Mr. Wallace, in the same discussion, stated a fact of
great value to those who believe, as we do, that conscience is inherent, but he drew from it a deduction it will scarcely bear. He has .bad an immense experience of savages, and says he has repeatedly found among them "a most delicate sense of right and wrong," and deduces from that a theory that they are degenerate persons, who have retained amidst their degeneracy a primeval idea of morals. Why? Why should not their sense of right and wrong be as inherent as their sense of sight or hearing, and due, like it, either to the Creator, as we should say, or, as our opponents would phrase it, to Nature ? Mr. Wallace seems from his books to have on some points an unusually delicate sense of right and wrong. Is that a proof that he has degenerated from the Pict, who was pro- bably his ancestor? Mr. Wallace wishes, we imagine, to prove that such a sense must have come from revelation, that is, from God. That we also believe, but why limit God to one operation ? Why should not conscience, like sight, be given to each new baby as one of his faculties for the conduct of life ? If it be all from Adam, bow does the dog come by it ? Did he catch it, like a disease, from man ?
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