THE APPARENT CRUELTY OF NATURE. 263 
different things. I think it is Livingstone who tells us of an 
accident which befel one of his camp-followers, and which 
resulted in a broken thigh. A rough litter was constructed, 
the man laid upon it, and borne upon the shoulders of four 
of his comrades. Suddenly, in the course of the march, a 
shout of laughter was heard, and it was found that, through 
the carelessness of the bearers, the patient had fallen to the 
ground, with the result of converting a simple into a com- 
pound fracture. The bearers were convulsed with laughter 
at the doubled-up appearance which the wounded limb 
presented ; and the injured man himself was laughing as 
heartily as anyone. 
It is only necessary, again, to mention the Maquarri Dance 
of the natives of Guiana, the Sun Dance of the North American 
Indians, and the horrible rites by which the young braves of 
the Mandan tribe are “initiated” into the enjoyment of the 
full privileges of their manhood, to show that the nervous 
organization of the savage is far less susceptible to pain than 
that of the civilized man. 
Dr. Felkin, in a series of carefully planned experiments, 
for the carrying out of which he enjoyed unusual facilities, 
arrived at the conclusion that the relative susceptibility to 
pain in the European, the Arab, and the Negro, was in the 
proportion of three, two, and one; his attention having been 
in the first instance directed to the subject by the remarkable 
fortitude with which patients of the two latter classes endured 
severe surgical operations. When, indeed—as Mr. Christie 
assures us happened in a case under his own notice—a Bosgjes- 
man can walk into a surgery, exhibit a hole in the crown of 
his head, due to a blow from a “knob-kerry,” which had 
resulted in the forcing of a piece of the skull down upon the 
brain, submit to the operation of trepanning, and then walk 
away as if nothing had happened, it is difficult to believe that 
the members of these uncivilized races can possess any true 
sense of pain at all. 
(8) In the course of the above-mentioned experiments, 
Dr. Felkin also discovered that the result of education upon 
negroes was to increase their susceptibility to pain by one- 
third. And that such is a result of education is daily mani- 
fested by the comparative indifference with which a field 
labourer, for example, will endure an injury which would lay 
a brain worker prostrate. For education, in a sense, is only 
civilization carried on. It results in a considerable develop- 
ment and refinement of the brain, and this, necessarily re- 
