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 CONTENTS
............. ~ ............ .

Preface xv
New to the Fourth Edition xvi
••
Instructor's Manual and Companion Website XVll

A Note on the Companion Volume xvii

Acknowledgments xviii

INTRODUCTION 1
The Lay of the Land 1
Skepticism about Ethics 3
Ethical Starting Points 5
What Is Morality? 7
Moral Reasoning 9
The Role of Moral Theory 16
Looking Ahead 17

PART ONE

eGoodLife
CHAPTER 1 Hedonism: Its Powerful Appeal 23
Happiness and Intrinsic Value 23
The Attractions of Hedonism 25
There Are Many Models of a Good Life 26
Personal Authority and Well-Being 27
Misery Clearly Hampers a Good Life; Happiness Clearly
Improves It 27

••
VII
 •••
Vlll CONTENTS

Ihe Limits of Explanation 28

Rules of the Good Life and Their Exceptions 28
Happiness Is What We Want for Our Loved Ones 29

CHAPTER 2 Is Happiness All that Matters? 32

The Paradox of Hedonism 32
Evil Pleasures 34
The Two Worlds 35
False Happiness 36
The Importance of Autonomy 37
Life's Trajectory 40
Unhappiness as a Symptom of Harm 41
Conclusion 42

CHAPTER 3 Getting What You Want 44

A Variety of Good Lives 45
Personal Authority 45
Avoiding Objective Values 46
Motivation 4 7
Justifying the Pursuit of Self-Interest 48
Knowledge of the Good 49

CHAPTER 4 Problems for the Desire eory s1

Getting What You Want May Not Be Necessary for
Promoting Your Good 51
Getting What You Want May Not Be Sufficient for
Promoting Your Good 52
Desires Based on False Beliefs 52
Disinterested and Other-Regarding Desires 53
Disappointment 54
Ignorance of Desire Satisfaction 55
Impoverished Desires 55
Ihe Paradox of Self-Harm and Self-Sacrifice 56
Ihe Fallibility of Our Deepest Desires 57
Conclusion 58
 Contents ix

PART TWO
•
tng
CHAPTER 5 Morality and Religion 63
Three Assumptions about Morality and Religion 63
First Assumption: Religious Belief Is Needed for Moral
Motivation 64
Second Assumption: God Is the Creator of Morality 66
Third Assumption: Religion Is an Essential Source of
Moral Guidance 71
Conclusion 74

CHAPTER 6 Natural Law 76

The Theory and Its Attractions 76
Three Conceptions of Human Nature 80
Human Nature as Animal Nature 80
Human Nature Is What Is Innate 81
Human Nature Is What All Humans Have in Common 82
Natural Purposes 83
The Argument from Humanity 87
Conclusion 89

CHAPTER 7 Psychological Egoism 91

Egoism and Altruism 91
Does It Matter Whether Psychological Egoism Is True? 95
The Argument from Our Strongest Desires 95
The Argument from Expected Benefit 98
Two Egoistic Strategies 100
Appealing to the Guilty Conscience 100
Expanding the Realm of Self-Interest 100
Letting the Evidence Decide 101
Conclusion 105

CHAPTERs Ethical Egoism 107

Why Be Moral? 107
Two Popular Arguments for Ethical Egoism 110
The Self-Reliance Argument 111
The Libertarian Argument 112
The Best Argument for Ethical Egoism 113
X CONTENTS

Three Problems for Ethical Egoism 115

Egoism Violates Core Moral Beliefs 115
Egoism Cannot Allow for the Existence of
Moral Rights 115
Egoism Arbitrarily Makes My Interests All-Important 117
Conclusion 118

CHAPTER 9 Consequentialism: Its Nature

and Attractions 120
The Nature of Consequentialism 122
Structure 122
Maximizing Goodness 123
Moral Knowledge 124
Actual Versus Expected Results 125
Assessing Actions and Intentions 126
The Attractions of Utilitarianism 127
Impartiality 127
The Ability to Justify Conventional Moral Wisdom 128
Conflict Resolution 129
Moral Flexibility 130
The Scope of the Moral Community 131
Slippery Slope Arguments 135

CHAPTER 10 Consequentialism: Its Difficulties 139

Measuring Well-Being 139
Utilitarianism Is Very Demanding 143
Deliberation 143
Motivation 144
Action 145
Impartiality 147
No Intrinsic Wrongness (or Rightness) 149
The Problem of Injustice 151
Potential Solutions to the Problem of Injustice 152
Justice Is Also Intrinsically Valuable 153
Injustice Is Never Optimific 154
Justice Must Sometimes Be Sacrificed 154
Rule Consequentialism 155
Conclusion 158
 Contents xi

CHAPTER 11 e Kantian Perspective:

Fairness and ustice 160
Consistency and Fairness 161
The Principle ofUniversalizability 163
Morality and Rationality 166
Assessing the Principle of Universalizability 170
Integrity 171
Kant on Absolute Moral Duties 172

CHAPTER 12 e Kantian Perspective:

Autonomy and Respect 175
The Principle of Humanity 176
The Importance of Rationality and Autonomy 178
The Good Will and Moral Worth 180
Five Problems with the Principle of Humanity 183
Vagueness 183
Determining Just Deserts 184
Are We Autonomous? 186
Moral Luck 188
The Scope of the Moral Community 189
Conclusion 191

