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Ethics.

has a very different meaning, according as we look at self exclusive, or inclusive, of other men's wellbeing. The most enlarged benevolence, in one view, is but an aspect of self. Adam Smith, in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, laid down as the criterion of right, the "sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed spectator." But although this theory acknowledges our bias in the capacity of agents, it presumes us to be infallible when acting as judges or critics, a position by no means self-evident. The spectator has his own failings as well as the actor, unless specially qualified by nature and education to play the part of a moral judge. But to pass on. Jeremy Bentham is known as the most distinguished propounder of the principle of utility as the basis of morals, a principle explained by him as in contrast, first to asceticism, and next to "sympathy and antipathy," by which he meant to describe all those systems, such as the moral sense theory, that are grounded in internal feeling, instead of a regard to outward consequences. In opposing utility to asceticism, he intended to imply that there was no merit attaching to self-denial as such, and that the infliction of pain, or the surrender of pleasure, could only be justified by being the means of procuring a greater amount of happiness than was lost. Paley also repudiated the doctrine of a moral sense, and held that virtue is "the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." The utilitarian theory of Bentham, with various modifications, has been defended and expounded by James Mill, in his Analysis of the Human Mind, and in his anonymous Fragment on Mackintosh; by John Austin, in his Province of Jurisprudence Determined; and by Mr. John Stuart Mill in his Dissertatione and Discussions, and in Fraser's Magazine (Oct. to Dec., 1861).

The great controversy may be said to lie between the adherents of the moral sense in some form or other, and those that deny both the existence of a separate faculty in the mind for perceiving moral distinctions, and the validity of the determinations of the individual conscience; maintaining that morality ought to be founded on a regard to the well-being of mankind, and that exclusively; and that rules of morality grounded on any other motives are indefensible. In short, the question is, Is morality an intuition of the mind, or is it, like the government of the state, a positive institution, on which different societies may differ, and which may be set up or abrogated at the pleasure of the society?

The theory of intuitive morality was vigorously assailed by Locke in his Essay on the Understanding (book i. chap. 3); and we may venture to say that his objections to what he called "innate practical principles" have never been answered. These objections have been given in a condensed form by Paley (Moral Philosophy, book i.). Locke urged that, in point of fact, there are no principles universally received among men; that moral rules require a reason to be given for them, which ought not to be necessary, if they are innate; that virtue is generally approved of, not because innate, but because profitable; that innumerable enormities have been practiced in various countries without even causing remorse; that the moral rules of some nations are flatly contradicted by others; that no one has ever been able to tell what the innate rules are; that we do not find children possessed of any moral rules, etc. It has been attempted to reply to the objection, founded on the great variety and opposition of moral rules in different places and times, by saying that although the substance of the moral codes differone part of the world being monogamous and chaste, while other nations allow promiscuous intercourse of the sexes-all agree in enjoining some moral rules; nowhere is there an absence of social and moral obligations. But this is to depart from the original question, which was to assign the standard of morals, the criterion for determining which of two opposite courses-monogamy or polygamy-is the correct or moral course. The intuitive moralists say that human nature is endowed with an instinct which at once approves the right and disapproves of the wrong, and that we need go no further than our own conscience to settle the point. Now, when the existence of contradictory consciences is pointed out, it is not to the purpose to say that these are still consciences, and indicate something as obligatory; this all admit: what we desire is to determine which we are to follow.

Dr. Whewell, in his Elements of Morality, has proposed a way out of this serious difficulty by setting up a supreme or standard conscience, by which the individual conscience may be squared and corrected; but he has not told us who are the men whose conscience is the standard; it being obvious that the human race, as a whole, do not recognize any such, although each separate community might consent to take some of its most estimable citizens, or the interpreters of its religious code, as models to conform to.

