650 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



suffices that they were committed without remorse, without a feeling 

 of wrong-doing. They are not instances of perverted conscience, but 

 of no conscience, and the concurrent testimony of travelers is that the 

 lower races have no moral sense. Mr. Dove says that the Tasmanians 

 "are entirely without moral views" or impressions. Governor Eyre 

 says the Australians have no moral sense of what is just and equitable 

 in the abstract, their only test of propriety being whether they are 

 numerically or physically strong enough to brave the vengeance of 

 those whom they may have provoked or injured. " Conscience," says 

 Burton, " does not exist in eastern Africa, and ' repentance ' means re- 

 gret for missed opportunities of mortal crime." Mr. Campbell observes 

 that the Soors, an aboriginal tribe of India, are without moral sense. 

 Language is a pretty good measure of mental development, yet the 

 dialects of inferior tribes are generally deficient in terms expressive of 

 moral quality. Remorse is absolutely unknown, and Lubbock says the 

 only instance of a man belonging to one of the lower races trying to 

 account for an act is the case of a young Feejeean, who, when asked 

 why he had killed his mother (in law?), answered, "Because it was 

 right." 



It is very difficult to get at the original man, for the reason that 

 wherever found he is the heir of all the ages, and the training of circum- 

 stance and condition begins away beyond the reach of mind and mem- 

 ory. No man can remember the time when he could not talk or walk. 

 He can not remember when sad experience first taught him that the 

 candle-flame was not just the thing to cut his teeth upon. No more 

 does his memory go back to the time when his first lessons in ethics 

 were enforced by the gentle spat of the mother's hand or the warning 

 " No ! no ! " of her reproving voice. Humanity forbids repeating the 

 cruel experiment of Psammeticus, who secluded a child from all inter- 

 course with his kind in order to get at the original speech of man. But 

 nature has done what civilization would have no right to do, and offers 

 in the phenomena of deaf-mutism a psychological study of curious in- 

 terest. Considered from an intellectual and moral standpoint, the deaf- 

 mute is an anachronism — a prehistoric man standing bewildered in the 

 blaze of the nineteenth century. By simple severance of a nerve con- 

 nection an invisible barrier is thrown around the child, and in this se- 

 clusion the mind develops to a certain extent free from the influences 

 of accumulated culture, and is in respect to ethical notions absolutely 

 primitive. The animal instincts are strong, and their gratification 

 sought after the manner of an animal. He appreciates kindness and 

 resents injury. He will steal and hide the thing stolen, but I have 

 seen a dog do the same. He acquires certain ideas concerning the 

 rights of possession, and will commit murder in defense of such right 

 without remorse. In a recorded case near Rodez, France, officers were 

 sent to seize property for debt. They were driving off the peasant's 

 cow, when the farmer's son, an uneducated deaf-mute, seized a club 