CHAPTER13 e Social Contract Tradition: e eory

and Its Attractions 194
The Lure of Proceduralism 194
The Background of the Social Contract Theory 195
The Prisoner's Dilemma 196
Cooperation and the State of Nature 199
The Advantages of Contractarianism 200
Morality Is Essentially a Social Phenomenon 200
Contractarianism Explains and Justifies the Content of
the Basic Moral Rules 201
Contractarianism Offers a Method for Justifying
Every Moral Rule 202
Contractarianism Explains the Objectivity of Morality 202
Contractarianism Explains Why It Is Sometimes Acceptable
to Break the Moral Rules 203
xii CoNTENTS

More Advantages: Morality and the Law 204

Contractarianism Justifies a Basic Moral Duty to Obey the Law 204
The Contractarian Justification of Legal Punishment 204
Contractarianism Justifies the State's Role in Criminal Law 205
Contractarianism and Civil Disobedience 205

CHAPTER 14 e Social Contract Tradition:

Problems and Prospects 2os
Why Be Moral? 208
The Role of Consent 212
Disagreement among the Contractors 215
The Scope of the Moral Community 216
Conclusion 219

CHAPTER 15 Ethical Pluralism and Absolute Moral Rules 221

The Structure of Moral Theories 221
Is Torture Always Immoral? 222
Preventing Catastrophes 224
The Doctrine of Double Effect 225
A Reply to the Argument from Disaster Prevention 227
How the DDE Threatens Act Consequentialism 227
Distinguishing Intention from Foresight 228
Moral Conflict and Contradiction 230
Is Moral Absolutism Irrational? 231
The Doctrine of Doing and Allowing 233
Conclusion 237

CHAPTER 16 Ethical Pluralism: Prima Facie Duties

and Ethical Particularism 239
Ross's Ethic of Prima Facie Duties 239
The Advantages of Ross's View 241
Pluralism 241
We Are Sometimes Permitted to Break the Moral Rules 241
Moral Conflict 241
Moral Regret 242
Addressing the Anti-absolutist Arguments 243
A Problem for Ross's View 244
Knowing the Fundamental Moral Rules 245
Self-Evidence and the Testing of Moral Theories 246
Knowing the Right Thing to Do 247
Ethical Particularism 249
 Contents xiii

Three Problems for Ethical Particularism 251

Its Lack of Unity 251
Accounting for Moral Knowledge 252
Some Things Possess Permanent Moral Importance 252
Conclusion 254

CHAPTER 17 Virtue Ethics 256

The Standard of Right Action 257
Moral Complexity 258
Moral Understanding 259
Moral Education 261
The Nature of Virtue 262
Virtue and the Good Life 264
Objections 266
Tragic Dilemmas 266
Does Virtue Ethics Offer Adequate Moral Guidance? 267
Is Virtue Ethics Too Demanding? 269
Who Are the Moral Role Models? 270
Conflict and Contradiction 271
The Priority Problem 272
Conclusion 274

CHAPTER 18 Fetninist Ethics 276

The Elements of Feminist Ethics 276
Moral Development 278
Women's Experience 279
The Ethics of Care 282
The Importance of Emotions 283
Against Unification 284
Against Impartiality and Abstraction 285
Against Competition 285
Downplaying Rights 286
Challenges for Feminist Ethics 287
Conclusion 289

PART THREE

Metaethics: e Status of Morality

CHAPTER 19 Ethical Relativistn 293
Moral Skepticism 293
Two Kinds of Ethical Relativism 295
xiv CoNTENTS

Some Implications of Ethical Subjectivism

and Cultural Relativism 296
Moral Infallibility 296
Moral Equivalence 298
Questioning Our Own Commitments 299
Moral Progress 299
Ethical Subjectivism and the Problem of Contradiction 300
Cultural Relativism and the Problem of Contradiction 302
Ideal Observers 305
Conclusion 309

CHAPTER 20 Moral Nihilistn 310

Error Theory 311
Expressivism 316
How Is It Possible to Argue Logically about Morality? 318
Expressivism and Amoralists 319
Ihe Nature of Moral Judgment 320
Conclusion 321

CHAPTER 21 Eleven Arguments Against Moral

Objectivity 323
1. Objectivity Requires Absolutism 324
2. All Truth Is Subjective 325
3. Equal Rights Imply Equal Plausibility 326
4. Moral Objectivity Supports Dogmatism 327
5. Moral Objectivity Supports Intolerance 328
6. Moral Objectivity Cannot Allow for Legitimate Cultural
Variation 330
7. Moral Disagreement Undermines Moral Objectivity 331
8. Atheism Undermines Moral Objectivity 333
9. The Absence of Categorical Reasons Undermines Moral
Objectivity 334
10. Moral Motivation Undermines Moral Objectivity 336
11. Values Have No Place in a Scientific World 338
Conclusion 341

References R. .l
Suggestions for Further Reading FR-1
<Jlossary CJ . . l
Index J. . l
 PREFACE
............. ~ ............ .

his book is divided into three parts one on the Good Life,
another on Doing the Right Thing, and the last on the Status of
Morality. You can read these parts in any order. Many will want
to begin at the end, for instance, with a discussion of whether morality
is a human invention, or is in some way objective. Some will prefer to
start in the middle, asking about the supreme principle of morality (and
whether there is any such thing). And others may want to begin at the
beginning, by thinking about human well-being and the quality of life.
Each part can be understood independently of the others, though there
are of course many points of connection across the three main branches of
moral philosophy. No matter where you begin, there are footnotes in most
chapters that provide cross-references to relevant discussions elsewhere in
the book.
When beginning a new area of study, you're bound to encounter some
unfamiliar jargon. I've tried to keep this to a minimum, and I suppose that
you can be thankful that we're doing ethics here, rather than physics or
anatomy. I define each technical term when I first use it, and have also put
together a glossary, which appears at the end of the book. Each specialized
term that appears in boldface has an entry there.
You may be interested enough in what you read here that you'll want
to continue your studies in moral philosophy. There is a natural place to
begin the companion volume to this book, The Ethical Life, described
later in this preface. I have also compiled a list of Suggestions for Further
Reading for each chapter or pair of chapters. This list appears at the end of

