The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

10 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

that the sacredness of the marriage tie or of family life, as we
understand it, came to be recognised. Among certain tribes of
Esquimaux there is still promiscuous intercourse between the
[008] two sexes; and wherever Mohammedanism extends, polygamy,
with its attendant degradation of the woman, is permitted. On the
other hand, there are still tribes and races in which polyandry is
practised, and the child has consequently no father whom it can
rightfully call its own. Until the recent conversion of the Fijians
to Christianity, it was considered a filial duty for the sons to
kill and devour their parents when they had become too old for
work; and in the royal family of Egypt, as among the Ptolemies
who entered on its heritage, the brother was compelled by law
and custom to marry his sister. Family morality, in fact, if I may
use such an expression, has been slower in its development than
communal morality: it was in the community and in the social
relations of men to one another that the ethical sense was first
developed, and it was from the community that the newly-won
code of morals was transferred to the family. Man recognised
that he was a moral agent in his dealings with the community to
which he belonged, long before he recognised it as an individual.
Religion, however, has an inverse history. It starts from the
individual, it is extended to the community. The individual must
have a sense of a power outside himself, whom he is called
upon to worship or propitiate, before he can rise to the idea of
tribal gods. The fetish can be adored, the ancestor addressed in
prayer, before the family has become the tribe, or promiscuous
intercourse has passed into polygamy.
The association of morality and religion, therefore, is not only
not a necessity, but it is of comparatively late origin in the history
of mankind. Indeed, the union of the two is by no means complete
even yet. Orthodox Christianity still maintains that correctness
of belief is at least as important as correctness of behaviour, and
[009] it is not so long ago that men were punished and done to death,
not for immoral conduct, but for refusing to accept some dogma