THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



unequal value. Not only may larger animals and plants 

 retain domination for a long time in virtue of their 

 special use or superior force and mass, but small ones 

 may prevail owing to their power of inflicting injury 

 (bacteria, fungi, parasites, etc.). In the same way the 

 value of the various races and nations is very unequal 

 in human history. A small country like Greece has 

 almost dominated the mental life of Europe for more 

 than two thousand years in virtue of its superior culture. 

 On the other hand, the various tribes of American Indians 

 have, it is true, developed a partial civilization in some 

 parts (Peru and Central America) ; but, on the whole, 

 they have proved incapable of advancing. 



Though the great differences in the mental life and 

 the civilization of the higher and lower races are gener- 

 ally known, they are, as a rule, undervalued, and so 

 the value of life at the different levels is falsely estimated. 

 It is civilization and the fuller development of the mind 

 that makes civilization possible, that raise man so much 

 above the other animals, even his nearest animal rel- 

 atives, the mammals. But this is, as a rule, peculiar 

 to the higher races, and is found only in a very imperfect 

 form or not at all among the lower. These lower races 

 (such as the Veddahs or Australian negroes) are psycho- 

 logically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to 

 civilized Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally 

 different value to their lives. The views on the subject 

 of European nations which have large colonies in the 

 tropics, and have been in touch with the natives for 

 centuries, are very realistic, and quite different from the 

 ideas that prevail in Germany. Our idealistic notions, 

 strictly regulated by our academic wisdom and forced by 

 our metaphysicians into the system of their abstract 

 ideal-man, do not at all tally with the facts. Hence we 

 can explain many of the errors of the idealistic philos- 

 ophy and many of the practical mistakes that have 



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