Savage Survivals

Front Cover
Kerr, 1916 - Ethics, Evolutionary - 191 pages

From inside the book

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 181 - As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
Page 151 - My country — may she ever be right; but, right or wrong, my country.
Page 135 - Yet although the ox has so little affection for, or individual interest in, his fellows, he cannot endure even a momentary severance from his herd. If he be separated from it by stratagem or force, he exhibits every sign of mental agony ; he strives with all his might to get back again, and when he succeeds, he plunges into its middle to bathe his whole body with the comfort of closest companionship.
Page 97 - Furnished with iron tools capable of holding both an edge and a point, mankind were certain of attaining to civilization. The production of iron was the event of events in human experience, without a parallel, and without an equal, beside which all other inventions and discoveries were inconsiderable, or at least subordinate.
Page 108 - English school-boy. They puzzle very much after five, because no spare hand remains to grasp and secure the fingers that are required for units. Yet they seldom lose oxen ; the way in which they discover the loss of one is not by the number of the herd being diminished, but by the absence of a face they know. When bartering is going on each sheep must be paid for separately. Thus, suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely...
Page 95 - From the use of Pottery to the Domestication of Animals in the Eastern Hemisphere : and in the Western to the cultivation of Maize and Plants by irrigation, with the use of adobes and dressed stone in houses. f From the Domestication of animals, III. Middle Status of Barbarism. J ete., to the Manufacture and use of ^Iron.
Page 102 - 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, the branches of which hang low.
Page 131 - ... every antelope in South Africa has literally to run for its life once in every one or two days upon an average, and that he starts or gallops under the influence of a false alarm many times in a day."* So it is with the savage ; he is always suspicious, always in danger, always on the watch.
Page 108 - When bartering is going on, each sheep must be paid for separately. Thus, suppose two sticks of tobacco to be the rate of exchange for one sheep, it would sorely puzzle a Dammara to take two sheep and give him four sticks.
Page 132 - He expects nothing from his neighbour, and does unto others as he believes they would do unto him. Thus his life is one prolonged scene of selfish-ness and fear. Even in his religion, if he has any, he creates for himself a new source of terror, and peoples the world with invisible enemies.

Bibliographic information