170 MORAL SENSE IN MAN. 



civilised or semi-barbarous man does the same. For in- 

 stance, the Hamram hunters of Abyssinia cut steaks out 

 of living cattle. The Angola negro ' has not the slightest 

 idea of mercy, pity, or compassion for suffering. A fellow-crea- 

 ture or animal writhing in pain or torture is to him a sight 

 highly provocative of merriment and enjoyment' (Monteiro). 



The human child, even among the most highly civilised 

 nations, has to be taught by rewards and punishments what 

 is right and wrong, just as in the case of the lower ani- 

 mals. It has to learn to distinguish simply between what is 

 forbidden and what is permitted long before it acquires any 

 abstract ideas of moral right or wrong, if indeed in many 

 cases it ever acquires such ideas. In other words, its moral 

 sense or conscience has to be developed ; it is not innate or 

 congenital, and, as will afterwards appear, it is sometimes 

 never duly developed. Cruelty, however, is natural or innate 

 in the child. It appears to be an ' instinct.' Children have 

 to be taught kindness to and consideration for each other 

 and for other animals. Mercilessness or pitilessness is a 

 frequent characteristic of childhood. The child often revels 

 in its cruelty, takes the same evident pleasure in torture that 

 the Red Indian does as regards his victim, the cat with the 

 mouse, or the eagle with its captive (Houzeau). Infants and 

 children, indeed, torment animals for ' sport ' to themselves ; 

 and the same instincts of cruelty, love of sport, and destruc- 

 tiveness break out at a later stage amongst adults of the 

 highest ranks, including royalty itself, when they revel in 

 the butchery of battued pigeons or hares. Children, then, 

 obviously require education or training in kindness, in jus- 

 tice, in a sense of right and wrong, in the doing of the 

 right and avoidance of the wrong. 



The human idiot shows the same conspicuous moral de- 

 fects that characterise many savage races man in a primi- 

 tive state. He has no sense of decency or modesty. There 

 is incapacity for moral as for mental development. Among 

 the mental phenomena presented by wolf children in India 

 are insensibility to kindness, the absence of shame, joy, 

 gratitude. 



In various forms of human insanity moral degradation 



