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 THE EVOLUTION
OF MORAL PROGRESS
 THE EVOLUTION
OF MORAL PROGRESS

a biocultural theory

ALLEN BUCHANAN
AND
RUSSELL POWELL

1
 1
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
 CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii

INTRODUCTION: WHY A THEORY OF MORAL

PROGRESS IS NEEDED 1

PART I: WHAT IS MORAL PROGRESS?

1. A TYPOLOGY OF MORAL PROGRESS 45

2. CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS OF MORAL

PROGRESS 67

3. A PLURALISTIC, DYNAMIC CONCEPTION

OF MORAL PROGRESS 92

PART II: EVOLUTION AND THE POSSIBILITY

OF MORAL PROGRESS

4. IS EVOLVED HUMAN NATURE AN OBSTACLE

TO MORAL PROGRESS? 115

5. THE INCLUSIVIST ANOMALY AND THE

LIMITS OF EVOLUTIONARY EXPLANATION 153

6. TOWARD A NATURALISTIC THEORY OF

INCLUSIVIST MORAL PROGRESS 187

7. NATURALIZING MORAL REGRESSION: A

BIOCULTURAL ACCOUNT 218

8. DE-​MORALIZATION AND THE EVOLUTION

OF INVALID MORAL NORMS 239
vi Contents
PART III: THE PATH TRAVELED AND
THE WAY FORWARD

9. IMPROVEMENTS IN MORAL CONCEPTS AND

THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT 273

10. HUMAN RIGHTS NATURALIZED 306

11. BIOMEDICAL MORAL ENHANCEMENT

AND MORAL PROGRESS 343

CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF HUMAN

MORALITY 374

POSTSCRIPT: MORAL PROGRESS AND

CULTURAL EVOLUTION 396

Appendix: Topics for Future Research 403

Index 411
 PREFACE

Whether there has been moral progress and whether it can be

achieved now or in the future are surely among the most im-
portant questions human beings can ask. Yet in spite of a recent
bourgeoning of systematic philosophical inquiry in moral and
political philosophy across a remarkably wide range of topics,
these remain neglected questions. It was not always so. Until
the twentieth century, liberal political thought—​ which today
remains the most developed system of thinking about the mo-
rality of political institutions—​was centrally preoccupied with
the topic of moral progress. This volume is an attempt to begin
the task of making moral progress a respectable topic once again,
one worthy of the attention of philosophers and of thoughtful
people generally.
This is an unusual book, and not just because it navigates the
largely unfamiliar conceptual terrain of moral progress. It is
also unusually interdisciplinary, drawing on diverse literatures
in moral and political philosophy, evolutionary biology, evo-
lutionary psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history.
One of the authors, Allen Buchanan, was trained as an analytic
philosopher—​that is, as someone who was taught that tackling
philosophical problems requires only the ability to construct hy-
pothetical (and often outlandish) examples to prompt moral in-
tuitions, to make fine distinctions, and to reason logically from
premises designed to generalize from particular, firmly held, and
stable intuitions. Put less charitably, Buchanan, like everyone else
in his generation of analytic philosophers, was led to believe that
to solve philosophical problems one need not know anything
about the world and that indeed such knowledge is a dangerous
distraction from the proper task of the philosopher. The other
author, Russell Powell, is trained in law, biology, bioethics, and
viii Preface
the philosophy of science and is of a younger generation of phi-
losophers who tend to appreciate the need for interdisciplinary
work—​and for attention to facts and scientific theory—​more so
than most philosophers of Buchanan’s generation.
Both authors are thoroughly committed to interdisciplinary
work and recognize that for those philosophical problems that
require an interdisciplinary approach, co-​authorship is almost al-
ways a necessity. One person, even if she is committed to learning
from disciplines other than the one in which she was primarily
trained, often cannot know enough to engage with these topics
effectively. This is especially true for the philosophical problems
tackled in this book, which require integrating work in moral and
political philosophy with the conceptual and methodological re-
sources of biological, cultural, and social sciences.
The authors of this book are unabashedly committed to “nat-
uralism” in philosophy: they believe that fruitful engagement
with at least some of the most significant philosophical problems
requires recourse to scientific knowledge, including the best
available theory and data. That is not to say, of course, that sci-
ence can replace philosophy in these matters. Instead, the idea is
that while traditional analytic philosophical skills of analysis and
reasoning are necessary for addressing challenging philosophical
problems, sometimes they are not sufficient. Whether naturalism
is the correct way to do philosophy—​or at least a correct way—​
can only be determined by ascertaining the quality of the best
examples of that approach. We believe that this book is one of the
most thoroughly developed, systematic attempts at naturalistic
moral and political philosophy currently available. At the same
time, it shows how contemporary work in ethics and political
philosophy can inform our best scientific theories of morality,
in part by drawing attention to theoretically important aspects
of human moral thought and behavior that moral scientists and
philosophers of science have tended to overlook. It also corrects
for other flaws that commonly arise in the course of attempts to
do naturalistic philosophy such as the tendency to go too lightly
 Preface ix
on the analytic component of the enterprise, to overinterpret
purported scientific findings (and in particular to overestimate
their implications for traditional philosophical problems), and to
cherry-​pick scientific studies, attending only to those that sup-
port philosophical views one already holds.
We think this book may also do something to remedy what we
take to be a serious deficiency of contemporary philosophy and
more broadly of the culture of educated people today: namely,
a failure to assimilate fully the Darwinian revolution in biology
and to appreciate its profound implications for how humanity
should think about itself. In our experience, educated people,
including professional philosophers, may use the language of
Darwinian theory and pay face time to its significance but none-
theless still cling, implicitly or explicitly, to pre-​Darwinian, tele-
ological views of nature (and human nature). That is one mistake
to be assiduously avoided. The flip side is a tendency among some
philosophers and scientists to fetishize Darwinian evolutionary
theory and to assume that the possibilities for human morality
are tightly constrained by the psychology that natural selection,
working on the genetic components of thought and behavior,
solidified in human beings many millennia ago. This mistaken
evolutionary “determinist” view fosters an equally erroneous
normative view that we characterize as “evoconservatism”: an
unduly pessimistic understanding of the possibilities for moral
improvement based on a failure to appreciate how culture has not
only liberated us from but, more importantly, transformed our
evolved moral nature.
Every chapter of this book demonstrates both that an un-
derstanding of evolutionary processes is necessary for thinking
fruitfully about moral progress (and regression) and that it is not
sufficient because culture can stretch the evolutionary leash and
produce results that could not be anticipated if one made the mis-
take of thinking that morality as it first originated is essentially
the same as the morality we have, and struggle with, today. This
book is not, therefore, an attempt to replace moral philosophy
x Preface
with evolutionary science; rather, it draws on evolutionary sci-
ence and the philosophy thereof to help make moral philosophy
more fruitful and more practically relevant to the moral problems
that confront humanity in the twenty-​first century.
The theory of moral progress developed in these pages has
a dual aspect: it provides guidance not only for how to achieve
some especially important types of moral progress but also for
how to avoid moral regression. So even if one thinks that human
moral progress has approached its limit, one should still find this
book of use since it illuminates the question of how to preserve
the moral advances that humans have achieved thus far. In our
less optimistic moments, we are inclined to think that the first
order of business is to prevent regression. This feels especially
true now, given the recent wave of nativism, hypernationalism,
authoritarianism, and xenophobia that has swept the globe and
is straining progressive political institutions—​from human rights
and climate change agreements to the basic principles of consti-
tutional democracy and rule of law itself—​to the breaking point.
In Chapter 7 of this volume, we develop an account of moral
regression in which the exaggeration of “out-​group threat cues”
can trigger the development of tribal moral responses and hence
the dismantling of inclusivist institutions. This response was
likely adaptive in the prehistoric environments in which some
of the basic features of human moral psychology were formed;
but in the modern world, it is subject to deliberate demagogic
manipulation. Out-​group threat cues include anything that re-
liably provokes primal fears of physical violence by members
of other groups, the danger of parasitic diseases spread by out-​
group members, the expropriation of the fruits of cooperation
by “social parasites” in our midst (free-​riders on intragroup co-
operation) especially in the context of perceived resource scar-
city, “alien” ideas or values or challenges to in-​group identity that
could undermine norms of cooperation in one’s own group, and
the prospect that “we” are in a no-​holds-​barred competition for
vital resources with “them.”
 Preface xi
While we were in the midst of writing this chapter on moral
regression, a U.S. presidential candidate was employing all of
the techniques for fostering moral regression that we discuss. As
president of the United States, Trump has continued his assault on
inclusivist norms and institutions and the social-​epistemic foun-
dations on which those institutions rest, expertly employing the
very tactics that we discuss in this book. Trump’s demagoguery
is particularly effective because of the large number of out-​group
threat cues that it deploys and disseminates through social media
and because of its systematic manipulation of the social moral in-
formation space resulting in massive shifts of popular perception.
It is probably not hyperbolic to say that if all of Trump’s publicly
avowed commitments were realized, they would dismantle some
of the more important inclusivist achievements in the United
States of the last century and, indeed, since the founding of the
Republic. Similar tactics can be seen in other countries, with
proto-​fascist and extreme nationalist sentiments on the rise glob-
ally, as we have seen in Turkey and eastern Europe.
Whether our most progressive cultural moral innovations can
resist this pressure remains to be seen. A central aim of this book
is to better understand the biocultural conditions that give rise
to, and exacerbate, these troubling moral trends. One can always
hope, nonetheless, that conditions will eventually become more
favorable to progressive moralities, either spontaneously or by
design, and that, when they do, our goal once again should be to
strive for moral improvement.
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We are indebted to many people who provided generous com-

ments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, including Aaron
Ancell, Alex Rosenberg, Robert Brandon, Richmond Campbell,
Steve Clarke, Rainer Forst, Jeff Holzgrefe, Guy Kahane, Neil
Levy, Victor Kumar, David Schmitz, Kyle Stanford, and Julian
Savulescu. We also thank the participants in two workshops
where materials from the book manuscript were discussed, in-
cluding one sponsored by the University of Arizona Philosophy
Department and one by Duke University and Duke’s Humanities
Futures project, as well as audiences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe
University, Santa Clara University, Boston University, and the
American Philosophical Association Meeting in Seattle. Thanks
are also due to Rainer Forst, the Director of the Normative
Orders Cluster at the Goethe-​University in Frankfurt and to
Stephan Gospath, the Director of the Justicia Amplificata Center
at the Frei-​Universitat in Berlin for hosting colloquia at which
material from the book manuscript was presented and vigorously
and constructively discussed. We are also indebted to Peter Ohlin
of Oxford University Press for his support and encouragement
throughout all stages of this project. We also wish to express our
gratitude to the National Endowment for the Humanities for the
award of a Collaborative Grant for research on moral progress, and
Powell is also grateful to the Templeton Foundation for its sup-
port of research on evolutionary theory, as well as to the Cernese
Fund for Ethics and Emerging Sciences at Boston University. This
book grew out of a series of collaborative papers that served as
the conceptual foundation for the present project. These include
“Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Moral Progress,” 2016 and
xiv Acknowledgments
“The Limits of Evolutionary Explanations of Morality and Their
Implications for Moral Progress,” 2015, both in the journal Ethics;
“De-​Moralization as Emancipation,” 2017, in Social Philosophy
and Policy; and “The Evolution of Moral Enhancement” in The
Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate, 2016,
Oxford University Press.
 THE EVOLUTION
OF MORAL PROGRESS
 INTRODUCTION
Why a Theory of Moral Progress Is Needed

Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrasing the words of nineteenth-​

century abolitionist Theodore Parker, famously proclaimed that
“the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward jus-
tice.” Yet if you ask people, even very knowledgeable people,
whether they think there is such a thing as moral progress, you
often get either a blank look or a skeptical response: technolog-
ical progress, obviously; scientific progress, of course; but moral
progress? Some even respond with indignation, saying that, on
the contrary, there has been moral regression—​that from a moral
point of view things have gotten worse, not better. Indeed, many
people think that the last century is perhaps the most violent
ever (given two world wars and the Holocaust), that people are
more selfish and less virtuous now than they used to be, that
public political debate is less civil, that government is more cor-
rupt, that countries are less stable, that warfare has become more
barbaric, that terrorism has increased, that inequality has grown,
and so on.
This sort of “Golden Age thinking” has deep roots in the
academy. Indeed, there is a feisty, iconoclastic philosophical tradi-
tion, running from Rousseau to Alastair MacIntyre, proclaiming
that modern societies are morally degenerate, not progressive—​
that, morally speaking, things have deteriorated rather than gotten
better. Similarly, many cultural anthropologists have insisted that
aggressive warfare and genocide are not prehistoric components
2 Introduction
of human nature but rather the result of pernicious cultural norms
that arose more recently in human history and that have lured us
away from our more cooperative, peaceful past.1
Yet with a little reflection, the denial of moral progress seems
absurd and skepticism about moral progress deeply misplaced,
puzzling, and, above all, ungrateful. For shining examples of
moral progress are not hard to come by: consider, for example,
the change from a world in which slavery was ubiquitous and ac-
cepted as natural to one in which it is universally condemned and
no longer the lot of the majority of humankind, the increasing
recognition of the equal rights of women in many societies, the
growing recognition in belief and practice that there are moral
limits on how we may treat (at least some) non-​human animals,
the abolition of cruel punishments in many countries and of the
cruellest punishments virtually everywhere, the notion that war
must be morally justified, and the acknowledgment and (admit-
tedly imperfect) institutionalization of the idea that the people
are ultimately sovereign or at least that government should serve
the people rather than the other way around. And this list is far
from exhaustive. It is hard to understand how these changes are
so often overlooked, given how transformational many of them
have been.
Consider British abolition. The outstanding historian of
slavery and emancipation Seymour Drescher eloquently captures
just how momentous this change was:

Emancipation was . . . an act without precedent in history. On a

single day in 1834, 800,000 slaves had been called from social death
to life. Neither at the announcement of coming freedom nor at the

1
This view is evident, for example, in the Seville Statement of 1986 on the
biology of human aggression, adopted by UNESCO and endorsed by nu-
merous social scientific associations. See D. Adams and J. Buchanan (1990),
“The Seville Statement on Violence,” American Psychologist 45(10): 1167–​1168.
As we discuss in Chapter 5, in recent years there has been a shift toward a much
less rosy view of premodern societies.
 Introduction 3
moment of implementation had it produced “a single insurrec-
tion,” nor had it “cost the life of a single man.”2

“Emancipation,” Drescher continues, “was a peaceful reform

generated from below and pursued for half a century. It was the
act of a nation and not of its rulers. English governments strug-
gled as long as they could against the adoption of every major
step toward emancipation, from the abolition of the slave trade
to the abolition of slavery.”3
The case of British abolition illustrates an ironic fact about
moral progress: once it occurs, we tend to take it for granted or
at least to underestimate its significance. Slavery has been called
“the peculiar institution.” But, in fact, across the long sweep of
human history, freedom is the peculiar institution.4 When we
think of freedom as the normal condition of most human beings
and slavery as the abnormal condition, we ignore the fact that
until very recently slavery in one form or another was ubiqui-
tous, and thus we undervalue and underestimate the great inno-
vation and dramatic reversal that was emancipation.
Similarly, if we think that democracy is the norm, we fail to ap-
preciate how rare, recent, and (perhaps) fragile the achievement of
democratic governance is. Or consider sorcery (witchcraft): most
human beings until very recently did not have the concept of a
fortuitous harm—​that is, they assumed that any harm that befell

2
Seymour Drescher, Abolition—​ A History of Slavery and Antislavery
(Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 264).
3
British abolition was all the more impressive as an instance of moral prog-
ress, then, because it was democratic and peaceful, rather than top-​down and vio-
lent. In contrast, the abolition of American slavery was far from peaceful: about
700,000 human beings perished in the Civil War. It is a shameful fact that the
United States was the only country that required a bloody civil war to abolish
slavery. (This is not the sort of “American exceptionalism” that conservatives
like to talk about.) Further, the beginning of American emancipation was an
executive order, The Emancipation Proclamation, framed by President Lincoln
not as a democratic legislative act but as a wartime emergency provision.
4
Drescher, Abolition, supra note 2, pp. ix–​x.
4 Introduction
them was the result of an intentional act, either by a god or by a
malicious human being who had put a spell on them. The ubiqui-
tous belief in sorcery was immensely destructive, often resulting
in what was widely regarded as proper retaliation to malevolent
magic but was in fact unjustified, often lethal aggression against
innocent people. The belief in sorcery also poisoned perfectly be-
nign relationships, fed paranoia, and undermined social solidarity.
Fortunately, human beings now take it for granted that there are
nonintentional harms and that many harms are not the result of
any kind of agency at all, whether benign or malicious. The belief
in sorcery still persists in some quarters—​and still does horrible
damage—​but, as with slavery, where it has been abandoned people
tend to be unaware of how progressive its abandonment really was.
Moral progress, then, is like oxygen: when it exists, we don’t tend
to notice it, even though our well-​being depends on it. Yet since
all of the changes listed above are undeniable—​and undeniably
good from a moral point of view—​why are many people skeptical,
uncertain, or silent about moral progress? The puzzlement only
deepens if we consider the fact that the idea of moral progress took
center stage in liberal political thought from the Enlightenment
through the nineteenth century but is now largely absent from
philosophical discourse or is addressed only indirectly, cursorily,
or ambiguously. What explains the veritable disappearance of sys-
tematic thinking about moral progress from liberal thought?

Explaining the Disappearance of the

Concept of Moral Progress
One must not overstate the case—​neglect of the concept of
moral progress has not been total. Very recently, several an-
alytic philosophers have had something valuable to say about
moral progress, and we shall engage with their views in the next
chapter. However, their discussions of moral progress fall well
short of a full-​fledged theory. What can account for the lack
of systematic theorizing about moral progress, as well as the
 Introduction 5
common skepticism about the existence of moral progress? We
can imagine several plausible, mutually non-​exclusive explana-
tions. Each of these explanations is credible as an explanation
but not as a justification—​that is to say, none is a good reason
for abandoning the idea of moral progress or forgoing attempts
to theorize it without further ado.
First, as we have already suggested, some think that the hor-
rors of the two world wars and the Holocaust, and perhaps the
more recent rise of Islamic State and its unprecedented genocidal
brutality in attempting to establish a caliphate in the Middle
East, show that belief in moral progress is a delusion. However,
the bloodbaths of the twentieth and early twenty-first century
do not rule out the possibility of moral progress, past or future;
acknowledging them only requires that one abandon linear con-
ceptions of moral progress—​conceptions that require continuous
progress or at least rule out major regressions. Some theories
of moral progress have postulated laws governing predictable
stages of development through which societies or civilizations
were supposed to pass, and these nomological assumptions have
prevented them from taking the possibility of regression seri-
ously. But the notion of an inexorable, continuous march of
moral advance is certainly not an essential feature of the idea
of moral progress, let alone one that is empirically supported
given the staggered historical trajectory of moral progress.
Further, as historians of large-​scale armed conflict have shown,
even if the first half of the twentieth century featured extraordi-
narily violent mass conflicts, war in the second half has declined
significantly. More importantly, periods of moral regression—​
such as the cataclysmic events of the first half of the twentieth
century—​are compatible with moral progress in the long run.
The long-​term trend (at least since ~1450 C.E.) is one of re-
markable reductions in homicide rates in many regions of the
world, even if war deaths are included.5

5
See Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature (Viking, 2011).
6 Introduction
Theodore Parker conceded that he was not in a position to di-
rectly observe or calculate the long-​term arc of the moral uni-
verse; instead, he had to “divine it by conscience.” Thanks to
rigorous empirical work on large-​scale trends in violence, slavery,
and other features of our evolving moral world, we are now in
a much better position to calculate some important dimensions
of the moral arc—​and we can now say with reasonable credence
that, at least in respect of these dimensions, Parker and King’s
optimism was justified.
A second source of skepticism about the possibility of a theory
of moral progress may be doubts about the possibility of making
global (all-​things-​considered) assessments of progress, as when
one society is said to be more morally progressive than another
or when the same society is said to be more morally progressive
at one time than at another. Local moral progress assessments, in
contrast, do not venture to make all-​things-​considered evalua-
tions. Instead, they assert, for example, that there has been prog-
ress in reducing racial or gender discrimination or in abolishing
slavery, without assuming that there is moral progress overall—​a
judgment that would necessarily take into account all other di-
mensions of morality. If global moral progress assessments are
problematic, Parker and King would only be justified in rend-
ering specific moral progress judgments about abolition or racial
discrimination and not about the arc of the moral universe itself.
It might turn out—​and it is too early in our investigation to
tell—​that global (all-​things-​considered) assessments of moral
progress cannot be justified for either of two reasons. First, it
might be that in any given case there are moral gains and moral
losses and that some of these are incommensurable, that it is
impossible to measure them on a common scale and determine
whether there has been net moral progress by subtracting the
losses from the gains. For example, the rise and dominance of
market economies have no doubt produced much good—​raising
standards of living for most people and, according to Norbert
Elias, Stephen Pinker, and others, contributing to a dramatic
 Introduction 7
reduction in homicide rates. But market economies also arguably
encouraged the growth of slavery and colonial domination and
produced considerable misery for the first generation of workers
in the Industrial Revolution. How are we to sum up, balance,
or compare these gains and losses? Even if all moral gains and
losses were commensurable and global (as opposed to merely
local) moral progress assessments were justified in principle, the
complexity of the calculation might be so great that reliable as-
sessments of net gain or loss are beyond our powers, at least at
present. Thus, if one assumes that any theory of moral progress
that warrants the title must include global progress assessments,
then one will have good reason to doubt the feasibility of the
proj­ect. Note, however, that these same difficulties afflict at-
tempts to make global moral regression judgments, such as those
of Rousseau and MacIntyre alluded to above.
While it is true that many previous attempts to theorize moral
progress have assumed, without good reason, that global assess-
ments could be made, one should not presume that any worth-
while theory of moral progress must include global, as opposed
to local, moral progress assessments. This book will focus on
identifying and understanding various types of moral improve-
ments, without venturing all-​things-​considered judgments about
moral progress. The Conclusion, however, will return to the
question of global moral progress assessments and argue that
whether they are justifiable will depend upon whether our best
normative moral theories allow us to strongly rank moral values
or principles. We will conclude that on any plausible ranking of
moral values and principles, the global degeneration thesis must
be rejected.
A third possible motivation for the neglect of or skepticism
about a theory of moral progress is the notion that a proper ac-
knowledgment of moral pluralism—​the view that there is a plu-
rality of valid or reasonable moralities—​renders the notion of
moral progress uninteresting by ruling out the possibility of
moral progress for humanity as a whole, as opposed to moral
8 Introduction
progress for particular moral traditions or cultures. However, ac-
knowledging some degree of moral pluralism does not rule out
the possibility of meaningful moral progress. Suppose that there
is a plurality of reasonable moralities, each matched, as it were, to
different ecological conditions in which human beings may find
themselves; but in addition, suppose that they all share some fun-
damental moral norms because every viable morality must address
certain universal features of the human predicament. Increased
commitment or conformity to these fundamental norms could
count as moral progress even if there remained great diversity in
other norms due to the peculiarities of history and local ecology.
So, even if it is highly unlikely that there will be complete agree-
ment on any one particular morality—​and even if there is no
reason to think that there should be—​this is compatible with
increasing convergence on some important moral norms (such
as basic human rights) and with moral progress being gauged in
terms of compliance with those norms.6
A fourth and related source of skepticism about attempts to
theorize moral progress stems from the perceived perils of using
the concept of moral progress, even if this is done with good
intentions. Reflecting on atrocities committed in the name of
moral progress by agents of colonialism and imperialism, some
people may conclude that the idea is simply too dangerous to

