[1] It is interesting to note that the "sense of Sin" seems now (1920)
to have nearly passed away. And this fact probably indicates a
considerable impending change in our Social Order.
[2] For proof I must refer the reader to Engels, or to his own studies
of history.
[3] Say like the Homeric Greeks, or the Spartans of the Lycurgus period.
[4] _Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls_, p. 209.
[5] A similar physical health and power of life are also developed among
Europeans who have lived for long periods in more native conditions. It
is not to our _race_, which is probably superior to any in capacity, but
to the state in which we live that we must ascribe our defect in this
particular matter.
[6] See Col. Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_.
[7] Wood's _Natural History of Man_.
[8] See Appendix.
[9] See Note at end of this chapter.
[10] No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate
this--no enthronement of _any_ virtue can take its place; for all virtue
enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice.
[11] It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the
word Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure.
[12] And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that among
the animals there is anything like immunity from it--since diseases of a
more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes of plants and
animals--still they seem to be rarer, and the organic instinct of health
greater, than in the civilised man.
[13] As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter
seemingly beyond dispute; their keenness of sense, sensitiveness to
atmospheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of
animals, etc., have been the subject of frequent remark; but beyond
this, their strong _feeling_ of union with the universal spirit,
probably only dimly self conscious, but expressing itself very markedly
and clearly in their customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning.
The dances of the Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild
festival of the new moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the
processions through the forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums,
the torture-dances of the young Red Indian bravos in the burning heat of
the sun; the Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks; and indeed the
sacrificial nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of
second-sight found among all primitive peoples; all these things
indicate clearly a faculty which, though it had hardly become
self-conscious enough to be what we call religion, was yet in truth the
foundation element of religion, and the germ of some human powers which
wait yet to be developed.
[14] There is another point worth noting as characteristic of the
civilisation-period. This is the abnormal development of the abstract
intellect in comparison with the physical senses on the one hand, and
the moral sense on the other. Such a result might be expected, seeing
that abstraction from reality is naturally the great engine of that
false individuality or apartness, which it is the object of Civilisation
to produce. As it is, during this period man builds himself an
intellectual world apart from the great actual universe around him; the
"ghosts of things" are studied in books; the student lives indoors, he
cannot face the open air--his theories "may prove very well in
lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds, and along
the landscape and flowing currents"; children are "educated" afar from
actual life; huge phantom-temples of philosophy and science are reared
upon the most slender foundations; and in these he lives defended from
actual fact. For as a drop of water, when it comes in contact with
red-hot iron, wraps itself in a cloud of vapor and is saved from
destruction, so the little mind of man, lest it should touch the burning
truth of Nature and God and be consumed, evolves at each point of
contact a veil of insubstantial thought which allows it for a time to
exist apart, and becomes the nurse of its self-consciousness.
[15] See Alonso di Ovalle's _Account of the Kingdom of Chile_ in
Churchill's _Collection of Voyages and Travels_, 1724.
[16] See Notes at end of this chapter.