able act; and it is still practised by
some semi-civilized and savage nations without reproach, for it does not
obviously concern others of the tribe. It has been recorded that an
Indian Thug conscientiously regretted that he had not robbed and
strangled as many travelers as did his father before him."[64]

See how weak the conscience of even more highly civilized men are in
their dealings with the brute creation; how the sportsman delights in
hunting-scenes, Spanish bull-fights, cock-fights, etc.; how indignant
was the sensitive Cowper, if any one should "needlessly set foot upon a
worm"! The rights of the worm are as sacred in his degree as ours are,
and a true conscience will recognize them. What, then, is a true
conscience? Savage states in a few words, it is "one that knows and is
adjusted to the realities of life. When men know the truth about God,
about themselves--body and mind and spirit--about the real relations of
equity in which they stand to their fellow-men in state and church and
society, and when they appreciate these, and adjust their conscience to
them, then they will have a true conscience. An absolutely true
conscience, of course, cannot exist so long as our knowledge of the
reality of things is only partial."

It is evident, then, that the conscience of man depends on his education
and environments, and therefore is the subject of improvement. It
becomes, then, the duty of every man to search for truth, for his
conscience is not infallible, and by so doing he will bring it to accord
with the real facts of God. "Throw away," says Savage, "prejudice and
conceit, seek to make your conscience like the magnetic needle. The
needle ever and naturally seeking the unchanging pole." As conscience,
then, is but a faculty capable of development, it is not so difficult to
understand a race of people whose conscience was in just the first
stages of development; and, finally, a race which did not possess this
faculty at all, as in the inferior nations which Wagner speaks of.

[Illustration: FIG. I.--Butcher's Shop of the Anziques, Anno 1598.

(From Man's Place in Nature, by _Huxley_.)]

What kind of conscience and intelligence had the people near Cape Lopez,
called the Anziques, which M. du Chaillu describes. They had incredible
ferocity; for they ate one another, sparing neither friends nor
relations. Their butcher-shops were filled with human flesh, instead of
that of oxen or sheep, for they ate the enem