XV
xvi PREFACE

the book, just before the Glossary. I have selected the readings with an eye
to what might be accessible and interesting to those just beginning their
study of moral philosophy.
There is so much that is fascinating about ethics. This tempts a text-
book author to go on and on. And yet page limits must be respected.
Deciding what to keep and what to leave on the editing floor has been a
real challenge. Perhaps you think that the balance hasn't always been well
struck. Perhaps you find certain discussions unclear or boring. Io like to
know about this. The best way to get in touch is by email: RussShafer
Landau@gmail.com.

New to the Fourth Edition

I'm very pleased that students and instructors have found this book useful
enough to warrant a new edition. In the interests of maintaining conti-
nuity with the previous edition, I have tried to introduce only relatively
modest changes. While I have made many dozens of small changes in the
hopes of improving clarity and accuracy, I have also introduced several
larger revisions. Here is a brief list:
• Chapters 3 and 4 now include discussions that reflect clearer dis-
tinctions between the intrinsic and instrumental values of desire
satisfaction.
• Chapter 7 includes a new discussion of the empirical literature on
altruism.
• Chapter 19 includes a new discussion of the attractions of ethical
subjectivism and relativism.
• Substantive improvements have also been made to many sections,
including:
• Happiness and Intrinsic Value in chapter 1
• The Paradox of Hedonism in chapter 2
• Two Popular Arguments for Ethical Egoism in chapter 8
• The Structure of Consequentialism in chapter 9
• Slippery Slope Arguments in chapter 9
• Measuring Well-Being in chapter 10
• Ideal Observers in chapter 19
• The comprehensive companion website associated with this book
has been updated, as has its Instructor's Manual. These resources
 Preface xvii

contain loads of helpful material so much so that they deserve a

brief summary all their own.

Instructor's Manual and Companion Website

The website designed to support this book offers about 250 multiple-choice
questions for students to test their comprehension of the materials here. It
also contains a glossary and links to other websites of further interest. You
can visit the companion website at www.oup.com/us/shafer-landau.
In addition, the Instructor's Manual can be accessed on the Oxford
University Press Ancillary Resource Center (ARC) at https://arc2.oup-arc
.com/access/shafer-landau-fundamentals-of-ethics-4e-instructor-resources.
The manual itself has summaries for all twenty-one chapters, more than
100 essay questions, over 200 multiple-choice questions (in addition to
those available elsewhere on the website), about 200 PowerPoint slides to
help organize lectures, and a variety of links that point students to websites
with content that supplements the material in this book. The ARC is a con-
venient, instructor-focused, single destination for resources to accompany
this text. Accessed online through individual user accounts, the ARC pro-
vides instructors with up-to-date ancillaries at any time while guarantee-
ing the security of grade-significant resources. In addition, it allows Oxford
University Press to keep instructors informed when new content becomes
available.
The work for these ancillary materials was undertaken by my stel-
lar research assistants: Justin Horn, who provided all of the Web materi-
als associated with the first two editions, and Ben Schwan, who provided
updates associated with the third and this latest edition. I am very grateful
for their dedicated efforts in making these first-rate resources.

A Note on the Companion Volume

There are two kinds of introductory books. One is the sort that you have
in your hands right now. It's one person's take on the subject, and your
fate, dear reader, depends on how reliable and engaging that author hap-
pens to be. I have tried to be both, but you will be the judge of that. There
are benefits to a single-authored book. At its best, you'll get a coherent
narrative that draws connections between various discussions. You'll be
handed the important highlights, be introduced to the really big ideas,
and get an accurate map of the relevant terrain.
 •••
XVlll PREFACE

But there is another approach, equally valid. And that is to hear what
the major figures in the area have to say, to familiarize yourself with the
original voices in the field. For those with an interest in going this route,
I have put together a companion volume, The Ethical Life: Fundamental
Readings in Ethics and Moral Problems, which allows you to do just that.
The Ethical Life gathers together readings from more than forty
authors on the main subjects that are covered here. There are many
entries on the good life, on the central ethical theories, and on the status
of morality. There are also twenty additional readings on pressing moral
problems, such as the death penalty, abortion, animal rights, and other
urgent matters. There are many resources that can help readers through
that book introductions to each reading, study questions, suggestions
for further reading, and a website with sample quizzes, essay questions,
and lots of extra materials.
The fullest introduction to ethics would include both of these
approaches. The Ethical Life will give you lots of primary sources, and Fun-
damentals can help you to place them in context, clearly setting out their
ideas and providing some critical evaluation of their strengths and weak-
nesses. For those who are content to take my word for it, Fundamentals
will be enough. For those who want to see what other philosophers have
to say about these important matters, The Ethical Life might be a good
place to start. And for those of you attracted by both approaches, working
through each in tandem with the other can provide a well-rounded pic-
ture of what moral philosophy is all about.

