The Origin of Man and of His SuperstitionsRead, Carveth
Philosophy
The Origin of Man and of His Superstitions
Read, Carveth
Animism; Human beings -- Origin; Magic; Superstition; Totemism
(11) When prey has been killed by a pack of wolves, there follows a
greedy struggle over the carcass, each trying to get as big a meal as
possible. Mr. Th. Roosevelt writes of dogs used in hunting the cougar
(puma): “The relations of the pack amongst themselves (when feeding)
were those of wild beast selfishness.... They would all unite in the
chase and the fierce struggle which usually closed it. But the instant
the quarry was killed, each dog resumed his normal attitude of greedy
anger or greedy fear toward the others.”[50] As this was a scratch
pack of hounds, however, we cannot perhaps infer that a naturally
formed pack of wolves is equally discordant, or that the human pack
was ever normally like that. Galton, indeed, says: “Many savages are
so unamiable and morose as to have hardly any object in associating
together, besides that of mutual support;”[51] but this is by no means
true of all savages. At any rate, the steadier supply of food obtained
by our race since the adoption of pastoral or agricultural economy,
with other circumstances, has greatly modified the greedy and morose
attitude in many men and disguised it in others; though it reappears
under conditions of extreme social dislocation, and it is a proverb
that “thieves quarrel over their plunder.” In the original pack such
a struggle over the prey may have subserved the important utility of
eliminating the weak, and of raising the average strength and ferocity.
But some custom must have been established for feeding the women and
children. No doubt when fruits were obtainable, the women and children
largely subsisted upon them. But the strong instinct of parental care
in Primates, the long youth of children, and the greater relative
inferiority of females to males (common to anthropoids and savages)
than is found amongst dogs and wolves, must have made the human pack
from the first differ in many ways from a pack of wolves.
So much, then, as to the traits of character established in primitive
man by his having resorted to co-operative hunting: they all plainly
persist in ourselves.
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