For example, the idea of human rights apparently originated in the West
6

but now has become incorporated into the moral outlooks of people from
many different cultures. See Allen Buchanan, “Moral Progress and Human
Rights,” in Cindy Holder and David Reidy (eds.), Human Rights: The Hard
Questions (Cambridge University Press, 2013, pp. 399–​417). Likewise, more
widespread acknowledgment of the fact of reasonable pluralism, if it results in
greater tolerance of reasonable differences in moral belief, could also count as
moral progress. Even if there are no shared fundamental moral norms among
reasonable moralities, the question of whether there has been or can be moral
progress from the standpoint of some particular reasonable morality may still
be worth addressing. For example, it should matter for those whose moral out-
look is liberal whether there has been or is likely to be moral progress as judged
from that perspective.
 Introduction 9
be employed. Now it is undeniable that the concept of moral
progress is subject to abuse, but this is true of many other moral
concepts that are indispensable. Consider the concepts of the
right of self-​defense and of just war: these concepts have been
used to rationalize morally unjustified aggression, and yet this
lamentable sociological fact does not warrant their abandonment.
Rather than leading us to jettison the idea of moral progress, the
fact that the concept has been misused should compel us to reflect
critically on our confidence in making judgments about moral
progress and to carefully scrutinize the political roles that the
idea of moral progress should or should not play.
Reluctance to acknowledge the existence of moral progress
may also reflect a concern that in doing so we run the risk of ob-
scuring the great moral failures of our time. Recognizing major
moral victories may be seen as objectionably self-​congratulatory
in ways that could impede further moral progress by enervating
current efforts at reform or by distracting us from what remains
to be done. Yet clearly there is no logical tension between our
willingness to recognize moral gains and our ability to identify
further areas for improvement; nor is it evident that there is a
psychological tension. Indeed, recognizing our moral achieve-
ments and that our progressive social movements can succeed
even in the face of overwhelming opposition can energize, rather
than enervate, further efforts at moral reform, as it arguably has
done in the case of the ever-​expanding civil rights movement.
However, even if the perils of employing the concept of moral
progress can be adequately mitigated, skepticism of the project
may remain due to the idea that a notion of moral progress that
is free of cultural bias is impossible to achieve. Given the fact
that virtually all earlier attempts to think seriously and systemat-
ically about moral progress have been marred by racial, gender,
class, or ethnonational bias, people who are acutely aware that
all human beings, now as before, are afflicted by prejudice may
simply conclude that constructing an unbiased theory is beyond
our capacities. While it is true that previous efforts to theorize
10 Introduction
moral progress have been compromised by prejudices of one sort
or another (often more than one), so too have attempts to the-
orize morality itself. Yet in both cases, there is good reason to
try to think in ways that avoid or mitigate such biases, rather
than to abandon the projects themselves. Further, for the first
time, human beings are developing scientific knowledge of how
biases work and how “de-​biasing” might in practice be achieved.
The proper conclusion to draw, then, is not that the problem of
bias is so hopeless as to make the development of a sound theory
of moral progress futile. The take-​home point, rather, is that
no theory of moral progress will be plausible unless it takes the
problem of bias seriously. The theory developed in this book sat-
isfies that requirement.
A final reason for the dearth of hard thinking about moral
progress in recent philosophical scholarship might be the
general lack of attention to “nonideal theory.”7 There are dif-
ferent understandings of the distinction between ideal theory
and nonideal theory in moral and political philosophy, but on
most accounts nonideal theory includes systematic thinking
about how to move toward a better moral condition—​in par-
ticular, the fuller realization of valid principles of justice.8 It
may also include a theory of how institutions should be, given
the assumption that they will not (for the foreseeable future)

7
We are grateful to Aaron Ancell for this suggestion.
8
Laura Valentini discusses several ways of drawing the nonideal/​ ideal
theory distinction: (1) full compliance versus partial compliance theory: ideal
theory assumes full compliance with the moral principles it identifies, whereas
nonideal theory provides an account of how to respond to noncompliance;
(2) realistic versus utopian theorizing: theories are more or less ideal depending
upon the extent to which they assume away various psychological (including
motivational), economic, or political limitations on achieving full compli-
ance with moral principles; and (3) end-​state versus transitional theory: ideal
theory specifies morally ideal end-​states, whereas nonideal theory provides an
account of the transition to or toward the end-​state. Laura Valentini (2012),
“Ideal and Nonideal Theory: A Conceptual Map,” Philosophy Compass
7(9): 654–​664.
 Introduction 11
be fully just and that there will be imperfect compliance with
valid moral principles.9 Nonideal theory, so far as it includes
an empirically informed and principled account of the transi-
tion toward a morally better condition, must include a theory
of moral progress.
Some contemporary philosophers do think in nonideal terms,
attempting to apply philosophical analysis to problems in our far
from perfect world. But it would be a stretch to say that they have
developed nonideal theories; instead, they have offered useful but
undeniably ad hoc proposals, rather than a systematic account. So,
because anything meriting the title of nonideal theory is currently
lacking, it is perhaps not surprising that there has been little ex-
plicit attention to the topic of moral progress. Yet to the extent
that philosophers acknowledge that working out a nonideal theory
includes a systematic, principled account of how to make the tran-
sition from less to more just conditions, they ought to be thinking
about moral progress, at least with regard to justice. And if they
have a wider understanding of nonideal theory, one that encom-
passes other dimensions of morality in addition to justice, then
they ought to be developing a general theory of moral progress.

Moral Skepticism and the Assumption

of Equal Basic Moral Status
None of the above reservations is a good reason for not trying
to think deeply and systematically about moral progress. Doing
so is not merely an “academic” exercise for moral and political
theorists. Whether there has been moral progress, and whether
we can reasonably hope there will be more, matters. As Stephen

9
Although there is a good deal of nonideal thinking of both these sorts in
contemporary political philosophy, we think it is fair to say that it hasn’t yet
risen to the level of nonideal theorizing: instead, there are more or less ad hoc
suggestions for how to make some progress here or there, along with piecemeal
reflections on how to proceed in light of the fact that ideal principles will not
be fully realized in institutions and practice.
12 Introduction
Pinker eloquently writes, “What could be more fundamental to
our sense of meaning and purpose than a conception of whether
the strivings of the human race over long stretches of time have
made us better or worse off.”10 Put simply, if morality matters,
then so does moral progress: if it matters whether we act mor-
ally and whether our social practices and institutions conform to
morality’s demands, then it matters whether we are doing better
in this regard. If it is important to understand what morality is and
what it requires of us, it is also important to know how to make
ourselves and our world morally better. Moral philosophers pro-
ceed on the reasonable assumption that, because morality matters
and matters a great deal, some people ought to think seriously and
systematically about it—​in other words, that some people ought to
try to construct a moral theory and to attempt to understand how
existing moral frameworks hang together. Similarly, there are pow-
erful reasons to think seriously and systematically about moral
progress; that is, to develop a theory of moral progress. This book
aims to take some of the first significant steps in this direction.
Of course, if you do not think there is such a thing as genuine
morality or normativity—​if you believe there is no such thing as
a non-​instrumental “ought”—​then you may reject the very pos-
sibility of moral progress out of hand. This book does not speak
to the moral nihilist. It assumes that one can sometimes make
true or justified moral judgments and have true or justified moral
beliefs. One of the book’s aims is to characterize the biosocial en-
vironments in which especially important true or justified moral
beliefs are likely (and unlikely) to occur and become widespread.
Among the most important moral beliefs, from the standpoint of
moral inclusivity, are those concerning moral standing and equal
basic moral status.
Further, although we do not offer a normative ethical theory,
we are committed to the truth of certain normative ethical claims.

10
Pinker, Better Angels, supra note 5, p. 1.
 Introduction 13
For example, we assume that slavery and other forms of bondage,
as well as discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, or re-
ligion, are morally wrong. More generally, we assume that social
arrangements are morally wrong if they relegate some persons
to an inferior moral status—​where this means they are excluded
from highly valued social activities and roles—​simply by virtue
of their perceived or self-​identified membership in some social
group such as an ethnicity, race, religion, or gender. It might be
thought that in doing so we are reposing on an undefended as-
sumption that all persons are entitled to recognition and protec-
tion of an equal basic status—​that we are assuming that moral
status-​egalitarianism is a moral truth. That is incorrect. Instead,
we think the shoe is on the other foot: those who endorse ine-
quality of basic status must provide a cogent justification for such
inequality—​and they have uniformly failed to do so.
Those who deny that members of certain groups are entitled
to equal basic status typically assert that everyone in their own
group is so entitled. But in that case the burden is on them to
show what it is about some individuals that qualifies them for
equal basic status and what it is about other individuals that
makes them unqualified. Invariably, when pressed to do so, the
advocates of inequality of basic status invoke false generaliza-
tions about the supposedly natural characteristics of members of
various groups—​for example, that women are less rational than
men, that blacks are intellectually and morally inferior, that low-​
caste people are essentially unclean, that non-​human animals
do not experience pain. Or they make implausible assumptions
about which supposedly natural characteristics qualify an in-
dividual for having equal basic status. For example, Nazis and
American eugenicists assumed that if one wasn’t a net contributor
to society—​if one was a “useless eater”—​then one lacked even
the most fundamental rights that constitute equal basic status. At
least in environments that are not so harsh that extinction of the
group is likely if “nonproductive” members are not abandoned,
it is implausible to think that simply by becoming disabled to the
14 Introduction
point of not being able to make a net contribution to the social
product, one suddenly is no longer worthy of equal respect and
lacks fundamental rights. After all, the features of human beings
that are plausibly invoked to explain their high moral status—​the
fact that they are agents with a life of their own to live, that they
are capable of being responsive to reasons in a practice of reason-​
giving with others, that they endow the world with meaning
through their recognition of value, etc.—​have nothing to do with
whether or not an individual happens to be capable of making
a net contribution to social production. Similarly, it would be
implausible to hold that what qualifies one for high equal basic
status is the possession of some trait like intelligence to a greater
degree than other persons possess it. Someone who held such a
view would almost certainly be guilty of inconsistency because
he would not admit that the discovery that some other individual
was more intelligent than he is would automatically deprive him
of equal status. In addition, a conception of equal basic status that
required a multitude of statuses tracking all the differences in in-
telligence in the human population, and which therefore required
revisions in an individual’s status every time new information
emerged about someone being more intelligent, could not per-
form the functions that a conception of equal status is reasonably
expected to perform.
The same burden of proof applies—​and in our opinion has not
been successfully borne—​in the case of views that assert that all
non-​human animals not only lack the same basic moral status as
humans but also have no moral standing at all. Given the im-
portance of avoiding the infliction of suffering in any reasonable
morality, it is simply not cogent to admit, as one must in the light
of scientific knowledge of comparative anatomy and functional
neuroscience, that many non-​ human animals experience pain
much as we do, while at the same time denying that they have no
moral standing whatsoever—​that there are no moral constraints
at all on how we may treat them. The key point is that assertions
of unequal basic status ought not to go unchallenged: if someone
 Introduction 15
asserts that only some human beings have a high moral status or
that no non-​human animals have any moral standing at all, she
owes a justification for these supposed differences. Justifications
that rely on false claims about natural differences or implausible
assumptions about which natural differences are relevant to moral
status fail. So do justifications that make sentience irrelevant to
moral standing or that pick out morally arbitrary biological cat-
egories as the basis for moral standing (such as being a member
of the designated species Homo sapiens). In our judgment, no co-
gent justifications have ever been given for the denials of equal
basic status that undergird systems of racial or gender discrim-
ination, caste systems, or any other practices that relegate some
human beings to a lesser moral status, nor for practices that treat
all non-​human animals as if were mere things with not even the
most basic moral standing. That is why we think it is appropriate
to begin our inquiry into moral progress with a presumption
that developments in inclusivity—​changes that involve extending
equal basic status or some kind of moral standing to classes of
individuals that had previously been excluded—​are relatively un-
controversial instances of progress.
We do not pretend to refute or even address the moral nihilist
who, qua nihilist, would presumably deny that anyone has moral
standing of any sort (whether equal or unequal). Having moral
standing of any sort implies that there are moral constraints on
how an individual who has moral standing ought to be treated,
but the moral nihilist denies that there are any moral constraints
whatsoever. Our foil, rather, is someone who says that some par-
ticular group of individuals has the high moral status that many
people now believe that all human persons have, while denying
that other people have that status. Our foil might hold that only
men have that high status or that only believers in a particular re-
ligion have it or that it only attaches to a particular racial group.
But if that is his or her view, then it is perfectly appropriate to de-
mand an explanation—​to ask why it is that some human individ-
uals have this high moral status while others lack it. The answer
16 Introduction
to this question typically, if not uniformly, is that those to whom
high status is accorded are said to have some natural property or
set of properties that those who are denied this high moral status
supposedly lack.
Consider, for example, moral belief systems that deny equal
status to women—​that exclude women from valued social prac-
tices and institutional roles simply because they are women. Those
who endorse these inequalities have tended to argue that women
lack the rationality and self-​control of men or that women are
subordinate to men in the scala naturae. There are two replies to
such equal status–​denying thinking. First, one can appeal to em-
pirical findings about the natural capacities of men and women
to show that if differences of the sort that the equal status–​denier
postulates exist at all, they are not essential features of the world
but rather artifacts of systematic discrimination. In later chapters
we elaborate this argument in detail, explaining how discrimina-
tory practices foster false beliefs about natural differences, which
in turn produce a distorted experience of what different groups
of human beings are like. Likewise, one could appeal to modern
scientific understandings of life and its evolution to reject anthro-
pocentric, racist, and sexist “scale of nature”–​type thinking about
evolution in general and human origins in particular. Second,
one can challenge the normative assumption that the supposed
differences—​ in the magnitudes that actually exist—​ are good
grounds for conferring equal basic status. For example, one can
point out that even if it were true that women or some “racial”
group were on average less rational or intelligent than some other
group, it is implausible to think that this would disqualify them
from equal basic status. In other words, even if some capacity
for rationality is a necessary condition for equal basic status,
any account of why that is so will make it clear that the required
threshold of rationality is one that all cognitively normal human
beings reach. One can also argue that even if there are measurable
differences in average rationality or intelligence between groups,
there are differences of equal or greater magnitude within the
 Introduction 17
supposedly superior group, which undermines the proffered ra-
tionale for group-​based discrimination.
So, if one contends that some persons have a high basic status
while others do not, then one owes a justification for the claim
that not only establishes that there are differences among groups
but also that these differences are of the sort and magnitude that
are relevant to making moral status judgments. As our investi-
gation unfolds, it will become clearer why we think that—​moral
nihilists aside—​it is the defender of basic status inequality, not
the proponent of it, who owes (and fails to bear) the burden
of argument. In any case, the point is that it would be a mis-
take to say that in our investigation of moral inclusivity we are
simply assuming, with no good reason, a status-​egalitarian view.
Nonetheless, if the reader remains unconvinced, our investiga-
tion of moral progress in the form of inclusivity can be read in a
more modest fashion—​namely, as being addressed to those who
are already committed to the proposition that all persons have an
equal (and equally high) basic moral status.
In our judgment, the belief that all persons have an equal basic
status is unproblematic, given the failure of equal status–​deniers
to provide a plausible defense of their view. The real problems are
specifying exactly what equal basic status amounts to in practice
and in determining the status of human beings who are relevantly
different from the paradigmatic cases of equal basic status—​for
example, individuals who from birth or due to injury or the rav-
ages of mind-​and personality-​destroying disorders may lack
the properties ordinarily associated with equal basic status.
Nonetheless, we think that the social practices we examine in this
volume—​in particular, slavery and race-​and gender-​based forms
of discrimination—​are clearly denials of equal basic status, even
if the full contours of the concept of equal basic status and the
boundaries of the class of beings to whom it is properly accorded
are unclear and disputed.
To begin our inquiry, we first need to have a clear initial, if
admittedly provisional, idea of what moral progress is (or, more
18 Introduction
cautiously, would be, were it to exist). For example, is everything
that earlier generations included under the rubric “civilization” a
matter of moral progress, or is some of it simply a matter of more
refined manners or aesthetic sensibilities? (Earlier writers often
didn’t make these distinctions, lumping all these putative im-
provements together under the heading of “progress” or “the ad-
vance of civilization.”) More importantly, are there distinct types
of moral progress and, if so, are some more basic than others (and
in what sense of “basic”)?
The focus of this book is on one especially important type of
moral progress: gains in what we will refer to as “moral inclusivity”
(“inclusivity” for short), what the Victorian historian of morals
William Lecky called “the expanding circle” of moral concern.11
In a future book, we will offer a more comprehensive theory, one
that covers other types of moral progress as well—​though much of
what we will have to say about the origins of moral inclusivity will
apply to the origins of other types of moral progress as well.

