GENESIS OF MAN, MORALLY 



tribe are at stake: instances are not rare in which 

 they will deliberately choose to be shot rather 

 than betray the plans of their fellow tribesmen. 

 It is to such cases as these that we must attrib- 

 ute the discrepancies in the accounts of savage 

 moraHty given by different travellers.^ If we do 

 not stop to analyze the matter, such instances 

 may seem to prove that the savage is morally 

 on a level with us. But the analysis of countless 

 seemingly inconsistent observations shows that 

 savage virtues are, in general, confined to the 

 clan. The same savage who will suffer torture 

 with equanimity, rather than betray his com- 

 rades, is also capable of the most fiendish cruelty 

 and treachery toward the members of another 

 clan. For the very forces which, during long 

 ages, have brought him to the point at which 

 he can sacrifice his own pleasure to the good of 

 the tribe, have also been impressing upon him 

 the meritoriousness of letting loose all his brutal 

 instincts beyond the tribal limits. The savage 

 has no sense of the wickedness of killing, steal- 

 ing, and lying, in the abstract, or of the horrible 

 cruelty of tying his enemy to a tree and slowly 

 burning him to death with firebrands. To the 



^ Between different savage races, moreover, there are un- 

 doubtedly great differences in emotional characteristics. While 

 some, as the Fijis, are exceptionally ferocious, others, as the 

 Hawaiians and Eskimos, appear to be comparatively gende 

 and sympathetic. 



143 



