Chapter 12

17Bain,Emotions and the Will, p. 268.

18Tucker,Light of Nature Pursued, i. 154.

We have already seen that sympathy springing from an altruistic sentiment may produce, not only disinterested resentment, but disinterested retributive kindly emotion as well. When taking a pleasure in the benefit bestowed on our neighbour, we naturally look with kindness upon the benefactor; and just as sympathetic resentment may be produced by the cognition of the outward signs of resentment, so sympathetic retributive kindly emotion may be produced by the signs of retributive kindliness. Language communicates emotions by terms of praise, as well as by terms of condemnation; and a reward, like a punishment, tends to reproduce the emotion from which it sprang. Moreover, men have disinterested likings, as they have disinterested dislikes. As an instance of such likings may be mentioned the common admiration of courage when felt irrespectively of the object for which it is displayed.

Having thus found the origin of disinterested retributive emotions, we have at the same time partly explained the origin of the moral emotions. But, as we have seen, disinterestedness is not the sole characteristic by which moral indignation and approval are distinguished from other retributive emotions: a moral emotion is assumed to be impartial, or, at least, is not knowingly partial, and it is coloured by the feeling of being publicly shared. However, the real problem which we have now to solve is not how retributive emotions may become apparently impartial and be coloured by a feeling of generality, but why disinterestedness, apparent impartiality, and the flavour of generality have become characteristics by which so-called moral emotions are distinguished from other retributive emotions. The solution of this problem lies in the fact that society is the birthplace of the moral consciousness; that the first moral judgments expressed, not the private emotions of isolated individuals, but emotions which werefelt by the society at large; that tribal custom was the earliest rule of duty.

Customs have been defined as public habits, as the habits of a certain circle, a racial or national community, a rank or class of society. But whilst being a habit, custom is at the same time something else as well. It not merely involves a frequent repetition of a certain mode of conduct, it is also a rule of conduct. As Cicero observes, the customs of a people “are precepts in themselves.”19We say that “custom commands,” or “custom demands,” and speak of it as “strict” and “inexorable”; and even when custom simply allows the commission of a certain class of actions, it implicitly lays down the rule that such actions are not to be interfered with.

19Cicero,De Officiis, i. 41.

The rule of custom is conceived of as a moral rule, which decides what is right and wrong.20“Les loix de la conscience,” says Montaigne, “que nous disons naistre de nature, naissent de la coustume.”21Mr. Howitt once said to a young Australian native with whom he was speaking about the food prohibited during initiation, “But if you were hungry and caught a female opossum, you might eat it if the old men were not there.” The youth replied, “I could not do that; it would not be right”; and he could give no other reason than that it would be wrong to disregard the customs of his people.22Mr. Bernau says of the British Guiana Indians:—“Their moral sense of good and evil is entirely regulated by the customs and practices inherited from their forefathers. What their predecessors believed and did must have been right, and they deem it the height of presumption to suppose that any could think and act otherwise.”23The moral evil of the pagan Greenlanders “was all that was contrary to laws and customs, asregulated by the angakoks,” and when the Danish missionaries tried to make them acquainted with their own moral conceptions, the result was that they “conceived the idea of virtue and sin as what was pleasing or displeasing to Europeans, as according or disaccording with their customs and laws.”24“The Africans, like most heathens,” Mr. Rowley observes, “do not regard sin, according to their idea of sin, as an offence against God, but simply as a transgression of the laws and customs of their country.”25The Ba-Ronga call derogations of universally recognised customyila, prohibited, tabooed.26The Bedouins of the Euphrates “make no appeal to conscience or the will of God in their distinctions between right and wrong, but appeal only to custom.”27According to the laws of Manu, the custom handed down in regular succession since time immemorial “is called the conduct of virtuous men.”28The Greek idea of the customary, τὸ νόμιμον, shows the close connection between morality and custom; and so do the words ἔθος, ἤθος, and ἠθικά, the Latinmosandmoralis, the GermanSitteandSittlichkeit.29Moreover, in early society, customs are not only moral rules, but the only moral rules ever thought of. The savage strictly complies with the Hegelian command that no man must have a private conscience. The following statement, which refers to the Tinnevelly Shanars, may be quoted as a typical example:—“Solitary individuals amongst them rarely adopt any new opinions, or any new course of procedure. They follow the multitude to do evil, and they follow the multitude to do good. They think in herds.”30

20Cf.Austin,Lectures on Jurisprudence, i. 104; Tönnies, ‘Philosophical Terminology,’ inMind, N.S., viii. 304. Von Jhering (Zweck im Recht, ii. 23) defines the GermanSitteas “die im Leben des Volks sich bildende verpflichtende Gewohnheit”; and a similar view is expressed by Wundt (Ethik, p. 128sq.).

