[5] A similar physical health and power of life are also developed among Europeans who have lived for long periods in more native conditions. It is not to our _race_, which is probably superior to any in capacity, but to the state in which we live that we must ascribe our defect in this particular matter. [6] See Col. Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_. [7] Wood's _Natural History of Man_. [8] See Appendix. [9] See Note at end of this chapter. [10] No words or theory even of morality can express or formulate this--no enthronement of _any_ virtue can take its place; for all virtue enthroned before our humanity becomes vice, and worse than vice. [11] It is curious that this word seems to have the same root as the word Man, the original idea apparently being Order, or Measure. [12] And with regard to disease, though it is not maintained that among the animals there is anything like immunity from it--since diseases of a more or less parasitic character are common in all tribes of plants and animals--still they seem to be rarer, and the organic instinct of health greater, than in the civilised man. [13] As to the unity of these wild races with Nature, that is a matter seemingly beyond dispute; their keenness of sense, sensitiveness to atmospheric changes, knowledge of properties of plants and habits of animals, etc., have been the subject of frequent remark; but beyond this, their strong _feeling_ of union with the universal spirit, probably only dimly self conscious, but expressing itself very markedly and clearly in their customs, is most strange and pregnant of meaning. The dances of the Andaman Islanders on the sands at night, the wild festival of the new moon among the Fans and other African tribes, the processions through the forests, the chants and dull thudding of drums, the torture-dances of the young Red Indian bravos in the burning heat of the sun; the Dionysiac festivals among the early Greeks; and indeed the sacrificial nature-rites and carnivals and extraordinary powers of second-sight found among all primitive peoples; all these things indicate clearly a faculty which, though it had hardly become self-conscious enough to be what we call religion, was yet in truth the foundation element of religion, and the germ of some human powers which wait yet to be developed.