Evidence of Actual Social Processes 167 



the lowest societies in existing savages, renders a 

 verdict against the primitive hostility romance. 

 Thus, M. Lagorgette says: 



The experience of a great number of travellers shows 

 that almost all the non-civilized races exhibit a very 

 kindly attitude on the first visit, and that the later 

 hostile dispositions are reprisals for the evils which 

 they have suffered from the civilized races. ^ 



Even Ratzenhofer confirms this evidence.^ He 

 emphasizes the fact that the first Europeans land- 

 ing in America in the fifteenth century were 

 received in a most friendly fashion by the abo- 

 rigines. But if there is no combat, no struggle of 

 extermination, on first contact between races so dif- 

 ferent as the Spanish and the Redskins of America, 

 still less ought there to have been any between 

 primitive tribes who resembled each other so much 

 more closely. To affirm that peaceful contacts 

 are possible now, but that they were not possible 

 two hundred thousand years ago, is to run counter 

 to the evidence of actual social processes. We 

 have seen that geology became a positive sci- 

 ence, solely when it adopted the theory of actual 

 causes. Surely it is high time for sociology to 

 abandon the categorical affirmations of the 

 anthropological romances and begin to assume the 

 character of a serious science, dealing not with 



^ Le role de la guerre, p. 210. 



' See his Sociologische Erkentniss, p. 134. 



