450 EXPANSION OF MORALS. 



No savage dares to be unpopular at home ; the weight 

 of opprobrium is more than any man can bear. His 

 happiness depends on the approbation of those with 

 whom he lives : there is no world for him outside his 

 clan. The town laws were, therefore, respected by 

 each man for the sake of his Family, and then by a 

 well-known mental process, they came to be respected 

 for themselves, and were brought under the moral law 

 which was written on the heart. Men ceased to be 

 clansmen ; they became citizens. They next learnt to 

 cherish and protect those foreigners who came to trade 

 and who thus conferred a benefit upon the town ; and 

 at last the great discovery was made. Offences against 

 the golden rule are wrong in themselves, and displeasing 

 to the gods. It is wicked for a man to do that 

 which he would not wish a man to do to him ; it is 

 wrong for a man to do that to a woman which he 

 would not wish done to his sister or his wife. Murder, 

 theft, falsehood, and fraud, the infliction of physical 

 or mental pain, all these from time immemorial had 

 been regarded as crimes between clansmen and clans- 

 men ; they were now regarded as crimes between man 

 and man. And here we come to a singular fact. The 

 more men are sunk in brutality the less frequently 

 they sin against their conscience ; and as men become 

 more virtuous, they also become more sinful. With 

 the primeval man the conscience is an instinct ; it is 

 never disobeyed. With the savage the conscience 

 demands little ; that little it demands under pain of 

 death ; it is, therefore, seldom disobeyed. The 

 savage seldom does that which he feels to be wrong. 

 But he does not feel it wrong to commit incest, 

 to eat grandfather soup, to kill a sickly child like a 



