Note 152.2 — Chapter VIII · Religion and Morality.

We may say, then, that we find a high degree of morality in early Greece, a still higher at a still earlier period in Babylon, and both are obviously indigenous and natural products. And both reveal the phenomenon that marks an early stage of social morality: as the tribe or the family are one flesh, one corporate unit of life, so the members are collectively responsible, and “the sins of the fathers are visited on the children.” This was the familiar law of old Hellas, and we may say of the ancient Mediterranean society; the first to make the momentous protest against it, and to proclaim the responsibility of the individual conscience, was Theognis for the Hellenes and Ezekiel for the Hebrews. The Babylonian, advanced in moral thought as he was, had not escaped the bondage of the older clan-faith: in an incantation-hymn to Marduk,152.2 the man who is seeking deliverance prays “may the sins of my father, of my grandfather, my mother, my grandmother, my family, my whole circle of kindred, not come near me, may they depart from my side.”