VII.
THE FUNCTION OF LAW IN SOCIETY.
Spencer is not the only one who fell into these errors. Remaining true to the teaching of Hobbes, the philosophers of the nineteenth century persisted in looking at primitive men as wild beasts living in small isolated families and fighting one another for their food and their womenfolk, till a kindly authority settled in their midst in order to enforce peace. Even a naturalist like Huxley went on repeating the same assertion as Hobbes, and wrote (in 1885) that in the beginning men lived by fighting "one against all," until, thanks to a few superior beings, "the first society was founded." (See his article, "The Struggle for Existence: a Programme.") Thus, even a learned Darwinian like Huxley had no idea that society, far from having been created by man, existed among animals long before his appearance on the earth. Such is the force of an established prejudice.
If we endeavour to trace the history of this prejudice, we soon find that it derived its origin from religion and churches. The secret societies of wizards, rain-makers (shamans—half sorcerers and half priests), later on, the Assyrian and Egyptian priests, and still later on, the Christian priests, always endeavoured to persuade man that "the world is steeped in sin"; that only the kindly intervention of the shaman, the wizard, the saint, and the priest hinders the powers of evil from taking possession of man; that they alone can induce an angry divinity not to crush man by sin and then punish him for his ill deeds.
Primitive Christianity vainly endeavoured to weaken this prejudice as regards priests; but the Christian Church, taking a stand on the words of the Gospels concerning "eternal fire," only strengthened it. The idea itself of God the Son coming to die on earth, in order to redeem the sins of humanity, confirmed that way of thinking. And this is just what permitted the "Holy Inquisition" to subject their victims to the most atrocious tortures and to grill them on a slow fire: thus they were offered a chance of repentance and salvation from eternal suffering. Moreover, it was not only the Roman Catholic Church which
