350 COtiMIC PHILOSOPHY. [IT. n 



conceptions of good and evil are thus so widely differentiated 

 from the simpler conceptions of pleasure and pain, that the 

 traces of the original kinship are obscured. This kind of 

 restraint has not ceased to operate upon numbers of civilized 

 men at the present day ; and theologians tell us that, if it 

 were removed, there would ensue a moral retrogression. So 

 doubtless there would, if it could be removed prematurely. 



Returning to our savage, it must be observed that these 

 combined agencies have enforced upon him an amount of 

 self-restraint, in view of tribal sanctions, which differentiates 

 him widely from any gregarious animal. Savages are not 

 unfrequently capable of extreme devotion and self-sacrifice 

 when the interests of the tribe are at stake : instances are 

 not rare in which they will deliberately choose to be shot 

 rather than betray the plans of their fellow-tribesmen. It is 

 to such cases as these that we must attribute the discre 

 pancies in the accounts of savage morality given by different 

 travellers. 1 If we do not stop to analyze the matter, such 

 instances may seem to prove that the savage is morally on a 

 level with us. But the analysis of countless seemingly in 

 consistent observations shows that savage virtues are, in 

 general, confined to the clan. The same savage who will 

 suffer torture with equanimity, rather than betray his com 

 rades, is also capable of the most fiendish cruelty and 

 treachery toward the members of another clan. For the 

 very forces which, during long ages, have brought him to the 

 point at which he can sacrifice his own pleasure to the good 

 of the tribe, have also been impressing upon him the 

 meritoriousness of letting loose all his brutal instincts beyond 

 the tribal limits. The savage has no sense of the wickedness 

 of killing, stealing, and lying, in the abstract, or of the 



1 Between different savage races, moreover, there are undoubtedly gr^at 

 differences in emotional characteristics. While some, as the Fijis, are excej&amp;gt; 

 tionally ferocious, others, as the Hawaiian! and Eskimos, appear to be coiu- 

 pari,t.ively gentle and sympathetic. 



