Walter Bagehot

In all slave-owning communities--in Rome formerly, and in Virginia yesterday--such was the accepted rule of law; the child kept the condition of the mother, whatever that condition was; nobody inquired as to the father; the law, once for…

But one of the axioms of pre-historic investigation binds us to accept this as the morality of the pre-historic races if we receive that axiom.

It is plain that the wide-spread absence of a characteristic which greatly aids the possessor in the conflicts between race and race probably indicates that the primary race did not possess that quality.

A diffused deficiency in a warlike power is the best attainable evidence that the pre-historic men did not possess that power.' If this axiom be received it is palpably applicable to the marriage-bond of primitive races.

In a Roman family the boys, from the time of their birth, were bred to a domestic despotism, which well prepared them for a subjection in after life to a military discipline, a military drill, and a military despotism.

They were ready to obey their generals because they were compelled to obey their fathers; they centered the world in manhood because as children they were bred in homes where the tradition of passionate valour was steadied by the habit of…

An ill-knit nation which does not recognise paternity as a legal relation, would be conquered like a mob by any other nation which had a vestige or a beginning of the patria potestas.

If, therefore, all the first men had the strict morality of families, they would no more have permitted the rise of SEMI-moral nations anywhere in the world than the Romans would have permitted them to arise in Italy.

They would have conquered, killed, and plundered them before they became nations; and yet semi-moral nations exist all over the world.

For it proves that not only the somewhat-before-history men, but the absolutely first men, could not have had close family instincts, and yet if they were like most though not all of the animals nearest to man they had such instincts.

There is a great story of some African chief who expressed his disgust at adhering to one wife, by saying it was 'like the monkeys.' The semi-brutal ancestors of man, if they existed, had very likely an instinct of constancy which the…

The answer is plain: they could lose it if they had it as an irrational propensity and habit, and not as a moral and rational feeling.

And reason is a force of such infinite vigour--a victory-making agent of such incomparable efficiency--that its continually diminishing valuable instincts will not matter if it grows itself steadily all the while.

The strongest competitor wins in both the cases we are imagining; in the first, a race with intelligent reason, but without blind instinct, beats a race with that instinct but without that reason; in the second, a race with reason and high…

Savages believe that casual omens are a sign of coming events; that some trees are lucky, that some animals are lucky, that some places are lucky, that some indifferent actions--indifferent apparently and indifferent really--are lucky, and…

Nor can a savage well distinguish between a sign of 'luck' or ill-luck, as we should say, and a deity which causes the good or the ill; the indicating precedent and the causing being are to the savage mind much the same; a steadiness of…

They are playing a game--the game of life--with no knowledge of its rules.

They have not an idea of the laws of nature; if they want to cure a man, they have no conception at all of true scientific remedies.

The most useful modern remedies were often discovered in this bare, empirical way.

What could be more improbable--at least, for what could a pre-historic man have less given a good reason--than that some mineral springs should stop rheumatic pains, or mineral springs make wounds heal quickly?

And yet the chance knowledge of the marvellous effect of gifted springs is probably as ancient as any sound knowledge as to medicine whatever.

The chance which happily directed men in this one case, misdirected them in a thousand cases.

Ancient medicine is equally unreasonable: as late down as the Middle Ages it was full of superstitions founded on mere luck.

The nature of minds which are deeply engaged in watching events of which they do not know the reason, is to single out some fabulous accompaniment or some wonderful series of good luck or bad luck, and to dread ever after that…

Gamblers to this day are, with respect to the chance part of their game, in much the same plight as savages with respect to the main events of their whole lives.