21Montaigne,Essais, i. 22 (Œuvres, p. 48).

22Fison and Howitt,op. cit.p. 256sq.

23Bernau,Missionary Labours in British Guiana, p. 60.

24Rink,Greenland, p. 201sq.

25Rowley,Religion of the Africans, p. 44.

26Junod,Ba-Ronga, p. 477.

27Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 224.

28Laws of Manu, ii. 18.

29For the history of these words, see Wundt,op. cit.p. 19sqq.For other instances illustrating the moral character of custom, see Maclean,Compendium of Kafir Law and Customs, p. 34 (Amaxosa); Macpherson,Memorials of Service in India, p. 94 (Kandhs); Kubary,Ethnographische Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Karolinischen Inselgruppe, i. 73 (Pelew Islanders); Smith,Chinese Characteristics, p. 119.

30Caldwell,Tinnevelly Shanars, p. 69.

Disobedience to custom evokes public indignation. Inthe lower stages of civilisation, especially, custom is a tyrant who binds man in iron fetters, and who threatens the transgressor, not only with general disgrace, but often with bodily suffering. “To believe that man in a savage state is endowed with freedom either of thought or action,” says Sir G. Grey, “is erroneous in the highest degree”;31and this statement is corroborated by an array of facts from all quarters of the savage world.32Now, as the rule of custom is a moral rule, the indignation aroused by its transgression is naturally a moral emotion. Moreover, where all the duties incumbent on a man are expressed in the customs of the society to which he belongs, it is obvious that the characteristics of moral indignation are to be sought for in its connection with custom. The most salient feature of custom is its generality. Its transgression calls forth public indignation; hence the flavour of generality which characterises moral disapproval. Custom is fixed once for all, and takes no notice of the preferences of individuals. By recognising the validity of a custom, I implicitly admit that the custom is equally binding for me and for you and for all the other members of the society. This involves disinterestedness; I admit that a breach of the custom is equally wrong whether I myself am immediately concerned in the act or not. It also involves apparent impartiality; I assume that my condemnation of the act is independent of the relationship in which the parties concerned in it stand to me personally, or, at least, I am not aware that my condemnation is influenced by anysuch relationship. And this holds good whatever be the origin of the custom. Though customs are very frequently rooted in public sympathetic resentment or in public disinterested aversions, they may have a selfish and partial origin as well. At first the leading men of the society may have prohibited certain acts because they found them disadvantageous to themselves, or to those with whom they particularly sympathised. Where custom is an oppressor of women, this oppression may certainly be traced back to the selfishness of men. Where custom sanctions slavery, it is certainly not impartial to the slaves. Yet in the one case as in the other, I assume custom to be in the right, irrespectively of my own station, and I even expect the women and slaves themselves to be of the same opinion. Such an expectation is by no means a chimera. Under normal social conditions, largely owing to men’s tendency to share sympathetically the resentment of their superiors, the customs of a society are willingly submitted to, and recognised as right, by the large majority of its members, whatever may be their station. Among the Rejangs of Sumatra, says Marsden, “a man without property, family, or connections, never, in the partiality of self-love, considers his own life as being of equal value with that of a man of substance.”33However selfish, however partial a certain rule may be, it becomes a true custom, a moral rule, as soon as the selfishness or the partiality of its makers is lost sight of.

31Grey,Journals of Expeditions in North-West and Western Australia, ii. 217.

