ly incredible that whole races of men in the
most distant parts of the world (capable of counting, for they quickly
learn to count) should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever
possessed it. It is incredible that whole races could lose the elements
of common sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and
things mental--the Benjamin Franklin philosophy--if they had ever known
it. Without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. As
Lord Bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' And in the
absence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of
reason as far as we are trained, they had no 'stuff.' Even, therefore,
if their passions were not absolutely stronger than ours, relatively
they were stronger, for their reason was weaker than our reason. Again,
it is certain that races of men capable of postponing the present to
the future (even if such races were conceivable without an educated
reason) would have had so huge an advantage in the struggles of
nations, that no others would have survived them. A single Australian
tribe (really capable of such a habit, and really practising it) would
have conquered all Australia almost as the English have conquered it.
Suppose a race of long-headed Scotchmen, even as ignorant as the
Australians, and they would have got from Torres to Bass's Straits, no
matter how fierce was the resistance of the other Australians. The
whole territory would have been theirs, and theirs only. We cannot
imagine innumerable races to have lost, if they had once had it, the
most useful of all habits of mind--the habit which would most ensure
their victory in the incessant contests which, ever since they began,
men have carried on with one another and with nature, the habit, which
in historical times has above any other received for its possession the
victory in those contests. Thirdly, we may be sure that the morality of
pre-historic man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason. The
same sort of arguments apply to a self-restraining morality of a high
type as apply to a settled postponement of the present to the future
upon grounds recommended by argument. Both are so involved in difficult
intellectual ideas (and a high morality the most of the two) that it is
all but impossible to conceive their existence among people who could
not count more than five--who had only the grossest and simplest forms
of language--who had no kind of writing or readin