597 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



Sagacity 

 Savagery 



effected with great difficulty. LYELL Prin- 

 ciples of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 21, p. 338. (A., 

 1854.) 



2952. SAVAGE COMPARED WITH 

 BRUTE Reasoning Power Divides Man from 

 Lower Animals. A creature which has few 

 instinctive impulses, or interests, practical 

 or esthetic, will dissociate few characters, 

 and will, at best, have limited reasoning 

 powers ; whilst one whose interests are very 

 varied will reason much better. Man, by 

 his immensely varied instincts, practical 

 wants, and esthetic feelings, to which every 

 sense contributes, would, by dint of these 

 alone, be sure to dissociate vastly more 

 characters than any other animal; and ac- 

 cordingly we find that the lowest savages 

 reason incomparably better than the high- 

 est brutes. JAMES Psychology, vol. ii, ch. 

 22, p. 345. (H. H. & Co., 1899.) 



2953. SAVAGE, HOW NATURE 

 MOVES THE The Struggle for Life Develops 

 New and Higher Powers. Start with a 

 comparatively unevolved savage, and see 

 what the struggle for life will do for him. 

 When we meet him first he is sitting, we 

 shall suppose, in the sun. Let us also sup- 

 pose and it requires no imagination to 

 suppose it that he has no wish to do any- 

 thing else than sit in the sun, and that he 

 is perfectly contented, and perfectly happy. 

 Nature around him, visible and invisible, is 

 as still as he is, as inert apparently, as un- 

 concerned. Neither molests the other; they 

 have no connection with each other. Yet it 

 is not so. That savage is the victim of a 

 conspiracy. Nature has designs upon him, 

 wants to do something to him. That some- 

 thing is to move him. Why does it wish to 

 move him? Because movement is work, 

 and work is exercise, and exercise may 

 mean a further evolution of the part of him 

 that is exercised. How does it set about 

 moving him? By moving itself. Every- 

 thing else being in motion, it is impossible 

 for him to resist. The sun moves away to 

 the west and he must move or freeze with 

 cold. As the sun continues to move, twi- 

 light falls and wild animals move from 

 their lairs, and he must move or be eaten. 

 The food he ate in the morning has dis- 

 solved and moved away to nourish the cells 

 of his body, and more food must soon be 

 moved to take its place or he must starve. 

 So he starts up, he works, he seeks food, 

 shelter, safety; and those movements make 

 marks in his body, brace muscles, stimulate 

 nerves, quicken intelligence, create habits, 

 and he becomes more able and more willing 

 to repeat these movements and so becomes 

 a stronger and a higher man. DRTJMMOND 

 Ascent of Man, ch. 6, p. 191. (J. P., 1900.) 



2954. SAVAGE SURPASSES BRUTE 



Capacity for Language, Learning, Prog- 

 ress. In the comparison of man with other 

 animals the standard should naturally be 

 the lowest man, or savage. But the savage 



is possessed of human reason and speech, 

 while his brain-power, tho it has not of 

 itself raised him to civilization, enables him 

 to receive more or less of the education 

 which transforms him into a civilized man. 

 To show how man may have advanced from 

 savagery to civilization is a reasonable 

 task. . . . But there is no such evidence 

 available for crossing the mental gulf that 

 divides the lowest savage from the highest 

 ape. On the whole, the safest conclusion 

 warranted by facts is that the mental ma- 

 chinery of the lower animals is roughly 

 similar to our own, up to a limit. Be- 

 yond this limit the human mind opens out 

 into wide ranges of thought and feeling 

 which the beast-mind shows no sign of ap- 

 proaching. If we consider man's course of 

 life from birth to death, we see that it is, 

 so to speak, founded on functions which 

 he has in common with lower beings. Man, 

 endowed with instinct and capable of learn- 

 ing by experience, drawn by pleasure and 

 driven by pain, must, like a beast, maintain 

 his life by food and sleep, must save him- 

 self by flight, or fight it out with his foes, 

 must propagate his species and care for the 

 next generation. Upon this lower frame- 

 work of animal life is raised the wondrous 

 edifice of human language, science, art, and 

 law. TYLOR Anthropology, ch. 2, p. 54. 

 (A., 1899.) 



2955. SAVAGERY AS MODERN AS 

 CIVILIZATION The Same Distance from 

 Primeval Life. It is to be remembered that 

 the savage of the present day is as far re- 

 moved in time from the common origin of 

 our race as the man who now exhibits the 

 highest type of moral and intellectual cul- 

 ture. Whether that time is represented by 

 six thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred 

 thousand years, it is the same for both. If, 

 therefore, the number of years since the 

 origin of man be taken as a multiplier in 

 the processes of elevation, it must be taken 

 equally as a multiplier in the processes of 

 degradation. Not even on the theory which 

 some hold, that the human species has 

 spread from more than one center of birth 

 or of creation, can this conclusion be af- 

 fected. For even on this hypothesis of sepa- 

 rate origins there is no reason whatever to 

 suppose that the races which are now gen- 

 erally civilized are of more recent origin 

 than those which are generally savage. 

 Presumably, therefore, all the ages which 

 have been at work in the development of 

 civilization have been at work equally in 

 the development of savagery. It is not pos- 

 sible in the case of savagery, any more than 

 in the case of civilization, that all those 

 ages have been without effect. Nor is it 

 possible that the changes they have wrought 

 have been all in one direction. The conclu- 

 sion is, that neither savagery nor civiliza- 

 tion, as we now see them, can represent the 

 primeval condition of man. Both of them 



