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PRIMEVAL MAN

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BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

 

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS
416 BROOME STREET, NEVV-YORK
1871

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PREFACE.

AVING now no immediate pros-

pect of being able to expand or

to illustrate the argument contained in the
following pages, I republish it with very
little alteration from the form in which
it originally appeared in “Good Words.”
I am well aware how much it requires
both expansion and illustration. But I
hope that at leastthe main lines of that
argument are traced with sufficient

clearness to enable others with more

 

vi PREFACE.

 

leisure to pursue them farther, and to
test the results arrived at by our
growing knowledge in the sciences
which bear upon the early condition
of Mankind. The distinctions here
taken between different branches of
the subject, have not, so far as I know,
been elsewhere laid down with adequate
precision. Yet all safe reasoning depends
upon such distinctions being carefully
observed. If they are sound, they place
an insuperable bar in the way of cer-
tain conclusions respecting Primeval Man,
which have been too hastily assumed
as following from recently discovered

facts. At all events these conclusions

 

PREFACE. vii

 

can only be reached by new arguments‘
and by new methods of proof.

Many of the questions which are in-‘
volved in the reasoning of this Essay,
are questions which touch upon the pro-

foundest problems of our nature and of-
our history :—On the connection, seem-7
ingly inseparable, between all mental
phenomena and physical organization; on
the truthfulness of any system of claSsifi-
cation which does not take equal cogni-
zance of both; on the distinction between
intellectual powers and moral character;
on the distinction, again, between the
mere results of accumulated knowledge,

and the working of the original facul-

 

viii PREFACE.

 

ties of Reason; on the question how
far the first use and the first direction
of his mental powers may have been
as purely instinctive in Man as in the
Bee or in the Beaver; on the relation
‘between the two tendencies in Man to
advance and to decline; on the causes
of degradation which are born with him
and seem to be inseparable from his
nature; on the bearing upon the whole
argument of existing facts respecting his
distribution on the globe, and the obvious
effects upon him of hardship and of
suffering to produce, or to intensify, a
barbarous condition ;-——on each and all of

these questions, which enter into the

 

PREFACE. ix

 

reasoning of this Essay, whole volumes
might be written without exhausting
what is to be said upon them. I shall
be content, in the meantime, if this
slight sketch of so great a. subject
should be of any use in directing others
into some well—defined paths of thought

and of investigation in regard to it.

LONDON, Dec. 9, 1868.

 

CONTENTS.

PAGE
INTRODUCTORY o o a v . c o o a o o a o o I

PART II.

I‘HEORIGINOFMAN . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

PART III.

THEANTIQUITYOFMAN . . . . . . . . . . . 76

PA RT IV.

MAN’S mumnvz CONDITION . . . . . . . . . 129

 

PARTI.
INTRODUCTORY.

AT the meeting, in 1867, of the British

Association for the Advancement of
Science, a paper was read by Sir J.
Lubbock upon “The Early Condition of
Mankind.” It purports to be a reply to
a lecture on the “Origin of Civilization” by
Dr. VVhately, the late Archbishop of Dublin,
which was published in 1854. The Arch-
bishop’s position is shortly this,—that mere
savages—that is to say, “ men in the lowest
degree, or even anything approaching to the

B

 

2 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

lowest degree, of barbarism in which they can
possibly subsist at all—never did and never
can, unaided, raise themselves into a higher

condition ;”

that even when they are brought
into contact with superior races, it is ex-
tremely difficult to teach them the simplest
arts; that they “seem never to invent or
discover anything,” because even “necessity
is not the mother of invention except to those
who have some degree of thoughtfulness and
intelligence;” that whatever the natural
powers of the human mind may be, they
require to have some instruction from with-
out wherewith to start. He holds it to
be “a complete moral certainty that men

left unassisted in what is called a state of

nature—that is, With the faculties Man is born

 

\VHATELY’S ARGUMENT. 3

 

with not at all unfolded or exercised by
education—never did, and never can, raise
themselves from that condition.” Therefore,
“according to the present course of things,
the first introducer of civilization among
savages is, and must be, man in a more
improved state.” But as “in the beginning
of the human race there was no man to
effect it,” this must have been the work of
another Being. “There must have been, in
short, something of a revelation made to the
first or to some subsequent generation of our
species.” The conclusion is that, as Man
must have had a Divine Creator, it seems
equally certain that,~ to some extent also,
he must have had a Divine Instructor. I

