336 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



keen eyes, as if fearing that some one should take it away again: all this was 

 done with such looks and gestures, that any one must have been ready to swear 

 he had taken the example of them entirely from an ape." 



Indirect evidence that early human nature differed from later hu- 

 man nature, by having this extreme emotional variability, is yielded 

 us by the contrast between the child and the adult among ourselves. 

 For, on the hypothesis of evolution, the civilized man, passing through 

 phases representing phases passed through by the race, will, early in 

 life, betray this impulsiveness which the early race had. The saying 

 that the savage has the mind of a child with the passions of a man 

 or, as it would be more correctly put, has adult passions which act in 

 a childish manner thus possesses a deeper meaning than appears. 

 There is a genetic relationship between the two natures, such that, al- 

 lowing for differences of kind and degree in the emotions, we may re- 

 gard the coordination of them in the child as fairly representing the 

 coordination in the primitive man. 



The more special emotional traits are in large part dependent on, 

 and further illustrative of, this fundamental trait. This relative im- 

 pulsiveness this smaller departure from primitive reflex action, this 

 lack of the re-representative emotions which hold the simpler ones in 

 check is accompanied by improvidence. 



The Australians are described as " incapable of any thing like per- 

 severing labor the reward of which is in futurity." According to 

 Kolben, the Hottentots are " the laziest people under the sun ; " and 

 we are told that with the Bushmen it is " always either a feast or a 

 famine." Passing to the indigenes of India, it is said of the Todas 

 that they are " indolent and slothful ; " of the Bhils, that they have 

 " a contempt and dislike to labor" will half-starve rather than work; 

 while of the Santals we read that they have not " the unconquerable 

 laziness of the very old Hill-tribes." So, from Northern Asia, the 

 Kirghiz may be taken as exemplifying idleness ; and in America 

 we have the fact that none of the aboriginal peoples, if uncoerced, 

 show capacity for industry. In the North, cut off from his hunting- 

 life, the Indian, capable of no other, decays and disappears ; and in 

 the South the tribes disciplined by the Jesuits lapsed into their origi- 

 nal state, or a worse, when the stimuli and restraints ceased. All 

 which facts are in part ascribable to inadequate consciousness of the 

 future feeble grasp of distant results. Where, as among the Sand- 

 wich-Islanders, and in some of the Malay societies, we find considera- 

 ble industry, it goes along with such a social state as implies discipline 

 throughout a long past conditions have caused considerable diver- 

 gence from the primitive nature. It is true that perseverance with a 

 view to remote benefit occurs among savages. They bestow much 

 time and pains on their weapons : six months to make as many arrows, 

 immense patience in drilling holes through stones. But in these cases, 

 beyond the fact that the benefits are simple, proximate, and conspicu- 



