"The Gallinomeros kill their aged parents in a most coldblooded
manner," says Bancroft (I., 390), and this custom, too, prevails on
both sides of the Continent. The Canadians, according to Lalemant
(_Jesuit Relations_, IV., 199),
"kill their fathers and mothers when they are so old that
they can walk no longer, thinking that they are thus doing
them a good service; for otherwise they would be compelled
to die of hunger, as they have become unable to follow
others when they change their location."
Henry Norman, in his book on the Far East, explains (553) why so few
deaf, blind, and idiots are found among savages: they are destroyed or
left to perish. Sutherland, in studying the custom of killing the aged
and diseased, or leaving them to die of exposure, found express
testimony to the prevalence of this loveless habit in twenty-eight
different races of savages, and found it denied of only one. Lewis and
Clarke give a list of Indian tribes by whom the aged were abandoned to
starvation (II., Chap. 7), adding:
"Yet in their villages we saw no want of kindness to the
aged: on the contrary, probably because in villages the
means of more abundant subsistence renders such cruelty
unnecessary, old people appeared to be treated with
attention."
But it is obvious that kindness which does not go beyond the point
where it interferes with our own comfort, is not true altruism. If one
of two men who are perishing of thirst in the desert finds a cupful of
water and shares it with the other, he shows sympathy; but if he finds
a whole spring and shares it with the companion, his action does not
deserve that name. It would be superfluous to make this remark were it
not that the sentimentalists are constantly pointing to such sharing
of abundance as evidence of sympathetic kindness. There is a whole
volume of philosophy in Bates's remark (293) concerning Brazilian
Indians: "The good-fellowship of our Cucámas seemed to arise, not from
warm sympathy, but simply from the absence of eager selfishness in
small matters." The Jesuit missionary Le Jeune devotes a whole chapter
(V., 229-31) to such good qualities as he could find among the
Canadian Indians. He is just to the point of generosity, but he is
compelled to end with these words: "And yet I would not dare to assert
that I have seen one act of real moral virtue in a savage. They have
nothing but their own pleasure and satisfaction in view."