32Tylor, ‘Primitive Society,’ inContemporary Review, xxi. 706.Idem,Anthropology, p. 408sq.Avebury,Origin of Civilisation, p. 466sqq.Eyre,Journals of Expeditions into Central Australia, ii. 384, 385, 388. Curr,The Australian Race, i. 51. Mathew, ‘Australian Aborigines,’ inJour. and Proceed. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, xxiii. 398.Idem,Eaglehawk and Crow, p. 93. Taplin, ‘Narrinyeri,’ in Woods,Native Tribes of South Australia, pp. 35, 136sq.Hawtrey, ‘Lengua Indians of the Paraguayan Chaco,’ inJour. Anthr. Inst.xxxi. 292. Murdoch, ‘Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition,’ inAnn. Rep. Bur. Ethn.ix. 427sq.(Point Barrow Eskimo). Holm, ‘Ethnologisk Skizze af Angmagsalikerne,’ inMeddelelser om Grönland, x. 85. Nansen,First Crossing of Greenland, ii. 295. Johnston,British Central Africa, p. 452. New,Life, Wanderings, and Labours in Eastern Africa, p. 110 (Wanika). Scott Robertson,Káfirs of the Hindu-Kush, p. 183sq.

33Marsden,History of Sumatra, p. 247.

It will perhaps be argued that, by deriving the characteristics of moral indignation from its connection with custom, we implicitly contradict our initial assumption that moral emotions lie at the bottom of all moral judgments. But it is not so. Custom is a moral rule only on account of the indignation called forth by its transgression. In its ethical aspect it is nothing but a generalisation of emotional tendencies, applied to certain modes of conduct, and transmitted from generation to generation. Public indignation lies at the bottom of it. In its capacityof a rule of duty, custom,mos, is derived from the emotion to which it gave its name.

As public indignation is the prototype of moral disapproval, so public approval, expressed in public praise, is the prototype of moral approval. Like public indignation, public approval is characterised by a flavour of generality, by disinterestedness, by apparent impartiality. But of these two emotions public indignation, being at the root of custom and leading to the infliction of punishment, is by far the more impressive. Hence it is not surprising that the term “moral” is etymologically connected withmos, which always implies the existence of a social rule the transgression of which evokes public indignation. Only by analogy it has come to be applied to the emotion of approval as well.

Though taking their place in the system of human emotions as public emotions felt by the society at large, moral disapproval and approval have not always remained inseparably connected with the feelings of any special society. The unanimity of opinion which originally characterised the members of the same social unit was disturbed by its advancement in civilisation. Individuals arose who found fault with the moral ideas prevalent in the community to which they belonged, criticising those ideas on the basis of their own individual feelings. Such rebels are certainly no less justified in speaking in the name of morality true and proper, than is society itself. The emotions from which their opposition against public opinion springs may be, in nature, exactly similar to the approval or disapproval felt by the society at large, though they are called forth by different facts or, otherwise, differ from these emotions in degree. They may present the same disinterestedness and apparent impartiality—indeed, dissent from the established moral ideas largely rises from the conviction that the apparent impartiality of public feelings is an illusion. As will be seen, the evolution of the moral consciousness involves a progress in impartiality and justice; it tends towards an equalisationof rights, towards an expansion of the circle within which the same moral rules are held applicable; and this process is in no small degree effected by the efforts made by high-minded individuals to raise public opinion to their own standard of right. Nay, as we have already noticed, individual moral feelings do not even lack that flavour of generality which characterises the resentment and approval felt unanimously by a body of men. Though, perhaps, persecuted by his own people as an outcast, the moral dissenter does not regard himself as the advocate of a mere private opinion.34Even when standing alone, he feels that his conviction is shared at least by an ideal society, by all those who see the matter as clearly as he does himself, and who are animated with equally wide sympathies, an equally broad sense of justice. Thus the moral emotions remain to the last public emotions—if not in reality, then as an ideal.

34Cf.Pollock,Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, p. 309.

The fact that the earliest moral emotions were public emotions implies that the original form of the moral consciousness cannot, as is often asserted, have been the individual’s own conscience. Dr. Martineau’s observation, that the inner springs of other men’s actions may be read off only by inference from our own experience, by no means warrants his conclusion that the moral consciousness is at its origin engaged in self-estimation, instead of circuitously reaching this end through a prior critique upon our fellow-men.35The moral element which may be contained in the emotion of self-reproach or self-approval, is generally to such an extent mixed up with other and non-moral elements, that it can be disentangled only by a careful process of abstraction, guided by the feelings of other people with reference to our conduct or by our own feelings with reference to the conduct of others. The moral emotion of remorse presupposes some notion of right and wrong, and the application of this notion to one’s own conduct. Hence it could never havebeen distinguished as a special form of, or element in, the wider emotion of self-reproach, unless the idea of morality had been previously derived from another source. The similarity between regret and remorse is so close, that in certain European languages there is only one word for both.36

35Martineau,Types of Ethical Theory, ii. 29sqq.

