III. Aggression

CHAPTER III. AGGRESSION. § 125. Under this title, accepted in its full meaning, may be ranged many kinds of acts-acts so many and various that they cannot be dealt with in one chapter. Here I propose to restrict the application of the title to acts in flicting bodily injury on others to the extent of killing or "TO unding theIn-acts of kinds which we class as destruct ive. Even of these acts, which we may consider as completely or partially hOlnicidal, there are sundry kinds not compre hended under aggression as ordinarily understood. I refer .to those which do not imply antagonism or conflict. The first of them to be named is infanticide. Far from being regarded as a crime, child-rnurder has been, through out the world in early thnes, and, in various parts of the world still is, regarded as not even an offence: occasionally, indeed, as a duty. We have that infanticide which is dic tated by desire to preserve the lives of adults; for in a tribe vvhich is ever on the border of starvation, addition of sonle to its number may prove fatal to others. Female infanti cide, too, is often dictated by thought of tribal welfare: the established policy is to kill girls, who, while not useful for purposes of war and the chase, will, if in excess, injuriously tax the food-supplies. Then, again, we have the child Inurder committed in a fit of passion. Among savages, and AGGRESSION. 341 even among th;e-semi-civilized, this. is considered an indiffer entmatter: the power of life and death over children being, in early stages, taken for granted. Once more we have the sacrifice of childrell to propitiate cannibal chiefs, livin~ or dead. Regarded as an obligation, this may be classed as prom pted by a pro-ethical sentiment.

Turning to the socially-sanctioned homicides of which the. victims are adults, we lllay set down fir~t those which in many places oCcur at funerals; as instance Indian suttees until recent times. On much larger scales are the immola tions during the obsequies of chiefs and kings. The killing of wives to accompany their dead husbands to the other world, and the killing of maie attendants to serve them in the other world (sometimes also of friends) are forms of wholesale slaughter 'which have occurred in many countries, and still occur in parts of Africa. And with these may be joined such slaughters as those which are common in Da homey, where a man is killed that his double lnay carry a message froln the king to a deceased ancestor. Homicides of this class have also a kind of pro-ethical warrant; since they are instigated by reverence for custom and by the obli gation of loyalty. Lastly we have the homicides prompted by beliefs classed as religious. vVith.. or without the ascription of divine cannibalism, the sacrifices of victims to deities have prevailed widely among various races in early times-Phcenicians, Scythians, Greeks, Romans, Assyrians, Hebrews &c. carried, in sonle places, to great extremes; as··in Ancient ltlexico, where thousands of human victhns annually were slain on. altars, and where wars were made on the plea that the gods were hungry. And to these religious homicides which, in early stages, ministered to the supposed appetites of the gods, must be added the religions homicides. which, in comparatively modern times, have been committed, alike by Catholics and Protestants, to appease the supposed wrath of their God against Inisbelievers.

342 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS. Under that theory 'which regards the rightness of acts as constituted by fulfilment of divine injunctions, these re ligious homicides, in COllInon with sundry of those above de scribed, were prompted by one of the motives we class as pro-ethical. § ·126. From these aggressions, taking the form of homi cides, which are not consequent on personal or tribal antag onisms, let us pass to those of which bloodthirstiness is the cause, with or without enmity, personal or tribal. I will begin with an instance which I have named else,vhere -that of the Fijians, among whom murder was thought hon ourable. Credence to this statement, which otherwise one would be inclined to 'withhold, is justified by knowledge of kindred statements respecting other peoples. Livingstone tells us thatA Bushman" sat by the fire relating his early adventures: among these was killing five other Bushmen. 'Two,' said he, counting on his fingers, 'were females, one a male, and the other two calves.'-' What a villain you are to boast of killing women and children of your own nation! What will God say when you appear before him ~ '-' He will say,' replied he, 'that I was a very clever fellow.' . . . I discovered that, though he was employing the word whiJh is used among the Bakwains when speaking of the Deity, he had only the idea of a chief, and was all the time referring to Sekomi."

Still more· astounding is the state of things, and the kind of sentiment, described by Wilson and Felkin in their account of Uganda. Here is an illustrative incident. " A young page of Mtesa's [king of Uganda], son of a subordinate chief, was frequently employed to bring me messages from the palace, and one morning came down to my house, and informed me with great glee that he had just killed his father. I inquired why he had done this, and he said that he was tired of being merely a servant, and wished to become n chief, and said so to Mtesa, who replied, 'Oh, kill your father, and you will be come a chief; , and the boy did so." That, among peoples who lead lives of aggression, it is a virtue to be a destroyer and a vice to be peaceful, sundry cases prove.