The following is one view of the nature and origin of our moral principles which would seem free from the grave objections above alluded to. If we set aside for the present the question as to the proper standard of morals, the criterion that we should consider the right criterion, if we had to enact a code of morals for the first time, and if we look at the moral principles that have prevailed in different nations and times, we shall find that they have been dictated from two distinct kinds of motives. The one is utility, in the sense of the common safety of men living in society. The prohibitions against manslaying, theft, breach of bargain, rebellion, are necessary, wherever men have formed themselves into communities; and it is the agreement in such matters as these although subject still to very great varieties-that makes up the amount of

Ethics.

uniformity actually observed in the moral codes of nations. If the society did not agree to protect life and property, by punishing the murderer and the thief, nothing would be gained by coming under the sway of government, and human beings would not be got to associate themselves in tribes or nations. The common end gives a common character to the means, without supposing a special instinct to suggest that stealing is wrong. But, in the second place, there have been, in the moral codes of all countries, prohibitions not connected with any public utility, but prompted by strong sentimental likings or aversions, which have acquired the force of law, and are made the foundation of compulsory enactments. Of this kind is the antipathy of the Jew and the Mohammedan to the pig, the Hindoo repugnance to animal food generally, and the usages of a merely ceremonial kind prevailing among many nations, which are as stringently enforced by law and public opinion as the sacredness of life and property. For a woman, among the Mussulmans, to expose her face in public, is as great an offense as going naked would be with us; while, among savage tribes, in warm climates, where clothing is little required, it is no shame to expose the whole person. For these practices, no reason can be given; the public sentiment has determined some things to be right and others wrong, without reference to any public or private utility; and it is in these enactments, founded on liking or disliking, that nations have differed most widely, the difference often amounting to contrariety. The ancient Greeks held it as a sacred obligation to drink wine in honor of Dionysus (Bacchus); the Nazarenes among the Jews and the Mohammedans entertained an opposite view. A legislator for the North American Indians might prohibit alcoholic liquors on the ground of public utility, the natives not being able to control themselves under stimulants; but the prohibition of wine in those other instances is probably a species of asceticism, or an aversion to human pleasures as such, which belongs to the domain of sentiment, and not to the consideration of utility.

Looking at the many capricious injunctions that owe their origin to fancies such as these, it may be doubted whether the human race can ever gain anything by departing from the principle of utility as the sole criterion of good morality; and there is an increasing tendency to recognize the supremacy of this principle both in morals and in legislation. Justice, truth, purity, although sometimes viewed sentimentally, or as being ends themselves, are in men's practice looked upon more and more as of the nature of means, the promotion of human happiness being the end.

A great number of the existing moral rules can be traced to a distinct historical origin, proving still more decisively that they are not the suggestions of a universal instinct of the human mind. The Mohammedan code of morals came from Mohammed; Confucius was the moral legislator of one large section of the Chinese. The making of the marriage tie irrevocable in Christendom was an exercise of papal authority in the 13th c., and has since been repealed in some Protestant countries, although retained in Catholic states. See DIVORCE, MARRIAGE. The sentiment which forbids the holding of human beings as slaves is chiefly the growth of the last two or three centuries.

Although the doctrine of intuitive morality is, in this view, denied, it is still admitted that there is such a power in the mind as conscience, which warns us when we are doing wrong, and is to a certain extent a force to make us do right. But it cannot be shown that we are born with any such principle, combining both enlightenment and motive power. Conscience is a growth. There are in our constitution certain primitive impulses that so far coincide with what is our duty, and therefore contribute to the formation of the conscience; these are principally self-preservation, or a regard to ourselves, and sympathy, or a regard to others. There are many duties that we are prompted to for our own interest, such as telling the truth, in order that people may confide in us; obeying the laws, to avoid punishment, etc. But we cannot perform all our social duties if we look merely to ourselves. We must, in addition to prudence, have a source of disinterested action, inducing us both to avoid injuring our fellowbeings in the promotion of our own selfishness, and occasionally to sacrifice ourselves for the sake of others. Such a principle exists in our mental nature, although not of equal strength in all minds. Being provided with these two primitive springs of action, we are susceptible of being educated to the sense of moral obligation. The child is first taught obedience by penalties, and is made to associate pain with forbidden actions. This is the germ of conscience. Habits of avoiding what is prohibited under penalties are gradually formed, and the sense of authority and law is thereby acquired. When the powers of observation and reason come to maturity, the individual sees why the restrictions of duty have been imposed, and is then ready of his own accord, and apart from the fear of punishment, to behave rightly. The conscience, grounded on fear, then becomes the conscience grounded on spontaneous approval.