This is the argument which Sir J. Lubbock

BZ

 

4 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

has undertaken to refute. His conclusion is,
that the “ primitive condition of mankind was
one of utter barbarism;” that from this con—
dition certain races have independently raised
themselves; and, of course, that, instead of
existing savages being the degenerate descen-,
dants of ancestors who were more advanced,
all races now civilized are the children of
men who were once in the same low con-
dition. A further conclusion, though not
formally asserted, is plainly indicated, viz. this,
——that the “utter barbarism” of the first man
was itself an advance on the condition of
some progenitor. I infer that this idea is
intended to be conveyed when the “first
men” are explained to mean the “first beings

worthy to be so_called.”

 

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK’S PROPOSITIONS. 5

 

The two main lines of argument pursued
by Sir J. Lubbock connect themselves with
the two following propositions which he
undertakes to prove z—Ist, “That there are
indications of progress even among savages;"
and 2d, “That among the most civilized nations
there are traces of original barbarism.”

Sir J. Lubbock’s paper has confirmed an
impression I have long had, that Whately’s
argument, though strong at some points, is at
others open to assault; and that, as a whole,
the subject now requires to be differently
handled, and regarded from a different point
of view. On the other hand, the same paper
has convinced me that the argument in favour
of what may be called the Savage-theory is

very much the weaker of the two, and rests

 

6 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

upon a method of treatment much more in-
adequate and incomplete.

I propose in this, and in some following
chapters, to set forth the reasoning upon
which these convictions rest.

There are, however, some preliminary con-
siderations which it may be well to deal with
before proceeding farther.

It will be observed that both arguments
are avowedly conducted irrespective of any
belief in the Mosaic narrative of Creation.
They both profess to be purely scientific;
that is, founded on natural knowledge, and
using for the discovery of truth such facts
and inferences as are ascertainable by reason.
Whately expressly says that in his argument

he has not appealed to the Book of Genesis

 

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 7 ‘

 

as an authority, because he “thought it impor-
tant to show, independently of that authority
and from a monument actually before our
eyes—the existence, namely, of civilized man
———that there is no escaping such conclusions
as agree with the Bible narrative.” The
opposite argument is, of course, maintained
always from the same basis of scientific in-
dependence, and those who urge it do not
generally profess or care to reconcile the
conclusion arrived at, with the Mosaic narra-
tive. Sir J. Lubbock at the close of his paper
says emphatically, “ These views follow, I think,
from strictly scientific considerations.” No
doubt, if the inquiry is to be pursued at all
upon this basis, it must be conducted hon-

estly, and the conclusions legitimately reached

 

8 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

must be accepted with just so much of
conviction as is justified by the nature of
the data, and the nature of the reasoning
employed.

The question may well arise in many minds
in reference to this subject, whether it is a
legitimate subject of speculation at all—
whether it does not transcend our faculties
to ascertain the truth.

Respecting this question, there is one answer
which is obvious, although it may not go far
to satisfy those whose scruples are most sin-
Cere. When men in the position of the late
Archbishop of Dublin enter upon this dis-
cussion, and declare that, independent of all
authority, certain conclusions can be shown to

be unavoidable by natural reason, we cannot

 

IS THE DISCUSSION LEGITIMATE? 9

 

prohibit others from entering upon the same
ground, or from producing such arguments as
they may be able to find in support of an
opposite conclusion. But there are some
better arguments than this. This, indeed,
is enough to show that the discussion must,
as a matter of necessity, be encountered,
even though it should be deplored. But other
considerations may perhaps convince us that
it ought not to be avoided. It may be true,
and I believe it to be true, that the desire
of knowledge is capable of excess. The
spirit which in the ordinary concerns of
life is condemned as idle or vicious
curiosity has, surely, its counterpart in the
higher pursuits of intellect. David seems to

imply as much when he pleads in favour of

 

IO PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

his own character and conduct before God—-
“I do not exercise myself in things too high
for me.” On the other hand, we must remem-
ber that in nothing has the human race been
more liable to the delusions of superstition
than in the conception of the matters which
were to be held, or were not to be held, as
forbidden to investigation. Those physical
laws of nature which are now so familiar to
us as the peculiar field of observation and
discovery—a field on which the march of in—
tellect has been so rapid and so triumphant—-
were once held by the' early Greek philo-
sophers as belonging to the most secret things
of God. They thought, perhaps not un-
naturally, that~ a region Which lay, or seemed

to lie, so much nearer to themselves,:even

 

METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. II

 

their own mind and spirit—its phenomena
and its methods of procedure—must be the
ground most open to their search, and must -
afford results most comprehensible to the
understanding. And so they plunged into all
the problems of Metaphysics; But there are
no mysteries so deep as these—none in which
the human mind reaches so soon the limit of
its powers—none in which the temptation is
stronger to strain after knowledge which is
shrouded in impenetrable darkness. The
greatest intellects which the world has ever
seen have laboured at such problems, and,
in respect at least to many of them, have
left them as they found them. The same
tendency of metaphysical speculation, blend-

ing, through the school of Alexandria, with

 

12 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

the mysticism of the East, infected the
Theology of the early Church, and heretics
were not seldom divided from the orthodox
upon questions which were not only beyond
the reach of reason, but equally beyond the
scope of Revelation. In the Confessions of
St. Augustine there is a curious indication of
this transposition of the questions which are
deemed to be the most legitimate, and the
most accessible, subjects of our research.
In early life he had been, as is well
known, led away by the dangerous specula-
tions which pass in ecclesiastical history
under the name of the Manichaaan heresy.
He pours out his lamentations over the
subtleties which had once engrossed and

perplexed his mind—subtleties of which

 

AUGUSTINE’S DEFINITION. 13

 

Christianity had revealed the folly. And
among the temptations which he still desires
to overcome is the appetite of knowledge
—a “vain and curious desire hiding under
the name of science” (lib. x. c. 35). This
is the desire which pretends, he says, to
reach the inmost secrets of nature—secrets
which when discovered could have no value,
and of which men desire and expect no—
thing except to know. Now, here we have
an exact definition of the true scientific spirit
—-a spirit which has, indeed, in its results,
richly “endowed the human family with new
mercies,” but which never has had this dower
in view as its only, or even as its chief,
inducement. It is not perhaps exactly relevant

to observe that the glorious facts of Astro-

 

I4 P‘RIMEVAL MAN.

 

nomy are among the secrets of nature which '
Augustine rejoices to say he no longer desires
to know; because, in his mind, Astronomy
took the form of Astrology, to which in his
youth he had been much addicted. But
Augustine is right when he detects this same
love of mere knowledge in the instinctive
arrest of his attention by the commonest
works of nature. He desires to be de-
livered even from this. He has given up
many pleasures of the eye and curiosities of
the mind in which he once delighted,—not
only the transits of the heavenly bodies and
the response of oracles, but even the public
spectacles of the Roman world. Still, he
deplores that this wretched love of mere

knowledge,—this lust of the eyes,——is ever

 

AUGUSTINE’S DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. [3

 

pursuing him as he walks and lives. Although
no longer tempted to go to the Amphitheatre
to see the race of hound and hare, he com-
plains that the same sight, if seen accidentally
in the fields, will divert his attention from
some profound meditation. Even. from the
.windo'ws of his home his eye is caught by
some little lizard catching flies upon the
wall, or by some spider spreading for the
capture her wondrous web. The smallness
of these creatures, he confesses, does not
diminish his instinctive curiosity. True it
is that he might pass from these creatures
to magnify the Creator of them 'all. But
he is conscious that this was not present to
his thoughts when they were arrested and

fired upon the things he saw.

 

16 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

Most true! and equally true was it that
this desire of knowledge was burning in-
tensely in him when it wrung from him no
confession; or rather, when it was interwoven
into the very tissue of which his immortal
Confessions are composed. In them no more
splendid passages occur than those in which
he turns the eye of his curiosity inwards
upon the secrets of his own nature, and asks
a thousand unanswerable questions on the
structure and the power of Memory. What
and where are those innumerable chambers,—
those vast halls,—which hold in perpetual
imagery not only all he had ever seen, but
all he had ever conceived and known? How
can the immensities of Time and Space, of

earth, and sky, and ocean, be thus contained?