Ideal Theory and Moral Progress

One reader of a draft of this book stated that once you have a
theory of the just society, what counts as improvement or regress
should “just drop out as a simple corollary”; and thus, it isn’t
clear why a theory of moral progress is needed. That statement
is wrong. First, even if one limits moral assessment to societies
(rather than individuals or groups), morality cannot be reduced
to principles of justice, for even if justice is the first virtue of in-
stitutions (as Rawls thought), it is not the only one. Further, there
is no reason to assume that all the other virtues of societies can be
reduced to justice—​that there is at bottom only one virtue of insti-
tutions. The only way to make that claim at all plausible would be
to change the meaning of “the just society” to mean “the compre-
hensively morally good society.” Second, society is not the only

William Edward Harpole Lecky, History of European Morals from

11

Augustus to Charlemagne, v. 1, 3rd edition (D. Appleton, 1921).

 Introduction 19
subject matter of morality. There are some moral principles or
concepts that apply directly to individuals, families, friendships,
etc. and that do not reduce to those that apply to society.
Nor will it do to acknowledge that morality is about more than
justice but then to assert that one doesn’t need a theory of moral
progress because what counts as progress or regress simply fol-
lows as a corollary of one’s theory of the morally good or morally
optimal society comprehensively characterized. There are two
problems with that claim. First, it is hubristic to think that an-
yone now possesses a valid comprehensive theory of morality—​
an adequate theory of morality in all its dimensions—​so it would
not be very illuminating to define moral progress as progress to-
ward a society that satisfies all the demands of a valid comprehen-
sive morality. Later, we argue that a theory of morality ought to
allow for the possibility of improvements in our understanding
of morality and hence of moral progress. Second, suppose (rather
fantastically) that we could now confidently say that we are in
possession of a characterization of the society that satisfies all the
demands of morality. To say that what counts as moral progress
and regress would “drop out as a simple corollary” from that
would be wrong. One needs an empirically well-​founded ac-
count of how progress toward or regression away from the real-
ization of the principles of the supposedly valid comprehensive
morality is likely to occur. Such an account does not “drop out”
as a “simple corollary” of one’s characterization of the compre-
hensively moral society or, more broadly, of the comprehensively
moral state of affairs. Our approach in this volume is to show
that there is much of interest to be said about moral progress in
the absence of the assumption that anyone possesses a valid com-
prehensive theory of morality (or even of justice), by focusing
on one especially important and relatively uncontroversial kind
of moral progress: improvements in the dimension of inclusivity.
Instead of resting content with the rather unhelpful idea that
moral progress in inclusivity is whatever moves us toward greater
inclusivity (of the right kind), we offer a theory of the conditions
under which that kind of moral progress is likely to occur, based
20 Introduction
on an analysis of the conditions under which it has occurred, in
the light of the best available evolutionary thinking about the or-
igins of human morality.
Now it might be that there is very little that can be said in-
formatively about what counts as moral progress in general or
in every case. There may be no specific moral or social theoret-
ical framework that unifies and explains all instances of moral
progress. If one thinks that anything short of that cannot count
as a theory of moral progress, then we freely admit that in this
book we do not offer a theory of moral progress in that ambi-
tious sense. As will soon become apparent, we think that there
are several kinds of moral progress, and we are skeptical that they
can all be reduced to one kind. Our chief aim is to offer the begin-
nings of a theory of moral progress for one especially important
kind of moral progress (namely progress in inclusivity), and we
withhold judgment about how far this framework can extend to
cover other cases.
If moral progress is possible, so far as one cares about morality,
one needs to know how to achieve it and how to avoid moral
regression. “Knowing how” includes knowing not just which ac-
tions or policies will bring some morally beneficial change about
but also which means of achieving progress are morally permis-
sible. That is why history, not fanciful philosophical thought
experiments, matters: understanding how actual instances of
moral progress have occurred may be valuable both for getting
clearer about what moral progress is and for knowing how to
bring it about in the right way. Finally, if it turns out that more
moral progress can be achieved, this is both consoling and moti-
vating: consoling because it can help us, especially in dark times,
to nurture reasonable hope for a brighter future; motivating, be-
cause it can help us avoid acceptance of or complicity in injus-
tice or other wrongs. In his speech dedicating the Smithsonian
National Museum of African American History and Culture in
Washington, DC, U.S. President Barack Obama put the point
this way:
 Introduction 21
[W]‌hat this museum . . . shows us is that in even the face of oppres-
sion, even in the face of unimaginable difficulty, America has moved
forward. And so this museum provides context for the debates of
our times. It illuminates them and gives us some sense of how they
evolved, and perhaps keeps them in proportion. . . . It reminds us
that routine discrimination and Jim Crow aren’t ancient history,
it’s just a blink in the eye of history. It was just yesterday. And
so we should not be surprised that not all the healing is done. We
shouldn’t despair that it’s not all solved. And knowing the larger
story should instead remind us of just how remarkable the changes
that have taken place truly are―just in my lifetime―and thereby
inspire us to further progress.12

Confronting the Moral Degeneration Thesis

The case we have begun to make for theorizing moral prog-
ress can be strengthened by pointing out some of the most
basic defects of the most prominent degeneration views. First,
as Stephen Holmes among others has shown, degeneration the-
orists, such as Rousseau, Montaigne, and MacIntyre, typically
find deterioration in modern societies by comparing them with
a highly idealized, historically inaccurate vision of the virtues of
premodern societies and people—​such as the myth of the harmo-
nious genuine community which, though hierarchical, was still
somehow nonexploitive and free or the fiction that premodern
societies were egalitarian tout court rather than egalitarian so
far as relationships among males were concerned.13 Second,
some degeneration theorists, and MacIntyre in particular, exag-
gerate the moral coherence of premodern societies, portraying
them as having less disagreement about values than they actually

12
The transcript of Obama’s dedication speech can be found at
https:// ​ o bamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ ​ t he- ​ p ress- ​ o ffice/ ​ 2 016/ ​ 0 9/ ​ 2 4/​
remarks-​president-​dedication-​national-​museum-​african-​american-​history.
13
Stephen Holmes, The Anatomy of Anti-​Liberalism (Harvard University
Press, 1994).
22 Introduction
exhibited.14 Third, they equally exaggerate the incoherence of
modern moral cultures. MacIntyre, for instance, believes that the
modern moral culture that succeeded the supposedly coherent
and admirable pre-​Enlightenment European Christian moral cul-
ture is like a shattered vase—​a scattered collection of fragments.
He somehow overlooks the fact that there seems to be rather
widespread consensus in modern moral culture on, for example,
the idea that democracy is the best form of government, that the
power of the state should be limited by a constitution, that gov-
ernment is to be a servant of the people and not its master, and so
on. MacIntyre also ignores the fact that the modern human rights
system, which encompasses elaborate bodies of regional and in-
ternational human rights laws and norms, is itself evidence of a
very broad moral consensus, especially among societies that are
the heirs of the very premodern Christian moral culture that he
extolls. Chapter 9 of this volume shows that the modern human
rights system exemplifies some of the most important advances in
moral progress in the form of increased inclusiveness.
Fourth, and more importantly, degeneration theorists overlook
a simple fact that is hard to reconcile with their views: most of
the paradigmatic examples of moral progress occurred precisely
during the period in which they say the formerly supposedly
healthy, coherent traditional moral culture was disintegrating
under the onslaught of the forces of modernity. Abolitionism, the
struggle for equal rights for women, the movement to end aggres-
sive war, the campaign to end cruel punishments, and the recog-
nition that at least some non-​human animals ought to be treated
more humanely all began in the latter half of the eighteenth cen-
tury, contemporaneously with the Enlightenment, the spread of
market relations, and the Industrial Revolution. So, either these
forces of modernity did not produce the disintegration of tra-
ditional moral culture, or they allowed for its replacement by a

