Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/383

 THE EVOLUTION OF CONSCIENCE 367

theft, robbery, of the most brutal kind, should be held in esteem, as an indication of manhood and prowess ? What is to explain the extraordinary instances of cruelty which are told of savage races, the utter absence of what we should call the sense of pity or mercy? Fancy the state of feeling among people who take the keenest delight in torturing to death other fellow-creatures, and who may get their highest satisfaction by inflicting such tortures. How shall we account for the downright pleasure taken in cruelty, in murder, in the sacrifice of human blood ?

And the pathetic part of it is that this is not the exception, but, if anything, the rule. Among savage races the peace-loving, peaceable tribes are the exception. There are such. They do exist. But, on the whole, I suppose it is true that one takes one's life in one's hands if one goes among savages.

Nature was many millions of years making the brute creature, and only a few hundred thousand years making the human crea- ture. We know that the law of blood, as it were, is the law of brute creation ; and it must be remembered that we are the heirs of all that has gone before. We have got the man in us now as a new phase, but also there is in us as an inheritance all the brute life which has preceded. Is it strange, then, that the human ele- ment should be, at the start and for a long while, comparatively weak ? Is it astonishing that conscience should not shine bright and clear, be strong and controlling over the human creature ? We must bear in mind that it is doing battle with hereditary tendencies established by millions of years of bygone history.

We should look, therefore, upon that primitive state of sav- age races, which was the state of our forefathers not many thou- sand years ago, rather with pity than with a sense of loath- ing. The manhood was coming, but not yet come ; conscience evolving, but not yet evolved. If we are heirs of all the brutal vindictiveness of our animal ancestry, we are also heirs of the courage, the capacity for devotion within the tribe, of our human ancestors. If there is a holding together of the social tissue today, it is partly owing to the way our primitive, savage ances- tors evolved a sense of loyalty to the clan or the tribe.

It is certainly a long, long distance from the primitive sav-