36As, in Swedish, the wordånger.

From what has been said above it is obvious that moral resentment is of extreme antiquity in the human race, nay, that the germ of it is found even in the lower animal world, among social animals capable of feeling sympathetic resentment. The origin of custom as a moral rule no doubt lies in a very remote period of human history. We have no knowledge of a savage people without customs, and, as will be seen subsequently, savages often express their indignation in a very unmistakable manner when their customs are transgressed. Various data prove that the lower races have some feeling of justice, the flower of all moral feelings. And the supposition that remorse is unknown among them,37is not only unfounded, but contradicted by facts. Indeed, genuine remorse is so hidden an emotion even among ourselves, that it cannot be expected to be very conspicuous among savages. As we have seen, it requires a certain power of abstraction, as well as great impartiality of feeling, and must therefore be sought for at the highest reaches of the moral consciousness rather than at its lowest degrees. But to suppose that savages are entirely without a conscience is quite contrary to what we may infer from the great regard in which they hold their customs, as also contrary to the direct statements of travellers who have taken some pains to examine the matter. The answer given by the young Australian when asked by Mr. Howitt whether he might not eat a female opossum if the old men were not present,38certainly indicates conscientious respect for a moral rule, and is, as Mr. Fison observes, “a striking instance of that ‘moralfeeling’ which Sir John Lubbock denies to savages.”39Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden asserts that, among the people whom he had in his service, he found the Negroes, in their sense of duty, not inferior, but rather superior to the Europeans.40Mr. New says of the Wanika:—“Conscience lives in them as the vicegerent of Almighty God, and is ever excusing or else accusing them. It may be blunted, hardened, resisted, and largely suppressed, but there it is.”41M. Arbousset once desired some Bechuanas to tell him whether the blacks had a conscience. “Yes, all have one,” they said in reply. “And what does it say to them?” “It is quiet when they do well and torments them when they sin.” “What do you call sin?” “The theft, which is committed trembling, and the murder from which a man purifies and re-purifies himself, but which always leaves remorse.”42Mr. Washington Matthews refers to a passage in a Navaho story which “shows us that he who composed this tale knew what the pangs of remorse might be, even for an act not criminal, as we consider it, but merely ungenerous and unfilial.”43

37Avebury,Origin of Civilisation, pp. 421, 426.

38Seesupra,p. 118.

39Fison and Howitt,op. cit.p. 257 n.

40Hübbe-Schleiden,Ethiopien, p. 184sq.

41New,op. cit.p. 96.

42Arbousset and Daumas,Exploratory Tour to the North-East of the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope, p. 322.

43Matthews, ‘Study of Ethics among the Lower Races,’ inJournal of American Folk-Lore, xii. 7.

A different opinion as to the existence of moral feelings among savages has been expressed by Lord Avebury. To him even modern savages seem to be “almost entirely wanting in moral feeling”; and he says that he has “been forced to this conclusion, not only by the direct statements of travelers but by the general tenor of their remarks, and especially by the remarkable absence of repentance and remorse among the lower races of men.”44The importance of the subject rendersit necessary to scrutinise the facts which Lord Avebury has adduced in support of his conclusion.

44Avebury,op. cit.pp. 414, 426. Lord Avebury quotes Burton’s statement that in Eastern Africa, as also among the Yoruba negroes, conscience does not exist, and that “repentance” expresses regret for missed opportunities of mortal crime. Speaking of the stage of savagery represented by the Bakaïri, Dr. von den Steinen likewise observes (Unter den Naturvölkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 351), “Goodness and badness exist only in the crude sense of doing to others what is agreeable or disagreeable, but the moral consciousness, and the ideal initiative, influenced neither by prospect of reward nor fear of punishment, are entirely lacking.” Lippert maintains (Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit, i. 27) “dass sich das Gewissen beim Naturmenschen nicht als ‘Selbsttadel,’ sondern nur als Furcht zeigt.”

