THE VALUE OF LIFE 



we must put in this class the Veddahs of Ceylon, the 

 Semangs of the Malay Peninsula, the Negritos of the 

 Philippines, the Andaman Islanders, the Kimos of 

 Madagascar, the Akkas of Guinea, and the Bushmen 

 of South Africa. Other scattered remnants of these 

 ancient negroid dwarfs, which approach closely to the 

 anthropoid apes, still live in various parts of the primi- 

 tive forests of the Sunda Islands (Borneo, Sumatra, 

 Celebes) . 



The value of the life of these lower savages is like that 

 of the anthropoid apes, or very little higher. All recent 

 travellers who have carefully observed them in their 

 native lands, and studied their bodily structure and 

 psychic life, agree in this opinion. Compare the 

 thorough treatment of the Veddahs of Ceylon in the 

 work of the brothers Sarasin (of which I have given a 

 summary in my Travels in Ceylon). Their only interests 

 are food and reproduction, in the same simple form in 

 which we find these among the anthropoid apes (c/. 

 chapters xv. and xxiii. of my Anihropogeny) . Our own 

 ancestors were probably much the same ten thousand 

 or more years ago. On the strength of fossil remains of 

 Pleistocene men Julius Kollmann has shown it to be 

 very probable that similar dwarf races (with an average 

 height of four and a half feet) inhabited Europe at that 

 time. 



B. Middle savages, somewhat larger and less apelike 

 than the preceding, averaging five to five and a half 

 feet in height. Their homes are rock caverns and 

 shelters from the wind and rain. Though they have 

 shirts and other rudiments of clothing, both sexes gen- 

 erally go naked; they have primitive weapons of wood 

 and stone and rudely fashioned boats, wander in troops 

 of fifty to two hundred, and have no social organi- 

 zation; certain races, however, have 'laws. To this 

 group belong the Australian negroes and Tasmanians, 



393 



