290 NATURAL SELECTION 1X 
hypothesis (which is the theory of natural selection applied to 
the mind) seems inadequate to account for the development 
of the moral sense. This subject has been recently much 
discussed, and I will here only give one example to illustrate 
my argument. ‘The utilitarian sanction for truthfulness is by 
no means very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it. 
No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In all 
ages and countries falsehood has been thought allowable in 
love, and laudable in war; while, at the present day, it is 
held to be venial by the majority of mankind in trade, com- 
merce, and speculation. A certain amount of untruthfulness 
is a necessary part of politeness in the East and West alike, 
while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable to elude. 
an enemy or prevent a crime. Such being the difficulties with 
which this virtue has had to struggle, with so many excep- 
tions to its practice, with so many instances in which it 
brought ruin or death to its too ardent devotee, how can we 
believe that considerations of utility could ever invest it with 
the mysterious sanctity of the highest virtue,—could ever 
induce men to value truth for its-own sake, and practise it 
regardless of consequences ? 
Yet it is a fact that such a mystical sense of wrong does 
attach to untruthfulness, not only among the higher classes of 
civilised people, but among whole tribes of utter savages. 
Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in his paper “On the Character- 
istics of the Population of Central and Southern India,” 
published in the Journal of the Ethnological Society of 
London, vol. i. p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals, . 
barbarous hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity. 
It is a common saying that “a Kurubar always speaks the 
truth ;” and Major Jervis says, “the Santals are the most 
truthful men I ever met with.” As a remarkable instance 
of this quality the following fact is given. A number of 
prisoners, taken during the Santal insurrection, were allowed 
to go free on parole, to work at a certain spot for wages. 
After some time cholera attacked them and they were obliged 
to leave, but every man of them returned and gave up his 
earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages, with money in 
their girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison rather than 
break their word! My own experience among savages has 
