10 NATURAL HISTORY. 



All nations which have preserved traditions of past events 

 agree in many points in a very remarkable manner. All have 

 some traditions of a creation, not always of a world, but of 

 that particular part in which they reside. The Fiji islanders 

 believe that one of their gods fished up Fiji from the bottom 

 of the sea, by entangling his fish-hook in a rock, and that the 

 island would have been higher had not the line broken. The 

 fish-hook is still preserved as a proof, but they do not state 

 where the god stood while fishing. A traveller asked one of 

 the priests why the hook, an ordinary tortoishell one, did not 

 break ? " Oh ! it was a god's hook and could not break." 

 But why then did the line break ? Whereupon the man, 

 according to the prevailing system of argument in those 

 countries, and perhaps in a few others, threatened to knock 

 him down if he abused the gods any more. Most nations 

 have dim notions of a deluge which overwhelmed the whole 

 world, and from which only a few individuals escaped, by 

 whom the earth was repeopled. Nearly all believe in a 

 good and an evil power continually at warfare, and that the 

 good will finally subclue the evil. Many savage nations, in 

 consequence, seek to propitiate the evil power with prayers and 

 offerings, feeling sure that the good one will not injure them. 



All nations (except one or two, such as the abject Bosjes- 

 man, who can form no idea of what he cannot see, and whose 

 answer when told of a God, is " Let me see him") believe in 

 a future state. Their belief is invariably modified according 

 to their habits. Some of the debased dark races believe that 

 after death they become white men and have plenty of 

 money ; the Mahometan considers his paradise as an abode 

 of everlasting sensual indulgence ; the savage believes that 

 when he leaves this world he will pass to boundless hunting- 

 fields, where shall be no want of game, and where his arrows 

 shall never miss their aim ; the Christian knows his heaven 

 to be a place of unspeakable and everlasting happiness, where 

 the power of sin shall have ceased for ever. 



The mind of man is much influenced by outward objects 

 and the society by which it is surrounded. If a man be con- 

 fined to one spot, or within certain bounds, his mind becomes 

 feeble in proportion to the isolation. The rustic, whose ideas 

 never wander from the farm on which he works, and whose 



