the laws of morality as we know them now, and have deliberately refused to obey them. But, it may be said, though men may differ as to details, they surely accept certain fundamental moral principles as self-evident and obligatory. Thus cruelty is universally condemned and benevolence approved. "It is a psychological fact," says Lecky,1 "that we' are intuitively conscious that our benevolent affections are superior to our malevolent ones."2 Anthropologists and historians, however, have adduced many facts which seem to contradict these statements, or, at least, to render them doubtful.3 "Conscience," says Burton, "does not exist in Eastern Africa, and repentance expresses regret for missed opportunities of mortal crime. Robbery constitutes. an honorable man; murder - the more atrocious the midnight crime the better- makes the hero."4 "The Arabian robber," says Burckhardt, "regards his occupation as an honorable one, and the term haramy (robber) is one of the most flattering titles which one can give a young hero."5 Mr. Galbraith, an Indian agent, describes the Sioux as "bigoted, barbarous, and exceedingly superstitious. They

1 History of European Morals, Vol. I, pp. 99 f.

2 P. Rée gives a long list of writers who agree with this idea in his Entstehung des Gewissens, pp. 9, 10, 25–27.

A good résumé of such facts is given by Williams, A Review of Evolutional Ethics, pp. 466 ff.; Rée, pp. 13 ff.; Spencer, Inductions, pp. 325 ff. See also in this connection Locke's Essay, Bk. I, chap. ii.

First Footsteps in Eastern Africa, p. 176. 5 Wahali, p. 121.

regard most of the vices as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder are among them regarded as the means of distinction; and the young Indian from childhood is taught to regard killing as the highest of virtues."1 "In Tahiti, the missionaries considered that no less than two-thirds of the children were murdered by their parents." 2 "Indeed, I do not remember a single instance in which a savage is recorded as having shown any symptoms of remorse; and almost the only case I can recall to mind, in which a man belonging to one of the lower races has accounted for an act by saying explicitly that it was right, was when Mr. Hunt asked a young Fijian why he had killed his mother." 3 Darwin does not believe that the primitive conscience would reproach a man for injuring his enemy. "Rather it would reproach him, if he had not revenged himself. To do good in return for evil, to love your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be doubted whether the social instincts would, by themselves, have ever led us. It is necessary that these instincts, together with sympathy, should have been highly cultivated and extended by the aid of reason, instruction, and the love or fear of God, before any such golden rule would be thought of and obeyed.” 4

(3) We cannot, therefore, prove the innateness of conscience by referring to principles that are uni

1 Lubbock, Origin of Civilization, pp. 397, 398.

2 Ib.

4 The Descent of Man, p. 113 note.

8 Ib., p. 405.

versally recognized as right. Some moralists grant the truth of this statement, but still maintain that conscience is innate. It is true, they declare, that the moral judgments of mankind diverge, that one age or tribe may approve of what another condemns. But all times and peoples agree that some form of conduct is better, higher, nobler than another, that right is better than wrong, that we bow down before authority. This is practically the theory advocated by the Schoolmen,1 who held that we have an innate faculty, the synderesis, which tells us that the right ought to be done and the wrong avoided.

There is, however, no such faculty as the one spoken of here. The proposition, The right ought to be done and the wrong avoided, is, like all general statements of the kind, the result of abstraction. We find by experience that many particular acts are accompanied in consciousness by feelings of obligation and approval, and that others are associated with feelings of disapproval and deterrence. We bring these acts under general heads, and call the former right, the latter wrong To say that right acts ought to be performed and wrong ones avoided, simply means that certain forms of conduct arouse feelings of obligation and approval, and others the reverse. The proposition, therefore, that we ought to do the right and refrain from the wrong, is a general expression of the fact that we feel obliged. to perform certain actions and to refrain from 1 See chap. ii, § 3 (1).

others; it is a universal proposition, an inference drawn from the facts of experience, not an a priori judgment of the reason.

(4) Even if it were true that certain moral judgments were universally accepted, this would not necessarily prove them to be innate. They might be the products of universally prevalent conditions.

(5) Nor can we prove the innateness of conscience from "the self-evidence and necessity" of some of its deliverances. It is true that such propositions as Stealing is wrong, Murder is wrong, Honesty is right, etc., seem necessary and self-evident to us children of the nineteenth century. But they may be satisfactorily explained without our having recourse to the doctrine of nativism, which is, after all, merely a confession of ignorance. As we saw before, the ideas of certain acts, say of murder and self-sacrifice, are accompanied in consciousness by peculiar feelings called moral feelings, feelings which are lacking when we think of other acts or things. I have no such sentiments when I perceive or think of a tree or a mountain. Whenever these feelings surround an idea, we call that for which it stands right or wrong. To say that stealing, or any particular deed, is wrong, means that the idea of that act is associated in my mind with feelings of disapproval, etc. Hence the judgment, Stealing is wrong, is equivalent to the proposition that an act which is condemned and prohibited is condemned and prohibited. The words, stealing, adultery, robbery, murder, etc.,

contain everything that is expressed in the predicate, wrong or bad; they express not only ideas of acts, but our attitude toward these acts. The judg ment in question is what Kant would call an analyt-ical judgment, i.e., one in which the predicate is but a repetition of the subject. Such judgments are always necessary and self-evident; the predicate is identical with, or only another way of writing, the subject. And when I perceive an act to be right or wrong, it is because that act arouses feelings in me in consequence of which I approve or disapprove of it.1

7. Criticism of Emotional Intuitionism. If all this is so, the question concerning the innateness of conscience or moral judgment must be formulated in a slightly different manner. Are the moral feelings, we now ask, which accompany certain ideas, the original associates of those ideas? That is, do the deeds which we now designate as right and wrong always arouse, and have they always aroused, in the consciousness, the feelings mentioned before? We can hardly assert it. One age, or race, or nation, or class, or sect, or even individual, may regard an act as right which another views with indifference or abhorrence. We cannot read without a thrill of pain and horror the accounts of gladiatorial contests which the purest Roman virgin witnessed without the slightest moral compunction.

1 See Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chap v, § 4; Rée, Die Entstehung des Gewissens.