IX.

FAILURE OF PRIMEVAL SOCIETY.

Human

nature.

THE first experiment of human society ended in disaster. Such is the written testimony such the not unreasonable inference to be drawn from what we know of human nature, when left comparatively to its own suggestion and direction. Education is a plodding process. Human wisdom is a thing of slow growth, and in the most favorable conditions has but a partial following.

The boy left to choose his own companions and follow his own inclinations goes to ruin. The patient watchfulness of parents and faithfulness of teachers do not always suffice to secure a different result.

The infancy of the race was much the same in many points as that of the individual, and must be accordingly considered.

Left first to unguided inclination, it showed a facility in evil growth not manifested in its tendency toward better things. The savage outran

Growth of evil.

the saintly qualities in the earliest development of the race; in the first changes from the barbarian level upon which, as shown in a preceding lecture, society began. Nor was this fact an abnormal one in human life. All along the line of history it appears that the evil in man, if not most potent, has shown itself of quickest growth.

How many of the discoveries and inventions of men were made to serve some evil purpose before they were turned to good account. The discovery of iron, with the method of reducing it, opens perhaps the widest field of useful industry in the whole history of the world. Strike that from the sum of human achievement, and nine tenths of all our machinery and useful implements goes with it. And yet the sword was shapen before the ploughshare, and men learned more deadly ways of fighting before they learned better methods of cultivating the soil, or of appropriating human skill and labor. And even to this day it depends entirely upon the use we make of any new discovery, whether it prove a blessing or a curse.

These reflections are in some sense preparatory to what we shall have to say in this discourse, of the flood, by which primitive society came to its disastrous end. To make our way clear we must consider the condition to which society had

actually come, at the time of this extraordinary

event.

Both poetry and tradition are given to representing the early existence of man as a Romance golden age of purity and innocence-of prosperity and peace. The story of Eden,

of

history.

as interpreted in the lecture on man, showed him as having a golden day of innocence to begin with, but falling early into disobedience and rapidly into strife. And, alas, for poetry and imagination-for tradition and romance, the earliest traces we find in fossil, of man upon the earth, are associated with implements of war; as if one of the first things men learned to do was to fall into deadly quarrels, and then fight them out.

But this need not surprise us when we are told that the second man, whose name comes Early down to us, was a fratricide. The story condition of that the fossils tell us give an air of plausibility as well as probability to this account.

society.

And we might readily conceive without any definite record, to what condition early society would be likely to come, with such a beginning as Adam made, and such a following as Cain; and if we choose to trace the matter farther, we shall find an indication in the wild song of vengeance addressed to his wives.

and defiance that Lamech

We are not entirely unprepared, after this re

view, for the statement that "the wickedness of man was great, and the earth was filled with violence." Humanity seems to have started on downward grade.

Natural depravity.

But is human nature, then, constitutionally depraved to such extent that the evil inevitably overbalances the good? No: but the evil is of far the quicker growth. Plant a garden, and leave it to itself, or without careful husbandry, and the weeds will choke out all the better plants. Recalling an illustration used before, the boy left to himself develops a readier affinity for evil than for good. A man may sink to the level of the savage more easily than he can rise to that of the philosopher or the saint. A youth may make his way to profligacy in far less time than he can fit himself for important and useful service in the world. And the same reasoning, we repeat, will apply with equal force to men in the combinations of social life. Society but expresses the sum of the influence and tendencies of the individuals composing it.

On this point we quote the substance of a striking paragraph from Dr. Hedge. The first society, committed to undisciplined instincts and native passion, without education, without experi ence, without ideals or examples before them, and with no authority but brute force, wo almost in

evitably fail for lack of moral resources; for moral ideas, and therefore moral safeguards and defences, are of slower growth.

Primeval

society.

Consider the situation of that primeval society. We may easily conceive, from what we know of human nature, how soon some sort of ambition or selfish desire would spring up among men. Ambition would breed jealousy; jealousy revenge; revenge violence and war. And this course of development of human passion would be inevitable, till men had learned to think soberly, to reason rightly, and to trace with some sort of logical sequence, their acts to their causes on the one hand, and to their consequences on the other. It seems hardly strange at all, therefore, that man should have found himself literally swamped in the slough of his own misguided passions, and that the first attempt of men to live in some sort of harmony, and with some community of interests, should have proved a signal failure.

The word

ought.

An eloquent author has said: "Let the word ought' be stricken from our language, with all that it implies, and civilization would be dust in a day." And one chief advantage that society has now, over that of the olden time, is that man has learned to say, "I ought," and to acknowledge and regard his neighbor's rights equally with his own.