14
Ibid., ­chapter 4.
 Introduction 23
new coherent moral culture, or moral progress does not require a
coherent moral culture. None of these three alternatives is com-
patible with degeneration theses from Rousseau to MacIntyre.
Indeed, this book will argue that these forces of modernity not
only did not result in moral degeneration but in fact played a cru-
cial causal role in making paradigmatic cases of moral progress
possible.
Rousseau cannot be faulted for failing to see that what he
regarded as the period of degeneration was in fact the begin-
ning of some of the greatest moral advances that have ever oc-
curred. He lived late enough to see some of the negative effects
of modernity but not long enough to witness the monumental
moral advances that began in the late eighteenth century. That
excuse is not available to contemporary degeneration theorists
like MacIntyre: there is no justification for blithely ignoring
the fact that momentous moral advances have occurred in post-​
traditional society—​ and that the traditional moral culture of
Europe that authors such as MacIntyre admire so much was re-
markably unprogressive, indeed stagnant from the standpoint of
some of the most important dimensions of moral improvement.
The traditional European Christian moral culture that MacIntyre
extols accepted slavery, accepted the subordination of women,
accepted horridly cruel punishments, and accepted the inflic-
tion of gratuitous suffering on animals. Indeed, the very same
moral culture supplied religious justifications for these shameful
behaviors. MacIntyre seems to be so preoccupied with the sup-
posed virtues of coherence in a moral culture—​and it is impor-
tant to understand that for him coherence includes unreflective
moral agreement—​that he overlooks the plausible possibility that
some incoherence, or some fragmentation, as well as a good deal
of disagreement, may be necessary for moral advancement.
Despite these profound flaws, degeneration theorists ad-
vance three extremely valuable points. First, they make vividly
clear a fact that hugely complicates the task of theorizing moral
progress—​namely, that moral advances often come with high
24 Introduction
costs, some of which may count as instances of moral dete-
rioration or regression. To return to an example used in our
discussion of global moral progress assessments, even though
the growth of market relations eventually lifted many people
out of poverty, reduced toilsome labor for many, and (if Elias
and Pinker are right) contributed to the development of a less
violent human moral psychology, it also fostered the growth of
the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism, resulted in ruth-
less and demeaning exploitation of workers by capitalists, and
may even have produced a (short-​term) decline in the health
of the average worker. Similarly, the Neolithic revolution—​the
invention and spread of agriculture and the domestication of
animals that began in the Fertile Crescent around ten thousand
years ago—​apparently worsened the health of most people
relative to their hunter–​gatherer ancestors and may also have
damaged some of the valuable social relations they enjoyed in
their previous, smaller groups. Second, and echoing our ear-
lier discussion by emphasizing that moral progress has a darker
side, degeneration theorists help bring to light the issue of
commensurability and thereby raise the question of whether it
is possible to make reliable global (as opposed to local) moral
progress assessments. They fail to realize, however, that the
conceptual and empirical difficulties confronting global moral
progress judgments apply equally to judgments of moral de-
generation. To say that things are worse nowadays than before
is to make a global assessment.
Third, degeneration theorists rightly urge us to appreciate the
virtues of some degree of coherence and moral agreement in a
moral culture and to take seriously the possibility that conditions
in modern societies may undermine adequate levels of both. And
this is true even if, as we have just suggested, some lack of coher-
ence actually facilitates moral progress, at least if full coherence
tends to require suppression of disagreement. For instance, citi-
zens of contemporary European democracies, such as France and
Germany, are right to be concerned about how the growing influx
 Introduction 25
of refugees from war-​torn countries and failed states, harboring
very different social, political, and religious values, might under-
mine the secular liberal foundations of their social democracies.
More specifically, the worry is that recent, hard-​won, and still in-
complete progress regarding the proper treatment of women and
the marginalization of anti-​Semitism could be eroded if there are
large numbers of immigrants from regions in which honor kill-
ings, gender discrimination, and anti-​Semitism are widespread.
How serious this risk is may be hard to judge, and there is reason
to believe that some reactions to the risk have been excessive
and inhumane. Yet it is clear that, under certain circumstances,
implementing a policy of “open borders” endorsed by the more
liberal strands of modern moral culture might lead to moral re-
gression. The magnitude of the risk depends chiefly on how resil-
ient liberal culture and institutions are—​that is, on their capacity
to persist in spite of the presence of illiberal groups within society.
In spite of these valuable insights, what degeneration theorists
ought to take seriously, but seem not to consider at all, is the
possibility that considerable moral disagreement and even some
degree of incoherence in a moral culture may be necessary con-
ditions for moral progress. Degeneration theorists may be right
that modern society is characterized by moral disagreement and
even by a degree of incoherence (at least relative to traditional
moral cultures). Yet it may nonetheless still be true that modern
moral culture is more morally progressive than traditional moral
cultures. Further, it may well be that modern society is more
morally progressive than traditional society precisely because it
includes more moral disagreement and less coherence. Here it is
important to remember that the coherence and agreement that
characterized traditional European culture, prior to the onset of
the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, was largely
due to oppression wielded by church and government elites.
Degeneration theorists tend to overlook the tremendous human
costs of this forced coherence and agreement, as well as the fact
that it seemed to produce not just stability but moral stagnation.
26 Introduction
Our aim in this volume is not to provide a detailed refutation
of degeneration views. Instead, we hope to have said enough
about the problems such views face to show that they are not a
conversation-​stopper regarding the topic of moral progress. The
case against degeneration views will be considerably strengthened
in later chapters, when we explore the biological, social, and po-
litical conditions that either encourage or inhibit moral progress.
In so doing, we will show exactly why it is that modern liberal
societies, not traditional ones, offer the best prospects for moral
progress.

Naturalizing Moral Progress

The theory of moral progress begun in this book is naturalistic
in several senses. The first is that it is secular, rather than theo-
logical: it appeals to natural rather than supernatural factors in
determining what counts as moral progress and how it can be
achieved—​unlike earlier accounts that viewed moral progress
as being defined and guided by divine providence. As a secular
theory, our account avoids the temptation to which theological
theorists of moral progress have often succumbed, namely, the-
odicy: the attempt to reconcile the bad in history with the as-
sumption that there is an all-​powerful and all-​beneficent being.
Secular approaches to moral progress are of course not new.
One of the distinctive features of mainstream liberal thought
from the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century was
that it secularized the idea of moral progress.15 That is, it char-
acterized moral progress without reference to religious tenets,
insisted that moral progress could be achieved solely by human
effort and without divine assistance, and promised to ground its

15
Spadafora shows that some British Enlightenment thinkers included a lim-
ited role for providence in their accounts of progress but that others held purely
secular views. David Spadafora, The Idea of Progress in Eighteenth-​Century
Britain (Yale University Press, 1990, pp. 88, 90, 91, 96, 97, 363–​365, 375, 390).
 Introduction 27
theories of progress in a “science of man.” Nevertheless, early
secular theories were insufficiently naturalistic because, like
their conservative detractors, liberal political theorists in that era
tended to rely upon under-​evidenced assumptions about human
psychology and society. Their factual assumptions were based on
folk psychology, flawed attempts to develop empirically based
psychological theories, a priori speculation, and reflections on
history hampered both by a lack of information and by inade-
quate methodology.16 Another defect of some secular concep-
tions of moral progress was that they claimed, without evidence,
that moral progress was inevitable, not merely feasible. Given a
near total lack of solid empirical grounding, the claim that moral
progress was inevitable was even shakier than the claim that it
was feasible.
At a minimum, a theory of moral progress ought to be compat-
ible with the relevant psychological and social facts about human
beings. A more demanding desideratum is that it must provide
an account of how the path of moral progress can be traversed
that is compatible with those facts. In particular, the theory
must support the conclusion that moral progress is more than
logically possible, given an accurate view of the relevant facts. It
must show that moral progress is both feasible and permissible,
and it should also supply some specific guidance as to how moral
progress can be achieved. Feasibility has two components: can

16
Theorists of progress in the English and Scottish Enlightenment, in-
cluding Hartley, Hume, Smith, and Kames, based their views on psychological
assumptions (e.g., that “the association of ideas” was a fundamental feature
of the human mind); but their psychological views, like their views about so-
ciety, lacked rigorous empirical support. In addition, their psychological the-
ories were seriously incomplete because they lacked an understanding of the
full range of what are now called “normal cognitive biases” and how these
biases interact with culture to construct morally relevant beliefs—​which we
later show to be of crucial relevance for any empirically grounded theory of
moral progress. For a valuable discussion of the psychological assumptions of
these theorists and their bearing on the idea of progress, see Ibid., pp. 138–​148,
163–​166, 343–​346, 151–​152.
28 Introduction
we really get there from here, and will the destination be sus-
tainable?17 Permissibility concerns whether we get there by using
morally acceptable means. Secular theories of moral progress
that are premised on false presuppositions about human nature
and society will be misguided or utopian; those that are mistaken
about the permissibility of traversing moral valleys in order to
reach a higher peak in a “morality landscape” will be morally re-
gressive, perhaps disastrously so.
The theory proposed here is thus “naturalistic” in the contem-
porary philosophical sense that it proceeds on the assumption
that empirical knowledge, and especially scientific knowledge of
human nature and society, can be crucial for tackling important
philosophical topics—​in this case, that of moral progress. More
specifically, in developing a theory of moral progress, we exploit
the resources of evolutionary biology, moral psychology, cultural
evolutionary theory, and the psychology of normal cognitive
biases and errors, as well as our best current understandings in
economics, sociology, and history regarding the nature of social
practices and institutions and how and why they have changed
over time. We also draw on the developing resources of social
moral epistemology, the comparative study of how different in-
stitutions and social practices affect the beliefs normally needed
for the functioning of human beings’ moral capacities—​ their
abilities to make moral judgments, engage in moral reasoning,
employ moral concepts, and experience moral emotions such as
sympathy and indignation at injustice.
The fact that earlier liberal thinkers failed to achieve fully nat-
uralistic theories of moral progress is not surprising, of course,
given how meager genuine scientific knowledge about human
psychology and society was in the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Our situation today is more hopeful. For the first time,

17
To say that some type of moral improvement is “feasible” is not to say that
it can be perfectly realized. It is too much to ask that a theory of moral progress
specify a fully attainable ideal. See Chapter 1 for further discussion.
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 CHAPTER XXVII.
THE WHITE NILE.

Explorations of the White Nile—Dr. Knoblecher’s Voyage in 1849-50—The

Lands of the Shillooks and Dinkas—Intercourse with the Natives—
Wild Elephants and Giraffes—The Sobat River—The Country of
Marshes—The Gazelle Lake—The Nuehrs—Interview with the Chief
of the Kyks—The Zhir Country—Land of the Baris—The Rapids
Surmounted—Arrival at Logwek, in Lat. 4° 10′ North—Panorama from
Mt. Logwek—Sources of the White Nile—Character of the Bari Nation
—Return of the Expedition—Fascination of the Nile.

