IX.] EVOLUTION AND ETHICS. 213 



an additional motive to regret them. A hurried visit to a 

 tribe, whose language, traditions, and customs are unknown, 

 is sometimes deemed sufficient for " smart " remarks as to 

 " ape characters," etc., which are as untrue as irrelevant. It 

 should not be forgotten how extremely difficult it is to enter 

 into the ideas and feelings of an alien race. If in the nine- 

 teenth century a French theatrical audience can witness 

 with acquiescent approval, as a type of English manners 

 and ideas, the representation of a marquis who sells his wife 

 at Smith field, etc. etc., it is surely no w r onder if the ideas 

 of a tribe of newly-visited savages should be more or less 

 misunderstood. To enter into such ideas requires long and 

 familiar intimacy, like that experienced by the explorer of 

 the Malay Archipelago. From him, and others, we have 

 abundant evidence that moral ideas exist at least in germ, 

 in savage races of men, while they sometimes attain even 

 a highly-developed state. No amount of evidence as to acts 

 of moral depravity is to the point, as the object here aimed 

 at is to establish that moral intuitions exist in savages, not 

 that their actions are good. 



Objections, however, are sometimes drawn from the 

 different notions as to the moral value of certain acts, enter- 

 tained by men of various countries or of different epochs ; 

 also from the difficulty of knowing what particular actions 

 in certain cases are the right ones, and from the effects 

 which prejudice, interest, passion, habit, or even, indirectly, 

 physical conditions, may have upon our moral perceptions. 

 Thus Sir John Lubbock speaks " of certain Feejeeans, who, 

 according to the testimony of Mr. Hunt, 13 have the custom 

 of piously choking their parents under certain circum- 

 stances, in order to insure their happiness in a future life. 

 Should any one take such facts as telling against the belief 

 in an absolute morality, he would show a complete misap- 



12 " Primitive Man," p. 248. 



13 "Fiji and the Fijians," vol. i., p. 183. 



