"We must not lose sight of the fact that man as we see him to-day—clean-shaven, manicured, trouser-creased—is only a step removed from the naked savage ancestor who in the palæolithic age emerged from his cave, club in hand, to defend his family or provide it with food. The man of the stone age tore flesh from the skeletons of wild animals he slew, and made of his wife a beast of burden. To-day, our city dweller employs a French chef, and buys for his wife a box at the opera. Conditions have altered radically since the dawn of history, thousands of years of education and refining influences have tamed the primeval man and woman and taught them how to keep their instincts, their passions, under control. Yet the change is far more apparent than real. Civilization is purely artificial. It is only a compromise, a convention. Our boasted refinement at best is little more than skin deep. There's an old saying: 'Scratch a Russian and you'll find a Tartar.' We might also say: 'Scratch civilized man and you'll find a primeval brute.' Fundamentally, men and women of to-day are the same as their savage ancestors, they are moved by the same impulses and desires as when in the dark quaternary epoch they roamed naked through the virgin forests, ferocious-looking and bestial in appetite, their matted hair falling over their brutal faces, their prominent teeth sharp and pointed like wolves' fangs. By nature we are thieves, murderers, liars, cheats."
"You have a fine opinion of your fellow men, I must say," interrupted Grace, with a mischievous smile at Mrs. Stuart.
"I am stating a cold, scientific fact, and one that is unqualifiedly endorsed by every self-respecting ethnologist," replied the professor firmly. "Civilization," he went on, "teaches us that it is wrong to kill, to steal, to lie, and society has amended Nature's law by decreeing that the murderer shall be executed, the thief imprisoned, the liar and cheat ostracized. That, frankly, is the chief reason why the majority of us behave ourselves. But some men are so constituted that they are unable to control their brutal instincts, their evil passions. Morally and mentally, sometimes physically, even, they resemble in striking fashion their savage prototypes of six thousand years ago. For instance, take that fireman Armitage—a colossus in physical strength, obeying only brutal impulses, to all intents and purposes an untutored barbarian. Civilization, you see, has done nothing for him. He is the primeval man. To me he is interesting, for he proves the truth of my atavistic theory."
Grace yawned. The professor was too deep for her. In fact, she found him rather tiresome, particularly as she could not guess what he was driving at. Mrs. Stuart, however, was a more attentive, if somewhat puzzled, listener.
"But what has all this to do with being wrecked on a desert island?" she demanded.
The professor smiled in a superior kind of way.
"Allow me to come to my point," he said, with a lordly wave of his hand. "Suppose a ship like the Atlanta, for instance, were wrecked, and the only two persons who survived the disaster—a man and a woman—found themselves on a desert island, far from the regular track of steamers and with the remotest chance of any vessel seeing their signal of distress. Suppose the man was one of the crew, a common sailor, a brute, say, of the type of that Armitage fellow, and the woman one of the first-cabin passengers, a beautiful, highly cultured girl, rich, luxury-loving, fastidious, such, for instance, as Miss Harmon——"
"Please do me the favor to leave me out of your comparisons," interrupted Grace coldly. She did not exactly relish the coupling of her name with that of a disreputable stoker.
"Oh—I only wanted to make my meaning as plain as possible," stuttered the professor, in profuse apology.
"Your meaning isn't plain at all!" retorted Grace, not knowing whether to laugh or to be angry.