ABSTRACT
The so-called savage has always been a plaything to civilized man—in practice a convenient instrument of exploitation, in theory a provider of sensational thrills. Savagery has been, for the reading public of the last three centuries, a reservoir of unexpected possibilities in human nature; and the savage has had to adorn this or that a priori hypothesis by becoming cruel or noble, licentious or chaste, cannibalistic or humane according to what suited the observer or the theory.
