e 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
furnished me with similar, although less severely tested, instances; and
we cannot avoid asking, how is it, that in these few cases "experiences
of utility" have left such an overwhelming impression, while in so many
others they have left none? The experiences of savage men as regards the
utility of truth, must, in the long run, be pretty nearly equal. How is
it, then, that in some cases the result is a sanctity which overrides
all considerations of personal advantage, while in others there is
hardly a rudiment of such a feeling?

The intuitional theory, which I am now advocating, explains this by the
supposition, that there is a feeling--a sense of right and wrong--in our
nature, antecedent to and independent of experiences of utility. Where
free play is allowed to the relations between man and man, this feeling
attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice,
which are the products of our affections and sympathies, and which we
term moral; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to give the same
sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are really
immoral,--as when the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve
than eat unclean food; and looks upon the marriage of adult females as
gross immorality.

The strength of the moral feeling will depend upon individual or racial
constitution, and on education and habit;--the acts to which its
sanctions are applied, will depend upon how far the simple feelings and
affections of our nature, have been modified by custom, by law, or by
religion.

It is difficult to conceive that such an intense and mystical feeling of
right and wrong, (so intense as to overcome all ideas of personal
advantage or utility), could have been developed out of accumulated
ancestral experiences of utility; and