PRUDENCE.
A.—LESSONS OF INSTINCT.
The first germs of animal life have been traced to the soil of the tropics, and in the abundance of a perennial summer the instincts of pleasure and pain may long have sufficed for the protection of mere existence. But when the progress of organic development advanced toward the latitude of the winter-lands, the vicissitudes of the struggle for existence gradually evolved a third instinct: The faculty of anticipating the menace of evil and providing the means of defense. The word Prudence is derived from a verb which literally means fore-seeing, and that faculty of Foresight manifests itself already in that curious thrift which enables several species of insects to survive the long winter of the higher latitudes. Hibernating mammals show a similar sagacity in the selection of their winter quarters. Squirrels and marmots gather armfuls of dry moss; bears excavate a den under the shelter of a fallen tree; and it has been noticed that cave-loving bats generally select a cavern on the south side of a mountain or rock. Beavers anticipate floods by elaborate dams. Several species of birds baffle the attacks of their enemies by fastening a bag-shaped nest to the extremity [[107]]of a projecting branch. Foxes, minks, raccoons, and other carnivora generally undertake their forages during the darkest hour of the night. Prowling wolves carefully avoid the neighborhood of human dwellings and have been known to leap a hundred fences rather than cross or approach a highway.
Young birds, clamoring for food, suddenly become silent at the approach of a hunter; and Dr. Moffat noticed with surprise that a similar instinct seemed to influence the nurslings of the Griqua Hottentots. Ten or twelve of them, deposited by their mothers in the shade of a tree, all clawing each other and crowing or bawling at the top of their voices, would abruptly turn silent at the approach of a stranger, and huddle together behind the roots of the tree—babies of ten months as quietly cowering and as cautiously peeping as their elders of two or three years. Young savages, and often the children of our rustics, show an extreme caution in accepting an offer of unknown delicacies. I have seen a toddling farmer’s boy smelling and nibbling an orange for hours before yielding to the temptation of its prepossessing appearance. Only the distress of protracted starvation will induce the Esquimaux to touch their winter stores before the end of the hunting season; and the supposed improvidence of savages is often due to the influence of a hereditary disposition once justified by the abundance which their forefathers enjoyed for ages before the advent of their Caucasian despoilers. [[108]]
B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY.
Civilization has partially healed the wounds of that Millennium of Madness called the Rule of the Cross, and of all the insanities of the Middle Ages the Improvidence Dogma has perhaps been most effectually eradicated from the mental constitution—at least, of the North-Caucasian nations. Instead of relying on the efficacy of prayers and ceremonies, the dupes of the Galilean miracle-monger at last returned to the pagan plan of self-help, and it would not be too much to say that the progress thus achieved in the course of the last fourteen decades far exceeds that of the preceding fourteen centuries. Earth has once more become a fit dwelling-place for her noblest children. Pestilential swamps have been drained. Domestic hotbeds of disease have been expurgated. Airy, weather-proof buildings have taken the place of the reeking hovels that housed the laborers of the Middle Ages. Farmers no longer live from hand to mouth. The price of the necessities and many luxuries of life has been brought within the resources of the humblest mechanic. Affluence is no longer confined to the palaces of kings. There is no doubt that the cottage of the average modern city tradesman contains more comforts than could be found in the castle of a medieval nobleman. Prudence, in the sense of economic foresight, has become almost a second nature with the industrial classes of the higher latitudes, and the benefits of such habits can be best appreciated by comparing the homes of the thrifty Northlanders—Scotch and Yankees—with those of the [[109]]Spanish-American priest-dupes: here deserts tilled into gardens, there gardens wasted into deserts. In natural resources, South America, for instance, excels New England as New England excels the snow-wastes of Hudson’s Bay Territory; yet industrial statistics demonstrate the fact that the financial resources of Massachusetts alone not only equal but far surpass those of the entire Brazilian empire.
The contrast between Prussia and Spain is not less striking, and that climatic causes are insufficient to explain that contrast is proved by the curious fact that within less than five centuries Spain and North Germany have exchanged places. Two hundred years before the conquest of Granada the fields of Moorish Spain had been brought to a degree of productiveness never surpassed in the most favored regions of our own continent, while Catholic Prussia was a bleak heather. Since the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and the monks from northern Germany, Prussia has become a garden and Spain a desert; the contrasting results of prudence and superstition. While the Prussians were at work the Spaniards were whining to their saints, or embroidering petticoats for an image of the holy Virgin. While the countrymen of Humboldt studied chemistry, physiology, and rational agriculture, the countrymen of Loyola conned oriental ghost stories; while the former placed their trust in the promises of nature, the latter trusted in the promises of the New Testament. Prudence, rather than military prowess, has transferred the hegemony of Europe from the Ebro to the Elbe, and prudence alone has smoothened even the path of exile [[110]]which ill-fated Israel has pursued now for more than a thousand years. For, with all the Spiritualistic tendency of their ethics, the children of Jacob have long ceased to deal in miracles, and train their children in lessons of secular realism which effectually counteract the influence of their school-training in the lessons of the past, and as a result famine has been banished from the tents of the exiles. Like the Corsicans and the prudent Scots, they rarely marry before the acquisition of a competency, but the tendency of that habit does not prevent their numerical increase. Their children do not perish in squalor and hunger; their patriarchs do not burden our alms-houses.