But did the most undeviating habits guide all brutes in such matters, were even aged and infirm members of a community of insects or birds carefully tended by young which benefited by their experience, such acts would not indicate even the faintest rudiment of real, _i.e._ formal, morality.

"Natural Selection" would, of course, often lead to the prevalence of acts beneficial to a community, and to acts _materially_ good; but unless they can be shown to be _formally_ so, they are not in the least to the point, they do not offer any explanation of the origin of an altogether new and fundamentally different motive and conception.
It is interesting, on the other hand, to note Mr.Darwin's statement as to the existence of a distinct moral feeling, even in, perhaps, the very lowest and most degraded of all the human races known to us.

Thus in the same "Journal of Researches"[210] before quoted, bearing witness to the existence of moral reprobation on the part of the Fuegians, he says: "The nearest approach to religious feeling which I heard of was shown by York Minster (a Fuegian so named), who, when Mr.Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, declared in the most solemn manner, 'Oh, Mr.Bynoe, much rain, snow, blow much.' This was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting human food." Mr.Wallace gives the most interesting testimony, in his "Malay Archipelago," to the existence of a very distinct, and in some instances highly developed moral sense in the natives with whom he came in contact.
In one case,[211] a Papuan who had been paid in advance for bird-skins and who had not been able to fulfil his contract before Mr.Wallace was on{198} the point of starting, "came running down after us holding up a bird, and saying with great satisfaction, 'Now I owe you nothing!'" And this though he could have withheld payment with complete impunity.
Mr.Wallace's observations and opinions on this head seem hardly to meet with due appreciation in Sir John Lubbock's recent work on Primitive Man.[212] But considering the acute powers of observation and the industry of Mr.Wallace, and especially considering the years he passed in familiar and uninterrupted intercourse with natives, his opinion and testimony should surely carry with it great weight.

He has informed the Author that he found a strongly marked and widely diffused modesty, in sexual matters, amongst all the tribes with which he came in contact.

In the same way Mr.
Bonwick, in his work on the Tasmanians, testifies to the modesty exhibited by the naked females of that race, who by the decorum of their postures gave evidence of the possession in germ of what under circumstances would become the highest chastity and refinement.
Hasty and incomplete observations and inductions are prejudicial enough to physical science, but when their effect is to degrade untruthfully our common humanity, there is an additional motive to regret them.