IS CONSCIENCE PRIMITIVE? 649 



inference that the faculty itself is not an essential of man's mental 

 constitution, but is a product of culture ; the resultant perhaps origi- 

 nally of observation and experience, which in time, and under the in- 

 fluences of civilization, tnay become an hereditary aptitude, though 

 the facts of deaf-mutism, to which reference is made hereafter, militate 

 against the theory of transmission. 



Coelum noil animum mutant qui trans mare currimt ' is perhaps 

 true of those who are old enough to travel, and who find national 

 habitudes of thought and culture followiug them everywhere, but mor- 

 als certainly change with almost every clime and age. In a broad 

 survey of the history of morals one comes to doubt whether there is 

 such a thing as abstract right and wrong. Every article of the religious 

 code in which we have been educated, and which we revere, has been 

 or is violated without remorse among the peoples who sit in darkness, 

 but who are supposed to have that intuitive faculty which makes the 

 pagan a law unto himself. The vice of to-day is the virtue of yester- 

 day : a disgrace in England is a dignity in Ashantee. The crowning 

 glory and triumph of Christian grace is the shame of the red-man's 

 creed. Crimes against life, crimes against liberty, crimes against per- 

 sonal rights, crimes against chastity, crimes against nature, have all 

 been sanctioned and justified by this infallible judge. The bitterest 

 wars have been religious wars, where the contending hosts were stimu- 

 lated and led on by conscience. The fiercest persecutions have been 

 religious persecutions, where conscience stretched the rack and tight- 

 ened the thumb-screws. The blood of martyrs stains the skirts of 

 every sect : Catholics have persecuted Protestants, Protestants have 

 persecuted Papists, and both have set their heel upon the Jew. The 

 atrocities of Alva were equaled by the cruelties of Louvois. The vic- 

 tims of St. Bartholomew find a parallel in the sufi'erings of the Scotch 

 Covenanters. Saul thought he was doing God service in haling men 

 and women to prison and to death. Blood for blood is Hebrew as well 

 as Indian law. The sin of stealing among the Spartans was in being 

 caught at it. The severe Cato thought it right to yield his wife to his 

 friend. Socrates sanctioned the prostitution of Aspasia by his daily 

 intercourse and friendship. In the Balearic Isles a bride was the com- 

 mon property of all the wedding-guests before she could be the wife of 

 one. Among the NaudoAVOssies the woman who could take to her 

 bosom forty stalwart warriors of a night w^as regarded almost with 

 veneration, and had her pick of the tribe for a husband. Galbraith 

 saj-s that among the Sioux theft, arson, rape, and murder, are regarded 

 as means of distinction. In Tahiti, while idolatry prevailed, the com- 

 mon animal instinct of maternal aifection seemed lacking, so much so 

 that Mr. Ellis, long resident there, says he never met a Tahitian mother 

 who had not imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring. It is 

 not necessary to show that these crimes were ever considered right. It 

 ' They change their sky, not their affection Sj who cross the sea. 



VOL. XIY. — 42 



