Page:BirdWatcherShetlands.djvu/323

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IN THE SHETLANDS
293

we must ask ourselves if, where it can and does exist amongst the latter, it is not of a more spontaneous and vigorous character, and if there is not more real sympathy attached to it. Where, for instance, can such perfect combination be found as amongst social insects—bees, wasps, ants, etc.—the conditions of whose existence are far simpler and more uniform than ours? And in what deep feelings of sympathy—or, as we may say, oneness—must blood-feuds have had their origin? If it is true that the sympathies of some civilised men have become widened so as to embrace humanity at large, and even the lower animals, is it not equally true that all civilised men stand more cut off from their immediate neighbours than do savages, because, owing to an increased diversity of individual character, consequent upon more diverse and complex conditions, they less resemble them? If so, though in one sense man may be said to sympathise more and more as he advances in culture, in another sense, and perhaps the truer one, he does so less and less; for as the river has widened it has become less deep, and the current less strong. Heine makes this same comparison in some interesting remarks upon the inhabitants of the Isle of Nordeney, which, as they exactly and felicitously express my meaning, I will here quote, albeit in a clumsy translation: "What links these men so fastly and inwardly together is not so much a mystic bond of love, as habit, the daily necessary living in each other's life, a common shared simplicity.