ii 4 PHYSICAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION 



persons, who travel with beasts of burden, baggage, 

 servants, firearms, etc., whose bodies are covered 

 with clothes, hats, boots, spurs, etc., and who usually 

 make a clearing, where they camp, light fires, 

 and set watches. Consider what an impressive com- 

 motion and show of strange power such a party must 

 make in its passage through the haunts of wild 

 beasts ! The naked unarmed natives of such districts 

 are by no means equally immune and yet for un- 

 numbered generations they have known how to use 

 artificial arms and fire. Even since the advent of 

 the English in India, bengal tigers have sometimes 

 entered native villages in broad daylight and carried 

 off and eaten some of the inhabitants. Then con- 

 sider during how many unnumbered generations 

 the trait of wariness, not to say fear, of the artificially 

 armed and clothed upright creatures, has been 

 naturally selected among all wild brutes, and to 

 what extent the severity of this natural selection 

 has been intensified since firearms came into use! 

 Try to imagine the human race had now suddenly 

 lost the faculty of using artificial arms and tools, 

 even such simple ones as sticks and stones — were 

 afraid of fire, as other brutes are — were reduced 

 for defence to their naked fists, without any pro- 

 fessional boxers to teach them how to use these — 

 how long would it take the more powerful and 

 fierce carnivorae to learn the fact what an easy, 

 delectable meal, par excellence, this unhairy kind 

 of creature makes which carries his vitals right in 



