174 SAVAGE SURVIVALS 



7. Some Newer Instincts. 



Human nature is a growth — an accumulation. 

 The elements which compose it have been added 

 one after another. Some of these elements are 

 very old and fundamental, while others are more 

 recent. As has been already shown, many of the 

 instincts which we find in ourselves are pre-human 

 in origin, and existed in the world millions and 

 millions of years ago, before there were any hu- 

 man beings in it. We human beings obtained 

 these instincts by inheritance from our animal an- 

 cestors, just as we obtained our backbone and 

 other features of our body. We human beings did 

 not invent the backbone. We inherited it from 

 the lower mammals, who inherited it from the rep- 

 tiles, who inherited it from the frogs, who inher- 

 ited it from the fishes, who originated it. In the 

 same way the instincts to kill and fight and play 

 and be afraid and to love young were developed 

 in our pre-human ancestors millions of years be- 

 fore human beings were ever dreamed of. 



Many savage tribes have no words for sym- 

 pathy, justice, chastity, temperance, humanity, 

 modesty, gratitude, forgiveness, or remorse, show- 

 ing that they have no ideas, or, at least, no well- 

 defined ideas, of these virtues. The earliest men, 

 of course, must have been much like the non- 

 human animals from whom they developed, acting 

 more or less blindly, and without the understand- 

 ing, forethought, and trust which we think of as 

 characterizing the conduct of humans. 



