Note 47 — CRIMINALITY.

In his work already quoted Nansen has described the influence exercised by exchange upon the character of the Eskimos studied by him. (The fact that this commerce has been developed by the coming of the Europeans makes no difference. Among primitive peoples exchange must have developed in the same way, only more slowly.) He says: “How baneful to them has been the introduction of money! Formerly they had no means of saving up work or accumulating riches; for the products of their labor did not last indefinitely, and therefore they gave away their superfluity. But then they learned the use of money; so that now, when they have more than they need for the moment, the temptation to sell the overplus to Europeans, instead of giving it to their needy neighbors, is often too great for them; for with the money they thus acquire they can supply themselves with the much coveted European commodities. Thus we Christians help more and more to destroy instead of to develop their old self-sacrificing love of their neighbors. And money does still more to undermine the Greenland community. Their ideas of inheritance were formerly very vague, for, as before mentioned, the clothes and weapons of a dead man were consigned with him to the grave. Now, on the other hand, the introduction of money has enabled the survivors to sell the effects of the deceased, and they are no longer ashamed to accept as an inheritance what they can obtain in this way. This may seem an advantage; but, here, too, their old habit of mind is upset. Greed and covetousness—vices which they formerly abhorred above everything—have taken possession of them. Their minds are warped and enthralled by money.”47 Thus are born avarice and rapacity, which, opposed in the beginning by altruistic sentiments developed earlier, become stronger from one generation to another.48