Acknowledgments
I wrote this book because my editor, Robert Miller, asked me to. Well, not
really. He asked, and I refused. He did it again, and I refused. Obviously,
I did finally give in. I want to thank Robert for his persistence, but much
more importantly for his unflagging enthusiasm and his uncommon good
sense. His assistant Alyssa Palazzo has been a dream to work with.
One of Robert's many kindnesses was to solicit feedback from so
many talented philosophers. I hope that the following folks will accept my
gratitude for having provided very helpful comments on drafts and previ-
ous editions of this book: Paul Abela, Luke Amentas, Martin Andersson,
Kristopher Area, Thomas Avery, Ralph Baergen, Stacy Bautista, Jeffrey
Brand-Ballard, Don Carrell, Tom Carson, Michael Cholbi, David Detmer,
Josh DiPaolo, Howard M. Ducharme, Matthew Eshleman, Daan Evers,
 Preface xix

Bud Fairlamb, Robert M. Farley, Steve Finlay, Robert Fischer, Deke Gould,
Christopher Grau, Clifton F. Guthrie, Craig Hanks, Dan Hausman, Rich-
ard Haynes, Kelly Heuer, Darren Hibbs, Ryan Hickerson, Richard Hine,
John Huss, Clark Hutton, Scott James, Julian Katz, Jacquelyn Ann Kegley,
Dan Kofman, Avery Kolers, Keith Allen Karcz, Jacob Krch, Robert Lane,
Patrick Linden, Jessica Logue, Andres Luco, Eugene Marshall, Michael
McKenna, William Darryl Mehring, Brian Merrill, John G. Messerly,
Richard Mohline, Nathan Nobis, Kristian Olsen, Aleksandr Pjevalica,
Philip Robbins, Barbara R. Russo, Jesse Steinberg, Glenn Tiller, James
Woolever, and Ruigand Xu. A superstar trio Tyler Doggett, Christian
Miller, and David Sobel deserve special mention for having devoted an
extraordinary amount of serious attention to the initial draft of this book.

R.S.L.
Madison, Wisconsin
Autumn 2017
 INTRODUCTION
............. ~ ............ .

The Lay of the Land

There is so much to know about our world. And for those who are the
least bit curious, we have more resources than ever to give us the insights
we seek. We can turn to a variety of scientists, doctors, economists, histo-
rians, and journalists to help us better understand ourselves, our world,
and our place within it.
But there is a set of vital questions that such experts will never answer.
These are questions about how we ought to live. Sure, financial advisors
can tell us how we ought to invest our money. Personal trainers can advise
us on getting in shape. Career counselors can steer us in one direction
or another. But if we are interested instead in what our guiding ideals
should be, in what sort of life is worth living, in how we should treat one
another, then we must turn to philosophy. Ethics also known as moral
philosophy is the branch of knowledge concerned with answering such
questions.
The field of ethics is vast, and bad news first there is no chance of
covering all of its interesting and important issues within these pages. In
selecting the topics for treatment, I have chosen those that seem to me
most central. These can be grouped under three headings, each represent-
ing a core area of moral philosophy:

1
2 INTRODUCTION

1
1. Value theory What is the good life? What is worth pursuing for its
:

own sake? How do we improve our lot in life?

2. Normative ethics: What are our fundamental moral duties? Which
character traits count as virtues, which as vices, and why? Who
should our role models be? Do the ends always justify the means, or
are there certain types of action that should never be done under
any circumstances?
3. Metaethics: What is the status of moral claims and advice? Can
ethical theories, moral principles, or specific moral verdicts be
true? If so, what makes them true? Can we gain moral wisdom? If
so, how? Do we always have good reason to do our moral duty?
The structure of this book mirrors this threefold division. The first
part is focused on the good life, with an emphasis on explaining the nature
and sources of well-being. We ask, for instance, about whether happiness
is the he-all and end-all of a good life, the only thing desirable for its own
sake. And, naturally, we'll consider views that deny this, including, most
importantly, the theory that tells us that getting what we want whatever
we want is the key to the good life.
Then it's off to normative ethics, which is devoted to examining our
moral relations with one another. Who counts are animals, ecosystems,
or fetuses morally important in their own right? Is there a fundamen-
tal moral rule, such as the golden rule, that can justify all of our spe-
cific moral duties? What role do virtue, self-interest, and justice play in
morality? Are we ever allowed to break the moral rules? If so, when and
why? These are among the most important questions taken up in norma-
tive ethics.
Finally, to metaethics. This part of moral philosophy asks questions
about the other two. Specifically, it asks about the status of ethical claims,
rather than about their content. We all have views about what is right and
good. Are these just matters of taste? Is moral authority based on per-
sonal approval? Social customs? God's commands? Or none of the above?
Is morality in more or less good working order, or is it just a convenient
fiction that keeps us in our place? These are the questions that we will take
up in the last section of the book.

1. All technical terms and phrases that appear in boldface are defined in the Glossary at
the end of the book.
 Introduction 3

There is no shortage of folks offering advice about these questions.

The self-help industry has its gurus, motivational speakers, and best
sellers, each aimed at guiding us on the path to a good life. Political
pundits, religious leaders, and editorial writers are more than happy to
offer us their blueprints for righteous living. They don't always agree,
of course. It would be nice to have a way to sort out the decent advice
from the rest.
Those of you turning to philosophical ethics for the first time are likely
to be hoping for something that I can't provide, namely, a simple recipe for
doing the sorting. It is perfectly natural to want a clear method for distin-
guishing correct from incorrect answers about the good life and our moral
duty. Indeed, when I first went to college, I enrolled in a philosophy course
hoping for just such a thing. My failure to find it left me deeply disap-
pointed. I abandoned philosophy for a few years, and even dropped out of
college for a while. After I returned, I went looking for it again. I've finally
realized that in this area of life, while there is plenty of good advice, it can't
be summed up in one snappy formula, captured in a neat slogan that can
be inscribed in a fortune cookie or on a bumper sticker.
Ethics is hard. It needn't be weakness or fuzzy thinking that stands in
the way of knowing the right thing to do, or the proper goals to strive for.
We are right to be puzzled by the moral complexity we find in our lives.
While we might yearn for clarity and simplicity, this wish for easy answers
is bound to be repeatedly frustrated.

