The native Australians are said to be "incapable of anything like persevering labor, the reward for which is in the future." The savage lives in the present. And he is unwilling to put forth exertions whose fruits are removed even a few weeks in time. A traveler calls the Hottentots of South Africa "the laziest people under the sun." Of some of the native tribes of India it is said that they have not only a distaste for labor, but a contempt for it, and will starve rather than work. Many tribes of American Indians, when cut off from their hunting life, quickly disappeared, because they were incapable of maintaining themselves by labor, as the higher races do. Burton says of the Dakota Indians: "The warrior considers the chase his share of the curse of labor. He is so lazy that he will not rise to saddle or unsaddle his pony. He would rather die than employ himself in useful industry."

Higher peoples are a great improvement over savages in the amount of energy they are able to produce. But they have not yet developed sufficiently in energy-producing power to enjoy the amount of work they are ordinarily called upon to do.

In the better times to come labor will not be looked upon as something to be avoided if at all possible to do so. It will be natural and pleasurable. Laziness will pass away-just as cruelty and killing will pass away. The human body will grow more and more dynamic (energy-produc

ing) with the passing of the centuries, and the present haphazard system of assigning men and women to their occupations will give way to a plan by which each person will do what he likes to do and is best fitted to do.

I don't suppose the bee dreads work. It has in full measure the energy which it needs in its busi

"THE BEE DOES NOT DREAD
WORK"

ness, and all it has to do is to direct its energies in the direction in which they should go. Some time we human beings will be as naturally industrious as the bee-unless we find out before that time that we don't need so many things in order to be happy and hence don't need to wear our lives out in making things to be happy with.

4. The Instinct of Revenge.

Revenge is the desire in an individual who has béen injured to do injury in return. It is the hunger to hit back. Revenge prompts us to inflict on any one who has injured us an amount of injury at least equal to what we have suffered. And if the injury we return is a little more than what we have received, our satisfaction is that much more complete.

Among all higher peoples, forgiveness is generally regarded with real admiration. Forgiveness is the passing by or ignoring of wrongs that have been done to us. Human nature is weak. We do so many things without thought or intention. It is a mark of greatness not to judge people too literally. It was said of Abraham Lincoln that his heart was as big as the world, but that he had no room in it for the memory of a wrong. A being who is immense enough to realize the frailties of human nature will not judge men harshly, but will look with an all-pitying tenderness on the erring children of this world.

What a beautiful mantle Charity is to throw over the misdeeds of men. Charity is the disposition to put a good construction on men's actions and to overlook their faults.

But charity, forgiveness, and the Lincoln-like spirit of forgetting wrongs are not in harmony with the tendencies which we commonly find in the hearts of men when we look into them. A blow arouses a burning desire to hit back-even

in those elite beings who realize that charity and forgiveness are more beautiful than revenge. Like so many other tendencies in our nature, which drive us this way and that in spite of ourselves, this instinct of revenge is a survival from savage times, when men lived in a state of militancy and hate and when the policy of a-blow-fora-blow was much more justifiable than now.

The struggle for life among primitive beings is carried on largely by fighting. Every fight is a succession of retaliations-bite being given for bite and blow for blow. These retaliations may follow each other in quick succession, or they may be postponed. A postponed retaliation is what is called revenge. The postponement may be merely long enough for the combatants to get their breath, or it may be for days, or it may be even for years. The feeling of revenge is, therefore, a close relative of anger, revenge being a sort of sustained or adjourned anger.

Among all primitive peoples the practice of revenge not only exists, but is regarded as more or less of a duty. Any one who fails to revenge himself on an enemy is despised as a coward. If a savage should forgive his enemies or do good to them that spitefully use him, he wouldn't be tolerated very long, even by his own people.

It is said of the natives of Australia: "The holiest duty a native is called on to perform is that of avenging the death of his nearest relatives. Until he has fulfilled this task, he is constantly

taunted by the old women; if he is married, his wives quit him; if he is unmarried, not a single young woman will speak to him; his mother constantly laments that she has given birth to a son so craven; and his father treats him with reproaches and contempt.'

The Kukis, an Asiatic tribe, are even more fanatical. "Like all savage peoples, the Kukis are of a most revengeful nature. Blood must always be shed for blood. If a man is killed by the accidental fall of a tree, his relatives assemble and reduce it to chips."

As a general rule among primitive peoples, the injury of one member of a tribe by another is not a matter of public concern. It is a matter to be settled by the two individuals concerned, or by their families. The chief of the tribe takes account of those offenses only which concern the interests of the community generally. The avenging of private injuries is left to the individual.

It is said of the Indians of the Caribbean islands: "The administration of justice is not exercised by any magistrate or judge; but he who thinks himself injured gets such satisfaction from the offender as his passion dictates or his strength permits him to obtain. The public does not concern itself at all with the punishment of criminals. And if any one suffers an injury or an insult and does not revenge himself for it, he is slighted by all the rest."

Among the North American Indians generally