EMOTIONS IN THE PRIMITIVE MAN. 333 



Here, then, are our guides in studying the primitive man as an 

 emotional being. Considering him as less evolved, we must expect to 

 find him comparatively wanting in those most complex emotions that 

 respond to multitudinous and remote probabilities and contingencies. 

 His consciousness may be regarded as unlike that of the civilized man, 

 by consisting in a greater degree of sensations and the simple repre- 

 sented feelings directly associated with them, and by containing fewer 

 and weaker feelings involving representations of consequences beyond 

 the proximate. And the relatively-simple emotional consciousness 

 thus characterized we may expect to be consequently characterized 

 by less of that coherence and continuity which results when the 

 promptings of direct desires are checked by sentiments responding to 

 ultimate effects, and by more of that irregularity which results when 

 each desire as it arises discharges itself in action before counter-de- 

 sires have been awakened. 



On turning from these deductions to examine the facts. with a view 

 to induction, we meet difficulties like those which we met in the last 

 chapter. As in size and structure the inferior races differ from one 

 another enough to produce some indefiniteness in our conception of 

 the primitive man physical ; so in their passions and sentiments the 

 inferior races present contrasts sufficiently mai'ked to obscure the 

 essential traits of the primitive man emotional. 



This last difficulty, like the first, is indeed one that might have 

 been anticipated. The spreading of the race during all past epochs 

 into the multitudinous widely-contrasted habitats entailing widely- 

 unlike modes of life has necessarily been accompanied by emotional 

 specialization as well as by physical specialization. And beyond dif- 

 ferentiations of character directly due to differences of natural cir- 

 cumstances and resulting habits, the inferior varieties of men have 

 been made to differ by the degrees and durations of social discipline 

 they have been subject to. Referring to such unlikenesses, Mr. Wal- 

 lace remarks that " there is, in fact, almost as much difference between 

 the various races of savage as of civilized peoples." 



To conceive the primitive man, therefore, as he existed when social 

 aggregation commenced, we must generalize as well as we can this 

 entangled and partially-conflicting evidence : led mainly by the traits 

 common to the very lowest, and finding what guidance we may in the 

 a priori conclusions set down above. 



The fundamental trait of impulsiveness, though one to be looked 

 for as universal among inferior races, is not everywhere conspicu- 

 ous. Taken in the mass, the aborigines of the New World seem im- 

 passive in comparison with those of the Old World : some of them, 

 indeed, exceeding the civilized people of Europe in ability to control 

 their emotions. Through stories most peoples have been made familiar 

 with this trait of the North- American Indians ; and the statements of 



