[34] Cf. Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, p. 309.
The fact that the earliest moral emotions were public emotions implies that the original form of the moral consciousness cannot, as is often asserted, have been the individual’s own conscience. Dr. Martineau’s observation, that the inner springs of other men’s actions may be read off only by inference from our own experience, by no means warrants his conclusion that the moral consciousness is at its origin engaged in self-estimation, instead of circuitously reaching this end through a prior critique upon our fellow-men.[35] The moral element which may be contained in the emotion of self-reproach or self-approval, is generally to such an extent mixed up with other and non-moral elements, that it can be disentangled only by a careful process of abstraction, guided by the feelings of other people with reference to our conduct or by our own feelings with reference to the conduct of others. The moral emotion of remorse presupposes some notion of right and wrong, and the application of this notion to one’s own conduct. Hence it could never have been distinguished as a special form of, or element in, the wider emotion of self-reproach, unless the idea of morality had been previously derived from another source. The similarity between regret and remorse is so close, that in certain European languages there is only one word for both.[36]
[35] Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, ii. 29 sqq.
[36] As, in Swedish, the word ånger.
From what has been said above it is obvious that moral resentment is of extreme antiquity in the human race, nay, that the germ of it is found even in the lower animal world, among social animals capable of feeling sympathetic resentment. The origin of custom as a moral rule no doubt lies in a very remote period of human history. We have no knowledge of a savage people without customs, and, as will be seen subsequently, savages often express their indignation in a very unmistakable manner when their customs are transgressed. Various data prove that the lower races have some feeling of justice, the flower of all moral feelings. And the supposition that remorse is unknown among them,[37] is not only unfounded, but contradicted by facts. Indeed, genuine remorse is so hidden an emotion even among ourselves, that it cannot be expected to be very conspicuous among savages. As we have seen, it requires a certain power of abstraction, as well as great impartiality of feeling, and must therefore be sought for at the highest reaches of the moral consciousness rather than at its lowest degrees. But to suppose that savages are entirely without a conscience is quite contrary to what we may infer from the great regard in which they hold their customs, as also contrary to the direct statements of travellers who have taken some pains to examine the matter. The answer given by the young Australian when asked by Mr. Howitt whether he might not eat a female opossum if the old men were not present,[38] certainly indicates conscientious respect for a moral rule, and is, as Mr. Fison observes, “a striking instance of that ‘moral feeling’ which Sir John Lubbock denies to savages.”[39] Dr. Hübbe-Schleiden asserts that, among the people whom he had in his service, he found the Negroes, in their sense of duty, not inferior, but rather superior to the Europeans.[40] Mr. New says of the Wanika:—“Conscience lives in them as the vicegerent of Almighty God, and is ever excusing or else accusing them. It may be blunted, hardened, resisted, and largely suppressed, but there it is.”[41] M. Arbousset once desired some Bechuanas to tell him whether the blacks had a conscience. “Yes, all have one,” they said in reply. “And what does it say to them?” “It is quiet when they do well and torments them when they sin.” “What do you call sin?” “The theft, which is committed trembling, and the murder from which a man purifies and re-purifies himself, but which always leaves remorse.”[42] Mr. Washington Matthews refers to a passage in a Navaho story which “shows us that he who composed this tale knew what the pangs of remorse might be, even for an act not criminal, as we consider it, but merely ungenerous and unfilial.”[43]
[37] Avebury, Origin of Civilisation, pp. 421, 426.
[39] Fison and Howitt, op. cit. p. 257 n.
[40] Hübbe-Schleiden, Ethiopien, p. 184 sq.
[41] New, op. cit. p. 96.