The latter have only physical wants which they satisfy as completely as possible. But, this end once attained, they go no further. The animal, when left to itself, does not know, or has scarcely a suspicion, of the superfluous. His wants are, therefore, always the same.
Man, on the contrary, whether the mind or the body is in question, is always seeking the superfluous, often at the expense of utility, sometimes to the detriment of the necessary. The result is that his wants increase from day to day. The luxury of the evening becomes the indispensable of the morrow.
This fact is just as true with regard to the savages as to civilized peoples. We must, then, consider it as one of those characters which belong to the very nature of beings. Regarded systematically from this point of view, man might be defined as an animal requiring the superfluous, with just as much reason as he has been called a reasoning animal.
Moralists have at all times severely blamed this tendency and condemned those insatiable appetites which are always asking for more and for what they do not possess. I cannot share this view. Far from blaming in principle that which essentially is but the desire for the better, I cannot but see in it one of the noblest attributes of man. This faculty is, in reality, one of the most important causes of his greatness. When men are once fully satisfied and have no more wants, they will come to a standstill, and progress, that great and sacred law of mankind, will come to a standstill also.
In reality, it is the want of the superfluous which has developed all our industries, which has engendered the arts and sciences without which many races and nations, and, even among ourselves, whole populations exist perfectly well. We must therefore, with every reservation as to wrong applications, accept it in the first place as a fact, in the second as a benefit.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MORAL CHARACTERS.
I. In spite of all that is exceptional and elevated in the intellectual phenomena displayed by man, they do not, when considered as characters, isolate us from animals. It is different with moral and religious phenomena. The latter, as we have seen, belong essentially to the human kingdom; they are the attributes of our species. Let us examine them rapidly, and, at the same time, invariably from this point of view.
Confining ourselves rigorously to the region of facts, and carefully avoiding the territory of philosophy and theology, we may state, without hesitation, that there is no human society or even association in which the idea of good and evil is not represented by certain acts regarded by the members of that society or association as morally good or morally bad. Even among robbers and pirates theft is regarded as a misdeed, sometimes as a crime, and severely punished, while treachery is branded with infamy; the facts noticed by Wallace among the Kurubars and Santals shew how the consciousness of moral good and truth is anterior to experience, and independent of questions of utility.
Nevertheless, Sir John Lubbock, in a work with which all my readers are doubtless acquainted, states that the moral sense is wanting in the savage. In support of this opinion he quotes some vague and general assertions, bearing more particularly upon the Australians, Tahitians, Red-Skins, etc. The assertions of the eminent naturalist have been so often repeated that it will only be necessary for me to examine them in a few words.