AGG RESSION. 343 " rrhe name of ' harami '-brigand-is still honourable among the Hejazi Bedouins .•.•He, on the other hand, who is lucky enough, as we should express it, to die in his bed, is called' fatis ' (carrion, the corps creve of the .Klephts); his weeping mother will exclaim, ' 0 that my sOn had perished of a cut-throat!' and her attendant crones will suggest, with deference, that such evil came of the will of Allah." How profound may become the belief in the virtue of Inan~ , slaughter, is made. clear by the Kukis, ,vhoseparadise is " the heritage of the luan who has killed the largest number of his enell1iesin life, the people killed by him attending on him as his slaves." With this s:upposed divine approval of man-slaying, we may join the social approval manifested in other cases. Among the Pathans, one of the tribes on the north-west frontier of the Punjaub, " there is hardly a man whose hands are unstained," and" each person counts up his murders."

.That, under wild social conditions, a sentiment of this kind readily arises, was shown in California during the gold period. Murderers "continued to notch the number of their victims on neatly.kept hilts of pistols or knives." § 127. If frol11 the implied or expressed belief in the hon ourableness of private homicide, illustrated by some still-ex tant savages, we turn to the belief in the honourableness of that public and wholesale honlicide for which the occasions are given by real or pretended inter-tribal or international in·· juries, ancient records of barbarous and semi-civilized peoples furnish illustrations in abund.ance~ Among the gods of the prilnitiive Indians, Indra is lauded in the Rig - Veda as the devastating warrior, and .A.glli, too, "was born, the slayer of the enemy," and the" destroyer of cities." Emulating their gods, the warriors of the Rig-Veda and the lIfahabhaTata glory in conquests. Propitiating Indra with deep libations, the hero prays :-" Let us share the wealth of him whom thou hast slain; bring us to the house hold of hirn ,vho is hard to vanquish." .And then with such 344 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS.

prayers, comn1on to militant peoples, may be joined passages from the Mahabharata recommending atrocities. " Let a map. inspire his enemy with confidence for some real reason, and then smite him at the proper time, when his foot has slipped a little." H Without cutting into an enemy's marrow, without doing something dreadful, without smiting like a killer of fish, a man does not attain great prosperity." " A son, a brother, a father, or a friend, who present any obstacle to one's interests are to be slain." After these early Aryans, look now at some of the early Sernites. Still more extrerne in the irnplied praiseworthi ness of sanguinary deeds, are they sho·wn to have been by their records. Assyrian kings glorify themselves in inscrip tions describing ,vholesale slaughters and the most savage cruelties. Sennacherib, driving his chariot through" deep pools of blood," boasts-" with blood and flesh its wheels were clogged;" Assurbanipal says of the conquered-" their tongues I pulled out," "the linlbs cut off I caused to be eaten by dogs, bears, eagles, vultures, birds of heaven;"

Tiglath-Pileser's account of the slain Muskayans is that " their carcases covered the valleys and the tops of the ll1ount ains ;" in an inscription of Assur-natsir-pal come the ,vords -" I am a ~"eapon that spares not," the re,"olted nobles" I flayed, with their skins I covered the pyramid," "their young Inen and lnaidens I burned as a holocaust; " and of his ene mies Shalmaneser II says-" with their blood I dyed the mountains like wool." Evidently the expectation was that IneH of after times would adlnire these merciless destructions, and this implies belief in. their righteousness; for vve cannot assume that these Assyrian kings intentionally made theln selves eternally infamous. Onlitting evidence furnished in plenty by the histories of the Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Macedonians, ROlnans, we find kindred thoughts and feelings betrayed by the peoples of northern Europe. The Gauls of early days, galloping home with the heads of their enemies slung to AGGRESSION. 345 their saddles, displayed them on stakes or preserved them in chests. According to Coosar·:The Suevi and Germans generally ~, esteem it their greatest praise .. that the lands about their territories lie unoccupied to a very great extent."

