MORAL SENSE IN MAN. 173 



Very appropriately does Goldsmith, in his * Deserted Village,' 

 speaking of tigers and their ferocity, refer to 



Savage men, more murderous still than they. 



In short, 'man's inhumanity to man' may well make 

 'countless thousands mourn' in senses and to an extent 

 hitherto unthought of. It transcends in reality all the con- 

 ceptions of the missionary, poet, or philanthropist. In 

 order to estimate its enormity we must place it alongside 

 the humanity of the lower animals to each other and to 

 man himself, their tyrant. And, considering his opportu- 

 nities and theirs, his moral and religious status and theirs, 

 we cannot fail to be brought to regard these, in one sense, 

 inferior creatures such as the dog as morally the superiors 

 of hosts of human beings. 



Darwin dwells on the differences of opinion that exist as 

 to whether the moral sense is instinctive or acquired. Bain, 

 Mill, Maudsley, and others have pointed out its acquired 

 nature. It is, in truth, produced or developed in man by 

 culture ; it decays or disappears with age ; it is perverted or 

 destroyed by disease. It is certainly not innate in primitive 

 man, in the civilised child, or in the idiot. In none of these 

 cases does it at first or under natural and normal conditions 

 exist, while in some it cannot be developed by any degree or 

 kind of culture. Nor are individual moral feelings innate, any 

 more than the aggregate of these feelings. Sexual modesty is 

 not an original virtue, but is, like conscience, the slow pro- 

 duct of civilisation. The idea of marriage, and all its rela- 

 tionships, is in the same position not innate, but a gradual 

 growth under favourable circumstances. 



Captain Burton remarks, ' It is time to face the fact 

 that conscience is a purely geographical and chronological acci- 

 dent. Where, may we ask, can be that innate and universal 

 monitor in the case of a people the Somali, for instance 

 who rob like Spartans, holding theft a virtue ; who lie like 

 Trojans, without a vestige of appreciation for truth ; and who 

 hold the treacherous and cowardly murder of a sleeping 

 guest the height of human honour?' In short, there is 

 ' no sin, however infamous, no crime, however abominable, 



