Moral Consequences of Heredity. 353 



inhabitants of New Zealand and the Tonga Islands. The former, 

 who were superior to the average Australian, more thoughtful and 

 more intelligent, already had clear notions about the rights of pro- 

 perty, and even about the rights of nations they put trust in the 

 word of their enemies. Theft was rare among them. Marsden 

 says that a chief was angry with a man who had stolen some old 

 iron, and he gives other instances of their honesty. 1 



Any tribe that is incapable of rising to this idea of justice and 

 of reciprocal duties, or of incorporating it in their manners, is fated 

 to perish by the inevitable logic of events. This leads us to 

 estimate at its true value a doctrine still largely diffused, which 

 regards morality as simply conventional. The philosophers of the 

 eighteenth century were disinclined to see in it anything more than 

 an artificial production, based on a primitive contract Before their 

 time, Pascal had advanced this theory in a famous passage, where 

 he himself did but express a thought previously uttered by Mon- 

 taigne: 'They do but trifle when, in order to give certitude to laws, 

 they say that some of them are stable, perpetual, and immovable, 

 which they call natural laws.' 



This scepticism has been opposed only by denunciation and 

 denial, based on vague proofs. Perhaps if its opponents had 

 accepted the evolution of moral ideas they would have found a 

 better answer, because that analysis, penetrating to the very basis of 

 morality, shows its nature and its stability. We might say that 

 morality is natural, as is proved by the fact that it is an absolute 

 condition of man's existence, and might establish our position 

 thus : man, considered as an intelligent being, can only live in 

 a society ; this is proved by the most positive facts ; in a state of 

 isolation man is without a mind. On the other hand, society, 

 even in its simplest form, can only exist on certain definite con- 

 ditions. Suppose a society whose members hold it to be right, 

 or else simply indifferent, to murder and pillage one another; 

 where parents abandon their children, and children maltreat their 

 parents it is quite clear that such a society cannot subsist; it 

 will perish by a vice inherent in its very constitution. As well 



1 For the particulars see Dumont d'Urville, tomes iii. and iv., Pikts Justifi 