And the fact that the Norse paradise was conceived as a place for daily cornbats, sufficiently shows how dOlninant ,vas the belief in the virtue of successful aggression. That throughout the Middle Ages successful aggression ,vas thought the One thing worth living for, needs no proof. History, which is little more thaD; the Newgate Calendar of nations, describing political burglaries and their results, yields illustrations on every page: h arms and the man" supply the univ~rsal theme. No better way of sho"wingthe dominant sentiment down to comparatively recent times, can be found than that of quoting the mottoes of nobles, of which here are some English ones. Earl of Rosslyn-" Fight;" Baron IIawke-" Strike;" Earl of Sefton-" To conquer is to live;" the Marquis of Downshir~-" By God and my sword I will obtain;" the Earl of Carysfort-" This hand is hostile;" Count Magawley-" The red hand to victory;" the Duke of Athole-" Forth, fortune, and fill the fetters." And the gen eral spirit is well shown by lines illustrating the motto of the Middleton falnily :" My sword, my spear, my shaggy shield, These make me lord of all below, And he who fears the lance to wield Beneath my shaggy shield· must. bow, His lands, his vineyards must resign, For all that cowards have is mine."

Mottoes being the expressions of feelings held above all others worthy, and tacitly assulning the existence of like feelings in others, those quoted irnply the social sanction given to ag gressiveness; and we need but recall the religious ce~emonies on the initiation of a knight, to see that his militant course of life was supposed to have a divine sanction also. War, even unprovoked ",val', was supported by a pro-ethical sentiment. Nor is it essentially otherwise even now. Thinly veiled 346 THE INDUOTIONS OF ETHICS. by conventional respect for the professed religious creed, the old spirit continually discloses itself. JVluch more feeling than is excited by a hylnn, is excited by the song-" The Hardy Norseman;" and pride in the doing of the "sea wolves" who " conquered Normandy," sho"\vn by the line "Oh, ne'er should we forget our sires," is habitually sy111pathized in. No reading is lllore popular than narra A ti ves of battles; and the epithet "great," as applied to Alexander, I{arl, Peter, Frederick, Napoleon, is applied notwithstanding all the atrocities they committed. Occa sionally, indeed) we meet "\vith overt expression of this sentiment. Lord W olseley says of the soldier :-" He must believe that his duties are the noblest that fall ~o man's lot. lie must be taught to despise all those of civil life:"

a sentilnent which is not limited to the" duties" of the soldier as a defender of his country, which in our day he never perforrns, but is extended to his "duties" as an invader of other countries, and especially those of weak peoples: the appetite for aggression transforms baseness into nobility. When, in the Hindoo epic, the god Indra is described as conquering a woman, we are astonished to find a victory which we should consider so cowardly lauded by the poet; and when, on the ,valls of Karnak, we see Rameses , represented as a giant holding by the hair half-a-dozen dwarfs, and cutting off all their heads 'with one sweep of his sword, we think it strange that he should have thought to glorify hilnself by depicting an easy triumph of strong over weak. But ,vhen with arms of precision, with shells, with rockets, with far-reaching cannon, peoples possessed only of feehle weapons are conquered ",~ith as great facility as a man conquers a child, there COlnes applause in our journals, with titles and rewards to the leaders! The " duties" of the soldier so performed are called "noble;"

while, held up in. contrast with them, those of the peaceful citizen are called despicable! Beyond question, .. then, the sentiment which rejoices in AGGRESSION. 34'7 personal superiority, and, not asking for equitable cause, is ready, under an authority it willingly accepts, to slaughter so-called enelnies, is still dominant. The social sanction, and the reflected inner sanction due to it, constitute a pro-ethi cal sentilnent which, in international relations, remains su preme. § 128. The ethics ~£ enmity 'thus illustrated, very little qualified in some tribes of savages, especially canni,bals, qualified in but a moderate' degree in ancient semi-civilized societies, and continuing predolninant during" the deveIop Inent of civilized societies, has been qualified more and more by the ethics of amity as the internal social life has' disci plined men in cooperation: "the relative prosperities of na tioils, while in part determined ?y their powers of conquest, having been all along in pal~t determined by the extents to which, in daily intercourse, the aggressiveness of their mem bers has been restrained.

