Prehistoric and Savage Man 1 89 



As far then as a posteriori evidence shows, man ever 

 possesses the faculty of moral perception. An(^ this a 

 posteriori evidence is but what we might expect seeing what 

 is the evidence a priori. As already said : ^ ' The obvious 

 truth that all knowledge is either certain in itself or is 

 derived by legitimate methods from that which is so ... is 

 of course true of ethical knowledge. If a proposition an- 

 nouncing obligation require proof at all, one term of that 

 proof must always be a proposition announcing obligation, 

 which itself requires no proof In other words, the general 

 propositions which really lie at the root of any ethical 

 system must themselves be ethical.' 



This truth cuts the ground from under — renders simply 

 impossible — the view that a judgment as to moral obligation 

 can ever have been evolved from mere likings and dislikings, 

 or from feelings of preference for tribal interests over in- 

 dividual ones. 



Thus a glaring hiatus exists between man in the lowest 

 and most degraded condition in which Ethnography reveals 

 him to us and the pure and simple animal. That this hiatus 

 noAV exists is not indeed denied, for it is so manifest it is 

 incapable of denial. 



But it is contended that it did not always exist, though 

 the argument that it did not do so is not supported by any 

 actual observations or by an appeal to experience, but reposes 

 on its supposed necessity in order to make valid the theory 

 of evolution in its entirety. But we cannot pay the price 

 of the sacrifice of facts for the sake of even the most seduc- 

 tive theory. 



Of the truth of that theory we may be persuaded, but of 

 the existence of the hiatus we may be certain. If we must 

 reject one, then must we rather reject the persuasion as to 

 the former than the certainty as to the latter. As I said a 



^ By Mr. Arthur Balfour. See aiUey vol. i. p. 408. 



