The old state of things is well illustrated in the Latin
word hostis^ which, meaning originally stranger, passed quite
naturally into the sense of enemy. Not only is slaying an
enemy in open war looked on as righteous, but ancient
law goes on the doctrine that slaying one's own tribesman
and slaying a foreigner are crimes of quite different order,
while killing a slave is but a destruction of property. Nor
even now does the colonist practically admit that killing a
brown or black man is an act of quite the same nature as
killing a white countryman. Yet the idea of the sacredness
of human life is ever spreading more widely in the world,
as a principle applying to mankind at large.
The history of the notion of theft and plunder follows
partly the same lines. In the lower civilization the law,
" thou shalt not steal," is not unknown, but it applies to
tribesmen andiriends, not to strangers and enemies. Among
the Ahts of British Columbia, Sproat remarks that an article
placed in an Indian's charge on his good faith is perfectly
safe, yet thieving is a common vice where the property
of other tribes or of white men is concerned. But, he
says, it would be unfair to regard thieving among these
savages as culpable in the same degree as among ourselves,
for they have no moral or social law forbidding thieving
between tribe and tribe, which has been commonly practised
28



414 ANTHROPOLOGY. [chap.