Such peoples as have produced literatures show us, in reI~tively early days, the rise of an ethics of alnity, set in opposition to the ethics of enmity. Proceeding, as the expressions of it do, from the mouths of poets and sages, we nl.ay not measure by th~m t~e beliefs which then pre vailed; any more than we luay now Ineasure the prevailing beH~£s by the injunctions to forgive enemies, perpetually uttered by our priests. But even, the occasional enuncia tion of altruistic sentiments, occlirring in ancient societiett after there had been long-established states of relatively peaceful life, is significant. AHd it is' interesting to observe, too,how, after the absolute selfishness of the antagonistic activities, a violent reaction led t9 the preaching of absolute uns~l:flshness. Thus, while of that, vast compilation which constitutes the llfahabharata, the older parts are sanguinary in sentiment, the latter parts contain condemnations of need less warfare. It is said that fig~t~pg is the worst means of gaining 'Victory,and that a king should extend his conquests 348 THE INDUCTIONS OF ETHICS.

without fighting. And there are much more pronounced re probations of aggressive action, as this:" Treat others as thouwould'st thyself be treated. Do nothing to thy neighbour, which hereafter Thou would'st not have thy neighbour do to thee. A man obtains a rule of action by looking on his neighbour as himself." And then in the writings of an Indian moralist, said by Sir William Jones to date three centuries'B. C., we read the ex treme statement :H A good man who thinks p~lly of benefiting his enemy has no feelings of hostility towards him even at thefllomentof being destroyed by him." Similarly among the ]?ersians, we find Sadi writing~" Show ~indnes8 even to thy foes;" and again-" ~he men of God's true faith, I've heard, grieve not the hearts e'en of their foes." In like manner among the Chinese, the teaching of Lao-Tsze was that"Peace is his highest aim· .... he. who rejoices at the destruction of human life is not fit to be entrusted with power in the world. He who has been instrumental in killing many people should move on over them with bitter tears." Confucius said :-" In carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good." 'Yenciu&l held that" he "rho has no pleasure in killing men can" unite the elnpire; and of the warlike he said that"When contentions about territory are the ground on which they' fight, they slaughter men, till the fields are filled with them. When some 'strug·· gle for a city is the ground on which they fight, they slaughter men tin the cUy is filled with them. . ... : Death is not enough for such a crime."

Early as was his time, YenGiu's evidently entertained higher sentiments than do" the western barbarians" at the present time. The characterization which has been given to slav.ery -" the sum of all villanies" - would probably haye been given by him to aggressive ·war. In section 573 of The .Prin.ciple8 if Sociology, as' also in section 437, instanees are given of various tribes which, non aggressive externally are 'also non-aggressive inter~anyAGGRESSION. 349 tribes in which crimes of violence are so rare that scarcely any control is needed~ There may be added' a' few other examples. There are the aborigines of, Sunlatra,a simple people who, thrust into the interior by the' Malays, ate de scribed by Marsden as "mild, peaceable, and forbearing" that. is, non-aggressive. There are the Tharus;' inhabiting a retired strip of forest at the foot of the Hinialayas, which af fords them a' refuge from invaders, and who are described as "a peaceful and good-natured race." Flirther;:we :ihave "a specially relevant testilnony given by different authoritiesre specting the Iroquois. In his work, The League-if thelroquois, Morgan says :- ' "It was the boast of the Iroquois that the great object of'their confeder acy was peace-to break up the spirit of perp~tualwarfare,which h&d waste~ the red race from age to age."

And then clear indication of the resultsls c'out£iineddn' the following statement made by the same 'writer"';";"'; "Crimes and offences were so unfrequent under their social :sysvem,that the Iroquois can scarcely be said to have·had a criminal'code." Here, however, the truth which it speciany~cohcerns us to note. is that during states of hostility wliichmake ag-: gression habitual, it acquires a social sanction;'and in so"me cases a divine sanction: there is a pro-ethical sentiment enlisted on its behalf~ Contrarhvise, in the 'cases just referred to, aggressiveness meets with reprobation:~ An ethical sentiment, rightly so-called, produces repugnance fu~ . N or was it otherwise with the lIebrews., After the chronic qntagonisms of nomadic life had been brought to an end by their captivity, and after their sub'seqtleB;t,wa:vsofcon~, quest had ended in a comparatively peacefhl-state, ,the ex pression of altruistic sentiments became" marked.; ...• until, in Leviticus, we see emerging the prinei ple~' often iegarded; as exclusively Christian-" Thou shalt love ":thyneighbour ;'as thyself "-a principle, however, which ,appears to ,have been limited to " the congregation of thechildren·of Israel.~' And 350 THE INDUOTIONS OF ETHIOS.