Let me here pause a moment, at the turning-point of my journey,

and cast a glance up the grand and wonderful vista which the White
Nile opened to my view. The exploration of this river within the last
fifteen years constitutes the most interesting chapter in the annals of
African Discovery. It has been ascended to lat. 4° north, eight
degrees of latitude, or four hundred and eighty geographical miles—
and at least eight hundred miles, following the course of the stream
—beyond the island of Aba. Of the Europeans who at different times
accompanied the exploring fleets of Mohammed Ali or the annual
trading expeditions, three kept journals and made scientific
observations, and two—D’Arnaud and Werne—have published
accounts of the voyage. Werne’s book, however, is taken up with
peevish comments on the conduct of D’Arnaud and Sabatier, and the
report of the former, as I learned from Dr. Knoblecher himself, is
incorrect in many particulars. The most satisfactory account is that of
Dr. Knoblecher, who ascended about fifty miles beyond the point
reached by previous expeditions. During my stay in Khartoum, I
received from him full particulars of his adventures, and was allowed
to inspect his journals and sketch-books. His reports are exceedingly
curious and interesting, and I herewith present a brief outline of
them.
 Dr. Knoblecher was specially educated, in the Propaganda at
Rome, as a missionary for Central Africa. After studying the Arabic
language for a year in Syria, he proceeded to Khartoum, where a
Catholic Mission had already been established. There, however, the
Mission found its sphere of operations circumscribed by the jealousy
of the government, as all attempts to make proselytes of Mussulmen
are forbidden, and the highest ambition of the slaves who are
brought from the interior is to be considered faithful followers of the
Prophet. Dr. Knoblecher was therefore directed to accompany the
annual trading expedition up the White Nile, for the purpose of
ascertaining the practicability of establishing a missionary station
among some of the native negro tribes near the Equator. He
experienced much difficulty at the outset, on account of the jealousy
of the Egyptian traders, who find the company of a European a
restraint upon their violent and lawless practices, but through the
influence of the Pasha, who was at last brought to give his consent,
the missionaries secured a place in the expedition, and on the 13th
of November, 1849, set sail from Khartoum. There were seven
vessels in the flotilla, and that of Dr. Knoblecher, though the smallest,
proved to be the best sailer and usually kept the lead. He had on
board a faithful and experienced Nubian pilot, named Suleyman
Abou-Zeid.
After fourteen days’ sailing, the expedition passed the islands of
the Shillooks and reached that part of the river where the banks are
covered with continuous villages. The number of these is estimated
at seven thousand. It is worthy of notice that their circular tokuls of
mud and reeds are precisely similar in form and construction to
those of the tribes on the Niger and Senegal Rivers, with whom the
Shillooks have no communication, and from whom they differ in
language, appearance and character. While threading the mazes of
the archipelago, a violent whirlwind passed over the river and
completely dismasted one of the boats. Beyond the islands the river
expands so that the marshy shores are barely visible in some
places. The lotus grows abundantly in the shallows, and the
appearance of the thousands of snowy blossoms as they flash open
at sunrise, is described as a scene of vegetable pomp and splendor,
which can be witnessed in no other part of the world. The forests of
sont trees which cover the islands give place to doum-palms and
immense tamarinds, and beyond lat. 10°, in the land of the Dinkas,
the beautiful dhelleb-palm is first seen. It has a tall, graceful trunk,
thick in the middle, but tapering towards the top and bottom, and a
rich crown of large, fan-like leaves.
On the twenty-eighth of November the expedition succeeded, after
some difficulty, in establishing an intercourse with the Dinkas and
Shillooks, who inhabited the opposite banks of the river. The latter in
consideration of some colored glass beads, furnished a number of
oxen for provisions. Dr. Knoblecher described their running, when
they drove the cattle together, as resembling that of the gazelle; they
leap high into the air, drawing up their long legs as they rise, and
clear the ground at a most astonishing speed. The next day the
vessels reached a large town called Vav, where the people received
them without the least appearance of fear, and brought quantities of
elephants’ tusks to trade for beads. Herds of wild elephants and
giraffes were now frequently seen on the banks of the river, and the
former sometimes threw up their trunks and spirted water into the air
when they saw the vessels. Numbers of white herons were perched
composedly upon their backs and heads. The giraffes, as they gazed
with wonder at the fleet, lifted their heads quite above the tops of the
mimosa trees. On the second of December, the expedition passed
the mouth of the Sobat River, the only tributary stream which comes
to the White Nile from the east. Its source is supposed to be in the
country of the Gallas, south of the kingdom of Shoa. Its breadth, at
its entrance into the Nile, is six hundred and fifty feet. Werne, who
ascended it about eighty miles, with D’Arnaud’s expedition, states
that its shores are higher than those of the Nile, and that the surface
of the country became more elevated as he ascended, whence he
infers that the White Nile, as far as it has been explored, flows in a
depressed basin of the table-land of Central Africa.
From lat. 9° 26′ to 6° 50′ N. there is a complete change in the
scenery. The magnificent forests disappear, and the shores become
marshy and unhealthy, covered with tall grass, whose prickly stalks
render landing difficult, and embarrass the navigation of the
shallows. The air is heavy with noxious miasmas and filled with
countless swarms of gnats and mosquitoes. The water of the river is
partially stagnant, and green with vegetable matter, occasioning
serious disorders to those who drink it. Dr. Knoblecher clarified it by
means of alum, and escaped with a sore mouth. In order to sleep,
however, he was obliged to wear thick gloves and muffle up his face,
almost to suffocation. The Bahr el-Ghazàl, or Gazelle Lake, lies in
lat. 9° 16′ N. It is thus named from the Gazelle River, which flows into
it on the western side, and which has never yet been explored. Its
depth is about nine feet, but the reeds and water-plants with which it
is filled reach to the surface, and render the navigation difficult. Its
shores are inhabited by the Nuehr negroes, a stupid, imbruted race,
many of whom are frequently carried off by the traders and sold as
slaves. For this reason it is now very difficult to procure elephants’
teeth from them.
After leaving the Gazelle Lake, the course of the White Nile
becomes exceedingly tortuous, and its current sluggish. Innumerable
estuaries, or blind channels, which lose themselves among the
reeds, perplexed the pilots, and delayed the progress of the
expedition. The land of the Kyks succeeded to that of the Nuehrs,
which terminated about the eighth parallel of latitude. The former are
a race of herdsmen, who have great numbers of cattle and sheep.
Dr. Knoblecher found them exceedingly shy, on account of the
threats of one of their kogiurs, or soothsayers, who had warned them
against holding any intercourse with the traders. On the twenty-
second of December they reached the village of Angwen, where the
King of the Kyks resided. The monarch received them with great
kindness, and paid distinguished homage to Padre Angelo Vinco, Dr.
Knoblecher’s companion, whom, on account of his spectacles and
gray beard, he took to be a magician. He begged the Padre to grant
him four favors, viz:—abundance of children; the death of the enemy
who had slain his father; victory in all his fights, and a cure for the
wound in his head. The latter gift was easily bestowed, by means of
a plaster, but he was not satisfied until an image of the Virgin had
been hung around his neck.
South of the Kyks dwell the Elliàbs, who are less timid than the
southern tribes, because they come less frequently into contact with
the traders. In their country the White Nile divides into two branches,
and here the expedition separated, each division taking a different
channel. The water was so low that the vessels stuck fast in the
mud, but were relieved by the friendly natives, who dragged them
through the shallows by means of long tow-ropes. For this service
they were paid in glass beads. The further the vessels went into
regions where intercourse with the Egyptian traders is rare, and
therefore fewer outrages are perpetrated, the more friendly, confiding
and unconcerned was the behavior of the natives.
On the thirty-first of December the expedition reached the country
of the Zhirs. The people came down to the water’s edge to greet
them, the women clapping their hands and singing a song of
welcome. On the second of January, 1850, Dr. Knoblecher saw in
the south-east the granite mountain of Nierkanyi, which lies in the
Bari country, in about the fifth degree of north latitude. It was the first
elevation he had seen since leaving Djebel Defafangh, in the country
of the Dinkas, in lat. 10° 35′. All the intervening space is a vast
savannah, interspersed with reedy swamps of stagnant water. The
Zhirs own numerous flocks and herds, and cultivate large fields of
sesamè and dourra. They are very superior to the Nuehrs and Kyks
in stature, symmetry of form and their manners toward strangers. In
all these tribes, the men go entirely naked, while the women wear a
narrow girdle of sheepskin around the loins. Dr. Knoblecher,
however, confirmed the statement of Werne as to the modesty of
their demeanor and the evident morality of their domestic life.
After leaving the Zhirs the expedition entered the country of the
Baris, and on the fourteenth of January reached the rapids of the
White Nile, at the island of Tsanker, in 4° 49′ N. This was the farthest
point reached by all previous expeditions, as they found it impossible
to advance further with their vessels. The Nubian pilot, Suleyman
Abou-Zeid, determined to make the attempt, and on the following
day, aided by a strong north-wind, stemmed the rapid and reached
the broad, lake-like expanse of river above it. Continuing his voyage,
Dr. Knoblecher sailed sixteen miles further, to the Bari village of
Tokiman. The country was exceedingly rich and beautiful, abounding
in trees, and densely peopled. The current of the river was more
rapid, its waters purer, and the air seemed to have entirely lost the
depressing miasmatic exhalations of the regions further north. The
inhabitants of Tokiman showed great astonishment at the sight of the
vessels and their white occupants. Nothing, however, affected them
so much as the tones of a harmonica, played by Dr. Knoblecher.
Many of the people shed tears of delight, and the chief offered the
sovereignty of his tribe in exchange for the wonderful instrument.
On the sixteenth, the expedition reached the village of Logwek,
which takes its name from a solitary granite peak, about six hundred
feet high, which stands on the left bank of the Nile. It is in lat. 4° 10′
N., and this is the most southern point which has yet been reached
on the White Nile. Dr. Knoblecher ascended the mountain, which
commanded a view of almost the entire Bari country. Towards the
south-west the river wound out of sight between the mountains Rego
and Kidi, near which is the mountain of Kereg, containing rich iron
mines which are worked by the natives. Towards the south, on the
very verge of the horizon, rose a long range of hills, whose forms
could not be observed with exactness, owing to the great distance.
Beyond the Logwaya range, which appeared in the east, dwell the
Berri tribes, whose language is distinct from the Baris, and who are
neighbors of the Gallas—that warlike race, whose domain extends
from Abyssinia to the wilds of Mozambique, along the great central
plateau of Uniamesi. The natives of Logwek knew nothing whatever
of the country to the south. The farthest mountain-range was
probably under the parallel of lat. 3° N., so that the White Nile has
now been traced nearly to the Equator. At Logwek, it was about six
hundred and fifty feet wide, and from five to eight feet deep, at the
time of Dr. Knoblecher’s visit, which was during the dry season. Such
an abundance of water allows us to estimate with tolerable certainty
the distance to its unknown sources, which must undoubtedly lie
beyond the Equator.
The great snow mountain of Kilimandjarò, discovered in 1850 by
Dr. Krapf, the German missionary, on his journey inland from
Mombas, on the coast of Zanzibar, has been located by geographers
in lat. 3° S. It is therefore most probable that the source of the White
Nile will be found in the range of mountains, of which Kilimandjarò is
the crowning apex. The geographer Berghaus, in a long and labored
article, endeavors to prove that the Gazelle River is the true Nile,
and makes it rise in the great lake N’Yassi, in lat. 13° S. Dr.
Knoblecher, however, who examined the Bahr el-Ghazàl at its
mouth, says it is an unimportant stream, with a scarcely perceptible
current. He considers the White Nile as being, beyond all question,
the true river. He also informed me, that, while at Logwek, some of
the natives spoke of people white like himself, who lived far towards
the south. I do not believe in the fable of a white civilized race in the
interior of Africa, and consider this rather as referring to the
Portuguese settlements on the coast of the Indian Ocean, reports of
which would readily be carried inland, from one tribe to another. Dr.
Knoblecher is of the opinion that no exploring expedition from
Khartoum will be successful; that the traveller must first stop in the
Bari country long enough to gain some knowledge of its people, and
then, with a company of the natives as his attendants, make that his
starting point.
The shortness of Dr. Knoblecher’s stay among the Baris did not
permit him to obtain much information concerning them. They
appeared to be worshippers of trees, like the Dinkas and Shillooks,
but to have a glimmering idea of the future existence of the soul.
They are brave and fearless in their demeanor, yet cheerful, good-
natured and affectionate towards each other. Werne frequently
observed the men walking along the shore with their arms around
each other’s necks. They are even more colossal in their stature
than the Shillooks, many of them reaching a height of seven feet.
Their forms are well-knit, symmetrical, and indicate great strength
and activity. In smelting and working up the iron ore of Mount Kereg
they show a remarkable skill. Many of the spears in Dr. Knoblecher’s
possession are as elegantly formed and as admirably tempered as if
they had come from the hands of a European blacksmith. They also
have war-clubs of ebony, which are nearly as hard and heavy as
iron. One end is of a sloping, oval form, and the other sharp, and
they are said to throw them a distance of fifty or a hundred yards
with such precision that the sharp point strikes first and the club
passes through the body like a lance. I have in my possession some
of these clubs, which were presented to me by Dr. Knoblecher.
 On the seventeenth of January the expedition left Logwek on its
return to Khartoum, the traders having procured all the ivory which
the natives had collected since the previous year. The Missionaries
were prevented from accomplishing their object by the jealousy of
the traders, who persuaded the Bari chiefs that they were magicians,
and that if they were allowed to remain, they would bewitch the
country, prevent the rains from falling and destroy the crops of
dourra. In consequence of these reports the chiefs and people, who
had been on the most friendly terms with Dr. Knoblecher and Padre
Angelo, suddenly became shy and suspicious, and refused to allow
the latter to take up their residence among them. The design of the
mission was thus frustrated, and the Vicar returned with the
expedition to Khartoum. He designed leaving for the Bari country in
November, 1852, but up to the present moment[5] no account has
been received of the fulfilment of his plans.
The pictures which these recent explorations present to us, add to
the stately and sublime associations with which the Nile is invested,
and that miraculous flood will lose nothing of his interest when the
mystery which veils his origin shall be finally dispelled. Although in
standing upon the threshold of his vast central realms, I felt that I
had realized a portion of my dream, I could not turn away from the
vision of those untrodden solitudes, crowned by the flashing snows
of Kilimandjarò, the monarch of African mountains, without a keen
pang of regret. Since Columbus first looked upon San Salvador, the
Earth has but one emotion of triumph left in her bestowal—and that
she reserves for him who shall first drink from the fountains of the
White Nile, under the snow-fields of Kilimandjarò.
 CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE HASSANIYEH ARABS.

