sities of savage men, and which even now,
with our comparatively high civilization, are, in their farthest
developments, in advance of the age, and appear to have relation rather
to the future of the race than to its actual status?

_Difficulty as to the Origin of the Moral Sense._

Exactly the same difficulty arises, when we endeavour to account for the
development of the moral sense or conscience in savage man; for although
the _practice_ of benevolence, honesty, or truth, may have been useful
to the tribe possessing these virtues, that does not at all account for
the peculiar _sanctity_, attached to actions which each tribe considers
right and moral, as contrasted with the very different feelings with
which they regard what is merely _useful_. The utilitarian 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, commerce, 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 exceptions 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
practice 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 civilized people,
but among whole tribes of utter savages. Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in
his paper "On the Characteristics 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, ar