or revenge"; and a century later Admiral Erskine remarks that "they carry their habits of cleanliness and decency to a higher point than the most civilised nations"; while all the Polynesian races are kind and attentive to the sick and aged, and unlimited hospitality is everywhere practised by them.
Even the Australian aborigines, who are often said to be one of the lowest of human races, are found to possess many good qualities by those who know them best. Mr. Curr, who was for forty years protector of the aborigines in Victoria, says:
"Socially, the black is polite, gay, fond of laughter, and has much bonhomie in his composition. . . . The natives are very strict in obeying their laws and customs, even under great temptation. The horror of marrying a woman within the prohibited degrees of relationship, the extreme grief they manifest at the death of children or relatives, and sometimes even for white men, as illustrated by the native boy who was the sole companion of the unfortunate Kennedy when he was murdered, are sufficient to indicate that they possess affections and a sense of right and wrong not very different from our own."
The fact that the physical characteristics of the Australians are substantially those of the Caucasian race in its
lowest types has led me to conclude that these interesting people may have been descended from much more civilised remote ancestors, and are thus an example of degradation rather than of survival.[34:A]
[34:A] See my Australia and New Zealand, Chap. V., "The Australian Aborigines," where this view was first set forth. (Stanford, 1893.) For cases of morality among savages see my Natural Selection and Tropical Nature, pp. 199-201.
Many other illustrations of both intelligence and morality are met with among savage races in all parts of the world; and these, taken as a whole, show a substantial identity of human character, both moral and emotional, with no marked superiority in any race or country. In intellect, where the greatest advance is supposed to have occurred, this may be wholly due to the cumulative effect of successive acquisitions of knowledge handed down from age to age. Euclid and Archimedes were probably the equals of any of our greatest mathematicians of to-day, while the architecture of Greece, of India, and of Central America is little inferior to mediæval Gothic. But none of these, though so different in style, can be said to prove any real advance in intellectual power from that of the builders of the much more
ancient temples and pyramids of Egypt. This latter country, too, in its high material civilisation and its remarkable religious system, shows itself the equal of any that has succeeded it.