532 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



n. 



We have now reached a position where we may compare 

 with more interest than before the mental activities of the savage 

 with those of the routine laborer in civilized life, and thus show 

 inductively that the conclusions adopted are sustained by an 

 applied and practical test. 



We are all equally well qualified probably to form an estimate 

 of the degree of emotional intensity and mental strain exercised 

 in making again and again for a lifetime the same one single 

 thing for instance, a pair of shoes or trousers or a coat ; in doing 

 mason, painting, or plumbing work; in constructing furniture, 

 shoeing horses, or setting type ; in putting bobbins into and taking 

 them from a machine in a factory, or in running the machine 

 itself by switching on and off the belt ; or in running the engine 

 which propels the machine, or even in running a lathe which 

 carves out over and over again the same part of some machine or 

 implement ; or in planting, harvesting, mowing, or chopping, or 

 any other kind of routine work which is learned by imitation and 

 thereafter performed automatically. Of course, the case was dif- 

 ferent when the same man, as formerly, had to perform nearly all 

 the above kinds of labor for himself. 



It is safe to say, however, since the recent extreme division of 

 labor, that a month of any one kind of such work would not 

 give rise to as many exciting incidents or unexpected exigencies 

 stirring the emotions and requiring sagacity, mental alertness, 

 quick perceptions, rapid decisions, and skillful execution, as would 

 be encountered in a successful attempt to catch a squirrel, kill a 

 deer, or fight a wild cat with savage appliances. 



Flippant and superficial as such a comparison may seem, at 

 first blush, in a serious paper, it is, however, quite necessary to 

 illuminate, as no other method of presentation would do, the 

 almost immeasurable difference between all the vocations of the 

 savage and those of the routine laborer in our civilized life. To 

 get a living, the hunting savage of the stone age is obliged to go 

 through these wildly exciting experiences and vicissitudes, no 

 two of which are exactly alike, nearly every day of his life, and 

 frequently several times a day. It is, moreover, the exciting 

 nature of primitive pursuits which makes this everyday labor of 

 the savage a lively and interesting recreation for the most cul- 

 tured and intellectually advanced classes among the civilized. 



Now this wide and extreme dissimilarity arising from the very 

 nature of savage pursuits, when compared with those of the 

 routine laborer, uncovers to our view a far-reaching cause in de- 

 velopment of which careful note should be taken. 



The savage, as we might even now imagine, and a little later 



