The Hottentots, while still low in the human scale, are mentally a stage in advance of the Bushmen, they having a more developed social organization and superior powers of thought. The latter is indicated by their myths and legends, of which they have a considerable store, though they are in great measure destitute of religious conceptions, such religion as they possess taking in great part the primitive form of ancestor worship. Under the influence of Europeans they are gradually abandoning their old habits and adopting those of civilized life, but while improving in social and industrial conditions there is little evidence of intellectual advance. The development in method of food-getting displayed by the Hottentots was really but the completion of the old battle for dominion with the animal host. It consisted in subjecting some of the docile herbivora more fully to human mastership. The hunter has to do with hostile beasts, victims but not servants of man. The herder has reduced some of these animals to servitude, and no longer has to overcome them through the arduous labors of the chase. He is able to obtain, as we have said, more food with less exertion, a larger population can live in a limited district, and the beneficial effects upon the mind of a closer social intercourse are shown. But the most important event in this stage of evolution was the subjection of the plant world to man. For ages of interminable length this was not thought of. Fruits and other vegetable products formed part of man's food; but these were the growth of wild nature, and the plant world was left to its own will, with no effort to bring it under human control. There is nothing to show that the idea of agriculture ever entered the mind of a Pygmy. Of the plants surrounding him, far the greater number were useless for food, only the few were available; but the conception of favoring the few at the expense of the many apparently never occurred to him. There is, indeed, some crude and simple agriculture pursued by a few of the Negritos of Luzon, but evidently as an imitation of the Malay agriculture or as a result of direct teaching, certainly not as an original conception. The conflict of the Pygmies with nature has been confined to the animal world, and reached its highest level in the herding industries of the Hottentots.