Note 31 — CRIMINALITY.

Finally it is of the highest importance in studying primitive peoples to make the distinction between the acts which have to do with persons of the same social group, and those which have to do with strangers. One of the principal causes of the charge of egoism made against primitive peoples is to be found in the fact that this dualism of ethics is forgotten. In the passages I have cited (those from Maine and Steinmetz, for instance) the great difference between acts committed within and without the group is brought out. We have seen that the Indians of North America, although very altruistic toward those who form the same group with them, as also toward their guests, are the most pitiless enemies of those who attack their independence or their hunting ground. Now it has been by these last acts that these peoples have been generally judged, a wholly wrong method, since the “dualism of ethics” has always existed. Great would be the astonishment if any one were to maintain that the South African war proved that the English were a nation of murderers and incendiaries. Yet this is just the sort of reasoning that is applied to primitive peoples.31