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 496 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

these cases we see the self-preserving instinct asserting itself in opposition to the offspring-preserving instinct.

It may be said that in such instances as the foregoing the natural instincts have been perverted. But this expression is only a metaphor ; there is no perversion in nature. Nor is it the exception, but the rule, that under the pressure of extreme want all so-called moral sensibilities are either entirely destroyed or subordinated to the more imperative feelings of self-preserva- tion and self-love. In the frequent famines and scarcities to which savages are exposed they do not scruple to devour their own offspring or other of their fellow-beings. A fishing or a hunting party, if the undertaking prove a failure, will sacrifice some of its own members, who are eagerly eaten by the fortunate survivors ; a father will gladly feed on his child, or, in time of war, desert him, or sell him for a hatchet or a knife.' The love of liberty, which in civilized communities seems to be so deeply rooted, is likewise killed (where it exists, for among some savages it is entirely absent) by the unsparing hand of misery, not only in the barbarous state, but even in more advanced com- munities. Many African negroes have been seen begging to be taken as slaves to save them from starvation, and in China the case is stated as very common of men selling their children, their wives, and themselves for the necessaries of life.^ In the Middle Ages the small proprietors surrendered their liberty in exchange for the protection of powerful vassals ; in times of famine the poor sold themselves into slavery for the means of subsistence, and, according to the testimony of contemporary historians, "mothers ate their children, and children their parents ; and human flesh was sold, with some pretense of con- cealment, in the markets." 3

I have referred to these well-known cases, which might be multiplied almost to infinity, because, for the very reason that they are extreme, they disclose to us the true ultimate springs of human actions, of which we constantly lose sight, owing to the

'See Malthus, Essay on Populalion, Bk. I, chap. iv.

'Ibid., Bk. I, chaps, viii, xii.

3HALLAM, Middle Ages, chap, ii, pt. ii, note 15.