The degradation as well as the development of conscience may be seen amongst us in the midst of our present civilization. It is contrary to the most rudimentary element of conscience to feed upon one’s kind, and cannibal tribes who devour their captives represent the lowest type of humanity; even the dogs of the Arctic voyager will endure the slow agony of starvation for days before their human taskmasters can compel them to eat the flesh of their companions. The well-known naturalist, Mr. W. H. Hudson, states that wolves, when pressed with hunger, will sometimes devour a fellow-wolf; as a rule, however, rapacious animals will starve to death rather than prey upon one of their own kind. Yet shipwrecked sailors, even of our own English race, have been known to drink the blood and eat the flesh of their own comrades when confronted by starvation. We find that intelligence may exist without conscience, but the human type changes to a destructive force when this separation takes place. A lamentable example of the social danger created by the destruction or absence of rudimentary conscience amongst us is shown by the betrayal and murder of the little boy Eccles in Liverpool, for the sake of his clothes, by his two companions of eight and nine years old. There was the deliberate plot to entice him to a pond; the throwing him three times into the water as he scrambled out; the final holding him under water until all struggle had ceased. These facts make a striking, but not unique, object-lesson, showing how intelligence may exist without conscience amongst all our appliances of civilization, and the danger of such separation. Examples of the social devastation produced by official corruption and business dishonesty are too numerous to be detailed; they are seen in what are called civilized countries--in London, Paris, Rome, and across the ocean. The lack of conscience in public and private transactions creates social misery proportioned to its extent. Recognising, therefore, that this distinctive principle of conscience is a fact of gradual development, that it grows by the union of the moral with the intellectual elements in our nature, and that the far-reaching consequences for good or evil of vivid or dulled conscience in the individual and the nation are far beyond our power of foresight, a grave responsibility rests upon us in this matter. We are bound to realize that any custom, or method of education, or proposed course of action, that seems to violate the natural instincts of humanity, or is contrary to the present enlightened conscience of any section of our Anglo-American race, demands imperatively the most careful consideration on our part. CHAPTER II _Conscience in Medicine_ Every intelligent member of the medical profession will certainly recognise the special value of human conscience in the profession.