I quote here from my treatise on The Evolution of Property (p.

46) on the subject of Pastoral Tribes:-- "It was at one time the fashion to hold up pastoral tribes and the patriarchs with their long flowing beards, as subjects of admiration.

Long-bearded patriarchs were objects of veneration.
Despite the quarrels of Esau and Jacob, and the story of Joseph sold by his brethren, pastoral life was pictured to us as mild as milk, as innocent as that of sheep in the fold, until Renan pointed out its qualities and defects.

At the same time we were told of the Bedouins "with saddle, bridle, and life on the Islam," always mounted, always armed, always engaged in war or razzias and mutual pillage; of the Turkomans and their motto: 'Thy soul is in thy sword'; and those who thus celebrated the amenities of pastoral life, and the heroic adventures of the Arabs of the desert, never perceived the contradictions they had fallen into." At the end of that Chapter I spoke of the Boers, according to Levaillant, "the most carniverous of men," as having turned out of their possessions the nomadic Hottentot and Kaffir shepherds.

_The Boers represent that form of warlike and political civilisation in which production is indirect, and obtained by utilising the labour of others._ It is a type of that ancient pillaging civilisation which we call war-like, when its methods have been reduced to rules.