…Lescarbot was only one of many who were impressed by the internal peacefulness of small-scale societies. By the end of the seventeenth century, according to Gilbert Chinard, “hundreds of voyagers had noted in passing the goodness of primitive peoples.” Their “goodness,” however, was applied only to people of the same society. In 1929, the anthropologist Maurice Davie summarized a consensus understanding that remains true today: people were as good to members of their own society as they were harsh to others.
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Veritas odium parit