Another instance of deduction distorted by current European
ideas, is where Casalis ("Etudes sur la langue Sechuana," par
Eugene Casalis, part ii. p. 84), speaking of the Sisuto proverbs,
makes them display the "vestiges of that universal conscience to
which the Creator has committed the guidance of every intelligent
creature." Surely it is time to face the fact that conscience is
a purely geographical and chronological accident. Where, may we
ask, can be that innate and universal monitor in the case of a
people, the Somal for instance, who rob like Spartans, holding
theft a virtue; who lie like Trojans, without a vestige of
appreciation for truth; and who hold the treacherous and cowardly
murder of a sleeping guest to be the height of human honour? And
what easier than to prove that there is no sin however infamous,
no crime however abominable, which at some time or in some part
of the world has been or is still held in the highest esteem? The
utmost we can say is that conscience, the accident, flows
directly from an essential. All races now known to the world have
a something which they call right, and a something which they
term wrong; the underlying instinctive idea being evidently that
everything which benefits me is good, and all which harms me is
evil.
Pages:
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218