Mind in Animals, 397 
found. But we must look to man if we would understand 
the lower animals. Even human nature must attain a high 
state of development before filial love can find any place in 
the affections. In savages it barely exists at all, and certainly 
does not survive into mature years. It is the glory of the 
North American Indian boy, at as early an age as possible, 
to despise his mother and defy his father. And the women 
are just as bad as the men. Rejoicing in the pride of youth 
and strength, they utterly despise the elder and feeble 
women, even though they be their own mothers, and will 
tear from their hands the food they are about to eat, on the 
plea that old women are of no use, and that the food would 
be much better employed in giving nourishment to the 
young and strong. The Fijians have not the least scruple 
in burying a father alive when he becomes infirm, and assist 
in strangling a mother that she may keep him company in 
the land of spirits. Both the Bosjesmen of South Africa and 
the Australian seem to have not the least idea that any duty 
is owing to a parent from a child, nor have they much 
notion of duty from a parent toward the child. If the father 
be angry with any one for any reason, he has a way of 
relieving his feelings by driving his spear through the body 
of his wife or child, whichever one of the two happens to be 
the nearer. Even the mother treats her child with less con- 
sideration than a cow does her calf, and leaves the little 
creature to shift for itself at an age when the children of 
civilized parents are hardly thought fit to be left alone for a 
few minutes. This being the case with parental love, it may 
be readily imagined that filial affection can have not the 
slightest chance for development, and it is very much to be 
questioned whether in the savage it can really be said to 
exist at all in the sense understood by enlightened peoples. 
Therefore, as in the lower human races, we find that filial 
love either is very trifling, or is absolutely non-existent, need 
we wonder that in the lower animals such few, if any, indica- 
tions of its presence should be found? 
