ld
that for artistic skill in inflicting the greatest possible
intensity of excruciating pain upon every nerve in the body,
the Spaniard was a bungler and a novice as compared with the
Indian. See Dodge's _Our Wild Indians_, pp. 536-538. Colonel
Dodge was in familiar contact with Indians for more than thirty
years, and writes with fairness and discrimination.

In truth the question as to comparative cruelty is not so much
one of race as of occupation, except in so far as race is
moulded by long occupation. The "old Adam," i. e. the
inheritance from our brute ancestors, is very strong in the
human race. Callousness to the suffering of others than self is
part of this brute-inheritance, and under the influence of
certain habits and occupations this germ of callousness may be
developed to almost any height of devilish cruelty. In the
lower stages of culture the lack of political aggregation on a
large scale is attended with incessant warfare in the shape in
which it comes home to everybody's door. This state of things
keeps alive the passion of revenge and stimulates cruelty to
the highest degree. As long as such a state of things endures,
as it did in Europe to a limited extent throughout the Middle
Ages, there is sure to be a dreadful amount of cruelty. The
change in the conditions of modern warfare has been a very
important factor in the rapidly increasing mildness and
humanity of modern times. See my _Beginnings of New England_,
pp. 226-229. Something more will be said hereafter with
reference to the special causes concerned in the cruelty and
brutality of the Spaniards in America. Meanwhile it may be
observed in the present connection, that the Spanish
taskmasters who mutilated and burned their slaves were not
representative types of their own race to anything like the
same extent as the Indians who tortured Brebeuf or Crawford. If
the fiendish Pedrarias was a Spaniard, so too was the saintly
Las Casas. The latter type would be as impossible among
barbarians as an Aristotle or a Beethoven. Indeed, though there
are writers who would like to prove the contrary, it may be
doubted whether that type has e