172 MORAL SENSE IN MAN. 



of which are composed of members not necessarily illiterate 

 or otherwise unrefined, there is a low development or a great 

 degradation or perversion of the moral sentiment. The evi- 

 dences of this vary both in their nature and number, accord- 

 ing to the class whose habits are matters of enquiry. Of 

 modern white savages those that approach most nearly to the 

 primitive peoples of lands and islands beyond the pale of 

 civilisation are, for instance, the cave-dwellers of Wick Bay 

 (Caithness-shire, Scotland), as described by Dr. Mitchell, of 

 Edinburgh a group or tribe of wandering gipsies (or Sco- 

 iice tinkers). 'He found them to be of the lowest type; 

 poor weak creatures morally, intellectually, and even physi- 

 cally. They were the analogues of the inhabitants of our 

 city closes, and were not a whit more degraded. . . . Among 

 them virtue and chastity feebly existed ; honour and truth 

 even more feebly.' * Of a group of twenty-four persons some 

 were wholly, others partially, nude, in both cases with * no 

 sense of shame.* 



On the other hand, the recreations of the miners, col- 

 liers, or navvies of the central counties including their 

 wife-kicking and of the aristocracy of the metropolis in- 

 cluding their treatment of the lower animals illustrate 

 eloquently and painfully the present state of moral feeling in 

 Christian England among upper and lower classes alike. 

 Even in the higher ranks, that boast of their culture or 

 refinement, tlieir advanced civilisation, their high mental 

 endowments, their morality and religion, as distinguishing 

 them from what are contemptuously spoken of as. 'the 

 brutes that perish,' intemperance, the social evil, debau- 

 chery, fast life, commercial immorality, battue-shooting and 

 other forms of the pursuit of * sport ' nay, the very wars 

 that have devastated in our own day portions of the continent 

 of Europe and of the United States of America all point to 

 bloodthirstiness, lust, selfishness, dishonesty, untruthfulness, 

 and other moral vices as perpetually cropping up and con- 

 taminating society even in its highest forms of development. 



1 Report of a lecture on ' Cave Life in Scotland,' Daily Review (Edinburgh) 

 of February 10, 1877. 



