THE DECLINE OF MEN AND RACES 249 



all their traditions, would have wholly disap- 

 peared, and it is no exaggeration to say that in 

 place of London, Paris, New York or Berlin, 

 there might now be but roving hordes of savages. 

 This is a strong saying, but the more deeply we 

 study history, the more the possibility of such a 

 continuous decline that existed then, must be 

 borne in upon our minds. There are certain sec- 

 tions of our glorious modern centers of supposed 

 culture which morally and religiously are even 

 now not far removed from the stage of savagery, 

 and which doubtless have sunk far below the 

 morality of many of the tribes now known to 

 anthropology as "primitives." 



It is always easy to lapse into savagery even in 

 the midst of our material culture, as divorce, and 

 birth control, and ugly slums, and the World War, 

 and the modern paganism, and the cult of naked- 

 ness, and Bolshevism and profiteering in the social 

 world make sufficiently clear. It is not the 

 feather stuck in the hair that constitutes the 

 savage. Last and yet not least, we may mention 

 "the strange dismaying things cast up by the tide 

 of war," as Windle strongly says, "those traces 

 of primitive fatalism, primitive magic and equivo- 

 cal divination which are within general knowl- 

 edge." It is here again that material civiliza- 

 tion and decadent barbarism have fallen to a com- 

 mon level. Thus our parlor Spiritism finds its 

 perfect parallel among the savage tribes of today. 



