1 88 Prehistoric and Savage Man 



is the amount of punishment Umited, that if in inflicting 

 such s]3ear- wounds, a man, either through carelessness or from 

 any other cause, exceeded the recognised limits — if, for 

 instance, he wounded the femoral artery — he would in his 

 turn become liable to punishment. 



'A yet stronger example of savage moral perception is 

 also furnished us by the Greenlanders. Should a seal escape 

 in Greenland Avith a hunter's javelin in it, and be killed by 

 another Greenlander afterwards, it belongs to the former. 

 But if after the seal is struck with a harpoon and bladder 

 the string breaks, the hunter loses his right. If a man finds 

 a seal dead, with a harpoon in it, he keeps the seal but 

 returns the harpoon. Any man who finds a piece of drift- 

 wood can appropriate it by placing a stone on it, as a sign 

 that some one has taken possession of it. No other Green- 

 lander will then touch it.' 



The inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are, if possible, more 

 wretched savages than the Australians, yet it is very interest- 

 ing to note that even Avith respect to these no less a witness 

 than Mr. Darwin himself informs us that when a certain Mr. 

 Bynoe shot some very young ducklings as specimens, a 

 Fuegian declared in the most solemn manner, ' Mr. 

 Bynoe ! much rain, snow, blow much ! ' And as to this 

 declaration, Mr. Darwin tells us . that the anticipated bad 

 weather ' was evidently a retributive punishment for wasting 

 human food,' i.e. for a transgression of the imperfect moral 

 code recognised by the Fuegian in question. 



That the language of savage tribes is capable of ex- 

 pressing moral conceptions will probably be contested by 

 no one. Even Mr. Tylor observes: 'Glancing down the 

 moral scale amongst mankind at large, Ave find no tribe 

 standing at or near zero. The asserted existence of savages 

 so loAV as to have no moral standard is too groundless to he 

 discussed.' 



