The origin and development of the moral ideas

Why are the blessings and curses of parents supposed to possess such an extraordinary power? One reason is no doubt the mystery of old age and the nearness of death. As appears from several of the cases already referred to, it is not parents only but old people generally that are held capable of giving due effect to their good and evil wishes, and this capacity is believed to increase when life is drawing to its close. The Herero “know really no blessing save that conferred by the father on his death-bed.”254 According to old Teutonic ideas, the curse of a dying person was the strongest of all curses.255 A similar notion prevailed among the ancient Arabs;256 and among the Hebrews the father’s mystic privilege of determining the weal or woe of his children was particularly obvious when his days were manifestly numbered.257 But, at the same time, parental benedictions and imprecations possess a potency of their own owing to the parents’ superior position in the family and the respect in which they are naturally held. The influence which such a superiority has upon the efficacy of curses is well brought out by various facts. According to the Greek notion, the Erinyes avenged wrongs done by younger members of a family to elder ones, even brothers and sisters, but not vice versâ.258 The Arabs of Morocco say that the curse of a husband is as potent as that of a father.

The Tonga Islanders believe that curses have no effect “if the party who curses is considerably lower in rank than the party cursed.”259 Moreover, where the father was invested with sacerdotal functions—as was the case among the ancient nations of culture—his blessings and curses would for that reason also be efficacious in an exceptional degree.260

However, the facts which we have hitherto considered are hardly sufficient to account for the extraordinary development of the paternal authority in the archaic State. Great though it be, the influence which magic and religious beliefs exercise upon the paternal authority is, as we have just seen, largely of a reactive character. A father’s blessings would not be so eagerly sought for, nor would his curses be so greatly feared, if he were a less important personage in the family. So, too, as Sir Henry Maine aptly remarks, the father’s power is older than the practice of worshipping him. “Why should the dead father be worshipped more than any other member of the household unless he was the most prominent—it may be said, the most awful—figure in it during his life?”261 We must assume that there exists some connection between the organisation of the family and the political constitution of the society. At the lower stages of civilisation—though hardly at the very lowest—we frequently find that the clan has attained such an overwhelming importance that only a very limited amount of authority could be claimed by the head of each separate family. But, as will be shown in a following chapter, this was changed when clans and tribes were united into a State. The new State tended to weaken and destroy the clan-system, whereas at the same time the family-tie grew in strength. In early society there seems to be an antagonism between the family and the clan. Where the clan-bond is very strong it encroaches upon the family feeling, and where it is loosened the family gains. Hence Dr.

But whilst in its early days the State strengthened the family by weakening the clan, its later development had a different tendency. When national life grew more intense, when members of separate families drew nearer to one another in pursuit of a common goal, the family again lost in importance. It has been observed that in England and America, where political life is most highly developed, children’s respect for their parents is at a particularly low ebb.263 Other factors also, inherent in progressive civilisation, contributed to the downfall of the paternal power—the extinction of ancestor-worship, the decay of certain superstitious beliefs, the declining influence of religion, and last, but not least, the spread of a keener mutual sympathy throughout the State, which could not tolerate that the liberty of children should be sacrificed to the despotic rule of their fathers.