resemblances, almost identities, if they are in the least degree obscured by the slightest difference of forms or words. It was a long time before the resemblance was observed between the organisation of the Maories and that of the ancient Scotch. And yet if we deduct anthropophagy from the one people and from the other all that it has borrowed from the neighbouring nations, we shall be forced to admit that at the period when Cook visited the New Zealanders, the latter offered strange points of resemblance to the Highlanders of Rob Roy and Mac Ivor. As to the Children of the Mist, akin to the other Scotch clans, were they much above the Australian tribes ?

We must conclude, therefore, that civilization, with improvements and learning of every kind, is an exceptional fact, even in the midst of a most privileged people, and that upon their own territory they have had, and still have, their savage representatives. We must add that this fact is exhibited in different degrees among yellow and black tribes. Lastly, in reflecting upon our past history, we must avoid denying to other races aptitudes, which remained latent for centuries in our ancestors before they were developed, and which are still in the same condition in too many of our fellow-countrymen, and of our contemporaries.

XIV. In his remarkable work upon Origins of Civilization, Sir John Lubbock admits that the "primitive condition of man was a state of absolute barbarism." But he does not say what he means by this expression. Have there indeed ever been men living for centuries in the state depicted in Chinese traditions, men acknowledging no law, destitute of industry, ignorant of the use of fire, abandoning their dead without sepulture, living in trees. . . .? There is every reason to doubt it, for all established facts protest against this conclusion.

Whenever it has been possible to attain even a slight knowledge of the life of savage tribes, they have been found subject to laws, which, although not written, are still rigorously observed. This fact is proclaimed by Lubbock himself.

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.

He has

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 homes in trees after the manner of monkeys. Earle has reduced these exaggerations to their true value. 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 aërial 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 monkeys 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 Péron. 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 biatory 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 are, 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 defined 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, Red-Skins, etc. The assertions of the eminent naturalist have been so often