fe did not include the idea of necessary death. We are told that
the Australian savage who falls from a tree and breaks his neck is not
regarded as having met a natural death, but as having been the victim of
the magical practices of the "medicine-man" of some neighboring tribe.
Similarly, we shall find that the Egyptian and the Babylonian of the
early historical period conceived illness as being almost invariably
the result of the machinations of an enemy. One need but recall the
superstitious observances of the Middle Ages, and the yet more recent
belief in witchcraft, to realize how generally disease has been
personified as a malicious agent invoked by an unfriendly mind. Indeed,
the phraseology of our present-day speech is still reminiscent of this;
as when, for example, we speak of an "attack of fever," and the like.

When, following out this idea, we picture to ourselves the conditions
under which primitive man lived, it will be evident at once how
relatively infrequent must have been his observation of what we usually
term natural death. His world was a world of strife; he lived by the
chase; he saw animals kill one another; he witnessed the death of his
own fellows at the hands of enemies. Naturally enough, then, when a
member of his family was "struck down" by invisible agents, he ascribed
this death also to violence, even though the offensive agent was
concealed. Moreover, having very little idea of the lapse of
time--being quite unaccustomed, that is, to reckon events from any fixed
era--primitive man cannot have gained at once a clear conception of age
as applied to his fellows. Until a relatively late stage of development
made tribal life possible, it cannot have been usual for man to have
knowledge of his grandparents; as a rule he did not know his own parents
after he had passed the adolescent stage and had been turned out upon
the world to care for himself. If, then, certain of his fellow-beings
showed those evidences of infirmity which we ascribe to age, it did not
necessarily follow that he saw any association between such infirmities
and the length of time which those persons had lived. The very fact that
some barbaric nations retain the custom of killing the aged and infirm,
in itself suggests the possibility that this custom arose before a clear
conception had been attained that such drags upon the community would be
removed presently in the natural order of things. To a person who had
no clear conce