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ix LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION IN MAN 201furnished me with similar, although lest severely tested,instances ;and we cannot avoid asking, How is it that inthese few cases " experiences of "utility have left such anoverwhelming impression, while in so many others they haveleft none ? The experiences of savage men as regards theutility of truth must, in the long run, be pretty nearly equal.How is it, then, that in some cases the result is a sanctitywhich overrides all considerations of personal advantage, whilein others there is hardly a rudiment of such a feeling ?The intuitional theory, which I am now advocating, ex-a senseplains this by the supposition that there is a feelingof right and wrong in our nature, antecedent to and independentof experiences of utility.Where free play isallowed to the relations between man and man, this feelingattaches itself to those acts of universal utility or selfsacrificewhich are the products of our affections and sympathies,and which we term moral; while it may be, andoften is, perverted, to give the same sanction to acts of narrowand conventional utility which are really immoral, as whenthe Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve than eatunclean food, and looks upon the marriage of adult femalesas gross immorality.The strength of the moral feeling will depend uponindividual or racial constitution, and on education andhabit ;the acts to which its sanctions are applied willdepend upon how far the simple feelings and affections ofour nature have been modified by custom, by law, or byreligion.It is difficult to conceive that such an intense and mysticalf eeling of right and wrong (so intense as to overcome all ideasof personal advantage or utility), could have been developedout of accumulated ancestral experiences of utility; andstill more difficult to understand how feelings developed byone set of utilities could be transferred to acts of which theutility was partial, imaginary, or altogether absent. But if amoral sense is an essential part of our nature, it is easy tosee that its sanction may often be given to acts which areuseless or immoral ; just as the natural appetite for drinkis perverted by the drunkard into the means of his destruction.