ten be to prejudice
the chances of the fit. There are no arm-chair sentimentalists to oppose
this very practical consideration. The Indian judges it by his standard
of common sense: why live a life that has ceased to be worth living when
there is no bugbear of a hell to make one cling to the most miserable of
existences rather than risk greater misery?" Let us now see the kind of
life which the author, freed himself no doubt from "the bugbear of
hell," considers eminently sensible--the kind of life of which only an
"arm-chair sentimentalist" would disapprove; a kind of life, it may be
added, which will appear to most ordinarily minded people as being one
of selfishness raised to its highest power.

To begin with the earliest event in life. If a child, on its appearance
in the world, appears to be in any way defective, its mother quietly
kills it and deposits its body in the forest. If the mother dies in
childbirth the child, unless someone takes pity on it and adopts it, is
killed by the father, who, it may be presumed, is indisposed to take the
trouble, perhaps indeed incapable of doing so, of rearing the motherless
babe. That the child, in any case, immediately after birth, is plunged
into cold water, is not perhaps a conscious method of eliminating the
weak, though it must operate in that direction. At a later period of
life should any disease believed to be infectious break out in a tribe,
"those attacked by it are immediately left, even by their closest
relatives, the house is abandoned, and possibly even burnt. Such
derelict houses are no uncommon sight in the forest, grimly desolate
mementoes of possible tragedies." When a person becomes insane, he is
first of all exorcised by the medicine man, and if that fails is put to
death by poison by the same functionary. The sick are dealt with on
similar lines, unless there is or seems to be a probability of speedy
recovery. "Cases of chronic illness meet with no sympathy from the
Indians. A man who cannot hunt or fight is regarded as useless, he is
merely a burden on the community." Under these circumstances he is
either left at home untended or hunted out into the bush to die, or his
end is accelerated by the medicine man. The same fate awaits the aged,
unless they seem to be of value to the tribe on account of their wisdom
and experience.

All these things placed together give us a perfect picture of life under
Natural Selection, and having studied it we may fairly a