stian community. The social reformers of to-day might learn much in
these high latitudes.

Spencer has in one of his books pointed out that mankind has
two religions. The first and most natural is the instinct of
self-preservation, which impels the individual to protect himself
against all outward opposition or hostile interference. This he calls
the religion of enmity. The other is the instinct of association, which
impels men to join fellowship with their neighbours; and to it we trace
the Christian doctrine that you should love your neighbour as yourself,
and should even love your enemies. This he calls the religion of
friendship. The former is the religion of the past, the latter that of
the future.

Precisely this religion of the future the Eskimo seems to have made his
own to a peculiar degree.

The men of some tribes or races are driven to combine with each other
by the pressure of human enemies, others by inhospitable natural
surroundings. The latter has been the case with the Eskimos. Where
the instinct of association and mutual help has been most strongly
developed, there has the community's power of maintaining itself been
greatest, and it has increased in numbers and in well-being; while other
small communities, with less of this instinct, have declined or even
succumbed altogether.

In so far as we believe with Spencer that the religion of friendship is
that of the future, that self-sacrifice for the benefit of the community
is the point towards which development is tending, we must assign to the
Eskimo a high place in the scale of nations.

It is a question, however, whether our forefathers also, in long bygone
ages, did not act upon a similar principle. It may be that social
development proceeds in a spiral with ever wider and wider convolutions.

Footnotes.

[20: 'When they have seen our dissolute sailors quarrelling and
fighting, they regard such behaviour as inhuman, and say: "They do
not treat each other as human beings." In the same way, if one of the
officers strikes a subordinate, they at on