48 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Among all races religion is the most potent power to maintain 

 tradition, and for the savage religion enters into every act and thought. 

 To him as to the ancient Greeks everything is a personification of some 

 spirit — everything is somebody. The waterfall is such, for can you 

 not hear the laughter of the nymph, the clouds are spirits for they 

 come and go as only gods may do, and every beast and bird and plant 

 and stone is but the embodiment of a ghost or tribal hero. 



Yet it is probable that no savage has ever been more under the do- 

 minion of a world of omens and portents than was Louis XI, and even 

 to-day the breaking of a mirror, or the number thirteen, or a stumble 

 while crossing a threshold, remains of significance to many of us. All 

 matters of sentiment and credulity are closely wrapped up in this en- 

 tanglement of superstition ; it is hard to divorce ourselves from the idea 

 that moving machines have life and disposition. We must perforce 

 associate sublimity and grandeur with the inert rock-mass of the Alps, 

 and the great trees under which we played as children are sentient 

 beings to our imagination, and our hearts ache as for the loss of life-long 

 friends when we find them fallen to the woodman's axe. A cold heart- 

 less world it indeed would be were we not illogical and therefore 

 " savage " in our sentiments and loves. 



Upon analysis we find that lack of sympathy for the savage and ig- 

 norance of his tradition blinds our judgment and causes us to regard 

 as ridiculous in him things which we consider to be quite natural in 

 ourselves. The cleverness of the Yankee who sold wooden nutmegs is 

 quite amusing, but the Japanese who counterfeits an American trade- 

 mark is criminal. 



There is within us Europeans an inbred contempt for all that is 

 alien, and this trait, being the dominant characteristic of Christian 

 peoples, has enabled us through aggressive intolerance to impress our 

 customs upon all other races without ourselves being influenced by the 

 cultures we have overawed into a semblance of our own. 



In strange and possibly ominous contrast with ourselves, the Jap- 

 anese have for ages been keen to discover the good things of alien cul- 

 tures and quick to accept them as their own, while we must remain all 

 but unmoved by the example of their ennobling patriotism and mastery 

 of self, the happy simplicity of their family life, their respect for 

 worthy ancestors, their modesty, and their inbred grace of deportment ; 

 and as for their exquisite art we chiefly relegate it to our museums, 

 and their fine chivalric code, the bushido, remains all but untranslated 

 into our language, much less has it entered into our thought. 



The savage may know nothing of our classics, and little of that which 

 we call science, yet go with him into the deep woods and his knowledge 

 of the uses of every plant and tree and rock around him and his ac- 

 quaintance with the habits of the animals are a subject for constant won- 



