Note 324 — DEMOTIC CHARACTERS (continued 4)

The remarkable race-sense of the tribe, with the conjugal conation in which it seems to root, are discussed ante, pp. 160*-163*. There is nothing to indicate, and much to contraindicate, that the Seri are consciously engaged in stirpiculture; yet their social and fiducial devices would seem to be no less effective in developing race-sense, with its concomitants, than were those of prehistoric men in developing the physical attributes of animal associates, such as the wool-bearing of the sheep, the egg-laying of the fowl, and the milk-giving of the cow; or the still more striking mental attributes, such as the servility of the horse, the fidelity of the dog, and the domesticity of the cat. All these attributes are artificial, though not consciously so to their producers, hardly even to modern users; they are by-products of long-continued breeding and exercise, commonly directed toward collateral ends (as when the horse was bred for speed, the dog for hunting, and the fowl and cat for beauty); and, similarly, the Seri race-sense would seem to be largely a by-product of faith-shaped customs designed primarily to propitiate or invoke mystical potencies—yet the collateral effect is not diminished because overlooked in the primary motive.