Prehistoric and Savage Man 187 



moral unless there is a judgment that such preference is 

 ' right.' 



Similarly the prevalence in any tribe of practices which 

 shock us will never suffice to prove the absence of moral 

 perception in such tribe. Men are not necessarily devoid of 

 morality because they draw their lines in different places 

 from what we do. We have, then, but one question to 

 consider — Have we reason to believe that any tribe is 

 destitute of the faculty of moral perception ? As to brute 

 animals we willingly concede to them feelings which seem 

 to run parallel with our feelings of guilt and shame, but no 

 one pretends they are capable of abstract judgments as to 

 right and wrong, of which we shall, I think, directly see even 

 the most degraded savages are plainly capable. 



Now one of the clearest ethical judgments is that as to 

 * justice' and 'injustice'; and by common consent the native 

 Australians are admitted to be at about the lowest level of 

 existing social development, while, as we have seen, the 

 Eskimo are deemed by some to be the surviving specimens 

 of the oldest known men. Concerning the first of these 

 races, the Australians, Sir John Lubbock tells us : — ^ 



' The amount of legal revenge, if I may so- call it, is often 

 strictly regulated, even where we should least expect to find 

 such limitations. Thus, in Australia, crimes may be com- 

 pounded for by the criminal appearing and submitting him- 

 self to the ordeal of having spears thrown at him by all such 

 persons as conceive themselves to have been aggrieved, or by 

 permitting spears to be thrust through certain parts of his 

 body, such as through the thigh, or the calf of the leg, 

 or under the arm. The part which is to be pierced by a 

 spear is fixed for all common crimes, and a native who has 

 incurred this penalty sometimes quietly holds out his leg for 

 the injured party to thrust his spear through ! So strictly 



^ Origin of Civilisation, p. 318. 



