Torres to Bass's Straits, no matter how fierce was the resistance of
the other Australians. The whole territory would have been theirs,
and theirs only. We cannot imagine innumerable races to have lost,
if they had once had it, the most useful of all habits of mind--the
habit which would most ensure their victory in the incessant
contests which, ever since they began, men have carried on with one
another and with nature, the habit, which in historical times has
above any other received for its possession the victory in those
contests. Thirdly, we may be sure that the morality of pre-historic
man was as imperfect and as rudimentary as his reason. The same sort
of arguments apply to a self-restraining morality of a high type as
apply to a settled postponement of the present to the future upon
grounds recommended by argument. Both are so involved in difficult
intellectual ideas (and a high morality the most of the two) that it
is all but impossible to conceive their existence among people who
could not count more than five--who had only the grossest and
simplest forms of language--who had no kind of writing or reading--
who, as it has been roughly said, had 'no pots and no pans'--who
could indeed make a fire, but who could hardly do anything else--who
could hardly command nature any further. Exactly also like a shrewd
far-sightedness, a sound morality on elementary transactions is far
too useful a gift to the human race ever to have been thoroughly
lost when they had once attained it. But innumerable savages have
lost all but completely many of the moral rules most conducive to
tribal welfare. There are many savages who can hardly be said to
care for human life--who have scarcely the family feelings--who are
eager to kill all old people (their own parents included) as soon as
they get old and become a burden--who have scarcely the sense of
truth--who, probably from a constant tradition of terror, wish to
conceal everything, and would (as observers say) 'rather lie than