classed as civilized, is certainly not less, and has often heen greater, than that sho\vn by the races classed as uncivilized. Passing over the multitudinous cruelties which stain the annals of ancient .Eastern nations, of whonl the Assyrians rnay be nalned as a sample; rnerely nanling the doings of the admired IIomeric Greeks-liars, thieves and murderers, a£ Grote shows-whose heroes revelled in atrocities; and not dwelling on the brutalities of the Spartans or the callousness, if nothing nlore, of other later Greeks; ""ve may turn to the ROlnans, whose ruthless civilization, lauded by admirers of conquests, entailed on Europe centuries of misery. Twenty generations of predatory wars, developed a nature of which the savagery has rarely been equalled by that of the worst barbarian races known to us. Though the torture of captives has been practised by the HUMANITY. 395 North Alnerican Indians, they have not been in the habit of torturing their slaves. Though· there were subject. tribes alllong the Fijians "rho were liable to be used for cannibal feasts, yet the Fijians did not go to the length of killing hundreds of his fellow-slaves along vyith one who hadmur dered his master. 1\.nd if very often the uncivilized reduce to bondage such of the conquered as are not slain, they do not forln them into herds, make them work like beasts, and deny them all human privileges; nor do they use any of thelIl to gratify their app~tites for bloodshed by combats in arenas-appetites so rampant in Rome that the need for satisfying theln was bracketed 'with -the need for satisfying bodily hunger. Using the word "savage" in its modern acceptation, we m~y fairly say that, leaving the Fijians out of the conlparison, the white savages of Rome outdid all which the dark savages elsewhere have done.

Were it not that men are blinded by the theological bias· an~ the bias of patriotism, it would be clear to thelll that throughout Christian Europe also, during the greater part of its history, the inhumanity fostered by the wars between societies, as well as by the feuds within 'each society, has ,been carried to extremes beyond those reached by inferior peoples whom we think of as ferocious. Though the atrocities committed by such semi-civilized races as the Mexicans and Central Alnericans, such as skinning victims alive and tearing out their palpitating hearts, lnay not have been paralleled in Enrppe; yet Europeans, loudly professing a religion of love, have far exceeded them in the ingenuity of their multitudinous appliances for the infliction of pro longed agonies on heretics, on witches, and on political offenders. And even now, though at home the discipline of a peaceful social life has nearly extinguished such inhumani ties, yet by our people abroad there are still perpetrated in hUlllan deeds, if not of these kinds, yet of other kinds. The doings of· Australian settlers to the natives, of "beach combers" and kidnappers in the Pacific, do bnt exmnplify 396 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS.

in vivid ways the barbarous conduct of European invaders to native races-races which, when they retaliate, are con demned as "savage." § 153. While men of SOllle varieties appear to be devoid of sympathy, and the llloral traits which it originates, there are men of other varieties who, inferior to ourselves as they Inay be in respect of culture, are our equals, and some of thelll our superiors, in respect of humanity. Here, in the briefest way, I string together the testilnonies of travellers, whose names 'vill be found in the references. The Veddahs are "in general gentle and affectionate:" " wido,vs are always supported by the cOlnnlunity." Tannese -'~ The sick are kindly attended to the last." In New Guinea some tribes of Papuans have shown great humanity to Europeans placed at their mercy ~ Dyaks-" Hunlane to a degree which well might shame ourselves." Malagasy "Treat one another with Illore humanity than we do."

Esquimaux-" As between themselves, there can be no people exceeding them in this virtue-kindness of heart." Iroquois-" Kindness to the orphan, hospitality to all, and a cotnmon brotherhood" were enjoined. Chippewas-before the white man .caIne, there was more "charity practised towards one another; and the widow and orphan were never allowed to live in poverty and want." Araucanians-No indigent pt;rson is to be found .••the "most incapable of subsisting themselves are decently clothed:" "generous and humane towards the vanquished." Mandingos-" It is impossible for 111e to forget the disinterested charity, and tender solicitude, with which lnany of these poor heathens . . . sympathized with lUB in my sufferings." And Kolf!, speaking of the" continued kindness" of the inhabitants of Luan, says--" I never n'let with more harillony, content ment and toleration, more readiness to afford n'lutual assist ance, more domestic peace and happiness, nor more humanity and hospitality."

HUMANITY. 397 Though, as in the case of the Bushmen, characterized by Moffat in the first section of this chapter, humane actions on some occasions are associated 'with brutal actions on other oc casions, yet in some of the peoples here instanced-the Ved dahs, the Esquimaux, and the inhabitants of Luan-there is no such alloy. § 154. In the literatures of ancient Eastern peoples, there are numerous expressions of humane sentiments and exhor tations' to humane, actions~utterances of poets and sages, which, though they probably indicate in but small measure the prevailing senthnents, l11ay be taken as in some measure significant of advance consequent on settled social life. Among the early Indian books, the M"ahabharata contains the following':~ "To injure none by thought or word or deed, To give to others, a,nd be kind to all This is the constant duty of the good." And'in the same book, the princess Savitri, urging Yama, the god of death,. to give back the soul of· her husband ,vhich he was carrying away, tells the god how noble is the quality of mercy. She argues that to give is more divine than to take; to preserve is Inightier than to destroy. The sacred book .of the Persians, the Zend-Avesta, appears to have its humane precepts in some Ineasure prompted by the doctrine of metelnpsychosis-kind treatment of animals b~ing insisted upon partly for that reason; but Sadi, in the G~(;listan, has definite injunctions of a relevant kind : "Show mercy to the weak peasant . . . it is criminal to crush the poor and defenceless subjects with the arm of power ... Thou who art indif ferent to the sufferings of others deservest not to be called a man."

