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the dawn of civilisation. " Primitive man, ignorant and 

 idealess, the slave of his appetites and instincts, which were 

 simply the forces of nature freely acting in him, rose but 

 very gradually to the conception of the ideal. Art, poetry, 

 science, morality, all those highest manifestations of the 

 human soul, are like some frail and precious plant which has 

 come late into being, and been enriched by the long toil of 

 generations." 1 Carlyle has said that civilisation is only a 

 covering underneath which the savage nature of man con- 

 tinually burns with an infernal fire ; and that the philosopher 

 was right is easily proved by the facility with which, on 

 provocation, even the most civilised and highly educated 

 manifest a reversion to the primitive instincts of the race, 

 which in a moment may burst all the bonds which civilisa- 

 tion has imposed upon them when the brute nature appears 

 with all its unbridled appetites and savage passions, and 

 reasserts itself in its primitive barbarism. For, as Ribot has 

 well said, there exist in the bottom of the soul, buried in 

 the depths of our being, savage instincts, nomadic tastes, 

 unconquered and sanguinary appetites, which slumber but 

 die not. They resemble those rudimentary organs which 

 have outlived their functions, but which still remain as 

 witnesses to the slow, progressive evolution of the forms of 

 life. And these savage instincts, developed in man during 

 the past, whilst he lived free amid the forests and streams, 

 are from time to time recalled by heredity, as though to let 

 us measure with the eye the length of road over which we 

 have travelled. The basis of morals is responsibility ; but 

 heredity influences alike tendencies which are resistible and 

 those which are irresistible, and here we are once again met 

 with the unceasing conflict between free-will and fate, and I 

 will only add that in this warfare, fatalism is more often 

 1 Ribot. 



