300 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



ly complete free will. The free will of the morally ele- 

 vated man, is no common property of all mankind. 



Man alone, and all men, are supposed to have a con- 

 science. We consider, on the contrary, that conscience, 

 which is known to be utterly lost in many individuals 

 of even the most civilized nations, is, like moral will, 

 a result of education in some few races and tribes. Fear 

 of detection after a bad action, is not conscience; and 

 that well-trained dogs have sensations of conscientious 

 shame far superior to the animal terror of savage can- 

 nibals after they have wrought the murder of their fel- . 

 low-men, it is impossible to deny. Of this, evidence in 

 profusion is accumulated in the anthropological compila- 

 tions of Waitz. 



I That a consciousness of the Divine existence is a 

 fundamental property of all men, we likewise hold in 

 question. It is, again, an established phrase that the most 

 barbarous nations are guided by emotions and cravings, 

 however obscure, towards the unknown God. This as- 

 sumption is as old as the well-known attempt to prove 

 the existence of God, " De quo omnium natura consent it, 

 id verum esse necesse est" (That in which all intuitively 

 agree, must necessarily be true). How often has this 

 saying of Cicero been thoughtlessly repeated? This idea 

 of God is, however, as httle intuitive as the discrimina- 

 tion of good and evil by the conscience. Others main- 

 tain the contrary. Thus Gerland says of the 

 Australians:^^ "The statement that Australian civiHza- 

 tion indicates a higher grade is nowhere more clearly 

 proved than here (in the province of religion), where 

 everything resounds like the expiring voices of a pre- 

 vious and richer age; but we in no wav receive the im- 