.Charitable conduct was insisted upon among the Egyptians too.. According to Birch and DUllcker, it was enjoined" to give bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and shelter to' the wanderer;" and the memoirs in the tOlubs "portray just and charitable live~, protection of the widow" and the needy) care for the people in tiInes of 398 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS. famine." Similarly, the books of the Chinese sages agree in elnphasizing the virtues which flo\v from fellow-feeling. According to Legge, Lao-tsze "seenlS to condelnn the inflic tion of capital punishment; and he deplores the practice of war." In a like spirit Confucius says that "benevolence is the characteristic elenlent of humanity." And Mencius too, while alleging that the" feeling of commiseration is essential to ulan," remarks that "so is the superior man affected to'\vards animals, that, having seen them alive, he cannot bear to see them die." To all which has of course to be added ~he evidence furnished by the sacred books of the Hebrews, in the later of ,vhich there are injunctions to show kindness and mercy, not to men only but to animals-injunc tions which the European peoples who avo'wedly accepted theIn, along with the still more humane doctrine of Jesus, did so little throughout many centuries to practise, even in small rneasure.

§ 155. Amid perturbing causes and conflicting testi lIlonies, no general conclusions seenl trustworthy save those reached by putting side by side the extreme cases. Compari sons so made justify anticipation. Of the Karens, instanced above as absolutely heartless, it is said that "every tribe is antagonistic to each other," and there is almost continual war. So too is it with another Indian race, the Afridis. The intensity of the fighting propensity among them is such that" an AfrIdI generally has a blood-feud with Iline out of ten of his own relations; " and their lack of all humane-sentiment is implied by the statement that "ruthless, cowardly robbery, cold-blooded, treacherous murder, are to an Afridi the salt of life." Then we have the case of the Daholnans, above shown to be utterly void of sympathy, even with their own offspring, and whose absolutely militant social state is so exceptionally indicated by their army of Anlazons. The wildest tribes of the North Anlerican Indians, too, the Dakotas and the HUMANITY. 399 COluanches, whose inhumanity is shovtTn by torturing their prisoners, .are tribes of warriors carrying. on chronic feuds and perpetual ,vars.

Of the converse relation, the most marked cases above instanced are those exhibited by certain absolutely peaceful peoples-the Esquimaux, the inhabitants of Luau, the Ved dahs. Alnong such, free as they are from those passions which inter-tribal enmities exercise and increase, we find an unusual display of that fellow-feeling \vhich results in kindly behaviour and benevolent actions. And here, along with this contrast, lllay be joined a con trast of kindred nature, between the absence and presence of a trait allied to humane feeling-I mean gratitude; for of gratitude, as of humanity, the ultimate root is sym.pathy. Of .the fighting and destructive Fijians Williams says-" In gratitude deeply and disgracefully stains the character of the :F'ijian heathen." " If one of them, when sick, obtained medicine from me, he thought me bound to give him food; the reception of food he considered as giving him a claim on me for covering; and, that being secured, he deemed him self at liberty to beg· anything he wanted, and abuse· me if I refused his unreasonable request."

On· the other hand, what do we read about the Veddahs, living always in peace ~ }Ir. Atherton describes them as " very grateful for attention or assistance·;" and, as quoted by Pridhml1, Mr. Bennett says that after having given some Veddahs presents and done them a service"a couple of elephant's tusks,nearly six feet in length, found their way into his front verandah at night, but the Veddahs who had brought them never gave him an opportunity to 'reward them. 'What a lesson in grati tude and delicacy,' he observes, ' even a Veddah may teach! ' " Truly, indeed, they may teach this, by making in so un obtrusi ve a way, and with great labour, a return greater in' value than the obligation; and they may teach lTIOre-may teach that where there have not been preached theOhristial) virtues, these nlay be shown in a higher degree-than ,vhere they are ostentatiously professed and perpetually enjoined. .

27 CHAPTER IX. VERACITY. § 156. Complete truthfulness is one of the rarest of vir tues. Even those who regard themselvesa's absolutely truth ful are daily guilty of over-statements and under-statements~ Exaggeration is almost universal. The perpetual use of the word" very," where the occasion does not call for it, shows how widely diffused and confirmed is the habit of misrepre sentation. And this habit sometimes goes along with the loudest denunciations. of falsehood. After much veheluent talk about "the veracities," will eonle utterly unveraciolls accounts of things and people-accounts made 11nveracious by the use of emphatic words where ordinary words alone are warranted : pictures of which· the outlines are correct but the lights and shades a~d colours are -doubly and trebly as strong as they should be. Here, among the countless deviations of statement from fact, we are concerned only with those in which form is wrong as well as colour......-:-thosein'which the statement is not merely a perversion of the fact but, practically, an inversion of it. Chiefly, too, ,ve have to deal with cases in which personal interests of one or other kind are the prompters to falsehood :-now the desire to inflict injury, as by false witness; now the desire to gain a material advan tage; now the desire to escape a punishlnentor other threat ened evil; now the desire to get favour by saying that VER.A.CITY~ 401 which pleases. For 'inmankind at large, the love<o£ truth for truth'ssake,:.irrespective of ends, is but little exelnplified...