Chap. VII. 
THE RACES OF MAN. 
239 
the fact, that the first meeting of distinct and separated 
people generates disease . 33 Mr. Sproat, who in Van- 
couver Island closely attended to the subject of extinc- 
tion, believes that changed habits of life, which always 
follow from the advent of Europeans, induces much ill- 
health. He lays, also, great stress on so trifling a cause 
as that the natives become “ bewildered and dull by the 
“ new life around them ; they lose the motives for exer- 
“ tion, and get no new ones in their place .” 34 
The grade of civilisation seems a most important 
element in the success of nations which come in compe- 
tition. A few centuries ago Europe feared the inroads 
of Eastern barbarians ; now, any such fear would be ridi- 
culous. It is a more curious fact, that savages did not 
formerly waste away, as Mr. Bagehot has remarked, 
before the classical nations, as they now do before 
modern civilised nations ; had they done so, the old 
moralists would have mused over the event ; but there 
is no lament in any writer of that period over the perish- 
ing barbarians . 35 
Although the gradual decrease and final extinction 
of the races of man is an obscure problem, we can see 
that it depends on many causes, differing in different 
places and at different times. It is the same difficult 
problem as that presented by the extinction of one of 
the higher animals— of the fossil horse, for instance, 
which disappeared from South America, soon afterwards 
to be replaced, within the same districts, by countless 
troops of the Spanish horse. The New Zealander seems 
33 1 have collected ( 4 Journal of Researches, Voyage of the “ Beagle,” ' 
p. 435) a good many cases bearing on this subject : see also Gerland, 
ibid. s. 8. Poeppig speaks of the “ breath of civilisation as poisonous 
“ to savages.” 
34 Sproat, 4 Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,’ 1868, p. 284. 
35 Bagehot, “Physics and Politics,” ‘ Fortnightly Review,’ April 1, 
1868, p. 455. 
