648 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mal. Is not this lack rather a return to normal conditions by the re- 

 moval of that favorable environment which holds in check the lower 

 instincts, and helps to develop the higher capabilities, of man's na- 

 ture ? Is not that juvenile monstrosity Pomeroy a sort of moral ata- 

 vism ? In short, did the primitive man have a conscience ? 



And, lest the mere question should shock some good people, let it 

 be premised that the foundations of the Christian religion do not rest 

 upon a belief or disbelief in an innate conscience any more than the 

 popular fallacy of an innate and universal idea of God is a necessary 

 tenet of orthodox faith. These theories form no essential part of reli- 

 gion. They are simply some of the outposts which theologians apd 

 schoolmen have erected to strengthen, as they imagine, the citadel of 

 Biblical truth, but forming no part of the citadel itself. These need- 

 less defenses have been multiplied in the course of centuries till the 

 thing defended has sometimes been lost sight of. The Fathers have 

 usurped the authority of the Apostles ; ancient interpretation ranks 

 revelation. Milton has come to substitute Moses to that degree that 

 so learned a man as Professor Huxley has considered it worth his while 

 to apply the tests of a scientist to the visions of a poet. It must be 

 confessed that time and tradition have lent a sanctity to many articles 

 of popular creed that have little authority in Holy Writ, and the so- 

 called conflict between Science and Religion will have served no ill 

 purjDose if in its heat the rubbish of ages is burned away. In this 

 conflict man's fictions may suffer — God's truth, never. 



In the language of theology the conscience is a separate and dis- 

 tinct faculty of the mind — a sort of Supreme Court to which all cases 

 involving the principles of right and wrong are immediately referred 

 for adjudication and intuitively settled. It is generally asserted that 

 this faculty is congenital — chief justice by birth and divine right. I 

 believe, on the contrary, that this mind faculty is not innate, but, if it 

 exists at all, it is born of the other faculties, is educated to its func- 

 tions, and, like the late Electoral Commission, reflects its training in 

 all its decisions. 



A conscience to justify the popular notions of its origin and au- 

 thority ought to be infallible, and must be universal. If this faculty 

 is an innate and essential part of man's being, it should be in every 

 man, and exercise its functions everywhere. It is admitted that iso- 

 lated and sporadic cases of deficient moral sensibility do not authorize 

 the logical conclusion that there is no such thing as conscience, any 

 more than the inmates of a blind-school prove that there is no such 

 thing as sight ; but if there are found whole tribes of people who not 

 only lack all evidence of a conscience, but whose language has no 

 words to express moral distinctions or ideas of right and wrong ; if, in 

 addition, we find that where higher races give evidence in language 

 and life that they have certain moral perceptions, yet that the decisions 

 of conscience always follow local tradition and custom — it seems a fair 