Skepticism about Ethics

When people learn of the difficulties that face each important attempt to
solve ethical puzzles, they often give in to skepticism. The major tempta-
tion is to regard the entire enterprise as bankrupt, or to think that all ethical
views are equally plausible.
Doubts about morality are plentiful, and it would be silly to ignore
them in a book that is so focused on trying to improve our moral under-
standing. Chapters 19, 20, and 21 are entirely devoted to such doubts;
those who feel them acutely might do best to start with those chapters,
and then work their way to the other parts of the book that are focused on
the good life and normative ethics.
For now, let me say just a few things to the doubters. Perhaps the most
important is this: among those who have thought longest and hardest
about ethics, the view that morality is all make-believe, or that all moral
4 INTRODUCTION

standards are correct only relative to individuals or societies, is deeply

controversial. There are lots of problems with such views. Some of these
problems may be devastating.
As a result, it would be a serious mistake just to assume that morality
is a fiction, or that personal or cultural opinion is the ultimate measure of
what is right and wrong. We must follow the arguments where they lead.
They may indeed lead us ultimately to embrace such positions. But they
might not. And we can't know one way or the other until we've actually
done the hard work.
Since I really love this part of ethics the metaethical part I can't
resist saying just a bit more here. In my experience, most of those who
harbor serious doubts about morality base their skepticism on one or
more of the following considerations:
(A) Individuals constantly disagree about what's right and wrong, and
societies do, too. If there were some objective truth in ethics, then
we should expect all really smart people to agree on it. They don't.
So there is no objective truth in ethics.
(B) There are universally correct moral standards only if God exists.
But God doesn't exist, so ethics is just a ((human construct:'
(C) Science tells us the truth about the world, and science says nothing
about what's right and wrong. And that's because nothing really is
right or wrong.
(D) If there were a universal ethic, then that would make it okay for
some people to impose their own views on others. But that's not
okay at all. Therefore there is no universal ethic.
(E) If there were objective moral rules, then it would always be wrong
to break them. But every rule admits of exceptions; no moral
rule is absolute. That shows that we do make up the moral rules
after all.
This is going to sound like cheating, but here goes: every single one of
these arguments is problematic. I'm not going to defend that claim right
now that's what the last three chapters of this book are for. So I don't
expect you to believe me (yet). Still, there is a lesson here: until these (or
other) arguments are laid out with care and successfully defended, we are
in no position to assume that the skeptics about morality are right.
I think you'll soon see that we can make a lot of progress in our moral
thinking. And even if morality is in some way a human invention, there
is still lots to learn, and there are many ways to make mistakes when
 Introduction 5

thinking about what is good and right. It's important to avoid these errors.
Doing moral philosophy can help with this.
Look at it this way. Lots of people believe that when it comes to art,
beauty is in the eye of the beholder there are no objective, universal
standards of good taste. Suppose that's true. And suppose that morality is
just like art in this respect. Still, our tastes can be educated and improved.
Many people are much wiser than I am about music and painting, for
instance. Even if there are no universal standards of good taste, it would
be silly of me to pass up a chance to talk with people who have thought
long and hard about artistic matters. Why should I dismiss their opinions
and refuse to hear them out? I'm no genius. Maybe I could learn a thing
or two.
That's exactly the right attitude to take about ethics. Especially when
so much is at stake the very quality of our life and our relations with
others it would be terrible to close our minds to new and challenging
ideas. Those who have thought so hard about the central questions of exis-
tence may well have something to teach us.
I encourage you to resist the diagnosis that in ethics, anything goes.
As you'll see, good moral thinking is disciplined thinking. There are many
ways that we can go wrong in our moral reflections, and failure here can
have the most disastrous results. Though it is sometimes hard to know
when we have got it right in ethics, it is often very easy to know when we
(or others) have made a mistake. There are clear cases of people ruining
their lives, or doing morally horrific things. We should keep that in mind
before siding too quickly with a skepticism that says that every moral view
is as good as every other.

Ethical Starting Points

One of the puzzles about moral thinking is knowing where to begin. Some
skeptics about morality deny that there are any proper starting points for
ethical reflection. They believe that moral reasoning is simply a way of
rationalizing our biases and gut feelings. This outlook encourages us to
be lax in moral argument and, worse, supports an attitude that no moral
views are any better than others. While this sort of skepticism might be
true, we shouldn't regard it as the default view of ethics. We should accept
it only as a last resort.
In the meantime, let's consider some fairly plausible ethical assump-
tions, claims that can get us started in our moral thinking. The point of the
6 INTRODUCTION

exercise is to soften you up to the idea that we are not just spinning our
wheels when thinking morally. There are reasonable constraints that can
guide us when thinking about how to live. Here are some of them:

