158 Mr. Buckle's Fallacies. [ix. 



Mr. Buckle may say, however, that he does not use 

 the term " moraUty " in so wide a sense — that he 

 means by it merely a collection of general rules and 

 precepts, serving as rough guides for daily conduct. 

 Of course, if Mr. Buckle chooses to define his terms 

 to suit himself, he can prove anything. If he defines 

 morality so as to make it include nothing but the 

 precepts known three thousand years ago, and then 

 says that all moral truths now known were known 

 then, he merely asserts that what was known then 

 was known then ; a statement which probably few 

 will be hardy enough to dispute, but which unfortu- 

 nately leaves the argument just where it was 

 before. 



But supposing we accept this narrow definition of 

 morality, what will become of our author's statement, 

 even then .'' He himself quotes, from several authors, 

 passages which show that there was a time when 

 some nations did not acknowledge the moral law for- 

 bidding murder. " Among some Macedonian tribes, 

 the man who had never slain an enemy was marked 

 by a degrading badge." ^ And at the present day, 

 among barbarous tribes, as the Dyaks of Borneo, " a 

 man cannot marry until he has procured a human 



^ Grote's History of Greece, vol. xi. p. 397, quoted in Buckle, 

 vol. i. p. 176, nste 29. 



