9. HUMAN RIGHTS
70:9.1 Nature confers no rights on man, only life and a world in which to live it. Nature does not even confer the right to live, as might be deduced by considering what would likely happen if an unarmed man met a hungry tiger face to face in the primitive forest. Society’s prime gift to man is security.
70:9.2 ¶ Gradually society asserted its rights and, at the present time, they are:
70:9.3 1. Assurance of food supply.
70:9.4 2. Military defence — security through preparedness.
70:9.5 3. Internal peace preservation — prevention of personal violence and social disorder.
70:9.6 4. Sex control — marriage, the family institution.
70:9.7 5. Property — the right to own.
70:9.8 6. Fostering of individual and group competition.
70:9.9 7. Provision for educating and training youth.
70:9.10 8. Promotion of trade and commerce — industrial development.
70:9.11 9. Improvement of labour conditions and rewards.
70:9.12 10. The guarantee of the freedom of religious practices to the end that all of these other social activities may be exalted by becoming spiritually motivated.
70:9.13 ¶ When rights are old beyond knowledge of origin, they are often called
70:9.14 What may be regarded as right in one age may not be so regarded in another. The survival of large numbers of defectives and degenerates is not because they have any natural right thus to encumber XX century civilization, but simply because the society of the age, the mores, thus decrees.
70:9.15 Few human rights were recognized in the European Middle Ages; then every man belonged to someone else, and rights were only privileges or favours granted by state or church. And the revolt from this error was equally erroneous in that it led to the belief that all men are born equal.
70:9.16 The weak and the inferior have always contended for equal rights; they have always insisted that the state compel the strong and superior to supply their wants and otherwise make good those deficiencies which all too often are the natural result of their own indifference and indolence.
70:9.17 But this equality ideal is the child of civilization; it is not found in nature. Even culture itself demonstrates conclusively the inherent inequality of men by their very unequal capacity therefor. The sudden and nonevolutionary realization of supposed natural equality would quickly throw civilized man back to the crude usages of primitive ages. Society cannot offer equal rights to all, but it can promise to administer the varying rights of each with fairness and equity. It is the business and duty of society to provide the child of nature with a fair and peaceful opportunity to pursue self-maintenance, participate in self-perpetuation, while at the same time enjoying some measure of self-gratification, the sum of all three constituting human happiness.
10. EVOLUTION OF JUSTICE
70:10.1 Natural justice is a man-made theory; it is not a reality. In nature, justice is purely theoretic, wholly a fiction. Nature provides but one kind of justice — inevitable conformity of results to causes.
70:10.2 Justice, as conceived by man, means getting one’s rights and has, therefore, been a matter of progressive evolution. The concept of justice may well be constitutive in a spirit-endowed mind, but it does not spring full-fledgedly into existence on the worlds of space.
70:10.3 Primitive man assigned all phenomena to a person. In case of death the savage asked, not
70:10.4 ¶ In the earliest primitive society public opinion operated directly; officers of law were not needed. There was no privacy in primitive life. A man’s neighbours were responsible for his conduct; therefore their right to pry into his personal affairs. Society was regulated on the theory that the group membership should have an interest in, and some degree of control over, the behaviour of each individual.
70:10.5 It was very early believed that ghosts administered justice through the medicine men and priests; this constituted these orders the first crime detectors and officers of the law. Their early methods of detecting crime consisted in conducting ordeals of poison, fire, and pain. These savage ordeals were nothing more than crude techniques of arbitration; they did not necessarily settle a dispute justly. For example: When poison was administered, if the accused vomited, he was innocent.
70:10.6 The Old Testament records one of these ordeals, a marital guilt test: If a man suspected his wife of being untrue to him, he took her to the priest and stated his suspicions, after which the priest would prepare a concoction consisting of holy water and sweepings from the temple floor. After due ceremony, including threatening curses, the accused wife was made to drink the nasty potion. If she was guilty, “the water that causes the curse shall enter into her and become bitter, and her belly shall swell, and her thighs shall rot, and the woman shall be accursed among her people.” If, by any chance, any woman could quaff this filthy draught and not show symptoms of physical illness, she was acquitted of the charges made by her jealous husband.
70:10.7 These atrocious methods of crime detection were practised by almost all the evolving tribes at one time or another. Duelling is a modern survival of the trial by ordeal.
70:10.8 It is not to be wondered that the Hebrews and other semicivilized tribes practised such primitive techniques of justice administration 3,000 years ago, but it is most amazing that thinking men would subsequently retain such a relic of barbarism within the pages of a collection of sacred writings. Reflective thinking should make it clear that no divine being ever gave mortal man such unfair instructions regarding the detection and adjudication of suspected marital unfaithfulness.
70:10.9 ¶ Society early adopted the paying-back attitude of retaliation: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolving tribes all recognized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance became the aim of primitive life, but religion has since greatly modified these early tribal practices. The teachers of revealed religion have always proclaimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not altogether unlike present-day murders under the pretense of the unwritten law.
70:10.10 Suicide was a common mode of retaliation. If one were unable to avenge himself in life, he died entertaining the belief that, as a ghost, he could return and visit wrath upon his enemy. And since this belief was very general, the threat of suicide on an enemy’s doorstep was usually sufficient to bring him to terms. Primitive man did not hold life very dear; suicide over trifles was common, but the teachings of the Dalamatians greatly lessened this custom, while in more recent times leisure, comforts, religion, and philosophy have united to make life sweeter and more desirable. Hunger strikes are, however, a modern analogue of this old-time method of retaliation.
70:10.11 One of the earliest formulations of advanced tribal law had to do with the taking over of the blood feud as a tribal affair. But strange to relate, even then a man could kill his wife without punishment provided he had fully paid for her. The Eskimos of today, however, still leave the penalty for a crime, even for murder, to be decreed and administered by the family wronged.
70:10.12 Another advance was the imposition of fines for taboo violations, the provision of penalties. These fines constituted the first public revenue. The practice of paying “blood money” also came into vogue as a substitute for blood vengeance. Such damages were usually paid in women or cattle; it was a long time before actual fines, monetary compensation, were assessed as punishment for crime. And since the idea of punishment was essentially compensation, everything, including human life, eventually came to have a price which could be paid as damages. The Hebrews were the first to abolish the practice of paying blood money. Moses taught