Conscience thus follows, and does not precede, the experience of human authority. Authority, sanctioned by punishment, is the type and the starting-point, even when the conscience takes an independent flight, and adopts rules for itself different from those that entered into its education. The great mass of human beings have nothing more than the slavish conscience, or the habits imparted by the exercise of the parental and public authority, which shows what is the most natural foundation of moral sentiment. The persons that judge of right for themselves, instead of implicitly receiving the maxims peculiar to the society where they grow up, are so few as to be

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the exception everywhere; their conscience does not prove what is the usual endowment of human nature in this respect.

Inquiries of the nature of those above sketched, proceed upon the assumption that moral distinctions have their ground in the constitution of the world and of man's nature, and may be discovered by the exercise of human reason, as the other laws of the universe are. But practically, the rules of morality have, in almost all communities, been more or less dependent upon a belief in divine laws supernaturally revealed.

ETHIOPIA, the Biblical Kush. Originally, all the nations inhabiting the southern part of the globe, as known to the ancients; or rather, all men of dark-brown or black color, were called Ethiopians (Gr. aithō-ops, sunburned). Later, this name was given more particularly to the inhabitants of the countries s. of Libya and Egypt, or the upper Nile, extending from 10° to 25° n. lat., 45° to 58° e. long.-the present Nubia, Sennaar, Kordofan, Abyssinia. The accounts which the ancients have left us with respect to this people are, even where they are not of an entirely fabulous nature, extremely scanty and untrustworthy, as both Greeks and Romans never got beyond Napata, 19° n. lat. We will just mention that from the Homeric age down to Ptolemy-who is somewhat better informed—these regions were peopled by Pygmies, Troglodytes (dwellers in caverns), Blemmyes (hideous men), Macrobii (long-lived men), etc., besides being divided into the land of cinnamon, myrrh, of elephant-eaters, fish-eaters, tortoise-eaters, serpenteaters, etc. The only portion of ancient records which does contain something akin to historical accounts, is that which refers to Mero, an island formed by the rivers Astaphus and Astaboras, tributaries of the Nile. There stood, from times immemorial, an oracle of Jupiter Ammon. This, and the central portion of the island, together with the extraordinary fertility of its soil, the abundance of animals, metals, etc., made it not only the chief place of resort for all the inhabitants of the adjacent parts, especially the numerous nomad tribes, but also the emporium for India, Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, and Carthage. Thus it grew so rapidly, that about 1000 B.C. it counted among the most powerful states of the ancient world; and about 760, having ever since Sesostris been tributary to Egypt, it succeeded, under Sabacus, in shaking off the Egyptian yoke, and continued, in its turn, to hold Egypt for about sixty years. During the reign of Psammetichus, 240,000 Egyptians settled in Meroe, which, the greater part of the immigrants being artisans, traders, etc., rose still higher. Many new cities were built, and the state was in the most flourishing condition, when it was conquered by Cambyses, about 530 B.C. He fortified the capital town, and called it Meroë. After the destruction of Thebes by Cambyses, most of the inhabitants of that city took refuge there, and made the country still more Egyptian. Ergamanes transformed its theocracy into a military monarchy, in the 3d century. Under Augustus, Meroë was con quered, and a queen Candace is mentioned as his vassal. Under Nero, nothing but ruins marked the place of this once powerful and highly civilized state. Up to this day, remnants of mighty buildings, covered with sculptures-representations of priestly ceremonies, battles, etc.-and half-defaced inscriptions hewn in rocks, besides rows of broken sphinxes and colossi, are frequently met with in those parts.

