§ 6.

“I had so great a respect for the memory of Henry IV.,” said the celebrated French robber and assassin, Cartouche, “that had a victim I was pursuing taken refuge under his statue on the Pont Neuf, I would have spared his life.” An apt illustration, this, of the co-existence of profound hero-worship with the extremest savageness, and of the means hero-worship affords whereby the savage may be ruled. The necessity for some such sentiment to bind men together whilst they are as yet unsympathetic, has been elsewhere shown. For the anti-social man to be transformed into the social man, he must live in the social state. But how can a society be maintained when, by the hypothesis, the aggressive desires of its members are destructive of it? Evidently its members must possess some counterbalancing tendency which shall keep them in the social state despite the incongruity—which shall make them submit to the restraint imposed—and which shall diminish as adaptation to the new circumstances renders restraint less needful. Such counterbalancing tendency we have in this same sentiment of hero-worship; a sentiment which leads men to prostrate themselves before any manifestation of power, be it in chief, feudal lord, king, or constitutional government, and makes them act in subordination to that power.

Facts illustrating this alleged connection between strength of hero-worship and strength of the aggressive propensities, together with other facts illustrating the simultaneous decline of both, were given when the matter was first discussed (p. 197). Now, however, we may appropriately examine the evidence in detail. The proposition is, that in proportion as the members of a community are barbarous, that is, in proportion as they show a lack of moral sense by seeking gratification at each other’s expense, in the same proportion will they show depth of reverence for authority. What, now, are the several indications of deficient moral sense? First on the list stands disregard of human life; next, habitual violation of personal liberty; Edition: current; Page: [421] next to that, theft, and the dishonesty akin to it. Each of these, if the foregoing theory be true, we ought to find most prevalent where the awe of power is most profound.

Well, is it not a fact that grovelling submission to despotic rule flourishes side by side with the practice of human sacrifices, infanticide, and assassination? We find suttees and thuggee amongst a race who have ever been abject slaves. In some of the Pacific isles, where the immolation of children to idols, and the burying of parents alive, are common, “so high is the reverence for hereditary chieftainship that it is often connected with the idea of Divine power.” Complete absolutism uniformly co-exists with cannibalism. We read of human hecatombs in connection with the extremest prostration of subjects to rulers. In Madagascar, where men are put to death on the most trifling occasions, and where the coast is decorated with skulls stuck on poles, the people are governed on the severest maxims of feudal law, by absolute chieftains under an absolute monarch. The head-hunting Dyaks of Borneo have petty tyrants over them. There is autocratic government, too, for the bloodthirsty Mongolian races. Both positive and negative proof of this association is given by Mr. Grote, where he says, “In no city of historical Greece did there prevail either human sacrifices or deliberate mutilations, such as cutting off the nose, ears, hands, feet, &c., or castration, or selling of children into slavery, or polygamy, or the feeling of unlimited obedience towards one man; all of them customs, which might be pointed out as existing amongst the contemporary Carthagimians, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians,” &c. If we consult mediæval history, there, along with loyalty strongly manifested, are the judicial combats, right of private war, constant wearing of arms, religious martyrdoms and massacres, &c., to prove that life was held in less respect than now. Glancing over modern Europe, we find the assassinations of Italy, the cruelties of the Croats and Czecks, and the Austrian butcheries, illustrating the relationship. Whilst, amongst Edition: current; Page: [422] ourselves, diminished reverence for authority has occurred simultaneously with diminished sanguinariness in our criminal code.

That infringements of personal liberty are greatest where awe of power is greatest, is in some sort a truism, seeing that forced servitude, through which alone extensive violations of human liberty can be made, is impossible, unless the sentiment of power-worship is strong. Thus, the ancient Persians could never have allowed themselves to be considered the private property of their monarchs, had it not been for the overwhelming influence of this sentiment. But that such submission is associated with a defect of moral sense, is best seen in the acknowledged truth that readiness to cringe is accompanied by an equal readiness to tyrannize. Satraps lorded it over the people as their king over them. The Helots were not more coerced by their Spartan masters than these in turn by their oligarchy. Of the servile Hindoos we are told that “they indemnify themselves for their passiveness to their superiors by their tyranny, cruelty, and violence to those in their power.” During the feudal ages, whilst the people were bondsmen to the nobles, the nobles were vassals to their kings, their kings to the pope. In Russia, at the present moment, the aristocracy are dictated to by their emperor much as they themselves dictate to their serfs. And when to these facts we add the significant one elsewhere dwelt upon (pp. 161 and 178), that the treatment of women by their husbands, and children by their parents, has been tyrannical in proportion as the servility of subjects to rulers has been extreme, we have sufficient proof that hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.

