barbarity which seem almost unbelievable to one accustomed all his life to types of human character such as are found in Europe and America.

The following paragraph is about the Sioux Indians. It was written by a man who lived among them for a number of years and knew them thoroughly:

"They are bigoted, barbarous, and exceedingly superstitious. They regard most of the vices of higher men as virtues. Theft, arson, rape, and murder are regarded by them as the means of distinction. The young Indian is taught from childhood that killing is the highest of virtues. In their dances and at their feasts the warriors recite their deeds of theft, pillage, and slaughter as precious things. And the highest ambition of a young Indian is to secure the 'feather,' which is the evidence of his having murdered or participated in the murder of some human being— whether man, woman, or child is immaterial."

"Conscience," says Burton, "does not exist in east Africa; and repentance simply expresses regret for missed opportunities for crime. Robbery makes the honorable man, and murder makes the hero."

When the Fuegians, who inhabit the southern extremity of South America, are hard-pressed by want, they kill their old women rather than their dogs, saying: "Old women no use; dogs kill otters."

"What," said a negro to Burton, “am I to

starve while my sister has children whom she can sell?" The idea!-that he should go hungry so long as he had nieces and nephews who could be put on the market!

Speaking of the wild men in the interior of Borneo, Lubbock says:

"They live absolutely in a state of nature, neither cultivating the soil nor living in huts. They move about the woods like wild animals. When the children are old enough to shift for themselves, they usually separate, neither one afterwards thinking of the other. At night they sleep under some large tree whose branches hang low."

When the natives of Australia first saw packoxen, some of them were frightened and took them for demons with spears on their heads, while others thought they were the wives of the settlers because they carried the baggage.

Savages cry easily and are afraid of the dark; they are fond of pets and toys; they have weak wills and feeble reasoning powers; they are notoriously fickle and unreliable, and exceedingly given to exaggeration of their own importancein all of these particulars being much like the children of the higher races of men.

Richard says of the Dogrib Indians: "However great the reward they were to receive at the end of their journey, they could not be depended on to carry letters. Any slight difficulty, a prospect of a good meal, or a sudden impulse to do this or

that, was enough to turn them aside for an indefinite length of time."

A writer, speaking of the wild tribes in the Malay peninsula, says that they are always restless and always seem to think that they would be better off in some other place than the one they are in at the time. Like children, they almost always act impulsively, being rarely guided by reflection.

Of the South Sea Islanders, it is said that they express any strong passion that affects them by crying, and, like children, seem to forget their tears as soon as they are shed. A New Zealand Ichief is said to have "cried like a child because the sailors spoiled his favorite cloak by spilling flour on it."

Captain Cook says that the king and queen of Tahiti amused themselves with two large dolls. And according to Burton the Negro kings of West Africa generally "are delighted with toys, rubber faces, and other trinkets, such as would be acceptable to a child of eight-which the negro is."

Like the child, the savage is exceedingly variable and chameleonic in his nature, being driven hither and thither by whatever feelings and impulses happen along from time to time. He is governed by individual emotions, which successively depose one another, instead of by a council of the emotions. The nature of the savage is a series of emotional despotisms, instead of a republic presided over by reason.

14. The Understanding of Savages.

To the savage, things are what they seem to be. He does not look below the surface to find causes. He explains things as a child would explain them. The sun actually rises and sets, as it seems to do. The winds are alive. Diseases are caused by evil spirits, which get into the bodies of the sick and drive out the natural spirits. Dreams are real experiences which the soul goes thru in its wanderings outside the body when the body is asleep. A man's shadow or his image reflected in the water is a real part of himself. Savages are very reluctant about having their pictures taken, because they believe that the picture is something that has been extracted from themselves. The Basutos (Africa) are very careful when they walk along a river not to let their shadow fall into the water, for fear the crocodile will get it, and by means of the shadow drag them into the river and eat them.

Thunder, among savages, is often regarded as an actual deity or as the voice of a deity. "One night," says Tanner, "an Indian chief became much alarmed at the violence of the storm, and got up and offered some tobacco to the thunder, begging it to stop."

To the mind of the savage every object has a spirit, and this spirit causes the object to do whatever it does. A watch is a living thing. The ticking of the watch is believed to be caused by the spirit inside the watch. The howl of the wind is

the voice of the wind-the voice of something alive. When a tree falls in the forest, the savage believes that a spirit gets inside the tree and throws it down. And if the tree happens to fall on him he believes that the spirit has a grudge against him, and hurled the tree in his direction on purpose. The savage knows nothing of natural law, nothing of chemistry and physics, nor physiology. When fire burns a piece of wood, it is the understanding of the savage that the substance of that piece of wood goes out of existence.

Nothing is ever destroyed. Every particle of substance that exists today will always exist. It is not possible to destroy anything nor to create anything except form. The forms of substances change, but the atoms themselves remain the same. This is one of the discoveries of modern chemistry. It is known as the Law of the Indestructibility of Matter. When a piece of paper is burned up, every particle of matter that was in the paper continues to exist after the burning just as before, but in a different form. The carbon of the paper combines with oxygen and forms carbon dioxide (CO2), which passes into the air and is invisible. But the savage knows nothing of these changes, and believes that the paper goes out of existence because he doesn't see it any

more.

There are good spirits and bad spirits, according to the savage understanding. The bad spirits are supposed to be much more numerous and en