the intuition of the senses, so that much that was assumed as real by early man has become preposterously inconceivable to us, though it seems as if there were examples of the survival in children of their near relation to nature, for some of them certainly accept their pets, toys, etc., as companions of a similar living race to themselves.
We would say here that some anthropologists, in drawing analogies between the condition of the present savage races and that of the ancestors of the progressive 31 races, seem to us to be too confident in accepting those conditions as being identical. May it not be possible that there is an essential difference between the savage peoples of to-day and the early historical races; a difference which forbids the former to develop beyond a condition of savagery, and that therefore these historical races have never passed through a state of society precisely identical with those of the modern savage?
Footnotes
- It is curious to note how this view has acted on a man of such insight and such capacity for research as the late Lewis H. Morgan, who seeks the American democratic constitution in the beginnings of social evolution, alike in the Iroquois tribe, in the Greek πολις, and in the Roman city of the regal period.Back
- It has, moreover, often been dwelt upon by the present writers.Back
- Cf. Sir Henry Maine, Village Communities.Back
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