Ethics. Джон Дьюи

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СКАЧАТЬ age classes, as well as to which of the kin groups, a man of specific group must choose from. The courtship may follow different rules from ours, and the relation of the sexes in certain respects may seem so loose as to shock the student, but the regulation is in many respects stricter than with us, and punishment of its violation often severer. There can be no doubt of the meaning of the control, however mistaken some of its features. Whether the regulations for exogamy, which provide so effectually for avoiding incest, are reinforced by an instinctive element of aversion to sex relations with intimates, is uncertain; in any case, they are enforced by the strongest taboos. Nor does primitive society stop with the negative side. The actual marriage is invested with the social values and religious sanctions which raise the relation to a higher level. Art, in garments and ornament, in dance and epithalamium, lends ideal values. The sacred meal at the encircled hearth secures the participation of the kindred gods.

      (b) Certain Days or Seasons Important for the Industrial Life.—Seed time and harvest, the winter and summer solstices, the return of spring, are of the highest importance to agricultural and pastoral peoples, and are widely observed with solemn rites. Where the rain is the center of anxiety, a whole ritual may arise in connection with it, as among the Zuñi Indians. Ceremonies lasting days, involving the preparation of special symbols of clouds and lightning, and the participation of numerous secret fraternities, constrain the attention of all. Moreover, this constraint of need, working through the conception of what the gods require, enforces some very positive moral attitudes:

      "A Zuñi must speak with one tongue (sincerely) in order to have his prayers received by the gods, and unless his prayers are accepted no rains will come, which means starvation. He must be gentle, and he must speak and act with kindness to all, for the gods care not for those whose lips speak harshly. He must observe continence four days previous to, and four days following, the sending of breath prayers through the spiritual essence of plume offerings, and thus their passions are brought under control." (Mrs. M. C. Stevenson in 23d Report, Bureau of Ethnology.)

      Phases of the moon give other sacred days. Sabbaths which originally are negative—the forbidding of labor—may become later the bearers of positive social and spiritual value. In any case, all these festivals bring the group authority to consciousness, and by their ritual promote the intimate group sympathy and consciousness of a common end.

      (c) War.—War as a special crisis always brings out the significance and importance of certain customs. The deliberations, the magic, the war paint which precede, the obedience compelled by it to chiefs, the extraordinary powers exercised by the chief or heads at such crises, the sense of danger which strains the attention, all insure attention. No carelessness is permitted. Defeat is interpreted as a symbol of divine anger because of a violated law or custom. Victory brings all together to celebrate the glory of the clan and to mourn in common the warriors slain in the common cause. Excellence here may be so conspicuous in its service, or in the admiration it calls out, as to become a general term for what the group approves. So the aretē of the Greeks became their general term, and the Latin virtus, if not so clearly military, was yet largely military in its early coloring. The "spirit of Jehovah," the symbol of divine approval and so of group approval, was believed to be with Samson and Jephthah in their deeds of prowess in Israel's behalf.

      (d) Hospitality.—To the modern man who travels without fear and receives guests as a matter of almost daily practice, it may seem strained to include hospitality along with unusual or critical events. But the ceremonies observed and the importance attached to its rites, show that hospitality was a matter of great significance; its customs were among the most sacred.

      "But as for us," says Ulysses to the Cyclops, "we have lighted here, and come to these thy knees, if perchance they will give us a stranger's gift, or make any present, as is the due of strangers. Nay, lord, have regard to the gods, for we are thy suppliants, and Zeus is the avenger of suppliants and sojourners, Zeus, the god of the stranger, who fareth in the company of reverend strangers."

The duty of hospitality is one of the most widely recognized. Westermarck has brought together a series of maxims from a great variety of races which show this forcibly.[38] Indians, Kalmucks, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Arabs, Africans, Ainos, and other peoples are drawn upon and tell the same story. The stranger is to be respected sacredly. His person must be guarded from insult even if the honor of the daughter of the house must be sacrificed.[39] "Jehovah preserveth the sojourners," and they are grouped with the fatherless and the widow in Israel's law.[40] The Romans had their dii hospitales and the "duties toward a guest were even more stringent than those toward a relative"—primum tutelæ, delude hospiti, deinde clienti, tum cognato, postea affini.[41] "He who has a spark of caution in him," says Plato, "will do his best to pass through life without sinning against the stranger." And there is no doubt that this sanctity of the guest's person was not due to pure kindness. The whole conduct of group life is opposed to a general spirit of consideration for those outside. The word "guest" is akin to hostis, from which comes "hostile." The stranger or the guest was looked upon rather as a being who was specially potent. He was a "live wire." He might be a medium of blessing, or he might be a medium of hurt. But it was highly important to fail in no duty toward him. The definite possibility of entertaining angels unawares might not be always present to consciousness, but there seems reason to believe that the possibility of good luck or bad luck as attending on a visitor was generally believed in. It is also plausible that the importance attached to sharing a meal, or to bodily contact, is based on magical ideas of the way in which blessing or curse may be communicated. To cross a threshold or touch a tent-rope or to eat "salt," gives a sacred claim. In the right of asylum, the refugee takes advantage of his contact with the god. He lays hold of the altar and assumes that the god will protect him. The whole practice of hospitality is thus the converse of the custom of blood revenge. They are alike sacred—or rather the duty of hospitality may protect even the man whom the host is bound to pursue. But, whereas the one makes for group solidarity by acts of exclusive and hostile character, the other tends to set aside temporarily the division between the "we-group" and the "others-group." Under the sanction of religion it keeps open a way of communication which trade and other social interchange will widen. It adds to family and the men's house a powerful agency in maintaining at least the possibility of humaneness and sympathy.

      § 4. VALUES AND DEFECTS OF CUSTOMARY MORALITY

      These have been suggested, in the main, in the description of the nature of custom and its regulation of conduct. We may, however, summarize them as a preparation for the next stage of morality.

      1. The Forming of Standards.—There is a standard, a "good," a "right," which is to some degree rational and to some degree social. We have seen that custom rests in part on rational conceptions of welfare. It is really nothing against this that a large element of luck enters into the idea of welfare. For this means merely that the actual conditions of welfare are not understood. The next generation may be able to point out as equally absurd our present ignorance about health and disease. The members of the group embodied in custom what they thought to be important; they were approving some acts and forbidding or condemning others; they were using the elders, and the wisdom of all the past, in order to govern life. So far, then, they were acting morally. They were also, to a degree, using a rational and social standard when they made custom binding on all, and conceived its origin as immemorial. When further they conceived it as approved by the gods, they gave it all the value they knew how to put into it.

      The standards and valuations of custom are, however, only partly rational. Many customs are irrational; some are injurious. But in them all the habitual is a large, if not the largest, factor. And this is often strong enough to resist any attempt СКАЧАТЬ