Their religion, art, form of government, and civilization, generally being-in their chief features at least-so identical with the Egyptian as to have given rise to the question, which of the two nations imparted their knowledge to the other, we will refer the reader for these points to the article EGYPT; and will proceed now to say a few words on the history of the descendants of the ancient Ethiopians-the inhabitants of the present Habesch, or Abyssinia-as we derive it from their poor and scanty native chronicles.

According to these, the son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba (Makeda as they, Balkis as the Arabian historians call her), named Menilehek, was the first king of the Ethiopians. Few kings' names occur up to the time of Christ, when Bazen occupied the throne. The missionary Frumentius (330) found two brothers (Christians) reigningAbreha and Azbeha. During the time of the Greek emperor Justin (522), king Elezbaas destroyed the state of the Homerites in Asia, in order to revenge their persecutions of Christians; and was canonized. From 960 to 1300, another dynasty, the Zagoean, held the chief power, all the members of the Solomonic dynasty, save one, having been murdered by Esal, who made her son king. In 1300, Ikon-Amlak, a descendant of this one scion of the house of David, who had fled to Sheba, regained possession of the country, and made Sheba, instead of Axum, the seat of government. To this day, his family rules the country. Frequent revolutions within, more especially brought about by the religious squabbles imported by the Portuguese towards the end of the 15th c., and a host of enemies all around-the most formidable of whom were wild nomad tribes of the desert-forced the kings more than once to apply for foreign help; amongst others, that of the Turks in 1508; and the affairs of the modern state have at all times been anything but prosperous. Special mention is made of king Zara-Jakob (Constantine), 1434-68, who sent an embassy to the church-council at Florence; of Aznaf-Saged (Claudius), 1540-59, during whose reign Christoph. de Gama from Portugal lived in E., and made common cause with him against his enemies. This king also wrote a confession of faith, in which he defended his church both against Jesuits and the charge

Ethiopia.

of leaning towards Judaism. Socinios (1605-32) openly professed Roman views; but his son Facilides soon expelled the Jesuits and their friends from the country, and put an end to the Roman influence. Among these friends was also Abba Gregorius, later the friend of the great Ethiopologist Ludolf, who, having made his acquaintance at Rome, induced him to migrate to Gotha; where he also remained until his death. Under Joas (1753-69), the Gallas, a nomad tribe, hitherto the mightiest and most dangerous enemies of the Ethiopians, not only gained admission to all the offices in the state, but acquired almost absolute power. One of them (Susul Michael), holding the place of râsh, or prime minister and chief commander of the troops, proved a very great friend to Bruce, to whom he also intrusted the government of a province. The several provinces remained practically independent, each chief striving to subdue his neighbors, till in 1855, the chieftain afterwards known as Theodore (q.v.) attained supremacy. See also art. ABYSSINIA. The king resided but rarely in the city, and for the most part remained with his soldiers in the camp. His official name was Negus, or in full, Negus Nagass Za-itjopja, king of the kings of Ethiopia-alluding to the chiefs of the towns and provinces. The soldiers receive no pay, but rely on plunder; and have proved themselves able to fight bravely.

Emigrants, as were beyond doubt the earliest settlers in E., from the other side of the Arabian isthmus, it is but natural that the structure of their language, as well as that of their own bodies, should bear traces of their Shemitic origin. The reason of this emigration is contained in the very name of this language, which is called Geezfree, affording a most striking parallel to the designation Franc-French. Free places of habitation were what they came in search of. The name Ethiopian, or, as they call it, Ithiopjawan, they adopted from the Greeks at a very late period. This their oldest language, Leshana Geez, was suppressed by a royal decree of Ïkon-Amlak, in the 14th c., and the Amharic adopted as the court language. Ever since, it has, with exception of the province of Tigre, where it is still spoken (with slight idiomatic changes), remained the Leshana Mazhaf, the language of books and of the church. It is exclusively used in writing, even of ordinary letters, and the educated alone understand it. Its general structure comes as close to that of the Arabic as a dialect can and must. A great many of its words are still classical Arabic; others resemble more the Hebrew and its two Chaldee dialects, the Aramaic and Syriac; others, again, belong to African dialects; and many, as the names of the months, are Greek. It has 26 letters, 22 of which bear the ancient Shemitic stamp, and exhibit the greatest likeness to the Phenician, the common original alphabet; and seven vowels, including a very short e, which sounds precisely like the Hebrew Schewa. These vowels are represented by little hooks, and remain inseparably attached to their respective letters; and as the Geez, unlike all its sister-languages, is never written without vowels, the alphabet becomes a syllabary with 182 characters. Another difference exists in its being written from left to right-a circumstance from which some have concluded that the Greeks introduced writing in E.; forgetting, in the first place, that Greek itself was frequently written from right to left, and that Zend, certain cuneiferms, hieroglyphs, etc., are likewise written from left to right. We cannot enter here into the grammatical minutiæ of the language; we will only mention that out of the ten conjugations, eight are Arabic; that there is a double infinitive, but no participle and no dual; that the formation of the so-called plural, and of declension generally, point to that very remote period when the Hebrew and Arabic made use of the same grammatical processes. There are no diacritical marks employed in writing; the letters are not combined, and the words are separated by two dots.

