Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/50

22 learnt to know about them, is that the ethics of amity belong to their natural and normal mood, whereas the ethics of enmity, being but as 'the shadow of a passing fear,' are relatively accidental. Thus to the thesis that human charity is a by-product, I retort squarely with the counter-thesis that human hatred is a by-product. The brute that lurks in our common human nature will break bounds sometimes; but I believe that whenever man, be he savage or civilized, is at home to himself, his pleasure and pride is to play the good neighbour.

It may be urged by way of objection that I over-estimate the amenities, whether economic or ethical, of the primitive state; that a hard life is bound to produce a hard man. I am afraid that the psychological necessity of the alleged correlation is by no means evident to me. Surely the hard-working individual can find plenty of scope for his energies without needing, let us say, to beat his wife. Nor are the hard-working peoples of the earth especially notorious for their inhumanity. Thus the Eskimo, whose life is one long fight against the cold, has the warmest of hearts. Mr. Stefánsson says of his newly discovered 'Blonde Eskimo,' a people still living in the stone-age: 'they are the equals of the best of our own race in good breeding, kindness, and the substantial virtues." Or, again, heat instead of cold may drive man to the utmost limit of his endurance. Yet the inevitable consequence is not a drying-up of his natural affections. In the deserts of Central Australia, where the native is ever threatened by a scarcity of food, his constant preoccupation is not how to prey on his companions. Rather he unites with them in guilds and brotherhoods, so that they may feast together in the spirit, sustaining themselves with the common hope and mutual suggestion of better luck to come. But there is no need to go so far afield for one's proofs. I appeal to those who have made it their business to be