seemed
long-nailed monsters of depravity to the Greeks of the time of
Oedipus. Professor Freud, in his book on dreams, maintains that men
in all ages desire to kill their fathers out of jealousy; he contends
even that Hamlet's reluctance to kill his father's murderer was due
to the fact that he had often wished to murder his father himself.
This, however, is an abnormal interpretation of the jealousies and
hatreds of human beings. The philosopher, perhaps, may see the
principle of murder in every feeling of anger in the same way as the
Christian Apostle saw that, if you hate a man, you are already a
murderer in your own heart. The hatred of parents and children,
however, is not universal any more than the hatred of husbands and
wives. Still, family quarrels are sufficiently natural to enable us to
see that the first step towards good citizenship must have been the
prohibition of the right to kill the members of one's own family.
Gradually, the family widened into the clan, the clan into the city,
the city into the nation, the nation into the larger unit embracing
men of the same colour, and it will ultimately widen, one hopes, into
the human race. But we are far from having reached that stage yet. It
is said to be almost impossible to get a death sentence passed on an
Englishman who has murdered an Indian native. This merely means that
it is regarded as a lesser crime for a European to murder an Asiatic
than for a European to murder a European. In other words the family
sanctities have been extended in some respects so as to cover Europe,
but they have not yet overflowed so far as Asia and Africa. The
objection of the war-at-any-price party to-day to civil war is purely
on the ground that it is fratricidal--that it is an outrage on
recognised family sanctities. The militarists do not see that every
war is fratricidal--that every war is a civil war. As a rule, indeed,
they deny the existence of family rights outside the borders of their
own nation in the narrowest sense. They do not realise that it is as
horrible a thing to shoot fellow-Europeans--not to say, fellow-men--as
it is to shoot fellow-countrymen. As private citizens they not only
admit but insist upon the foreigner's right to live. As public-minded
men and patriots, they will admit nothing beyond his right to be
carried off on a stretcher if they fail to kill him on the field of
battle.

This, however, is to discuss Cain as a statesman rather than Cain as a