r who sets out with a more philosophical belief, not only
escapes the affliction of seeing sin wherever he sees difference, and
avoids the suffering of contempt and alienation from his species, but,
by being prepared for what he witnesses, and aware of the causes, is
free from the agitation of being shocked and alarmed, preserves his
calmness, his hope, his sympathy; and is thus far better fitted to
perceive, understand, and report upon the morals and manners of the
people he visits. His more philosophical belief, derived from all fair
evidence and just reflexion, is, that every man's feelings of right and
wrong, instead of being born with him, grow up in him from the
influences to which he is subjected. We see that in other cases,--with
regard to science, to art, and to the appearances of nature,--feelings
grow out of knowledge and experience; and there is every evidence that
it is so with regard to morals. The feelings begin very early; and this
is the reason why they are supposed to be born with men; but they are
few and imperfect in childhood, and, in the case of those who are
strongly exercised in morals, they go on enlarging and strengthening and
refining through life. See the effect upon the traveller's observations
of his holding this belief about conscience! Knowing that some
influences act upon the minds of all people in all countries, he looks
everywhere for certain feelings of right and wrong which are as sure to
be in all men's minds as if they were born with them. For instance, to
torment another without any reason, real or imaginary, is considered
wrong all over the world. In the same manner, to make others happy is
universally considered right. At the same time, the traveller is
prepared to find an infinite variety of differences in smaller matters,
and is relieved from the necessity of pronouncing each to be a vice in
one party or another. His own moral education having been a more
elevated and advanced one than that of some of the people he
contemplates, he cannot but feel sorrow and disgust at various things
that he witnesses; but it is ignorance and barbarism that he mourns, and
not vice. When he sees the Arab or American Indian offer daughter or
wife to the stranger, as a part of the hospitality which is, in the
host's mind, the first of duties, the observer regards the fact as he
regards the mode of education in old Sparta, where physical hardihood
and moral slavery constituted a man most honourable.