We leave the Islands of the Shillooks—Tropical Jungles—A Whim and its

Consequences—Lairs of Wild Beasts—Arrival among the
Hassaniyehs—A Village—The Woman and the Sultan—A Dance of
Salutation—My Arab Sailor—A Swarthy Cleopatra—Salutation of the
Saint—Miraculous Fishing—Night View of a Hassaniyeh Village—
Wad Shèllayeh—A Shekh’s Residence—An Ebony Cherub—The
Cook Attempts Suicide—Evening Landscape—The Natives and their
Cattle—A Boyish Governor—We reach Khartoum at Midnight.

After we parted from the Shillooks the men rowed lustily, and,
taking to the western side of the river, soon put an island between us
and the village. It was about two o’clock when we left, and the wind
fell sufficiently before night to allow them to make considerable
progress. We swept along, under the lee of the islands, brushing the
starry showers of yellow blossoms that trailed in the water, and
frightening the ibises and herons from their coverts among the reeds.
The hippopotami snorted all around us, and we had always a convoy
of them following in our wake. The sun sank, and a moon, four days
old, lighted the solitude of the islands, but the men still rowed
vigorously, until we had passed the spot where the Shillooks buried
their canoes in the morning. They then deemed it safe to come to
anchor in the middle of the stream, though the watch-fires of the
savages were still blazing brightly in the distance. During the night
the wind blew violently, and the river was rough and agitated. We all
went to sleep, therefore, feeling certain that no predatory canoes
would venture to follow us.
In the morning there was a strong head-wind, and the temperature
was so cold that I was obliged to wear my thick capote of camel’s
hair while I sat on deck, looking regretfully at the beautiful islands I
was leaving behind me. Achmet heated and strained the honey
given me by the Shillooks, which yielded between three and four
quarts of rich liquid. While the men made fast to the bank for
breakfast, I went on shore to get a glimpse of the country behind the
forests. Paths trodden by wild beasts led through the walls of tangled
vines that elsewhere were impenetrable, and I crept along them,
under the boughs of strange trees and through thickets of luxuriant
shrubs. At length I reached an open patch of grass four or five feet in
height, and so dry and yellow that it snapped like glass under my
feet. It was dotted with clumps of high shrubs, knotted all over with
wild, flowering vines, which formed admirable lairs for the lions and
leopards. There was a strong smell of lions about the place, and I
deemed it prudent not to venture far, since the rank animal odor
peculiar to that beast grew more marked the further I went. The
jungle in which I stood covered a tongue of land inclosed between
two coves of the river, and through the openings in the thickets I saw
that it led to other open tracts further inland. The wind was blowing
towards the river, and as I stood in the midst, contemplating the wild,
lawless grouping of the different trees and shrubs some imp of
darkness whispered in my ear “What a magnificent conflagration this
would make! and then, perhaps, you might have the satisfaction of
burning out a brace of lions!” Without more ado, I whipped out a box
of matches, and struck fire in one of the thickest tufts.
The effect was instantaneous, and so was my repentance. There
was a crack and a crash, like the explosion of powder, and a sheet of
red flame leaped into the air. In a few seconds it had spread to a
broad swath of fire, rolling rapidly before the wind, and leaving the
earth behind it as bare as the palm of my hand. The rank grass
roared and snapped as the terrible power I had so thoughtlessly
awakened, licked it away; and not the grass alone. It seized on the
vines and tore them down, swung itself by them into the boughs of
the trees, and found richer aliment in their gums and juices. It spread
on both sides and against the wind, and soon the long spires of
scarlet flame, twisting in the air, rose high and hot above the dome-
like tops of the mimosa forests. Before we left the place, the volumes
of smoke reached nearly to the other side of the Nile. As I heard its
relentless feet trampling down the thickets, I tormented myself with
pictures of the evil which I had perhaps originated. I fancied it
spreading from day to day, lapping the woods in coils of flame and
flinging their burning boughs from island to island, till of all the glory
of vegetation which had filled me with such rapture, there was
nothing but a few charred trunks standing in beds of ashes. I saw the
natives with their flocks and herds flying before it, the wild beasts
leaping into the flood for refuge from its red fangs, and all that
glorious region given up to terror and desolation. As we moved
slowly away, against the wind, I watched its progress with a troubled
conscience and an anxious heart. Now it paused and I flattered
myself that there was the end, but the next moment the black clouds
rolled up denser than ever. Thus it wavered for some time, but at
last, thank God! it seemed to fade gradually away, and I gave myself
the hope that it had not extended beyond the jut of land whereon it
was kindled.
At noon we passed the locality marked on D’Arnaud’s map as El-
Ais, but there was no sign of habitation. The raïs said there had been
a town some distance inland, but it is now deserted. The river here
makes a curve to the west, and our small stern-sail was bound to the
foremast, in order to use the side-wind. My sailors were unremitting
in their labors, and rowed, poled and tracked the whole day. I sat in
the sun all the while, looking on the incomparable shores. We saw
multitudes of gazelles along the water’s edge, on both sides. They
were in companies of forty or fifty, and so little shy, that they often
allowed us to approach within fifty yards. Wild fowl were as abundant
as ever, and I greatly regretted having brought no rifle and fowling-
piece. When we reached the northern extremity of Hassaniyeh, at
sunset, I went ashore on the eastern bank, hoping to find a gazelle.
The thickets were almost impenetrable, and I made my way with
difficulty into a more open space, where the trees grew in clumps
and the lion-paths had broken a way between them. Each of these
clumps was woven into a single mass with vines, forming coverts of
deepest shade, wherein a beast might crouch unobserved, even at
mid-day. The ground was covered with dry bur-grass, whose heads
pierced through my clothes. One of the sailors accompanied me with
a club, but was in such deadly fear of lions that he obliged me to
return to the shore. Certainly, this is the paradise of wild beasts.
Such convenient lairs they can find in no other part of the world, and
the thousands of gazelles and antelopes that range through the
wilderness furnish them with a choice bill of fare. The trees and vines
were nearly all new to me. I noticed in particular, a succulent vine,
resembling the cactus and cereus families, but with square, fluted
joints. It grew so thickly as frequently to conceal entirely the tree that
supported it. I also saw a shrub with leaves like the ivy, but a large,
purple, bell-shaped flower, and another with delicate, fern-like leaves
of a dark-green color, and white, fragrant blossoms. There was a
greater variety in the vegetable world than I had yet seen. What must
be the splendor of the land during the rainy season! I found a
peculiar fascination in tracing the wild paths through the thickets. It
was a labyrinth to which there was no end, and the sense of danger
gave a spice to its richness and novelty. Occasionally, I saw large
holes in the ground, which my attendant said were those of serpents.
No gazelle was to be seen, and when I reached the shore again, the
wild geese had left. The wind fell at sunset, and the sailors rowed
cheerily down stream, singing the while a barbaric chorus, which
they had learned from the slaves brought from Fazogl.
The sun, next morning, showed us a very different landscape from
that of the previous two days. The river was broader, but the shores
were clothed with a more scanty vegetation, and the few islands in
the stream were but beds of sand. When the men stopped for
breakfast we were in the neighborhood of a village of Hassaniyehs,
as I had previously conjectured, from the camels and donkeys
grazing among the thorns. Leaving the sailors to kill one of our
sheep, I took Achmet and the raïs, and followed the paths inland
through a wood of scattering mimosas. After a walk of ten minutes
we came to the village, or rather encampment, since the dwellings
were mere tents of sticks and reeds. They were barely large enough
to cover the two or three angarebs, which served as a bed for the
whole family. Although the sun was an hour high, not more than half
the inhabitants were stirring. The others, men and women, thrust
their heads from under their dirty cotton mantles and looked at us
with astonishment not unmixed with fear. The women who had
already risen sat on the ground kindling the fires, or spinning with a
rude distaff the raw cotton which these people cultivate. We found
two or three men, whom we saluted with the usual “Peace be with
you!” and the raïs informed them that the Sultan’s son, returning
from a visit to the Shillooks, with whom he had made a treaty of
peace, had come to see them. Thereupon one of them brought an
angareb and set it in the shade for me, while another caught a she-
goat that was browsing among the bushes, and soon returned with a
gourd half full of warm milk, which he gave me. As sour milk is
considered a great delicacy among these people, a gourd of it was
also procured for me. The woman who brought it knelt and placed it
at my feet, but as I could not drink it and did not wish to refuse their
gift, I asked one of the men to take it to the boat. He hesitated,
evidently afraid to trust himself with us, whereupon the woman said:
“I am not afraid to go with the Sultan; I will take it.” As we started to
return, the man, whose sense of bravery, and perhaps his jealousy
also, was touched by this remark, came likewise and accompanied
us to the river. When we reached the vessel I sent the milk on board
for the sailors use, and gave the woman two piastres in copper
money and a handful of tobacco. She immediately put her hand to
her mouth and uttered a piercing, prolonged cry, which the raïs said
was intended as an expression of great joy. After repeating this two
or three times she dropped on her knees, and before I could divine
her intention, kissed my red slipper.
In a short time I received word that the women of the village would
come to perform a dance of welcome and salutation, if I would allow
them. As the wind was blowing strongly against us and the sailors
had not finished skinning the sheep, I had my carpet spread on the
sand in the shade of a group of mimosas, and awaited their arrival.
Presently we heard a sound of shrill singing and the clapping of
hands in measured beat, and discerned the procession advancing
slowly through the trees. They came two by two, nearly thirty in all,
singing a shrill, piercing chorus, which sounded more like
lamentation than greeting. When they had arrived in front of me, they
ranged themselves into a semicircle with their faces towards me,
and, still clapping their hands to mark the rhythm of the song, she
who stood in the centre stepped forth, with her breast heaved almost
to a level with her face, which was thrown back, and advanced with a
slow, undulating motion till she had reached the edge of my carpet.
Then, with a quick jerk, she reversed the curve of her body, throwing
her head forward and downward, so that the multitude of her long
twists of black hair, shining with butter, brushed my cap. This was
intended as a salutation and sign of welcome. I bowed my head at
the same time, and she went back to her place in the ranks. After a
pause the chorus was resumed and another advanced, and so in
succession, till all had saluted me, a ceremony which occupied an
hour. They were nearly all young, between the ages of fourteen and
twenty, and some were strikingly beautiful. They had the dark-olive
Arab complexion, with regular features, teeth of pearly whiteness,
and black, brilliant eyes. The coarse cotton robe thrown over one
shoulder left free the arms, neck and breasts, which were exquisitely
moulded. Their bare feet and ankles were as slender as those of the
Venus of Cleomenes. Owing to the skirts worn by the American
women I have no recollection of ever having seen an entire foot
belonging to them, and therefore can make no comparison; but I
doubt if one in a thousand stands on so light and beautiful a pedestal
as those wild African girls. There were two or three old women in the
company, but they contented themselves with singing and did not
venture into the lists with the younger ones.
Several of the men, who had followed in the rear of the women,
came and sat near us, on the sand. They were all evidently delighted
with the occasion, and encouraged the more timid of the dancers by
their words. One of them was an old man, with a long gray
moustache and beard, carrying in his hand a spear, pointed with
iron. My raïs and sailors were on the ground, and one of the latter, a
splendid fellow, whose form was almost perfect in its manly strength,
took his station among the women and acted as master of the
ceremonies. He drew a line in the sand down the centre of the ring,
and another along the edge of my carpet, and she who did not dance
