324 ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES. 



They originate no art, no industry. They have added nothing to the 

 hereditary patrimony of the human species. What has their heroism 

 profited the Indians of North America ? Having organized nothing, 

 having accomplished nothing permanent, these races, despite their 

 singular energy, have disappeared from the earth before inferior men, 

 the last emigrants of Europe. 



Do not believe the axiom that huntsmen gradually develop into 

 agriculturists. It is not so they kill or die ; such is their whole 

 destiny. We see it clearly through experience. He who has killed, 

 will kill ; he who has created, will create. 



In the want of emotion which every man suffers from his birth, 

 the child who satisfies it habitually by murder, by a miniature 

 ferocious drama of surprise and treason, of the torture of the weak, 

 will find no great enjoyment in the gentle and tranquil emotions 

 arising from the progressive success of toil and study, from the limited 

 industry which does everything itself. To create, to destroy these 

 are the two raptures of infancy : to create is a long, slow process ; to 

 destroy is quick and easy. The least act of creation implies those best 

 gifts of the Creator and of kindly Nature : gentleness and patience. 



It is a shocking and hideous thing to see a child partial to 

 "sport ;" to see woman enjoying and admiring murder, and encourag- 

 ing her child. That delicate and sensitive woman would not give 

 him a knife, but she gives him a gun : kill at a distance be it so ! 

 for we do not see the suffering. And this mother will think it 

 admirable that her son, kept confined to his room, shall drive off ennui 

 by plucking the wings from flies, by torturing a bird or a little dog. 



Far-seeing mother ! She will know when too late the evil of 

 having formed a hard heart. Aged and weak, rejected of the world, 

 she will experience in her turn her son's brutality. 



****** 



But rifle practice ? They will object to you. Must not the child 

 grow skilful in killing, that, from murder to murder, he may at last 

 arrive at the surpassing feat of killing the flying swallow ? The only 

 country in Europe where everybody knows how to handle a musket is 



