Page:George Archdall Reid 1896 The present evolution of man.djvu/181

Rh of a moral nature, for whatever is moral in an individual appears later, at a time when the imitative instincts have come into play. In the third place, morals are evidently affairs of time and place—that which we now hold to be right was in other times held to be wrong, that which we now hold to be wrong is in other lands held to be right: our pagan ancestors persecuted the Christians; our Christian ancestors persecuted the Jews and Pagans; we hold religious persecution to be the most heinous of crimes. The Thugs approve of murder, the American Indians of robbery, the Chinese of infanticide, the Japanese of suicide, the Africans of cannibalism, the Turks of polygamy, some Indian bill tribes of polyandry, the Masai of promiscuous sexual intercourse, and so forth. On the other hand, we habitually do, without any sense of wrong-doing, that which other peoples esteem highly criminal; for instance, we eat flesh, and in particular beef and pork.

In the medley of moral systems two things are positively clear. First, that no system is inborn, but all are acquired; and second, that persistence of a moral system, during any number of generations, does not cause it to become inborn, i.e. acquired moral natures do not become transmissible no matter how often acquired; they are handed from parent to child as language is, or, as I may even say, as property is, not as eyes and teeth are; as is proved by the indubitable fact that the children of any race (e.g. Anglo-Saxons), if reared by another race (e.g. American Indians), develop the moral nature of the educators, not of the progenitors. Perhaps there is nothing more characteristic of the English than corporal modesty; there are among us women who would rather die than expose portions of their persons to the public gaze, or even to the gaze of accredited individuals, as every surgeon