" says Krauth, "that under the conditions of knowledge we
_know_, or in defect of them do not know; we are responsible if, under
the conditions of a well-grounded faith, we disbelieve."[63]

Let us look, then, at the belief in God. The question under
consideration at first will not be whether there exists a God, the
creator and ruler of the universe--for this will be afterward
considered--but is there any evidence that man was aboriginally endowed
with the ennobling belief in the existence of an Omnipotent God.

Schweinfurth relates that the Niam-niam, that highly interesting dwarf
people of Central Africa, have no word for God, and therefore, it must
be supposed, no idea; and Moritz Wagner has given a whole selection of
reports on the absence of religious consciousness in inferior nations.
The idea that conscience is a sort of permanent inspiration or dwelling
of God in the soul, I think, on consideration, any reasonable man will
not assume. "It is a purely human faculty," says Savage, "like the
faculty for art or music; and it gets its authority, as they do by being
true, and just in so far as it is true. Consciousness is our own
knowledge of ourselves and of the relation between our own faculties and
powers. Conscience is our recognition of the relations, as right or
wrong, in which we stand to those about us, God and our fellows.
_Con-scio_ is to know with, in relation.

There is such a thing, of course, as a _false conscience_ and a _true
conscience_. All the false "conscientiousness grows out of the fact that
men suppose they stand in certain relationships that do not really
exist. Thus they imagined duties that are not duties at all." The
virtues which must be practised by rude men, so that they can hold
together in tribes, are of course important. No tribe could hold
together if robbery, murder, treachery, etc., were common; in other
words, there must be honor among thieves. "A North-American Indian is
well pleased with himself, and is honored by others, when he scalps a
man of another tribe; and a Dyak cuts off the head of an unoffending
person, and dries it as a trophy. The murder of infants has prevailed on
the largest scale throughout the world, and has been met with no
reproach; but infanticide, especially of females, has been thought to be
good for the tribe, or at least not injurious. Suicide during former
times was not generally considered as a crime, but rather, from the
courage displayed, as an honor