Return to the River. 185 
which you, the towering tree, extend over him, the 
humble shrub. 
Another instance of deduction distorted by cur¬ 
rent European ideas, is where Casalis (“ Etudes 
sur la langue Sechuana,” par Eugene Casalis, 
part ii. p. 84), speaking of the Sisuto proverbs, 
makes them display the “ vestiges of that universal 
conscience to which the Creator has committed the 
guidance of every intelligent creature.” Surely it 
is time to face the fact that conscience is a purely 
geographical and chronological accident. Where, 
may we ask, can be that innate and universal 
monitor in the case of a people, the Somal for in¬ 
stance, who rob like Spartans, holding theft a 
virtue; who lie like Trojans, without a vestige of 
appreciation for truth; and who hold the treacher¬ 
ous and cowardly murder of a sleeping guest to be 
the height of human honour ? And what easier 
than to prove that there is no sin however infa¬ 
mous, no crime however abominable, which at 
some time or in some part of the world has been 
or is still held in the highest esteem? The utmost 
we can say is that conscience, the accident, flows 
directly from an essential. All races now known 
to the world have a something which they call 
right, and a something which they term wrong; 
the underlying instinctive idea being evidently that 
everything which benefits me is good, and all 
which harms me is evil. Their good and their 