down the line until the final toss of her head threw her hair over the
Sultan’s cap, was obliged to perform her part over again. My sailor
clapped his hands, joined in the song, and moved with such entire
and absolute grace in the dance, that he almost drew away my
attention from the women. He was of the Djaaleyn tribe, and
therefore of pure Arabian blood. As the ceremony was prolonged,
they accompanied the dance with a hard, guttural breathing, in time
with the music, and some of the old women, in their anxiety to
encourage the younger and more timid dancers, leaned forward with
eager eyes, uttering short, quick screams at intervals. It was a most
remarkable scene; the figures and the dancers were unlike any thing
I ever witnessed. For the first time, in fact—perhaps because I had
hitherto seen few women unveiled—I found undoubted beauty in the
Arab female countenance.
The last dancer was the wife of the Shekh, who came towards the
close, with two negro slaves behind her. She was a woman of
twenty, and the most beautiful of the group. Making allowance for the
difference in complexion, she had a strong resemblance to the
Cleopatra of Guido. Her eyes were large, black and lustrous; her
face the full, ripe oval of the South, with a broad, round forehead,
perfect lips and a most queenly neck and chin. She wore a diadem
of white beads, under which her thick hair—unfortunately plastered
with butter—hung to her shoulders in at least fifty slender braids.
She went through the monotonous movement of the dance with the
stately ease of a swan gliding down a stream, and so delighted my
sailors and the men who had come down from the village, that she
was obliged to repeat her salutation several times. I bowed lower to
her than to the others, but took care to keep her unctuous braids
from touching my face. When all was concluded, I directed Achmet
to distribute a few handfuls of copper money among them,
whereupon they returned to the village, uttering sharp yells of joy as
they went. After they had left, I asked the men whether what I had
heard in Khartoum, concerning the peculiar conjugal customs of the
tribe, was true, and they replied that it was.
As we were about leaving, one of the shekhs, or holy men of the
tribe, came down to greet me. He was an old man in a blue cotton
mantle, and had with him two attendants. After touching my hand
twice and asking many times for my health, he commenced singing
passages of the Koran, in a loud, resonant, and not unmusical tone,
somewhat resembling the sunset cry of the muezzin from his
minaret. The two others responded, and thus this religious
entertainment was kept up for some time. But the raïs was at his
post and the wind had fallen, so I acted my despotic character of
Sultan, by leaving the holy man in the midst of his chanting and
going on board. When we left he was still standing under the
mimosas, singing of Mohammed, the Prophet of God.
We made but little headway during the afternoon, although the
men worked faithfully. Djebel Deyoos, whose loose cluster of peaks
is seen for a great distance over the plains of Kordofan, still kept us
company, and did not pass out of our horizon until the next evening.
The men towed for several hours, and as the shore was flat and the
river very shallow they were obliged to walk in the water. While
Achmet was preparing dinner, a fish about the size of a herring
vaulted upon deck and fell at his feet. He immediately clapped it into
the frying-pan and presented me with an acceptable dish. To his
unbounded astonishment and my great satisfaction, the same thing
happened three days in succession, at precisely the same hour.
“Wallah, master!” he exclaimed: “it is wonderful! I never knew such a
thing to happen in Egypt, and it must certainly be a sign of good
fortune. If you were not a lucky man, the fish would never offer
themselves for your dinner in this way.”
By night the men could make no headway against the wind, which
continued unabated nearly all the next day. They worked hard,
stimulated by the promise of an abundant supply of mareesa at the
next Hassaniyeh village. In the afternoon we passed Tura, which I
recognized by the herds of camels on shore and the ferry-boats
passing back and forth across the broad stream. I walked an hour or
two while the men were towing, but was obliged to keep to the shore,
on account of the burr-grass which covered all the country inland.
This part of the river is thickly settled by the Hassaniyehs, whose
principal wealth appears to consist in their sheep, goats and camels.
They complained very much of the Shillooks, who come down the
river on predatory incursions, carry off their sheep and dourra, and
frequently kill the children who tend the herds.
By dint of unremitting exertions, we reached a small village which
the raïs called Wad Shèllayeh, about two hours after sunset. The
men carried me ashore through the shallows, and I went with them
to the village to perform my promise regarding the mareesa. We
extinguished the lantern for fear of alarming the inhabitants, and
walked slowly through the wilderness of thorns. The village lay half a
mile inland, between two low hills of sand. The dwellings were mere
tokuls, like those of the Shillooks, and made of the long grass of the
Desert. Each house was surrounded with a fence of thorns. The
inhabitants were sitting at the doors in the moonlight, calling out to
each other and exchanging jokes, while herds of the slender yellow
dogs of Soudân barked on all sides. While the raïs and sailors were
procuring their mareesa I entered one of the tokuls, which was
superior to those I had already seen, inasmuch as it contained an
inner chamber or tent, made of fine yellow grass, and serving as a
canopy to the family angareb. The people had kindled a fire on the
ground, and the dry mimosa branches were blazing in close
proximity to the straw walls of their dwelling. They were greatly
inferior to the Hassaniyehs of the first village, both in appearance
and courtesy of manners. The mareesa, which the raïs at last
brought, was weak, insipid stuff, and I returned to the boat, leaving
the men to drain the jars.
In the morning we reached another large Hassaniyeh village,
which was also called Wad Shèllayeh. It was the only village on the
river worthy of notice, as it had four vessels moored to the shore,
and boasted a few mud houses in addition to its array of tokuls.
Several of the latter were built in tent form and covered with a striped
cloth made of camel’s hair. I entered the residence of the shekh,
who, however, was absent with his wife to attend the funeral of a
relative. The tent was thirty feet long, with an arched top, and
contained two inner chambers. The sides were ornamented with
gourds, skins and other articles, grouped with some taste, and large
quantities of the cowries, or small white shells, which are used as
currency in some parts of Central Africa, were sewed upon the cloth
cover, in the form of crosses and stars. I looked into the principal
chamber, which inclosed a broad and handsome angareb, made of
plaited palm-leaves. The walls were entirely concealed by the
articles hung upon them, and every thing exhibited a taste and
neatness which is rare among the Arab tribes. The tent was in
charge of the shekh’s niece, a handsome girl of about eighteen, and
an old woman with three children, the youngest of which was
suckled by a black slave. He was an ebony Cupid of a year old,
rejoicing in the bunches of white shells that hung from his neck,
wrists and ankles. He exhibited a curiosity to touch me, and I took
him in my arms and addressed him in Christian nursery tongue. The
sound of my voice, however, was more horrible than the color of my
skin. He set up a yell and kicked out his little black, satin-skinned
legs till I was obliged to hand him over to the slave nurse.
From the bank on which the village is built, I could see beyond the
trees of the opposite shore, a wide stretch of the plains of Kordofan
—a level savanna of yellow grass, extending without a break to the
horizon. During the afternoon, while the men were resting from their
rowing, Bahr, the Dinka cook, got into a dispute with one of them,
and finally worked herself into such a rage that she jumped
overboard with the intention of drowning herself, and would have
done so, had not one of the sailors plunged after her and hauled her
ashore, in spite of her violent struggles and endeavors to thrust her
head under water. When she found she could not indulge in this
recreation, she sat down on the ground, burst into a paroxysm of
angry tears, and in a quarter of an hour went back to grind her
dourra, in the best possible humor. Her name, Bahr, signifies “the
sea,” but she was an Undine of the Black Sea, and the White Nile
refused to receive her.
We went gloriously down stream that evening, with a light west
wind filling the little sail and the men at their oars, singing shrill
choruses in the Dongolese and Djaaleyn dialects. The White Nile,
which is here three miles broad, was as smooth as glass, and
glimmered far and bright under the moon. The shores were still, in all
their dead level expanse, and had it not been for the uneven line
which their belts of thorn-trees drew along the horizon, I could have
imagined that we were floating in mid-ocean. While the men halted
for breakfast the next morning, I landed and walked ahead, hoping to
shoot a wild duck with my pistol. Notwithstanding there were
hundreds along the shore, I found it impossible to get within shooting
distance, as they invariably made into the river on my approach. An
attempt to gain something by running suddenly towards them,
terminated in my sticking fast in the mud and losing my red slippers.
I then crept through the scattering wood of mimosas to get a chance
at a pigeon, but some spirit of mistrust had taken possession of the
birds, and as long as I had a shot left there were none within reach.
When my two barrels were spent they sat on every side in the most
familiar proximity.
Notwithstanding there were very few villages on the river’s bank,
the country was thickly inhabited. The people prefer building their
dwellings a mile inland, and going to the river for water. This custom
probably originated in their fear of the Shillooks, which led them to
place their dwellings in situations most easy of defence. At one of
the fording-places I found a number of women and children filling the
water-skins and lifting them upon the backs of donkeys. Many
hundreds of the hump-backed cattle, peculiar to the country, were
collected along the shore. They have straight backs behind the
hump, (which is a projection above the shoulders, four to six inches
high) clean flanks, large, powerful necks, and short, straight horns.
They eyed me with an expression of great curiosity, and some of the
bulls evidently deliberated whether they should attack me. The
people in this region were Hassaniyehs, and the men resembled
those of the first village I visited. They were tall, with straight features
and a feminine expression of countenance, which was probably
caused by their wearing their hair parted in the middle, plaited into
long braids and fastened at the back of the head.
About noon we came in sight of Djebel Tinneh, which stands over
against the village of Shekh Moussa, and serves as a landmark to
the place. At sunset we saw the boat of Reschid Kashif, the
Governor of the tributary territories of the White Nile, anchored near
the western bank. Two of my sailors had previously been employed
by him, and as they had not received all their wages, they asked
permission to cross the river and apply for the money. This Reschid
Kashif was a boy of twelve or thirteen years of age, son of the former
Governor, Suleyman Kashif, who was so much esteemed by the
tribes on the river that after his death the Pasha invested his young
child with the office. The latter was also quite popular with the
natives, who attributed to him a sagacity marvellous for his years. He
paid the men the money due them, sent his compliments to me, and
inquired why I did not visit him. It was dusk by this time, and I did not
wish to delay the boat; besides, as I was a stranger and a Sultan,
courtesy required that he should pay the first visit.
We made the remainder of the voyage without further incident
than that of slaughtering one of our sheep, near Djebel Aūllee. The
wind was so light that our progress down the stream was rapid, and
at sunset on Friday, January thirtieth, I recognized the spot where Dr.
Reitz took leave of me, on the upward voyage. The evening on the
broad river was glorious; the half-moon, being just overhead, was
unseen, yet filled the air with light, and my natal planet burned white
and clear in the west. At ten o’clock we reached the island of
Omdurman, and wheeled into the Blue Nile. The camp-fires of
Kordofan merchants were gleaming on the western bank. The
barking of the dogs in Khartoum and the creaking wheels of the
sakias were welcome sounds to our ears, as we slowly glided past
the gardens. Ere long, the minaret of the city glimmered faintly in the
moonlight and we recognized the buildings of the Catholic Mission.
“God is great!” said Achmet, devoutly; “since we have been so near
the end of the world, Khartoum appears to me as beautiful as Cairo.”
It was nearly midnight when we came to anchor, having made a
voyage of about five hundred miles in nine days. My friends were all
abed, and I lay down for the night in the little cabin of my boat,
exclaiming, like Achmet: “God is great!”