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Only in the very extreme cases of our civilization can we find anything that covers the experiences of the ancients. For the innate depravity of shame lies in the fact that spiritual life was then dependent upon a certain number and a certain sort of ideas. Good breeding was a family treasure, possibly not differing greatly to our eyes as regards the different families, but in reality distinctively marked from earliest youth, stamped by traditions, determined by environment, and consequently not easily changed. Personality was far less mobile than now, and was far less capable of recuperation. If a kinsman lost an idea, he could not
make good the loss by taking up ideas from the other side; as he is bound to
the family circle in which he grew up, so he is dependent upon the soulconstituents fostered in him. The traditions and reminiscences of his people, the
enjoyment of ancient heirlooms and family property, the consciousness of
purpose, the pride of authority and good repute in the judgement of neighbours
found in his circle, make up his world, and there is no spiritual treasury outside
on which he can draw for his intellectual and moral life. A man nowadays may
be excluded from his family, whether this consist of father, mother, brothers and
sisters, or a whole section of society; and he need not perish on that account,
because no family, however large, can absorb the entire contents of a
reasonably well-equipped human being's soul. He has parts of himself placed
about here and there; even nature is in spiritual correspondence with him. But
man as a member of a clan has a void about him; it need not mean that his
kinsmen lack all wider interest, it does not mean that he is unable to feel himself
as member of a larger political and religious community; but these associations
are, in the first place, disproportionately weak, so that they cannot assert
themselves side by side with frith, and further, they are only participated in
through the medium of kinship or frith, so that they can have no independent
existence of their own. A man cast off from his kin cannot appeal to nature for
comfort, for its dominant attribute is hostility, save in the form where it faces him
as inspired by humankind, cultivated and inhabited; and in the broad, fair fields
it is only the land of his inheritance that meets him fully and entirely with friendly
feelings. It will also be found that in cases where a niding is saved to the world
by being received into a new circle, a family or a company of warriors, he does
not then proceed by degrees from his former state over to the new; he leaps
across a channel, and becomes a new man altogether.
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