• Neither the law nor tradition is immune from moral criticism. The law
does not have the final word on what is right and wrong. Neither
does tradition. Actions that are legal, or customary, are sometimes
morally mistaken.
• Everyone is morally fallible. Everyone has some mistaken ethical views,
and no human being is wholly wise when it comes to moral matters.
• Friendship is valuable. Having friends is a good thing. Friendships
add value to your life. You are better off when there are people you
care deeply about, and who care deeply about you.
• We are not obligated to do the impossible. Morality can demand only
so much of us. Moral standards that are impossible to meet are il-
legitimate. Morality must respect our limitations.
• Children bear less moral responsibility than adults. Moral responsibil-
ity assumes an ability on our part to understand options, to make
decisions in an informed way, and to let our decisions guide our be-
havior. The fewer of these abilities you have, the less blameworthy
you are for any harm you might cause.
• Justice is a very important moral good. Any moral theory that treats
justice as irrelevant is deeply suspect. It is important that we get what
we deserve, and that we are treated fairly.
• Deliberately hurting other people requires justification. The default
position in ethics is this: do no harm. It is sometimes morally ac-
ceptable to harm others, but there must be an excellent reason for
doing so or else the harmful behavior is unjustified.
• Equals ought to be treated equally. People who are alike in all relevant
respects should get similar treatment. When this fails to happen-
when racist or sexist policies are enacted, for instance then some-
thing has gone wrong.
• Self-interest isn't the only ethical consideration. How well-off we are is
important. But it isn't the only thing of moral importance. Morality
sometimes calls on us to set aside our own interests for the sake of
others.
• Agony is bad. Excruciating physical or emotional pain is bad. It may
sometimes be appropriate to cause such extreme suffering, but doing
so requires a very powerful justification.
 Introduction 7

• Might doesn't make right. People in power can get away with lots of
things that the rest of us can't. That doesn't justify what they do. That
a person can escape punishment is one thing whether his actions
are morally acceptable is another.
• Free and informed requests prevent rights violations. If, with eyes
wide open and no one twisting your arm, you ask someone to do
something for you, and she does it, then your rights have not been
violated even if you end up hurt as a result.
There are a number of points to make about these claims.
First, this short list isn't meant to be exhaustive. It could be made
much longer.
Second, I am not claiming that the items on this list are beyond criti-
cism. I am saying only that each one is very plausible. Hard thinking might
weaken our confidence in some cases. The point, though, is that without
such scrutiny, it is perfectly reasonable to begin our moral thinking with
the items on this list.
Third, many of these claims require interpretation in order to apply
them in a satisfying way. When we say, for instance, that equals ought to
be treated equally, we leave all of the interesting questions open. (What
makes people equals? Can we treat people equally without treating them
in precisely the same way? Etc.)
Not only do we have a variety of plausible starting points for our ethi-
cal investigations; we also have a number of obviously poor beginnings
for moral thinking. A morality that celebrates genocide, torture, treachery,
sadism, hostility, and slavery is, depending on how you look at it, either
no morality at all or a deeply failed one. Any morality worth the name will
place some importance on justice, fairness, kindness, and reasonableness.
Just how much importance, and just how to balance things in cases of
conflict that is where the real philosophy gets done.

at Is Morality:
Before investing yourself too heavily in a subject matter, it would be nice
to first have some idea of what you are getting yourself into. One way-
sometimes the best to gain such an understanding is by considering a
definition. When you open your trigonometry text or chemistry hand-
book, you'll likely be given, very early on, a definition of the area you are
about to intensively study. So, as a responsible author, I would seem to
have a duty now to present you with a definition of morality.
8 INTRODUCTION

I'd certainly like to. But I can't. There is no widely agreed-on defi-
nition of morality. We know that it is centrally concerned with protect-
ing people's well-being, with fairness, justice, respect for others, virtue,
responsibility, rights, liberties, social cooperation, praise, and blame. But
the precise nature of such concern is highly disputed, as we'll soon see.
The absence of a definition does not leave us entirely in the dark.
(After all, no one has yet been able to offer informative definitions of lit-
erature, or life, or art, and yet we know a great deal about those things.)
We can get a sense of our subject matter by considering the questions that
are distinctive of ethics namely, those that structure this book, the ones
focused on the good life, our duties to others, the nature of virtue, etc. We
can supplement this by considering the starting points listed above, and
many others that we could easily identify.
We can also better understand morality by contrasting its principles
with those that govern the law, etiquette, self-interest, and tradition. Each
of these represents a set of standards for how we ought to behave, ideals
to aim for, rules that we should not break. But the fact that a law tells us
to do something does not settle the question of whether morality gives its
stamp of approval. Some immoral acts (like cheating on a spouse) are not
illegal. And some illegal acts (like voicing criticism of a dictator) are not
immoral. Certainly, many laws require what morality requires, and forbid
what morality forbids. But the fit is hardly perfect, and that shows that
morality is something different from the law. That a legislature passed a
bill is not enough to show that the bill is morally acceptable.
We see the same imperfect fit when it comes to standards of etiquette.
Forks are supposed to be set to the left of a plate, but it isn't immoral to set
them on the right. Good manners are not the same thing as morally good
conduct. Morality sometimes requires us not to be polite or gracious, as
when someone threatens your children or happily tells you a racist joke.
So the standards of etiquette can depart from those of morality.
The same is true when it comes to the standards of self-interest. I've
just been watching the entire run of The Shield, a police drama set in a
crime-ridden district of Los Angeles. Early in the series, the main char-
acter, Vic Mackey, murders a fellow police officer who was set to reveal
Mackey's corruption. Mackey successfully frames a criminal for the
murder: a classic case of protecting one's own interests by acting immor-
ally. Though the relation between self-interest and morality is contested, it
is a plausible starting point to assume that morality can sometimes require
us to sacrifice our well-being, and that we can sometimes improve our lot
 Introduction 9

