SCIENCE AS A RULE OF LIFE 21 



interesting account of the peoples whom he met 

 with during his wanderings in the regions in- 

 dicated by the title of his book. And he tells us 

 that " the survival of the most fit is the very real 

 and the very stern rule of life in the Amazonian 

 forests. From birth to death it rules the Indians' 

 life and philosophy. To help to preserve the 

 unfit would often be to prejudice the chances of 

 the fit. There are no arm-chair sentimentalists 

 to oppose this very practical consideration. The 

 Indian judges it by his standard of common 

 sense : why live a life that has ceased to be worth 

 living when there is no bugbear of a hell to make 

 one cling to the most miserable of existences 

 rather than risk greater misery ? " Let us now 

 see the kind of life which the author, freed him- 

 self no doubt from " the bugbear of hell," con- 

 siders eminently sensible the kind of life of 

 which only an " arm-chair sentimentalist " would 

 disapprove ; a kind of life, it may be added, which 

 will appear to most ordinarily minded people as 

 being one of selfishness raised to its highest 

 power. 



To begin with the earliest event in life. If a 

 child, on its appearance in the world, appears to 

 be in any way defective, its mother quietly kills 

 it and deposits its body in the forest. If the 

 mother dies in childbirth the child, unless some- 

 one takes pity on it and adopts it, is killed by the 

 father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed 

 to take the trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of 

 doing so, of rearing the motherless babe. That 

 the child, in any case, immediately after birth, is 



