tion which is not possible until the brain has acquired considerable development. Sympathy implies imagination; the onlooker puts himself in thought in the place of the sufferer, and feels his sufferings by mentally transferring them to himself. Hence the perfectly accurate view that we cannot fully sympathise with any suffering we cannot understand; complete comprehension is necessary for complete sympathy. The absence of imagination in the savage, in the young child, in any whose brains have remained little developed, explains why each of these is often so cruel. The savage who tortures his captured enemy; the child who tortures one of the lower animals; the degraded ruffian who tortures his wife or his child; all these take pleasure in torturing, partly because of the exercise of power involved—the tormentor being patently superior to his victim—and partly because of the physical excitement attendant on watching violent physical contortions. None of these is capable of sympathy, because none possesses the imagination which would transfer the pain of the sufferer to the tormentor, and so render impossible the continuance of the infliction.
A mere glance at the customs of savages will help us along our road of inquiry. They are still in the stage of fierce struggle for existence, the struggle being only tempered by regard for the crude social union whose advantage they have begun to recognise. The tiger murders any living thing which comes in his way and suits him as food; the savage equally murders without remorse, but limits his murders by social custom. He slays the useless of the tribe, its aged and its surplus young; the struggle for existence is more successful when these non-producing consumers are put out of the way. Among some tribes murder is regarded as a virtue, probably by inherited tradition from the times when the most successful murderer had the best chance of survival. Büchner remarks: "Among the Fiji islanders the shedding of blood is a virtue, and not a crime. Whoever the victim may be, whether man, woman, or child, whether slain in battle or murdered by treachery, to be in any way a recognised murderer is the condition most eagerly coveted by every Fiji islander" ("Force and Matter," p. 365, ed. 1884). As barbarism grows towards civilisation, respect for human life is gradually developed; each man's objection to being
