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Show 295. Darwin, physical appearance indicated a difference between savage and civilized men, which was greater than that between wild and domestic animals. For Muir filthiness was shared by sheep-men, lumber-men, and all who took their living from Nature. Their spiritual alienation could be measured by their dirtiness. Thus he may have felt that Indians were more like white men than different; all were degraded by their economic lives. Both writers had difficulty identifying Indians as individuals. In The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin attributed the plight of "miserable degraded savages," the Fuegans, partly to their social condition. He thought they were too equal, too communistic, too sharing ever to improve themselves. He argued that "perfect equality among individuals composing the Fuegan tribes must for a long time retard their civilization." Similarly Muir imparted more individuality, self-reliance, and personality to the animals he portrayed than to men of any kind. Only humans he wished to learn from had any reality to him. Below this issue of individuality was a key question for an evolutionist, about the influence of environment on men. Darwin guessed that Nature circumscribed the Fuegan*s aspirations toward nobility when she placed him in a degrading natural environment. However, Muir's world was never the "miserable country" that Darwin described, and so he would be hard-pressed to explain why Californian Indians had not been ennobled by their surroundings. Indeed he argued consistently that Man |