Widely different is the man of the Prairies and the Forests, the Savage, who even to our own days has remained plunged in the lowest depths of social, intellectual, and moral development. Differing the one from the other, according to the country which they inhabit, the colour of the skin, the features of the countenance, and sometimes the forms and outlines of the body, savages everywhere approximate very closely in the general character of their instincts, sentiments, and ideas, and represent to us that early condition of humanity from which it has only been elevated by the Divine impulse and for the Divine purposes.
Assuredly it is not these whom Bonald has in view when he defines Man as “an intelligence served by organs;” for with them the respective parts of the mind and the body are inverted, and the first is the very humble servant of the second; its sphere of activity, accordingly, is very much restricted. War, the chase, the coarse pleasures of the banquet, the dance—and what a wild, barbarous, sensual dance it is!—the recital and glorification of the deeds of their ancestors, their nation, and themselves, mingled with marvellous improbabilities which he readily accepts for authentic histories, and finally, gambling—these are the only pleasures of the savage.
The chase is almost his sole means of existence; for he is no shepherd, and still less is he a tiller of the ground. He contents himself with gathering those alimentary substances which Nature spontaneously pours out at his feet; and as, among these, the flesh of animals is that which he prefers, he exerts all his physical faculties, and all the resources of his intelligence, to procure it. He fashions for himself arms; he learns to handle them skilfully, as well as to follow up the scent of the game, to contend with the wild beast in agility or cunning; and he displays in this exercise a courage, a patience, and an ardour augmented by the stimulus of vanity, which prompts every tribe and every individual to claim the crown of superior bravery and the prize of surpassing skill.
From emulation to rivalry, from the chase to the campaign, there is but one step. War, for the savage, is but a more dangerous and a more glorious chase; a chase more productive and more fertile in pleasures than the ordinary chase. Therein his self-love, as well as his fierce sanguinary instincts, can be amply gratified; and he feels a keener delight than in the pursuit of the lion or the tiger. He also derives from it far greater advantages, realizes far more considerable profits; the likeness is moreover all the closer, since he looks upon his vanquished enemy sometimes as a prey, sometimes as a slave or a thing for sale or barter. He may either kill him and eat him, or constrain him to labour for him; or finally sell him for money, or exchange him against other “goods and chattels.” If he does not cut him down on the battle-field, and it should not suit him to let his captive live, he may enjoy the pleasure of varying and multiplying his tortures before he deals the death-blow. Among all savage races no banquet is more eagerly enjoyed than the torture of their prisoners. It is generally round the stake to which the shuddering victims are confined, or their throbbing and bleeding remains, just about to be devoured, that the conquerors execute fantastic dances, and surrender themselves to noisy manifestations of joy, making the air re-echo with their discordant songs and the not less discordant sounds of their rude musical instruments; then after the hideous banquet—accursed as that which Pelops offered to the gods—seated around the glowing embers, and in the midst of the frightful fragments of the feast, they love to recall their achievements in the battle and the chase, or beguile the time with some rude game of chance. Gambling, like war and the chase, seems to be an innate passion with savages; and, sooth to say, it is a vice worthy of them and of their brutalized nature. Rightly does the poet exclaim,—
“What meaner vice
Crawls there than that which no affections urge,
And no delights refine; which from the soul
Steals mounting impulses which might inspire
Its noblest ventures, for the arid quest
Of wealth ‘mid ruin; changes enterprise
To squalid greediness, makes heaven-born hope
A shivering fever, and in vile collapse
Leaves the exhausted heart, without one fibre
Impelled by generous passion?”[178]
The “shivering fever” consumes the savage’s very life-blood; he gives himself up to it with unrestrained frenzy, and stakes, upon a throw of the dice, his weapons, his possessions, his women, and even his liberty.
Scarcely less violent is the passion which plunges him into drunkenness. With the fermented juices of various plants he is skilful in compounding intoxicating liquors, though he greatly prefers to these raw preparations the subtle mixtures introduced by Europeans. There is nothing which you cannot obtain from him for a few bottles of rum, of whisky, or brandy. And it is to the shame of our merchants that they do not scruple to stimulate, for their own sordid benefit, this vile passion to the utmost, against which the efforts of all our missionaries have proved almost powerless; so that, in truth, the commerce of the savage with civilized men, far from contributing to raise the former out of their abject, slothful, and degraded condition, has, on the contrary, proved for the majority of them a new source of embrutization and depravity.
Savages have no other literature than the traditions, myths, and marvels to which I have already alluded. They have no written language; and here we are at once provided with a means of distinguishing the wholly savage from the partly civilized races. The reduction of speech to a definite system, the acknowledgment of certain laws and principles as affecting the formation of a language, is the first great step out of barbarism which a barbarous people accomplishes.
Their science is limited to some acquaintance with the properties of the plants which they make use of, either as food, medicine, or poison. Medicine, indeed, as practised by “medicine-men,” priests, or “sorcerers,” consists practically of superstitious formulas, whose object is to expel the “evil spirit” which the savage supposes to be the cause of all his maladies.
The logical faculties are invariably those which in man are developed the most slowly and with the greatest difficulty. But they are also those which constitute the intellectual power of great nations. Without Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates, what had been ancient Hellas? Without Bacon, Locke, Newton, and Stuart Mill, what were modern England? Or Italy, without Galileo? And France, without Pascal, Descartes, Diderot, and Montesquieu? And Germany, without Fichte, Hegel, Kant, and Schlegel? The savage, however, possesses these faculties in a purely rudimentary condition. Analysis, synthesis, abstraction, generalization, are mental achievements which they cannot accomplish. They show themselves incapable, in fact, of the simplest calculations, of resolving easy arithmetical problems which are no mystery to the infants in our European infant-schools. Their numeration never goes beyond the safe and certain limit of their ten fingers; often they cannot compute above five, three, and even two. The Guarinis employ the expression “one hand” and “two hands” to designate five and ten; other American tribes say “two men” instead of forty, because each man has twenty toes and fingers. Among most of the African negroes, numeration is quinary; it is ternary, or even binary, among the Australian aborigines. The savage knows nothing of art, nor of that feeling for beauty which is the essence of art. If he cultivates music, it is of so discordant a character, and so incongruous a medley of sounds, that no European can listen to it with patience. The gods which they fashion out of wood or clay, and to which they frequently offer human sacrifices, are of the utmost hideousness; and it is with difficulty the spectator can recognize in their rude outlines any likeness, however imperfect, to the models in man or beast which the sculptor has pretended to imitate. The want, or rather the depravation of taste, is shown in the choice of the ornaments with which they decorate their persons; in the tatooings with which they bespatter their bodies; in the unbecoming ornaments of every kind which they suspend to the nose, the lips, the ears, and which render monstrous the visage already ugly enough by nature.