The origin and development of the moral ideas

The Sibuyaus, a tribe belonging to the Sea Dyaks, “are of opinion that an unmarried girl proving with child must be offensive to the superior powers, who, instead of always chastising the individual, punish the tribe by misfortunes happening to its members. They, therefore, on the discovery of the pregnancy fine the lovers, and sacrifice a pig to propitiate offended Heaven, and to avert that sickness or those misfortunes that might otherwise follow; and they inflict heavy mulcts for every one who may have suffered from any severe accident, or who may have been drowned within a month before the religious atonement was made.”140 According to Chinese beliefs, whole kingdoms are punished for the conduct of their rulers by spirits who act as avengers with orders or approval from the Tao, or Heaven.141 Prevalent opinion in China, continuously inspired anew by literature of all times and ages, further admits that spiritual vengeance may come down upon the culprit’s offspring in the form of disease or death.142 When a maimed or deformed child is born the Japanese say that its parents or ancestors must have committed some great sin.143 The Vedic people ask Varuna to forgive the wrongs committed by their fathers.144 Says the poet:—“What we ourselves have sinned in mercy pardon; my own misdeeds do thou, O god, take from me, and for another’s sin let me not suffer.”145 According to the ancient Greek theory of divine retribution, the community has to suffer for the sins of some of its members, children for the sins of their fathers.146 Hesiod says that often a whole town is punished

with famine, pestilence, barrenness of its women, or loss of its army or vessels for the misdeeds of a single individual.147 Crœsus atoned by the forfeiture of his kingdom for the crime of Gyges, his fifth ancestor, who had murdered his master and usurped his throne.148 Cytissorus brought down the anger of gods upon his descendants by rescuing Athamas, whom the Achaians intended to offer up as an expiatory sacrifice on behalf of their country.149 When hearing of the death of his wife, Theseus exclaims, “This must be a heaven-sent calamity in consequence of the sins of an ancestor, which from some remote source I am bringing on myself.”150 According to Hebrew notions, sin affects the nation through the individual and entails guilt on succeeding generations.151 The anger of the Lord is kindled against the children of Israel on account of Achan’s sin.152 The sin of the sons of Eli is visited on his whole house from generation to generation.153 Because Saul has slain the Gibeonites, the Lord sends, in the days of David, a three years’ famine, which ceases only when seven of Saul’s sons are hanged.154 The sins of Manasseh are expiated even by the better generation under Josiah.155 The notion of a jealous God who visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Him,156 is also frequently met with in the Old Testament Apocrypha. “The inheritance of sinners’ children shall perish, and their posterity shall have a perpetual reproach.”157 “The seed of an unrighteous bed shall be rooted out.”158 The same idea has survived

among Christian peoples. It was referred to in Canon Law as a principle to be imitated by human justice,159 and by Innocent III. in justification of a bull which authorised the confiscation of the goods of heretics.160 Up to quite recent times it was a common belief in Scotland that the punishment of the cruelty, oppression, or misconduct of an individual descended as a curse on his children to the third and fourth generation. It was not confined to the common people; “all ranks were influenced by it; and many believed that if the curse did not fall upon the first or second generation it would inevitably descend upon the succeeding.”161 In the dogma that the whole human race is condemned on account of the sin of its first parents, the doctrine of collective responsibility has reached its pitch.