The extreme importance of this comparison has only been fully appreciated of late years (by Lubbock, Romanes, etc.). Fritz Schultze (of Dresden) made the first valuable attempt in his interesting Psychology of the Savage (1900) to give us an "evolutionary psychological description of the savage in respect of intelligence, æsthetics, ethics, and religion." At the same time, he gives us "a history of the natural creation of the human imagination, will, and faith." The first book of this important work deals with thought, the second with will, and the third with the religious ideas of the savage, or "the story of the natural evolution of religion" (fetichism, animism, worship of the heavenly bodies). In an appendix to the second book the author deals with the difficult problems of evolutionary ethics, supporting himself by the authority of the great work of Alexander Sutherland, The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct (1898). Sutherland divides humanity, in regard to the various stages of civilization and mental development (not according to racial affinity), into four great classes: 1, Savages; 2, barbarians; 3, civilized races; 4, educated races. As this classification of Sutherland's not only enables us to take a good survey of the various forms of mental development, but is also very useful in connection with the question of the value of life at the different stages, I will briefly reproduce the chief points of his characterization of the four classes.
I. Savages.—Their food consists of wild natural products (the fruits and roots of plants, and wild animals of all kinds). Most of them are, therefore, fishers or hunters. They are ignorant of agriculture and the breeding of cattle. They live isolated lives in families or scattered in small groups, and have no fixed home. The lowest and oldest savages come very close to the anthropoid apes from which they have descended, in bodily structure and habits. We may distinguish three orders in this class—the lower, middle, and higher savages.
A. Lower savages, approaching nearest to the ape, pygmies of small stature, four to four and a half feet high (rarely four and three-quarters); the women sometimes only three to three and a half feet. They are woolly haired and flat-nosed, of a black or dark brown color, with pointed belly, thin and short legs. They have no homes, and live in forests and caverns, and partly on trees; wander about in small families of ten to forty persons; quite naked, or with just a trace of some primitive garment. Of the lower races now living we must put in this class the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Semangs of the Malay Peninsula, the Negritos of the Philippines, the Andaman Islanders, the Kimos of Madagascar, the Akkas of Guinea, and the Bushmen of South Africa. Other scattered remnants of these ancient negroid dwarfs, which approach closely to the anthropoid apes, still live in various parts of the primitive forests of the Sunda Islands (Borneo, Sumatra, Celebes).
The value of the life of these lower savages is like that of the anthropoid apes, or very little higher. All recent travellers who have carefully observed them in their native lands, and studied their bodily structure and psychic life, agree in this opinion. Compare the thorough treatment of the Veddahs of Ceylon in the work of the brothers Sarasin (of which I have given a summary in my Travels in Ceylon). Their only interests are food and reproduction, in the same simple form in which we find these among the anthropoid apes (cf. chapters xv. and xxiii. of my Anthropogeny). Our own ancestors were probably much the same ten thousand or more years ago. On the strength of fossil remains of Pleistocene men Julius Kollmann has shown it to be very probable that similar dwarf races (with an average height of four and a half feet) inhabited Europe at that time.
B. Middle savages, somewhat larger and less apelike than the preceding, averaging five to five and a half feet in height. Their homes are rock caverns and shelters from the wind and rain. Though they have shirts and other rudiments of clothing, both sexes generally go naked; they have primitive weapons of wood and stone and rudely fashioned boats, wander in troops of fifty to two hundred, and have no social organization; certain races, however, have laws. To this group belong the Australian negroes and Tasmanians, the Ainos of Japan, the Hottentots, Fuegians, Macas, and some of the forest races of Brazil. The value of their life is very little superior to that of the preceding order.
C. Higher savages, mostly of average human height (smaller in colder regions), having always simple dwellings (generally of skins or the bark of trees). They have always primitive clothing, and good weapons of stone, bronze, or copper. They wander in troops of one hundred to five hundred, led by prominent but not ruling princes, and exhibiting rudimentary differences of rank. The method of life is determined by hereditary customs. To this group belong many of the primitive inhabitants of India (Todas, Nagas, Curumbas, etc.), the Nicobar Islanders, the Samoyeds, and Kamtschadals; in Africa, the negroes of Damara; and most of the Indian tribes of North and South America. Their life is higher than that of the pithecoid lower and middle savages, but less than that of the barbarians.
II. Barbarians or Semi-savages.—The greater part of their food consists of natural products, which they secure with some foresight; hence they have developed agriculture and pasture to a greater or less extent. The division of labor is slight, each family supplying its own wants. As a rule, a stock of food is provided for the whole year. As a result of this, art begins to develop. They have generally fixed dwellings.
A. Lower Barbarians. Dwellings: Simple huts, generally grouped into villages and surrounded with plantations. Clothing worn regularly, but very simple: the men often naked in hot climates or with shirt. Pottery and cooking utensils, tools of stone, wood, or bone. Rudiments of commerce by exchange. Groups of one thousand to five thousand persons able to form larger communities; distinctions of rank and warfare. Princes rule according to traditional laws. Of this group we have in Asia many of the aboriginal inhabitants of India (Mundas, Khonds, Paharias, Bheels, etc.), the Dyaks of Borneo, the Battaks of Sumatra, Tunguses, Kirgises, etc.; in Africa the Kaffirs, Bechuanas, and Basutos; in Australasia the aborigines of New Guinea, New Caledonia, New Hebrides, New Zealand, etc.; and in America the Iroquois and Thlinkets, and the inhabitants of Nicaragua and Guatemala.
B. Middle barbarians. Dwellings good and durable, generally of wood, roofed with cane or straw, forming fine towns. Clothing general, though nudity is not considered immoral. Pottery, weaving, and metal-work pretty well developed. Commerce in regular markets, with the use of money. States ruled by kings in accordance with traditional laws, fixed distinctions of rank, communities up to one hundred thousand persons. To these belong in Asia the Calmucks; in Africa many negro races (Ashantis, Fantis, Fellahs, Shilluks, Mombuttus, Owampos, etc.); in Polynesia the inhabitants of the Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Markesas islands. In Europe the Lapps belonged to this class two hundred years ago, the ancient Germans two thousand years ago, the Romans before Numa, and the Greeks of the Homeric period.
C. Higher barbarians. Dwellings, usually solid stone buildings. Clothing obligatory, weaving habitual occupation of the women, metal-work far advanced, tools generally of iron. Restricted commerce, with minted money, no rudder-ships. Crude judicature in fixed courts; rudimentary writing. Masses of people, with progressive division of labor and hereditary distinctions of rank, sometimes reaching half a million souls, under an autonomous ruler. To this class belong in Asia most of the Malays (in the large Sunda Islands and the peninsula of Malacca), and the nomadic races of Tartars, Arabs, etc.; in Polynesia the islanders of Tahiti and Hawaii; in Africa the Somalis and Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of Zanzibar and Madagascar. Of the historic peoples of antiquity we have the Greeks of the time of Solon, the Romans at the beginning of the republic, the Jews under the Judges, the Anglo-Saxons of the Heptarchy, and the Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of the Spanish invasion.