ORGANIC EVOLUTION — MENTAL 171 



them by all the sermons, homilies, and text-books which 

 moralists and theologians have been able to produce." — 

 History of Civilization, vol. i. p. 180. 



But of these fundamental parts of almost all moral 

 systems which Mr. Buckle instances, it is to be 

 observed that they are precisely those which would 

 naturally be inculcated, for their own good, by the 

 normal instructors of youth. They are nearly universal, 

 not because they are inborn, but because the conditions 

 under which they are acquired are almost universal. 



Here I cannot refrain from observing, though the 

 remark is foreign to the purpose of this work, that the 

 great diversity of moral systems among the peoples of 

 the world should render each individual human being 

 cautious in believing, that the moral system which he 

 has acquired from his progenitors is an absolute guide 

 as to right and wrong, is a compendium to which he may 

 safely refer moral questions with absolute confidence. 

 Other moral systems which sanction rape and murder 

 are plainly wrong, and so may be our own system in some 

 particulars. Conscience alone is evidently an unsafe 

 guide, since its promptings manifestly vary with time 

 and place, since conscience prompted the Crusades and 

 the horrors of the Inquisition, and prompts at this day 

 the West African to torture before his Fetish sentient 

 animals, valuable to him, but sacrificed because of his 

 sense of right. That only should we regard as right 

 which we have valid reason for thinking so ; that only as 

 wrong which, not for ancient prejudice or superstition, 

 but for valid reason, we perceive to be so. Reasoning 

 by analogy from other peoples, we may be sure that 

 much that we abhor is not abhorrent, and much that we 

 revere is not reverend, but the reverse. 



In a species of ant, 



