Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/351

Rh, it is to be observed that little muscular effort is required, and the activity is thrown on perceptive faculties which are constitutionally active.

A trait which naturally goes along with inability so to conceive the future as to be influenced by the conception is a childish mirthfulness—merriment not sobered by thought of what is coming. Though sundry races of the New World, along with their general impassiveness, are little inclined to gayety, and though among the Malay races and the Dyaks gravity is a characteristic, yet generally it is otherwise. Of the New-Caledonians, Feejeeans, Tahitians, New-Zealanders, we read that they are always laughing and joking. Throughout Africa, too, the negro shows us everywhere this same trait; and of other races, in other lands, the various descriptions of various travelers are: "full of fun and merriment," "full of life and spirits," "merry and talkative," "skylarking in all ways," "boisterous gayety," "laughing immoderately at trifles." Even the Esquimaux, notwithstanding all their privations, are described as "a happy people." We have but to remember how greatly habitual anxiety about coming events moderates the flow of spirits—we have but to contrast the lively but improvident Irishman with the grave but provident Scot—to see that there is a relation between these traits in the uncivilized man. The relatively-impulsive nature, implying total absorption in a present pleasure, causes at the same time these excesses of gayety and this inattention to threatened evils.

Along with the trait of improvidence there goes, both as cause and consequence, an undeveloped proprietary sentiment. When thinking about the nature of the savage, we overlook the fact that he lacks the extended consciousness of individual possession, and that under his conditions it is impossible for him to have it. Established, as the sentiment can be, only by multitudinous experiences of the gratifications which possession brings, continued through successive generations, it cannot arise where the circumstances do not permit these experiences. Beyond the few rude appliances ministering to his bodily wants, the primitive man has nothing that he can accumulate—there is no sphere for an acquisitive tendency. Where he has grown into a pastoral life, there arises a possibility of benefits from increased possessions—he profits by multiplying his flocks. Still, while he remains nomadic, it is difficult to supply his flocks with unfailing food when they are large,