Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/196

 122 THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MANKIND. mere animal pleasures, and consequently his nature becomes embruted. And this eager pursuit of sensuality leads to injurious excess and unhealthy intemperance. The Aboriginal eats and drinks with a whole devotion and seriousness which shows that every faculty is absorbed in the occupation. The passions are never restrained, except in so far as custom prescribes, and consequently assume an imperious character; the man is entirely under their sway, and gratifies them to the utmost, although the body should die from the indulgence. And under such circumstances the race decreases in numbers; sensuality leads to infanticide and other atrocities too bad to mention; infant life perishes at an enormous percentage of the births which take place; diseases of a scrofulous type sweep away thousands of victims; and the whole people, unless some external aid comes in, is soon exterminated by mere barbarism. And in case of the Aborigines of these colonies, this result is accelarated through the vices introduced by the white man, and they receive an impulse which gives them an additional impetus towards destruction. Now it is very evident that if this representation be faithful, man never could originally have been created in a state lower than that of these Aborigines, for if he had been, he never, by any course of development accordant with the course of his nature, could have arisen out of it. The only conclusion at which we can fairly arrive is, that man was created with all the powers, faculties, and impulses which would lead him to adopt from the first that state of existence which we call civilisation.