200 NATURAL SELECTION ix 



hypothesis (which is the theory of natural selection applied "to 

 the mind) seems inadequate to account for the development 

 of the moral sense. This subject has been recently much 

 discussed, and I will here only give one example to illustrate 

 my argument. The utilitarian sanction for truthfulness is by 

 no means very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. 

 No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all 

 ages and countries falsehood has been thought allowable in 

 love, and laudable in war; while, at the present day, it is 

 held to be venial by the majority of mankind in trade, com- 

 merce, and speculation. A certain amount of untruthfulness 

 is a necessary part of politeness in the East and West alike, 

 while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable to elude 

 an enemy or prevent a crime. Such being the difficulties with 

 which this virtue has had to struggle, with so many excep- 

 tions to its practice, with so many instances in which it 

 brought ruin or death to its too ardent devotee, how can we 

 believe that considerations of utility could ever invest it with 

 the mysterious sanctity of the highest virtue, could ever 

 induce men to value truth for its own sake, and practise it 

 regardless of consequences ? 



Yet it is a fact that such a mystical sense of wrong does 

 attach to untruthfulness, not only among the higher classes of 

 civilised people, but among whole tribes of utter savages. 

 Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in his paper " On the Character- 

 istics of the Population of Central and Southern India," 

 published in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of 

 London, vol. i. p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals, 

 barbarous hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity. 

 It is a common saying that "a Kurubar always speaks the 

 truth ; " and Major Jervis says, " the Santals are the most 

 truthful men I ever met with." As a remarkable instance 

 of this quality the following fact is given. A number of 

 prisoners, taken during the Santal insurrection, were allowed 

 to go free on parole, to work at a certain spot for wages. 

 After some time cholera attacked them and they were obliged 

 to leave, but every man of them returned and gave up his 

 earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages, with money in 

 their girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison rather than 

 break their word ! My own experience among savages has 



