252 MENTAL CONSTITUTION OF ANIMALS. 



from their ordinary and proper action. The production of 

 those evilly disposed beings is in this manner. The moral 

 character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as does 

 the physical character also,) upon conditions of the parents, 

 both general conditions, and conditions at the particular time 

 of the commencement of the existence of the new being, and 

 likewise external conditions affecting the foetus through the 

 mother. Now the amount of these conditions is indefinite. 

 The faculties of the parents, as far as these are concerned, 

 may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme of 

 tensibility in one direction. The influences upon the foetus 

 may have also been of an extreme and unusual kind. Let us 

 suppose that the conditions upon the whole have been favour- 

 able for the development, not of the higher, but of the lower 

 sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the 

 result will necessarily be a mean type of brain. Here, it will 

 be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he 

 decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our per- 

 plexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. 

 He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a 

 principle, good in the main, but which admits of evil as an 

 exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God 

 leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action : 

 the general good results of this arrangement are obvious ; but 

 exceptions of evil are inseparable from such a system, and this 

 is one of them. To come to particular illustration when a 

 people are oppressed, or kept in a state of slavery, they inva- 

 riably contract habits of lying, for the purpose of deceiving 

 and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being a refuge of 

 the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parents 

 becomes an inherent quality in children. We are not, there- 

 fore, to be surprised when a traveller tells us that black 

 children in the West Indies appear to lie by instinct, and 

 never answer a white person truly, even in the simplest 

 matter. Here we have secretiveness roused in a people to a 

 state of constant and exalted exercise ; an over tendency of 

 the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence, and 

 a new organic condition is established. This tells upon the 



