The origin of man and of his superstitions / by Carveth Read.

  • Read, Carveth, 1848-1931.
Date:
1920
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The origin of man and of his superstitions / by Carveth Read. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    62/372 (page 46)
    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.” 1 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 sup¬ port; ” 2 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 elimi¬ nating 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. On our intelligence life in the hunting-pack had just as revolutionary an influence, as already explained in the first chapter. The whole art of hunting had to be learned from 1 Op. cit., pp. 6-7. 2 Op. cit., p. 78.