Although there can be no doubt of the existence of a rich literature in a flourishing country like E. anterior to Christ, still, owing both to frequent internal convulsions, and the misguided zeal of the early Christian missionaries, who here and elsewhere considered it their first duty to destroy all the ancient records of which they could get hold, nothing but a few half-erased inscriptions have survived. The earliest existing document of post-Christian literature is a complete translation of the Bible, probably by Frumentius. See FRUMENTIUS. The Old Testament, probably a translation from the Alexandrine version of the LXX., consists of four parts: 1, the Law or Octateuchos (five books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, Ruth); 2, Kings; 3, Solomon; 4, Prophets, and two books of the Maccabees. The New Testament consists of-1, Gospels; 2, Acts; 3, Paulus; 4, Apostolus. A very peculiar book, Henoch, belongs also to the literature of the Old Testament. See ENOCH, Book of. The New Testament comprises likewise another book, Senodas, containing the pseudo-Clementine or apostolical constitutions. The Ethiopians have a liturgy (Kanon Kedaso-Holy Kanon) and a symbolico-dogmatical work (Haimanota Abau-Belief of the Fathers), containing portions of homilies of the Greek fathers, Athanasius, Basil the Great, Chrysostom, Cyril, Gregory of Nyssa and Nazianzen. Besides these, they have martyrologies, called Synaxar. They employ in this their sacred literature a peculiar kind of rhythm without a distinct meter. Any number of rhyming lines forms a stanza, without reference to the number of words constituting the verse, or of verses constituting the stanza. They also use certain phrases as a refrain-not unlike the manner of the medieval Hebrew Pizmon. See LITURGY, JEWISH. As to general literature, they have neither a written book of laws, nor a grammar of their own language, nor, in fact, anything worth mentioning, except a Chronicle of Axum and Chronicles of Abyssinia. They are very fond, however, of riddles, wise saws, and

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the like, so fascinating to the eastern mind. They have a dictionary, but most of its explanations and translations are utterly wrong. No wonder the learned in Europe should have been sorely puzzled by such a language, and that they should, after long consideration, have pronounced it to be either Chaldee" or "Indian," while Bruce held it to be the language of Adam and Eve. Potgen, a Cologne church-provost, hap pening to be at Rome at the beginning of the 16th c., there made the acquaintance of native Ethiopians, and became the first to enlighten the world on the nature of this occult language. After him came the Carmelite Jacob Marianus Victorius, from Reate, who wrote Institutiones Lingua Chaldææ S. Ethiop. (Rome, 1548), an entirely worthless book; then Wemmers, who in 1683 published an Ethiopian grammar and dictionary. The principal investigator, however, is Hiob Ludolf from Gotha, who, aided by the Abba Gregorius, before mentioned, and supported by his own extraordinary linguistic talents and indomitable energy, acquired such a power over this language, that notwithstanding the number of eminent Orientalists, such as Platt, Lawrence, Dorn, Hupfeld, Hoffmann, Roediger, Ewald, Isenberg, Blumenbach, etc., who have since worked in this field, his books, as re-edited by Dillmann, still hold the first place. It is hardly necessary to add, that the Ethiopian is one of the most important and indispensable languages to the Shemitic scholar, containing as it does a great many words and forms of a date anterior to the separation of the different Shemitic dialects. Among the most important Ethiopian books printed in Europe are the Psalms, edited with a Latin translation by Ludolf (Frankfort, 1701); the New Testament, in two volumes (Rome, 1548); the book of Henoch (Lond. 1840); Ascensio Isaia Vatis, with a Latin translation by Lawrence (Oxford, 1819); Didascalia, or apostolical constitution of the Abyssinian church (Lond., 1834). Good treatises are Dillmann's Grammar of Ethiopic (Leip., 1857); Prætorius' Grammar (Halle, 1871); Schreiber, Manuel de la langue Tigraï (Vienna, 1887). Since the English expedition to Abyssinia, the British museum possesses a larger number of Ethiopic MSS. than any other library.

