THE ZOOLOGIST 



FOR 1859. 



Reason and Instinct, By the Rev. J. C. Atkinson, M.A. 



If now we turn to investigate the phenomena which bear upon our 

 last position we shall find ourselves not without a series of facts on 

 which to form a judgment, but still with a series comprising fewer and 

 less closely connected facts than we shall desire. 



We have, on the one side, the example of the white man, who, for- 

 saking many of the peculiarities and extricating himself from the action 

 of many of the influences of civilized life, assumes the habits and 

 undergoes the vicissitudes, physical and psychical, of savage life. I 

 refer to the professional hunters, the trappers, voyageurs, " mountain 

 men," of the Far West. " Wild as savages," " Wild and half savage," 

 are the descriptive epithets applied to them by one who knew their 

 class well, and had spent no small portion of his adventurous manhood 

 among them and in the scenes mainly frequented by them. 



And, on the other, we have the evidence afforded by the condition 

 of those wretched human creatures who are known to have fallen lower 

 and lower in the grades of humanity ; in other words, to have lapsed 

 to the very lowest depths of barbarous or savage life : 1 mean the 

 Bushmen of South Africa, the Diggers or Yamparicas of Western 

 America, and the like. Both the tribes named — if indeed they can be 

 with propriety styled tribes at all — present many of the characteristics 

 of the lower animals, and but very few of the ennobling distinctions of 

 humanity, and even those few shining with a miserably obscured 

 light. 



As to the psychical condition of the Bushmen, I must be content to 

 repeat part of a description already given (Zool. 5584) of their habits 

 and condition, physical and psychical. " No picture of human 

 degradation and wretchedness can be drawn which exceeds the real 

 XVII. B 



