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Death is easy.

To live, what boots it?

Death is peace.

Is this a Fijian Schopenhauer, or rather Leopardi; or does it mean contact with civilized thought and with Christian hymns? Before one accepts this as outcome of “primitive” poetic conditions, one must bring it into line with the poetry from such sources on which all evidence is agreed; at once the bard and his ditty fall under strong suspicion. Witty proverbial verses found in half-civilized tradition, say among the Finns,^[40] get the same label of “primitive,” until one appeals to the chronological sense of fitness, and to other kinds of evidence:—

Praise no new horse till to-morrow,

No wife till two years are over,

No wife’s brother till the third year,

Praise thyself not while thou livest!

At this rate the letters of some Lord Chesterfield to his son will yet be reconstructed for the epoch of our hairy ancestors on the tree platform. It is clear that the great body of ethnological evidence, unequal in its parts, and in sad need of sifting and revision, has something of that uncertain quality as an ally in argument which Tom Nash imputed to “law, logic, and the Switzers.” They could be hired to fight, he said, for anybody.