Contributions to the theory of natural selection. A series of essays ... By Alfred Russel Wallace ...

354 TIlE LIMITS OF NATURAL SELECTION
Santal insurrection, were allowed to go free on parole,
to work at a certain spot for wages. After some
time cholera attacked them and they were obliged to
leave, but every man of them returned and gave up
his earnings to the guard. Two hundred savages
with money in their girdles, walked thirty miles back
to prison rather than break their word! I My own
experience among savages has furnished me with
similar, although less severely tested, instances; and
we cannot avoid asking, how is it, that in these few
cases " experiences of utility" have left such an overwhelming impression, while in so many others they
have left none? The experiences of savage men as
regards the utility of truth, must, in the long run,
be pretty nearly equal. How is it, then, that in some
cases the result is a sanctity which overrides all considerations of personal advantage, while in others there
is hardly a rudiment of such a feeling?
The intuitional theory, which I am now advocating,
explains this by the supposition, that there is a feelinga sense of right and wrong-in our nature, antecedent
to andl independent of experiences of utility. Where
free play is allowed to the relations between man and
man, this feeling attaches itself to those acts of universal utility or self-sacrifice, which are the products
of our affections and sympathies, and which we term
moral; while it may be, and often is, perverted, to
give the same sanction to acts of narrow and conventional utility which are really immoral,-as when
the Hindoo will tell a lie, but will sooner starve than