in life by acting unethically. So the standards of morality are not the very
same as those of self-interest. (We will see a challenge to this view when
considering ethical egoism in chapter 8.)
Finally, morality is also distinct from tradition. That a practice has
been around a long time does not automatically make it moral. Morality
sometimes requires a break with the past, as it did when people called for
the abolition of slavery or for allowing women to vote.
True, people do sometimes speak of conventional morality, which is
the set of traditional principles that are widely shared within a culture or
society. These principles, like those of the law and etiquette, are the result
of human decisions, agreements and practices. Conventional morality can
differ from society to society. At least some of its principles can be traced
to common misunderstandings, irrationality, bias, or superstition.
When I write about morality in this book, I am not referring to
conventional morality. I am assuming that some social standards even
those that are long-standing and very popular can be morally mis-
taken. (We'll examine this assumption at length in chapter 19.) So when
I talk about morality from this point on, I will be referring to moral
standards that are not rooted in widespread endorsement, but rather
are independent of conventional morality and can be used to critically
evaluate its merits.
It's possible, of course, that conventional morality is all there is. But
this would be a very surprising discovery. Most of us assume, as I will do,
that the popularity of a moral view is not a guarantee of its truth. We could
be wrong on this point, but until we have a chance to consider the matter in
detail, I think it best to assume that conventional morality can sometimes
be mistaken. If so, then there may be some independent, ((critical" moral-
ity that (i) does not have its origin in social agreements, (ii) is untainted by
mistaken beliefs, irrationality, or popular prejudices, and (iii) can serve as
the true standard for determining when conventional morality has got it
right and when it has fallen into error. That is the morality whose nature
we are going to explore in this book.

Moral Reasoning
Moral reasoning, like all reasoning, involves at least two things: a set of
reasons, and a conclusion that these reasons are meant to support. When
you put these two things together, you have what philosophers call
an argument. This isn't a matter of bickering or angrily exchanging words.
10 INTRODUCTION

An argument is simply any chain of thought in which reasons (philoso-

phers call these premises) are offered in support of a particular conclusion.
Not all arguments are equally good. This is as true in ethics as it is
in science, mathematics, or politics. It is easy to mistake one's way when
it comes to ethical thinking. We can land at the wrong conclusion (by
endorsing child abuse, for instance). We can also arrive at the right con-
clusion by means of terrible reasoning. We must do our best to avoid both
of these mistakes.
In other words, our moral thinking should have two complementary
goals: getting it right, and being able to back up our views with flawless
reasoning. We want the truth, both in the starting assumptions we bring
to an issue and in the conclusions we eventually arrive at. But we also want
to make sure that our views are supported by excellent reasons. And this
provides two tests for good moral reasoning: first, we must avoid false
beliefs, and second, the logic of our moral thinking must be rigorous and
error-free.
The first test is pretty easy to understand. Consider the following
quote, written in 1833, by the pro-slavery author Richard Colfax:
[T]he mind will be great in proportion to the size and figure of the
brain: it is equally reasonable to suppose, that the acknowledged
meanness of the negroe's intellect, only coincides with the shape of his
head; or in other words, that his want [i.e., lack] of capability to
receive a complicated education renders it improper and impolitic,
that he should be allowed the privileges of citizenship in an enlight-
ened country. 2

And here is William John Grayson, antebellum congressman and senator

from South Carolina, on the same subject:
Slavery is the negro system of labor. He is lazy and improvident. ...
What more can be required of Slavery, in reference to the negro, than
has been done? It has made him, from a savage, an orderly and efficient
labourer. It supports him in comfort and peace. It restrains his vices. It
3
improves his mind, morals and manners.

2. Richard H. Colfax, Evidence Against the Views of the Abolitionists, Consisting of Physi-
cal and Moral Proofs, of the Natural Inferiority of the Negroes (New York: James T. M. Bleakley,
1833), p. 25.
3. William John Grayson, The Hireling and the Slave (Charleston, S.C.: John Russell,
1855), p. vii.
 Introduction 11

There are false beliefs galore in these (and other) defenses of American
chattel slavery. Africans, and those of African descent, are not inherently
lazy or unfit for a complicated education; they do not have heads with dif-
ferent shapes than whites; head shape is not correlated with intelligence;
slavery is anything but comfortable. When one starts with false assump-
tions, the entire chain of reasoning becomes suspect. Good reasoning, in
ethics as elsewhere, must avoid false beliefs if we are to have any confi-
dence in its conclusions.
But it is possible to develop moral arguments that fail, even though
every single one of their premises is true. The failure is of the second sort
mentioned above: a failure of logic.
Consider this argument:

1. Heroin is a drug.
2. Selling heroin is illegal.
3. Therefore, heroin use is immoral.

This is a moral argument. It is a set of reasons designed to support a moral

conclusion. Both of the premises are true. But they do not adequately sup-
port the conclusion, since one can accept them while consistently reject-
ing this conclusion. Perhaps the use of illegal drugs such as heroin really
is immoral. But we need a further reason to think so we would need, for
instance, the additional claim that all drug use is immoral.
The argument in its present form is a poor one. But not because it
relies on false claims. Rather, the argument's logical structure is to blame.
The logic of an argument is a matter of how its premises are related to
its conclusion. In the best arguments, the truth of the premises guaran-
tees the truth of the conclusion. When an argument has this feature, it is
logically valid.
The heroin argument is invalid. The truth of its premises does not
guarantee the truth of its conclusion indeed, the conclusion may be false.
Since the best arguments are logically valid, we will want to make sure
that our own arguments meet this condition. But how can we do that?
How can we tell a valid from an invalid argument, one that is logically
perfect from one that is logically shaky?
There is a simple, three-part test:

1. Identify all of an argument's premises.

2. Imagine that all of them are true (even if you know that some are
false).
12 INTRODUCTION

3. Then ask yourself this question: Supposing that all of the premises
were true, could the conclusion be false? If yes, the argument is
invalid. The premises do not guarantee the conclusion. If no, the
argument is valid. The premises offer perfect logical support for the
conclusion.

