True, these laws may often appear to us iniquitous or barbarous, but sometimes there is, even in their severities towards certain classes of the population, a trace of the most just and praiseworthy sentiments. We cannot indeed approve of the Australian code as regards the enactions which make a miserable slave of the woman; the privileges which it reserves to the chiefs are perhaps excessive ; but how can we help being struck when we see it grant to age the same advantages as to rank. Respect for old age was a feature in the manners of the Spartans which met with the admiration of the Athenians; we may well recognise its value in the Australians.

Mention has sometimes been made of races or populations dwelling in trees, such as the Orang-Kubus, certain Blacks of New Guinea, etc. They have been described as making their homos in trees after the manner of monkeys. Earle has reduced these exaggerations to their true value. He has shown that upon certain coasts, lined with a belt of mangroves, it is easier to walk upon the crowded, interlaced branches, than to force a passage along the network of aerial roots plunging into a bed of mud. He saw European sailors several times, with their muskets slung, passing over marshes of this nature in single file, in the same way as the Indians. We see, therefore, that it is not at all necessary to be absolutely savage and nearly allied to moukeys to travel in this manner.

The Tasmanians, as good an example of a nomad people as it would be possible to mention, only erected temporary shelters, and yet they burnt their dead, and raised to them mausoleums of branches and bark, which have been described and figured by Pcron. I have just remarked that the Australians had their institutions and their industries. Undoubtedly in Tasmania and Australia man is exhibited with the smallest amount of human development. And yet we nowhere observe that absolute barbarism which is apparently admitted by the learned Englishman.

However far we go back into our past history we shall meet with similar facts. The little that we know of tertiary man shews him to be in possession of fire and the art of cutting flints. He already has his industries, and this fact alone proves that his mode of life was different to that of the brute.

It could not be otherwise. Whatever the cause may have been which determined the appearance of man upon the surface of the globe, he has, from the first, always been in possession of his specific nature. He has had from the outset his intelligence and his aptitudes which, though at that time in a torpid and slumbering state, were ready to start into life under the spur of necessity. To procure nourishment and to defend himself against the external world, he could only have recourse to them, and the smallest manifestations of these superior faculties have of necessity traced from the commencement a line of demarcation between him and the brute.

XV. The intelligence and the aptitudes of man have manifested themselves in a thousand ways, which may be included under the general name of industries. Pacific or warlike, relating to the individual or to the whole population, they very often differ in different races, in different peoples, sometimes almost in different tribes. The greater number may consequently be considered as so many characters by which the different groups of the human species may be distinguished. It will, however, at once be understood that questions of this nature can only be discussed in a detailed history, and I must here confine myself to stating one of those general facts which, by themselves, are sufficient to separate man from animals.

The latter have only physical wants which they satisfy as completely as possible. But, this end once attained, they go no further. The animal, when left to itself, does not know, or has scarcely a suspicion, of the superfluous. His wants arc, therefore, always the same.

Man, on the contrary, whether the mind or the body is in question, is always seeking the superfluous, often at the expense of utility, sometimes to the detriment of the necessary. The result is that his wants increase from day to day. The luxury of the evening becomes the indispensable of the morrow.

This fact is just as true with regard to the savages as to civilized peoples. We must, then, consider it as one of those characters which belong to the very nature of beings. Regarded systematically from this point of view, man might be denned as an animal requiring the superfluous, with just as much reason as he has been called a reasoning animal.

Moralists have at all times severely blamed this tendency and condemned those insatiable appetites which are always asking for more and for what they do not possess. I cannot share this view. Far from blaming in principle that which essentially is but the desire for the better, I cannot but see in it one of the noblest attributes of man. This faculty is, in reality, one of the most important causes of his greatness. When men are once fully satisfied and have no more wants, they will come to a standstill, and progress, that great and sacred law of mankind, will come to a standstill also.

In reality, it is the want of the superfluous which has developed all our industries, which has engendered the arts and sciences without which many races and nations, and, even among ourselves, whole populations exist perfectly well. We must therefore, with every reservation as to wrong applications, accept it in the first place as a fact, in the second as a benefit.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

MORAL CHARACTERS.

I. In spite of all that is exceptional and elevated in the intellectual phenomena displayed by man, they do not, when considered as characters, isolate us from animals. It is different with moral and religious phenomena. The latter, as we have seen, belong essentially to the human kingdom ; they are the attributes of our species. Let us examine them rapidly, and, at the same time, invariably from this point of view.

Confining ourselves rigorously to the region of facts, and carefully avoiding the territory of philosophy and theology, we may state, without hesitation, that there is no human society or even association in'which the idea of good and evil is not represented by certain acts regarded by the members of that society or association as morally good or morally bad. Even among robbers and pirates theft is regarded as a misdeed, sometimes as a crime, and severely punished, while treachery is branded with infamy; the facts noticed by Wallace among the Kurubars and Santals shew how the consciousness of moral good and truth is anterior to experience, and independent of questions of utility.

Nevertheless, Sir John Lubbock, in a work with which all my readers are doubtless acquainted, states that the moral sense is wanting in the savage. In support of this opinion he quotes some vague and general assertions bearing more particularly upon the Australians, Tahitians, Ked-Skins, etc. The assertions of the eminent naturalist have been so often repeated that it will only be necessary for me to examine them in a few words.

In the first place, I might produce numerous quotations of the same nature in opposition to these assertions. I shall only recall the words of Wallace, speaking of the tribes in the midst of which he had lived. " Every individual," he says, "scrupulously respects the rights of bis neighbour, and these rights are but rarely infringed." Is it possible to admit that this respect does not rest upon something analogous to that which we call morality. I shall, moreover, presently shew that this is really the case.

Again, Lubbock seems to have contradicted himself when pointing out in his book the small amount of real liberty enjoyed by savages. He represents them, correctly, as being the slaves of a multitude of customs, having the importance of laws, which rule all their actions. Now, amongst these customs, there are a great number which are at variance with the most natural passions, such as the instinct of reproduction, the choice of nourishment, etc. .An infringement of these laws is followed by a punishment often terrible. Is it not evident that the greater number of them can only be based uppn the more or less distinct idea of good and evil ?

But the idea in question resembles mathematical formula. The result of the solution of a general equation varies with the data; and according to the latter may sometimes be represented by the sign plus, sometimes by the sign minus. So morality varies in its manifestations by virtue of innumerable circumstances which, again, originate in numerous causes. The same acts arc often regarded as good, bad, or indifferent, according to the special organisation, the religion, or the traditions of the society in which they have occurred.

These acts do not, on this account, cease to belong to a faculty essentially human ; and, whether of themselves, or from the idea with which they are connected in the different human groups, they furnish the naturalist with characters as true as those belonging to the intelligence.

This is still more certainly the case when institutions are