Similarly, according to Mr. Spencer, no employment can be made of the mistakes committed by a savage in the presence of certain complex products of the arts and of civilization; he believes these objects to be alive, but how should he do otherwise? If he is deceived, it is rather due to the degree of perfection attained by our art than to any defect in his own intelligence. When the indigenes of New Zealand saw Cook’s ship, they took it for a sailing whale. Anderson relates that the Bushmen supposed that a carriage was an animate being and must be provided with fodder; the complexity of its structure, the symmetry of its parts, its moving wheels, naturally suggested no fragment of their own experience of inanimate things. Just so the Esquimaux believed that a music-box and a hand-organ were living beings. All these errors are in a measure rational, but they are errors of a kind that really primitive man would have no opportunity to commit. To suppose that he was dominated by a natural tendency to assign life to things which were not alive, to imagine that he went out of his way to confound things which animals of a lesser degree of intelligence perfectly distinguish, is to invert the whole course of evolution. [Sidenote: Primitive man incurious.] There are, in Mr. Spencer’s opinion, still other prejudices relative to primitive man from which we should free ourselves. We believe him to be voluntarily and incessantly occupied, as the modern infant is, with the _why_ of things; we fancy him perpetually endeavouring to satisfy a restless curiosity. Unhappily, if we are to trust our experience of the lower races of man, it appears that the sentiment of curiosity decreases directly as one approaches the savage state. To awaken curiosity demands surprise; Plato was correct in regarding astonishment as the beginning of philosophy. Well, what produces astonishment is an unexpected breach in the chain of causation; but for a primitive intelligence which has not yet achieved scientific maturity, there is no such thing as natural causation and no such thing as rational surprise.[23] The Fuegians, the Australians, show the most complete indifference in the presence of matters for them absolutely new and essentially surprising. According to Dampier, the Australians whom he took on board paid no attention to anything in the vessel except what was given them to eat. The very mirrors did not succeed in astonishing savages of inferior race; they were amused with them, but evinced neither surprise nor curiosity. When Park inquired of the negroes, “What becomes of the sun at night? Is it the same sun that rises the next day or another?”—they made him no reply and found the question puerile. Spix and Martius report, that the minute one begins to question a Brazil Indian about his language he shows signs of impatience, complains of headache, and proves himself incapable of mental labour. Similarly the Abipones, when they find themselves