Validity is a matter of how well an argument's premises support its

conclusion. To test for this, we must assume that all of an argument's
premises are true. We then ask whether the conclusion must therefore be
true. If so, the argument is valid. If not, not.
Note that an argument's validity is a matter of the argument's struc-
ture. It has nothing to do with the actual truth or falsity of an argument's
premises or conclusion. Indeed, valid arguments may contain false prem-
ises and false conclusions.
To help clarify the idea, consider the following argument. Suppose
you are a bit shaky on your U.S. history, and I am trying to convince you
that John Quincy Adams was the ninth president of the United States.
I offer you the following line of reasoning:

1. John Quincy Adams was either the eighth or the ninth U.S. president.
2. John Quincy Adams was not the eighth U.S. president.
3. Therefore, John Quincy Adams was the ninth U.S. president.

In one way, this reasoning is impeccable. It is logically flawless. This is a

valid argument. If all premises of this argument were true, then the con-
elusion would have to be true. It is impossible for 1 and 2 to be true and 3
to be false. It passes our test for logical validity with flying colors.
But the argument is still a bad one not because of any logical error,
but because it has a false premise (number 1; Quincy Adams was the sixth
U.S. president) and a false conclusion. The truth of an argument's premises
is one thing; its logical status is another.
The lesson here is that truth isn't everything; neither is logic. We need
them both. What we want in philosophy, as in all other areas of inquiry,
are arguments that have two features: (1) they are logically watertight
(valid), and (2) all of their premises are true. These arguments are known
as sound arguments.
Sound arguments are the gold standard of good reasoning. And it's
easy to see why. They are logically valid. So if all of their premises are true,
their conclusion must be true as well. And by definition, sound arguments
contain only true premises. So their conclusions are true. If you can tell
 Introduction 13

that an argument is valid, and also know that each premise is correct, then
you can also know that the conclusion is true. That is what we are after.
I started this section by claiming that not all moral arguments are
equally good. We're now in a position to see why. Some arguments rely on
false premises. Others rely on invalid reasoning. Still others the worst of
the lot commit both kinds of error.
To reinforce these points, consider one more moral argument. Some
people say that killing animals and eating meat is morally okay, because
animals kill other animals, and there is nothing immoral about that. Is this
a plausible line of reasoning?
Not as it stands. To see this, let's reconstruct the argument by stating
it in premise-conclusion form. This is something that I'm going to do for
dozens of arguments over the coming pages. For those of you who want
to improve your philosophy skills, there's no better way to do so than to
take a line of reasoning in ordinary English and try to set it out step by
step. That makes it easier to tell just what is being claimed, and so easier
to determine the logical structure of the argument and the truth of the
•
premises.
Here is my take on this popular Argument for Meat Eating:

1. It is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat other

animals.
2. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for human beings to kill and eat
non-human animals.
As stated, there is only one premise to this argument. And it is true. So if
the argument is problematic, it has to be because of its logic.
And that is indeed its flaw. The argument is invalid; the premise does
not adequately support the conclusion. We can assume that the premise is
true (indeed, we should accept it), but the conclusion might still be false.
The truth of the premise is not enough to guarantee the truth of the con-
clusion, since what is morally acceptable for animals may not be morally
acceptable for us. We would need a further premise, to the effect that we
are allowed to do anything that animals do, in order to make this argu-
ment valid.
So as it stands, the Argument for Meat Eating is invalid. Therefore it is
unsound. Does that mean that its conclusion is false?
No. And here is another important lesson about reasoning: bad argu-
ments may contain true conclusions. After all, even true claims can be
supported by poor reasoning. The fact that the Argument for Meat Eating
14 INTRODUCTION

is invalid does not show that its conclusion is false. It shows only that this
particular way of defending that conclusion is no good. For all we know,
there might be other, better arguments that can do the trick.
The Argument for Meat Eating, like many other invalid arguments,
can be modified so that it takes on a logically perfect form. Indeed, a char-
itable reading of the argument would show that there is an underlying
assumption that, if brought out into the open, would allow us to transform
the argument into a valid one. With a little tweaking, for instance, we get
the following:
1. If it is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat one
another, then it is morally acceptable for humans to kill and eat
non-human animals. (This is the underlying assumption.)
2. It is morally acceptable for non-human animals to kill and eat one
another.
3. Therefore, it is morally acceptable for humans to kill and eat non-
human animals.
And this argument is logically perfect. If premises 1 and 2 are true, then
the conclusion, 3, has to be true.
But even this version is unsound. Not because it is invalid, but because
it now contains a false premise. Premise 2 is true. But premise 1 is not.
Four reasons explain this.
First, animals that eat other animals have no choice in the matter. We do.
Second, a carnivore's survival depends on its eating other animals.
Ours does not. With rare exceptions, human beings can survive perfectly
well without eating animal flesh. There are hundreds of millions of veg-
etarians leading healthy lives.
Third, none of the animals we routinely eat (chickens, cows, pigs, sheep,
ducks, rabbits) are carnivores. They don't eat other animals. So if their
behavior is supposed to guide our own, then we should eat only plants.
Fourth, it is implausible to look to animals for moral guidance. Ani-
mals are not moral agents they can't control their behavior through
moral reasoning. That explains why they have no moral duties, and why
they are immune from moral criticism. But we, obviously, are moral
agents, and we can guide our behavior by the moral decisions we make.
Again, this analysis does not prove that the argument's conclusion is
false. It just shows that this version of the argument, like the original, is
unsound. Meat eating may be perfectly morally acceptable. But this argu-
ment fails to show that.
Another random document with
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN