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200 NATURAL SELECTION ixhypothesis (which is the theory of natural selection applied "tothe mind) seems inadequate to account for the developmentof the moral sense. This subject has been recently muchdiscussed, and I will here only give one example to illustratemy argument. The utilitarian sanction for truthfulness isbyno means very powerful or universal. Few laws enforce it.No very severe reprobation follows untruthfulness. In allages and countries falsehood has been thought allowable inlove, and laudable in war; while, at the present day, it isheld to be venial by the majority of mankind in trade, commerce,and speculation.A certain amount of untruthfulnessis a necessary part of politenessin the East and West alike,while even severe moralists have held a lie justifiable to eludean enemy or prevent a crime. Such being the difficulties withwhich this virtue has had to struggle, with so many exceptionsto its practice, with so many instances in which itbrought ruin or death to its too ardent devotee, how can webelieve that considerations of utility could ever invest it withthe mysterious sanctity of the highest virtue, could everinduce men to value truth for its own sake, and practise itregardless of consequences ?Yet it is a fact that such a mystical sense of wrong doesattach to untruthfulness, not only among the higher classes ofcivilised people, but among whole tribes of utter savages.Sir Walter Elliott tells us (in his paper " On the Characteristicsof the Population of Central and Southern India,"published in the Journal of the Ethnological Society ofLondon, vol. i. p. 107) that the Kurubars and Santals,barbarous hill-tribes of Central India, are noted for veracity.It is a common saying that "a Kurubar always speaks thetruth ;" and Major Jervis says," the Santals are the mosttruthful men I ever met with." As a remarkable instanceof this quality the following fact is given. A number ofprisoners, taken during the Santal insurrection, were allowedto go free on parole, to work at a certain spot for wages.After some time cholera attacked them and they were obligedto leave, but every man of them returned and gave up hisearnings to the guard. Two hundred savages, with money intheir girdles, walked thirty miles back to prison rather thanbreak their word !My own experience among savages has