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Show 238 THE DESCENT OF MAN. PART I. Extinction follows chiefly from the competition of tribe with tribe, and race with race. Various checks are always in action, as specified in a former chapter, which serve to keep down the numbers of each savage tribe,-such as periodical famines, the wandering of the parents and the consequent deaths of infants, prolonged suckling, the stealing of women, wars, accidents, sickness, licentiousness, especially infanticide, and, perhaps, lessened fertility from less nutritious food, and many hardships. If from any cause any one of these checks is lessened, even in a slight degree, the tribe thus favoured will tend to increase ; and when one <>f two adjoining tribes becomes more numerous and powerful than the other, the contest is soon settled by war, slaughter, cannibalism, slavery, and absorption. . Even when a weaker tribe is not thus abruptly swept away, if it once begins to decrease, it generally goes on decreasing until it is extinct.31 When civilised nations come into contact with barbarians the struggle is short, except where a deadly climate gives its aid to the native race. Of the causes which lead to the victory of civilised nations, some are plain and some very obscure. We can see that the cultivation of the land will be fatal in many ways to savages, for they cannot, or will not, change their habits. New diseases and vices are highly destructive; and it appears that in every nation a new disease causes much death, until those who are most susceptible to its destructive influence are gradually weeded out; 32 and so it may be with the evil effects from spirituous liquors, as well as with the unconquerably strong taste for them shewn by so many savages. It further appears, mysterious as is ~ 1 Gcrland (ibid. s. 12) gives facts in support of this statement. 32 See remarks to t his effect in Sir H. Holland's 'l\fedical Notes and Reflections,' 1839, p. 390. C HAP. VII. THE RACES OF MAN. 239 the fact, that the first meeting of distinct and separated people generates disease.33 Mr. Sproat, who in Vancouver Island closely attended to the subject of extinction, believes that changed habits of life, which always follow from the advent of Europeans, induces much illhealth. He lays, also, great stress on so trifling a cause as that the natives become "bewildered and dull bv the " new life around them ; they lose the motives for ~xer" tion, and get no new ones in their place." 34 The grade of civilisation seems a most important element in the success of nations which come in competition. A few centuries ago Europe feared the inroads of Eastern barbarians; now, any such fear would be ridiculous. It is a more curious fact, that savages did not formerly waste away, as Mr. Bagehot has remarked, before the classical nations, as they now do before modern civilised nations ; had they done so, the old moralists would have mused over the event; but there is no lament in any writer of that period over the perishing barbarians.35 Although the gradual decrease and final extinction of the races of man is an obscure problem, we can see that it depends on many causes, differing in different places and at different times. It is the same difficult problem as that presented by the extinction of one of the higher animals-of the fossil horse, for instance, which disappeared from South America, soon afterwards to be replaced, within the same districts, by countless troops of the Spanish horse. The New Zealander seems 33 I hn.ve collected ( • Journal of Researches, Voyage of the "Beagle,'' ' p. 435) a good many cases bearing on this subject : see also Gerland ibid. s. 8. P oeppig speaks of the "breath of civilisation as poisonou~ ' ' to savages." 34 Sproat, ' Scenes and Studies of Savage Life,' 1868, p. 284:. ,35 Bageh ot, "Physics and Politics,''' Fortnig htly Review,' .April I, 1868, p. -155. |