352 Heredity. 



then, with the aid of anthropology, psychology, philology and history, 

 determining the evolution of moral ideas and their steady progress 

 from the simple to the complex. There is of course a point where 

 history fails us. History, being the consciousness of civilized 

 nations, necessarily implies continuity of tradition, whether oral or 

 written; and such continuity could not be found among people 

 without arts, without monuments, and whose records are only from 

 day to day. But where history falls short, anthropology may yet 

 serve as a guide. 



Yet we will not inquire whether the human race has ever had a 

 ' purely physiological period.' It suffices for us to begin our inves- 

 tigation with that primitive epoch which we call the savage state. 

 The savage is like the child : all travellers are unanimous on this 

 point. He is chiefly characterized, psychically, by the exclusive 

 predominance of sensibility and imagination (under their lower 

 forms), and consequently, from the moral point of view, by the 

 most absolute individualism. Their impressions and their ideas 

 possess an extraordinary mobility, which finds expression in an 

 exuberance of gesture, exclamations, contortions, and monkey-tricks. 

 They act less with design than by caprice. The portrait drawn by 

 Dumont d'Urville of the natives of Australia, answers in every 

 respect to children, even in the minor details, especially the child- 

 ish pronunciation of certain letters, such as s and r. It is impos- 

 sible that they should possess anything more than the merest 

 outlines of morality. As each individual is at every moment 

 carried away by violent and sudden outbursts of passion, as his life 

 is only a whirlwind of caprices, and as, in the absence of reflection, 

 there is never a moment's interval between desire and act, the 

 result is a turbulent and sanguinary existence, without anything 

 like order or reason. 



The first progress is made under the pressure of authority. 

 The wisest, speaking as kings or priests in the name of a God, 

 or of a supernatural power which alone has any control over 

 those wild natures impose restrictions on this absolute liberty 

 of the individual. These ordinances, though frequently violated, 

 are nevertheless the first germ of social justice ; and so soon as 

 some regard for property is established we discern the first linea- 

 ments of a civilization. Such were, half a century ago, the 