Equally abundant evidence exists that the prevalence of theft is similarly associated with a predominance of the loyalty-producing faculty. Books of travels give proof that amongst uncivilized races pilfering and the irresponsible power of chiefs co-exist. The same association of dishonesty and submissiveness is found amongst more advanced peoples. It is so with Edition: current; Page: [423] the Hindoos, with the Cinghalese, and with the inhabitants of Madagascar. The piracy of the Malays, and of the Chinese, and the long-continued predatory habits of the Arab races, both on land and sea, exist in conjunction with obedience to despotic rule. “One quality,” says Kohl, “which the Lettes show, with all enslaved tribes, is a great disposition to thieving.” The Russians, to whom worship of their emperor is a needful luxury, confess openly that they are cheats, and laugh over the confession. The Poles, whose servile salutation is, “I throw myself under your feet,” and amongst whom nobles are cringed to by the Jews and citizens, and these again by the people, are certainly not noted for probity. Turning to the superior races, we find that they, too, have passed through phases in which this same relationship of characteristics was strongly marked. Thus, the times when fealty of serfs to feudal barons was strongest, were times of universal rapine. “In Germany a very large proportion of the rural nobility lived by robbery;” their castles being built with a special view to this occupation, and that even by ecclesiasticsa Burghers were fleeced, towns were now and then sacked, and Jews were tortured for their money. Kings were as much thieves as the rest. They laid violent hands upon the goods of their vassals, like John of England and Philip Augustus of France; they cheated their creditors by debasing the coinage; they impressed men’s horses without paying for them; and they seized the goods of traders, sold them, and pocketed a large part of the proceeds. Meantime, whilst freebooters overran the land, pirates covered the sea, the Cinque Ports and St. Maloe’s being the head quarters of those infesting the English Channel.

Between these days and ours, the gradual decline of loyalty—as shown in the extinction of feudal relationships, in the abandonment Edition: current; Page: [424] of divine right of kings, in the reduction of monarchical power, and in the comparative leniency with which treason is now punished—has accompanied an equally gradual increase of honesty, and of regard for people’s lives and liberties. By how much men are still deficient in respect for each other’s rights, by so much are they still penetrated with respect for authority; and we may even trace in existing parties the constant ratio preserved between these characteristics. It has been shown, for instance, that the unskilled labourers of the metropolis, who, instead of entertaining violently democratic opinions, appear to have no political opinions whatever, or, if they think at all, rather lean towards the maintenance of “things as they are,” and part of whom (the coalwhippers) are extremely proud of their having turned out to a man on the 10th of April, 1848, and become special constables for the “maintenance of law and order” on the day of the great Chartist Demonstration,—it has been shown that these same unskilled labourers constitute the most immoral class. The Criminal-Returns prove them to be nine times as dishonest, five times as drunken, and nine times as savage (shown by the assaults), as the rest of the community. Of like import is the observation respecting convicts, quoted and confirmed by Captain Maconochie, that “a good prisoner (i. e. a submissive one) is usually a bad man.”a If, again, we turn over the newspapers which circulate amongst court satellites, and chronicle the movements of the haut-ton, which ascribe national calamities to the omission of a royal title from a new coin, and which apologise for continental despots; we read in them excuses for war and standing armies, sneerings at “peace-mongers,” defences of capital punishment, condemnations of popular enfranchisement, diatribes against freedom of exchange, rejoicings over territorial robberies, and vindications of church-rate seizures: showing that, where belief in the sacredness of authority most lingers, belief in the sacredness of life, of liberty, and of property, is least displayed.

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