THE ORIGIN OF PROVINCIALISM 283 



thing its fundamental characters. However far 

 anything may evolve, and however much it may 

 come to differ superficially from its original, it 

 will always remain at heart more or less faithful 

 to the facts of its genesis. This hereditary 

 tendency of everything, this tendency toward 

 invariability, is the conservative, or inertial ten- 

 dency of the universe. All races, colours, and 

 conditions of men — civilised, slightly civilised, 

 and barbarous — extend back to, and take root in, 

 savages, just as all savages have probably sprung 

 in some still more remote period of the past from 

 a single stirp of anthropoids. The savage is, 

 therefore, the author of human nature and 

 philosophy. Just as the fish, which is the com- 

 mon ancestor of all amphibians, reptiles, birds, 

 and mammals, has predetermined the general 

 structural style of all subsequently evolved verte- 

 brates, so the savage, as the original ancestor of 

 mankind, has predetermined the general mental 

 and dispositional make-up of all higher men. 

 That civilised and semi-civilised men are naturally 

 narrow and revengeful, selfish and superstitious, 

 and find it next to impossible to feel and act 

 toward others as they would like to have others 

 feel and act toward them, is, therefore, not more 

 mysterious than that vertebrates have red blood, 

 two eyes, two pairs of limbs, and a backbone with 

 a bulging brain-box at the hither end of it. Just 

 as the habits, beliefs, and conceptions of the child 

 persist, often but slightly modified, in the full- 

 grown man or woman, so the habits, beliefs, and 



