Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



afflicted are killed or confined by their fellows, for the 

 greatest care and attention are invariably paid to the sick, 

 aged and helpless." 



Mr. Man also remarks (Journ. Anthrop. Inst. XII, 92): 

 " It has been observed with regret by all interested in the 

 race, that intercourse with the alien population has, generally 

 speaking, prejudicially affected their morals ; and that the 

 candour, veracity, and self-reliance they manifest in their 

 savage and untutored state are, when they become asso- 

 ciated with foreigners, to a great extent lost, and habits 

 of untruthfulness, dependence and sloth engendered." 



The Bushmen 



Extract from F. C. Selous' African Nature-Notes, pp. 344 

 and 347. (1908.) 



" When I met with the first Bushmen I ever saw, on 

 the banks of the Orange River in 1872, I was a very young 

 man, and, regarding them with some repugnance, wrote 

 in my diary that they appeared to be removed by a very 

 few steps from the brute creation. That was a very foolish 

 and ignorant remark to make, and I have since found out 

 that though Bushmen may possibly be to-day in the same 

 backward state of material development and knowledge as 

 once were the palaeolithic ancestors of the most highly 

 cultured European races in prehistoric times, yet funda- 

 mentally there is very little difference between the natures 

 of primitive and civilised men, so that it is quite possible 

 for a member of one of the more cultured races to live 

 for a time quite happily and contentedly amongst beings 

 who are often described as degraded savages, and from whom 

 he is separated by thousands of years in all that is implied 

 by the word * civilisation.' I have hunted a great deal 

 with Bushmen, and during 1884 I lived amongst these 



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