ETHIOPS, or 'THIOPS (Gr. aithō, I burn, and ops, countenance; being of a black or burned countenance), is a term applied by the ancient chemists to certain oxides and sulphides of the metals which possessed a dull, dingy, or black appearance. Thus, ethiops martialis was the mixture of protoxide and peroxide of iron, known as the black oxide; ethiops mineral, or ethiops narcoticus, the black-gray sulphuret of mercury procured by triturating in a mortar a mixture of mercury and sulphur; and ethiops per se, was obtained by agitating commercial mercury for weeks or months, when the oxygen of the air slowly formed the black oxide of mercury.

ETHMOID BONE, THE (so called from ethmos, a sieve), is one of the eight bones which collectively form the cavity of the cranium. It is of a somewhat cubical form, and is situated between the two orbits of the eye, at the root of the nose. Its upper surface is perforated by a number of small openings (whence its name), through which the filaments of the olfactory nerve pass downwards from the interior of the skull to the seat of the sense of smell, in the upper part of the nose. It consists of a perpendicular central plate or lamella, which articulates with the vomer and with the central fibro-cartilage, and thus assists in forming the septum or partition between the two nostrils. The lateral masses present a very complicated arrangement, and are so planned as to give in a small space a very large amount of surface, on which the filaments of the olfactory nerve are spread. In comparative anatomy, we find a direct ratio between the development of these masses and the acuteness of the sense of smel' See NOSE AND THE SENSE OF SMELL.

ETHNOGRAPHY, a term closely allied to ethnology (q.v.). Ethnography embraces the details, and ethnology the rational exposition, of the human aggregates and organizations known as hordes, clans, tribes, and nations, especially in the earlier, the savage, and barbarous stages of their progress. Both belong to the general science of anthropology (q.v.), or the natural history of mankind, being related to it as parts to a whole. Ethnography and ethnology, indeed, run up into anthropology as anthropology does into zoology, and zoology into biology. No very sharp line can be drawn between these two sciences themselves, their differences being mainly those between the particular and the general, between the orderly collection of local facts, and the principles according to which they may be grouped and interpreted. Ethnographists deal with particular tribes, and with particular institutions and particular customs prevailing among the several peoples of the world, and especially among so-called savages. Ethnologists bring simultaneously under review superstitions, legends, customs, and institutions which, though scattered in distant regions of the earth, have some common basis or significance. Ethnography and ethnology run as easily one into another as the two sections of general anthropology, viz. 1, anthropology proper, as expounded by anatomists and physiolo gists, who deal with the different races of men, their elements, modifications, and possi ble origin; and, 2, demography, which, as constituted by the researches of Quetelet and his friends and disciples, as Farr, Galton, Guillard, and Bertillon, treats of the statistics of health and disease, of the physical, intellectual, physiological, and economical aspects of births, marriages, and mortality. Ethnography, ethnology, and anthropology are interwoven with philology, jurisprudence, archaeology, geography, and the various branches of history. A fact may require to be investigated successively by linguists,

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