then in later days by the Essenes, as well as by Ohrist and his apostles, the ethics of amity, extended so as to include enemies, ,vas carried even to the extreme of turning the cheek to the smiteI'. § 129. Into what general induction may these facts be grouped ~ Taken in the mass, the evidence shows, as we might expect, that in proportion as inter-tribal and inter national antagonisms are great and constant, the ideas and feelings belonging to the ethics of enmity predominate; and, conflicting as they do ,vith the ideas and feelings belonging to the ethics of amity, proper to the internal life of a society, they in greater or less degrees suppress these, and fill with aggressions the conduct of man to lnan. J\!Iiscellaneons kinds of hOlnicide, such as were noted at the out\set~infanticide, killing for cannibalism, immolations at funerals, sacrifices to the gods-are characteristic of societies in which warfare is habitual. Those most atrocious of lYlan-eaters,the Fijians, among ,vhom everyone carried his life in his hand, implied their ingrained militancy by their conception of the other ","orld,where their gods" make war, and kill and eat each another," and bear such names as "the 'murderer," "fresh from the cutting up or slaughter,"

&c.; where tt chief arri vingafter death, boasts that he has " gestroyed many towns, and slain many in war;" and ,vhere "men "rho have not slain an enemy" suffer" the most de grading of all punishments." The· Bushmen, exhibiting pride in private murder, pass their lives in ceaseless antagonism with ni~n and beasts around-aggressing and aggressed upon. So, too, the Bedouin tribes instanced as thi.nking any death save one suffered in combat disgraceful, cOlnlnit never-ending aggressions. And the Waganda, the king of whonl sug gested to his page the parricide gladly carried out by him, are soldiers iibtedfor "their warlike character, which tinges the whole of their life and government." . If, froIn the relations as .illustrated in these extreme AGGRESSION. 351 cases, we pass to the relations as illustrated in developing societies, we see that with decrease of external aggressive ness there goes decrease of internal aggressiveness. During the Merovingian period, along with chronic militant ac tivities on large and small scales, occurring even to the extent of ,val'S between towns, perpetual violence charac\ terized the relations of individuals: kings murdered their queens, royal fathers were murdered by their sons, princely brothers nlurdered brothers, while bloodshed and cruelty prevailed everywhere. In the next period the conquests of Charleluagne were accompanied by atrocities large and SIllall. He beheaded 4,000 Saxons in one day, and in flicted death on those who refused baptisrn or ate flesh during Lent. Silnilarlythroughout the Feudal ages, recur ring international fights were accornpanied by perpetual fights among nobles; the chroniclers .. describe little else than.· crimes '; and .the slaughtering of serfs by knights was passed over as a thing not calling for reproach. But as the course of ages and the consolidation of kingdoms brought diminution· of a diffused warfare, and as, by consequence, industrial activities, .with resulting internal co -operation, filled larger spaces in men's Iives,the more unscrupulous forms of aggressiveness canle to be reprobated, while appro bation was given to conduct characterized by regard. for others. And though modern times have seen great wars, yet, since the militant activities have not been all-pervading as in earlier times, the sentiments appropriate to peaceful activities have not been so universally repressed. Moreover, as we else"where sa,v, (Principles qf Sociology, § 573), the brutality of citizens to one another has from time to time increased along with renewed militancy and decreased along with cessation of it; while there have been concomitant mod ifications in the ethical standard.

24 CHAPTER IV. ROBBERY. § 130.' Between physically injuring another, partially or to the death, and injuring him either by taking possession of his body and labour, or of his property, the kinship in nature is obvious. Both direct and indirect injuries are comprehended under the title Aggression; and the second, like the first, might, ,vithout undue straining of words, have been brought within the lilnits of the last chapter. But, as before ilnplied, it has seemed nlore convenient to separate the aggression which nearly always has bloodshed for its concoluitant, frolu the aggression which is cornmonly blood less. Here we have to deal with this last. The extreme form of this last aggression is that which ends in capturing a man and enslaving hiIn. Though to class this under the head of robbery is to do SOlue violence to the name, yet we may reasonably say that to take a luan from himself, and use his powers for other purposes than his OWll, is robbery in the highest degree. Instead of de priving him of some product of past labour voluntarily under taken, it deprives him of the products of future labours ,vhich he is cOlIlpelled to undertake. At any rate, whether rightly to be called robbery or not, it is to be classed as an aggression, if not so grave as that of inflicting death, yet next to it in gravity.