338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and he has increased losses from enemies and wild animals ; so that 

 the benefits of accumulation are kept within narrow limits. Only as 

 the agricultural state is reached, and only as the tenure of land passes 

 from the tribal form, through the family form, to the individual form, 

 is there a widening of the sphere for the proprietary sentiment. 



So that the primitive man, distinguished by his improvidence, dis- 

 tinguished also by deficiency of that desire to own which checks im- 

 providence, is, by his circumstances, debarred from the experiences 

 which develop this desire and diminish the improvidence. 



Let us turn now to those emotional traits which directly affect the 

 formation of social groups. Varieties of mankind, as we now find 

 them, are social in different degrees ; and, further, they are distin- 

 guished by different degrees of independence are here tolerant of 

 restraint and here intolerant of it. Clearly, the proportions between 

 these two characteristics must greatly affect the social union. 



Describing the Mantras, indigenes of the Malay Peninsula, Pere 

 Bourien says : " Liberty seems to be to them a necessity of their very 

 existence ; " " every individual lives as if there were no other person 

 in the world but himself; " they separate if they dispute; So, too, of 

 the wild men in the interior of Borneo, " who do not associate with 

 each other ; " and whose children, when " old enough to shift for them- 

 selves, usually separate, neither one afterward thinking of the other." 

 A nature of this kind manifestly precludes social development ; and 

 it shows its effects in the solitary families of the wood-Veddahs, or 

 those of the Bushmen, whom Arbrousset describes as " independent 

 and poor beyond measure, as if they had sworn to remain always free 

 and without possessions." Of sundry races that remain in a low state, 

 this trait is remarked ; as in South America, among the Araucanians, 

 " the Mapuche is impatient of contradiction, and brooks no command ; " 

 as, according to Bates, among the Indians of Brazil, who, tractable 

 when quite young, begin to display " impatience of all restraint at 

 puberty ; " as among the Caribs, who were " impatient under the least 

 infringement" of their independence. Sundry of the Hill-tribes of 

 India, too, exhibit a kindred nature. The savage Bhils have " a nat- 

 ural spirit of independence ; " the Bodo and Dhimal " resist injunctions 

 injudiciously urged, with dogged obstinacy ; " and the Lepchas " un- 

 dergo great privations rather than submit to oppression." This im- 

 pediment to social evolution we meet with again among some nomadic 

 races. " A Bedouin," says Burckhardt, " will not submit to any com- 

 mand, but readily yields to persuasion ; " and he is said by Palgrave 

 to have " a high appreciation of national and personal liberty," and " a 

 remarkable freedom from any thing like caste feeling in what concerns 

 ruling families and dynasties." That this moral trait is injurious 

 during eai'ly stages of social progress, is in some cases observed by 

 travelers, as by Earl, who says of the New Guinea people that their 

 "impatience of control " precludes organization. Not, indeed, that 