Mr. Neighbors states that, among the Comanches of Texas, “no individual action is considered a crime, but every man acts for himself according to his own judgment, unless some superior power—for instance, that of a popular chief—should exercise authority over him.” Another writer says, “The Redskin has no moral sense whatever.” Among the Basutos, according to Casalis, morality “depends so entirely upon social order that all political disorganisation is immediately followed by a state of degeneracy, which the re-establishment of order alone can rectify.” Similar accounts are given as regards Central Africa and some other places. Thus at Jenna, and in the surrounding districts, “whenever a town is deprived of its chief, the inhabitants acknowledge no law—anarchy, troubles, and confusion immediately prevail, and till a successor is appointed all labour is at an end.” The Damaras “seem to have no perceptible notion of right or wrong.” The Tasmanians were “without any moral views and impressions.” Eyre says of the Australians that they have “no moral sense of what is just and equitable in the abstract”; and a missionary had very great difficulty in conveying to those natives any idea of sin. The Kacharis had “in their own language no words for sin, for piety, for prayer, for repentance”; and of another of the aboriginal tribes of India Mr. Campbell remarks that they “are … said to be without moral sense.” Lord Avebury in this connection even quotes a statement to the effect that the expressions which the Tonga Islanders have for ideas like vice and injustice “are equally applicable to other things.” The South American Indians of the Gran Chaco are said by the missionaries to “make no distinction between right and wrong, and have therefore neither fear nor hope of any present or future punishment or reward, nor any mysterious terror of some supernatural power.” Finally, Lord Avebury observes that religion, except in the more advanced races, has no moral aspect or influence, that the deities are almost invariably regarded as evil, and that the belief in a future state is not at first associated with reward or punishment.45

45Avebury,op. cit.p. 417sqq.

Many of the facts referred to by Lord Avebury do not at all presuppose the absence of moral feelings. It is difficult to see why the malevolence of gods should prevent men from having notions of right and wrong, and we know from the Old Testament itself that there may be a moral law without Paradiseand Hell. The statement concerning the Comanches only implies that, among them, individual freedom is great; whilst the social disorder which prevails among various peoples at times of political disorganisation indicates that the cohesiveness of the political aggregate is weak, as well as a certain discrepancy between moral ideas and moral practice. In Morocco, also, the death of a Sultan is immediately followed by almost perfect anarchy, and yet the people recognise both the moral tenets of the Koran and the still more stringent tenets of their ancient customs. As to the Basutos, Casalis expressly states that they have the idea of moral evil, and represent it in their language by words which mean ugliness, or damage, or debt, or incapacity;46and M. Arbousset once heard a Basuto say, on an unjust judgment being pronounced, “The judge is powerful, therefore we must be silent; if he were weak, we should all cry out about his injustice.”47Moreover, a people may be unconscious of what is just “in the abstract,” and of moral “notions,” in the strict sense of the term, and at the same time, in concrete cases, distinguish between right and wrong, just and unjust. Of the Western Australians, Mr. Chauncy expressly says that they have a keen sense of justice, and mentions an instance of it;48whilst our latest authorities on the Central Australians observe that, though their moral code differs radically from ours, “it cannot be denied that their conduct is governed by it, and that any known breaches are dealt with both surely and severely.”49As regards the Tonga Islanders, Mariner states that “their ideas of honour and justice do not very much differ from ours except in degree, they considering some things more honourable than we should, and others much less so”; and in another place he says that “the notions of the Tonga people, in respect to honour and justice … are tolerably well defined, steady and universal,” though not always acted upon.50The statement that the American Indians have “no moral sense whatever,” sounds very strange when compared with what is known about their social and moral life; Buchanan, for instance, asserts that they “have a strong innate sense of justice.”51Of course, there may be diversity of opinion as to what constitutes the “moral sense”; if the conception of sin or other theological notions are regarded as essential to it, it is probablywanting in a large portion of mankind, and not only in the least civilised. When missionaries or travellers deny to certain savages moral feelings and ideas, they seem chiefly to mean feelings or ideas similar to their own.

46Casalis,Basutos, p. 304.

47Arbousset and Daumas,op. cit.p. 389.

48Brough Smyth,Aborigines of Victoria, ii. 228.

49Spencer and Gillen,Native Tribes of Central Australia, p. 46.

