Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/234

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cohesion of the pack, there must be the equivalent of a recog- nised table of precedence amongst its members, which is gained by fighting. (lo) A pack of wolves relies not merely upon running down its prey, but resorts to various stratagems to secure it. Such devices imply intelligent co-operation, some means of communicating ideas, patience, self-control and per- severance. Primitive man, beginning with more brains than a wolf, may be supposed soon to have discovered such arts and to have improved upon them, (ii) When prey has been killed by a pack of wolves, there follows a greedy struggle over the carcass. But the strong instinct of parental care in Pri- mates, the long youth of children, and the greater relative inferiority of females to males than is found amongst dogs and wolves, must have made the human pack from the first differ in many ways from a pack of wolves. So much, then, as to the traits of character established in primitive man by his having resorted to co-operative hunting : they all plainly persist in ourselves.

Mr. Read then proceeds to discuss some further consequences of the hunting-life, and here he follows clues offered by the most backward of existing savages and by what may be observed of the individual development of our children ; these are : ia) the constructive impulse, (/?) language, [c) custom, [d) the claim to property, (<?) wars, originally, probably, for hunting- grounds, later for aggressiveness and insatiable greed. Nothing has been so influential as war in the development of society ; it strengthened internal sympathies and loyalties, and its external antipathies, and extended the range and influence of the more virile and capable tribes. (/) Most of the amusements, as well as the occupations of mankind, depend for their zest upon the spirit of hunting and fighting, (g) The great amuse- ment and pastime of feeding has, no doubt, descended to us in unbroken tradition, through harvest and vintage festivals, from the unbridled indulgence that followed a successful hunt, and, he suggests, that the origin of laughter and the enjoyment of broad humour may be traced to these occasions of riotous exhilaration and licence.

The earliest growth of magnanimity, friendliness, compassion.