animals? Now those of primitive man are quite as innocent, and the brutality of the savage has nothing in common with the moral retrogression of the civilised man struck with decay.
How unlike is the Aleout, imitating the sea-otter, without thinking any evil, to the European degraded by the vices of our civilisation! For the latter the future is closed; there are some declivities that can never be remounted. The posterity of the savage, on the contrary, may, with the aid of time and culture, attain to great moral elevation, for there are vital forces within him which are fresh and intact. The primitive man is still young, and he possesses many latent energies susceptible of development. In short, the savage is a child, while the civilised man, whose moral nature is corrupt, presents to us rather the picture of decrepid old age.
