354 THE LIMITS OF NATUEAL SELECTION 



Santal insurrection, were allowed to go free on parole, 

 to work at a certain spot for wages. After some 

 time cholera attacked them and they were obliged to 

 leave, but every man of them returned and gave up 

 his earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages 

 with money in their girdles, walked thirty miles back 

 to prison rather than break their word ! My own 

 experience among savages has furnished me with 

 similar, although less severely tested, instances; and 

 we cannot avoid asking, how is it, that in these few 

 cases " experiences of utility " have left such an over- 

 whelming impression, while in so many others they 

 have left none ? The experiences of savage men as 

 regards the utility of truth, must, in the long run, 

 be pretty nearly equal. How is it, then, that in some 

 cases the result is a sanctity which overrides all con- 

 siderations of personal advantage, while in others there 

 is hardly a rudiment of such a feeling ? 



The intuitional theory, which I am now advocating, 

 explains this by the supposition, that there is a feeling 

 a sense of right and wrong in our nature, antecedent 

 to and independent of experiences of utility. Where 

 free play is allowed to the relations between man and 

 man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of uni- 

 versal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products 

 of our affections and sympathies, and which we .term 

 moral ; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to 

 give the same sanction to acts of narrow and con- 

 ventional utility which are really immoral, as when 

 the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve than 