50Mariner,Natives of the Tonga Islands, ii. 159, 163.

51Buchanan,Sketches of the History, &c., of the North American Indians, p. 158.

Of many savage and barbarous peoples it is directly affirmed that they have a sense of justice. Mr. Man says concerning the Andaman Islanders, “Certain traits which have been noticeable in their dealings with us would give colour to the belief that they are not altogether lacking in the sense of honour, and have some faint idea of the meaning of justice.”52Colonel Dalton states that, among the Korwás on the highlands of Sirgúja, when several persons are implicated in one offence, he has found them “most anxious that to each should be ascribed his fair share of it, and no more, the oldest of the party invariably taking on himself the chief responsibility as leader or instigator, and doing his utmost to exculpate as unaccountable agents the young members of the gang.”53The Aleuts, according to Veniaminof, are “naturally inclined to be just,” and feel deeply undeserved injuries.54Kolben, who is nowadays recognised as a good authority,55wrote of the Hottentots, “The strictness and celerity of the Hottentot justice are things in which they outshine all Christendom.”56Missionaries have wondered that, among the Zulus, “in the absence for ages of all revealed truth and all proper religious instruction, there should still remain so much of mental integrity, so much ability to discern truth and justice, and withal so much regard for these principles in their daily intercourse with one another.”57Zöller ascribes to the Negro a well-developed feeling of justice. “No European,” he says, “at least no European child, could discriminate so keenly between just and unjust punishment.”58Mr. Hinde observes:— “One of the most marked characteristics of black people is their keen perception of justice. They do not resent merited punishment where it is coupled with justice upon other matters. The Masai have their sense of justice particularly strongly developed.”59Dieffenbach writes of the Maoris, “There is a high natural sense of justice amongst them;and it is from us that they have learnt that many forbidden things can be done with impunity, if they can only be kept secret.”60Justice is a virtue which always commands respect among the Bedouins, and “injustice on the part of those in power is almost impossible. Public opinion at once asserts itself; and the Sheykh, who should attempt to override the law, would speedily find himself deserted.”61

52Man, inJour. Anthr. Inst.xii. 92.

53Dalton,Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, p. 230.

54Veniaminof, quoted by Dall,Alaska, p. 398.

55Theophilus Hahn remarks (The Supreme Being of the Khoi-Khoi, p. 40) that Kolben’s reports have been doubted by European writers without any good reason.

56Kolben,Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, i. 301.Cf.ibid.i. 339.

57Quoted by Tyler,Forty Years among the Zulus, p. 197.

58Zöller,Kamerun, ii. 92.Cf.Idem,Das Togoland, p. 37.

59Hinde,The Last of the Masai, p. 34.Cf.Foreman,Philippine Islands, p. 185.

60Dieffenbach,Travels in New Zealand, ii. 106.

61Blunt,Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, ii. 224sqq.

Much less conspicuous than the emotion of public resentment is the emotion of public approval. These public emotions are largely of a sympathetic character, and, whilst a tendency to sympathetic resentment is always involved in the sentiment of social affection, a tendency to sympathetic retributive kindly emotion is not. Among the lower animals this latter emotion seems hardly to occur at all, and in men it is often deplorably defective. Resentment towards an enemy is itself, as a rule, a much stronger emotion than retributive kindly emotion towards a friend. And, as for the sympathetic forms of these emotions, it is not surprising that the altruistic sentiment is more readily moved by the sight of pain than by the sight of pleasure,62considering that its fundamental object is to be a means of protection for the species. Moreover, sympathetic retributive kindliness has powerful rivals in the feelings of jealousy and envy, which tend to make the individual hostile both towards him who is the object of a benefit and towards him who bestows it. As an ancient writer observes, “many suffer with their friends when the friends are in distress, but are envious of them when they prosper.”63But though these circumstances are a hindrance to the rise of retributive kindly emotions of a sympathetic kind, they do not prevent public approval in a case when the whole society profits by a benefit, nor have they any bearing on those disinterested instinctive likings of which I have spoken above. I think, then, we maysafely conclude that public praise and moral approval occurred, to some degree, even in the infancy of human society. It will appear from numerous facts recorded in following chapters, that the moral consciousness of modern savages contains not only condemnation, but praise.

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