inference that the faculty itself is not an essential of man's mental constitution, but is a product of culture; the resultant perhaps originally of observation and experience, which in time, and under the influences of civilization, may become an hereditary aptitude, though the facts of deaf-mutism, to which reference is made hereafter, militate against the theory of transmission.
Cœlum noil animum mutant qui trans mare currunt[1] is perhaps true of those who are old enough to travel, and who find national habitudes of thought and culture following them everywhere, but morals certainly change with almost every clime and age. In a broad survey of the history of morals one comes to doubt whether there is such a thing as abstract right and wrong. Every article of the religious code in which we have been educated, and which we revere, has been or is violated without remorse among the peoples who sit in darkness, but who are supposed to have that intuitive faculty which makes the pagan a law unto himself. The vice of to-day is the virtue of yesterday: a disgrace in England is a dignity in Ashantee. The crowning glory and triumph of Christian grace is the shame of the red-man's creed. Crimes against life, crimes against liberty, crimes against personal rights, crimes against chastity, crimes against nature, have all been sanctioned and justified by this infallible judge. The bitterest wars have been religious wars, where the contending hosts were stimulated and led on by conscience. The fiercest persecutions have been religious persecutions, where conscience stretched the rack and tightened the thumb-screws. The blood of martyrs stains the skirts of every sect: Catholics have persecuted Protestants, Protestants have persecuted Papists, and both have set their heel upon the Jew. The atrocities of Alva were equaled by the cruelties of Louvois. The victims of St. Bartholomew find a parallel in the sufferings of the Scotch Covenanters. Saul thought he was doing God service in haling men and women to prison and to death. Blood for blood is Hebrew as well as Indian law. The sin of stealing among the Spartans was in being caught at it. The severe Cato thought it right to yield his wife to his friend. Socrates sanctioned the prostitution of Aspasia by his daily intercourse and friendship. In the Balearic Isles a bride was the common property of all the wedding-guests before she could be the wife of one. Among the Naudowossies the woman who could take to her bosom forty stalwart warriors of a night was regarded almost with veneration, and had her pick of the tribe for a husband. Galbraith says that among the Sioux theft, arson, rape, and murder, are regarded as means of distinction. In Tahiti, while idolatry prevailed, the common animal instinct of maternal affection seemed lacking, so much so that Mr. Ellis, long resident there, says he never met a Tahitian mother who had not imbrued her hands in the blood of her offspring. It is not necessary to show that these crimes were ever considered right. It
- ↑ They change their sky, not their affections who cross the sea.
