The origin and development of the moral ideas

Among this group of peoples, also, we meet with reverence for the elder brother, for persons of a superior age generally, and, especially, for the aged.

Obedience on the part of the younger to the elder brother is strongly inculcated by Confucianism and Taouism.159 In ancient China the eldest son of the principal wife held so high a position that even his own father had to mourn for him at his death in the selfsame degree in which the son was bound to mourn for his father;160 and in some provinces of Japan the elder brother or sister did not even go to the funeral of the younger.161 In Babylonia the elder brother occupied a privileged position in the family in relation to the younger.162 In one of the Mandæan writings it is said, “Honour your father and your mother and your elder brother as your father.”163 According to the sacred books of the Hindus, “the feet of elder brothers and sisters must be embraced, according to the order of their seniority”;164 “towards a sister of one’s father and of one’s mother, and towards one’s own elder sister, one must behave as towards one’s mother,” though the mother is more venerable than they.165

Again, in ancient Mexico respect was paid not only by children to their parents but by the young to the old.166 Among the Yucatans “the young reverenced much the aged.”167 In China persons of the lowest class who have attained to an unusual age have not infrequently been distinguished by the Emperor,168 and even criminals with grey hairs are treated with regard.169 “Respect for elders,” says Mencius, “is the working of righteousness”;170 and it is said in Thâi Shang that the good man “will respect the old and cherish the young.”171 A Japanese proverb runs, “Regard an old man as thy father.”172 We read in Leviticus, “Thou shalt rise up before the hoary head, and honour the face of the old man, and fear thy God.”173 Veneration for the aged is emphatically inculcated by Islam.174 In the sacred books of India it is represented as a virtue.175 Herodotus states that the Egyptians resembled the Lacedæmonians in the reverence the young men paid to their elders.176 Plato says in his ‘Laws’ that everybody ought to consider that the elder has the precedence of the younger in honour, both among the gods as also among men who would live in security and happiness; wherefore it is a foolish thing and hateful to the gods to see an elder man assaulted by a younger in the city.

Everybody ought to regard a person who is twenty years older than himself, whether male or female, as his father or mother, and to abstain from laying hands on any such person “out of reverence to the gods who preside over birth.”177 Regard for old age lies behind such words as presbyter and the Anglo-Saxon ealdormonn; and all travellers among the Southern Slavs have noticed their extraordinary respect for old people.178