 

MEMORY. 17

 

How can they be recalled into what seemed
a lost existence? What, depths and mysteries
of being! How little can we understand our-
selves! Does it not seem then as if the mind
were too narrow to comprehend itself? And
so, through pages of most subtle and eloquent
analysis, he revels in that faculty of Wonder,
which is the very root and principle of all
curious inquiry. I do not say that these
questions are wholly vain. But they are use-
ful only as all knowledge may be useful, in
teaching us—if it be nothing else—how small
that knowledge is. St. Augustine was right
in thinking that this wonderful power of
Memory lies 'close to the final secrets on
which our very being and personality depend.
An eminent philosopher of our own time has

C

 

18 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

found in Memory the only insuperable diffi-
culty in the way of reducing the definition of
ourselves into that of mere “Possibilities of
Feeling.“ But in pursuing these speculations
into the most inscrutable of all subjects, St.
Augustine is but following the instincts of the
same restless and curious intellect which had
once struggled with the questions, What
Matter is, and How Evil came to be? There
is no inquiry in which the human mind comes
so immediately to the limit of its powers, as
in the analysis of itself. Inscrutable questions
may indeed be asked as to what Man once

was. But questions much more inscrutable

" Mr. J. S. Mill. I have discussed elsewhere the logic and
the adequacy of this definition :—“The Reign of Law.” Fifth
Edition. Note D,

IMPOTENCE OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 19

 

may be asked, and are habitually asked, as
to what Man now is. ‘No conclusions in
respect to the original condition 'of our race
can be more shocking to reason and cOmmon
sense, ‘than many conclusions which meta-
physicians have pretended to establish respect-
ing its condition now.

Another ‘reason against declining this in-
quiry, is to be found in the fact that the
plea of impotence against the human under-
standing, is a plea which may be urged in
the service of the most irrational error, as
easily as, perhaps more easily than, in the
service of the most certain truths. Men en-
grossed by some particular theory are under
immense temptation to denounce the power
of faculties whose function it is to apprehend

C2

 

20 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

ideas differing from their own. At the pre-
sent moment this is the habitual practice of
a whole school of thinkers, who have eyes
for nothing but a particular class of facts, and
who therefore very naturally resort to the
assertion that all eyes with a wider range of
vision are eyes of “phantasy.” And if this
has been sometimes the result of the anatomy
of Mind, what are we to say of the anatomy
of the Body? We cannot even think of our
bodily frames without encountering at once all
the facts which connect the phenomena of
Mind with the structure and condition of
Material Organs. And then our Organism
as a whole, how close it stands to that of the
beasts that perish! Are we to close these

paths of investigation also, because some

 

MANY FORMS OF PRIESTCRAFT. 21

 

minds have been led by them to a gross
materialism? It is not on one subject of
inquiry, but in all, that we come speedily to
questions which cannot be answered. The
result therefore is, that we should never be
jealous of research, but always jealous of
presumption,-—-that on all subjects Reason
should be warned to keep within the limit
of her powers, but from none should Reason
be warned away. Men who denounce any
particular field of thought are always to
be suspected. The presumption is, that
valuable things which these men do not like
are to be ‘found there. There are many
forms of Priestcraft. The same arts, and the
same delusions, have been practised in many

causes. Sometimes, though perhaps not so

 

22 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

often as is popularly supposed, men have been
warned off particular branches of physical in—
quiry, in the supposed interests of Religion.
But constantly and habitually, men are now
warned from many branches of inquiry, both
physical and psychological, in the interests—
real enough—of the PoSitive Philosophy!
“Whatever,” says Mr. Lewes, “is inaccessible
to reason, should be strictly interdicted to
research.” Here we hate the true ring of
the 01d sacerdotal interdicts. Who is to
define beforehand what is, and what is not,
“ inaccessible to reason .9” Are we to take
such a. definition on trust from the priests of
this new philosophy? They tell us that all
proofs of Mind in the order of the universe,

all evidences of purpose, all conceptions of

 

RESEARCH DEFENDED. 23

 

plan or of design, in the history of Creation,
are the mere product of special “infirmities”
of the human intellect. In opposition to
these attempts—come from what quarter they
may—to limit arbitrarily the boundaries of
knowledge, let us maintain the principle that
we never can certainly know what is
“inaccessible to reason” until the way of
access has been tried. In the highest
interests of truth, we must resist any and
every interdict against research. The strong
presumption is that every philosophy which
assumes to issue such an interdict, must have
reason to fear inquiry.

On these principles it may be affirmed
generally that all subjects are legitimate sub-

jects of reasoning in proportion as they are

 

24 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

accessible to research; and that the degree
in which any given subject is accessible to
research cannot be known until research has
been attempted.

r‘ Within certain limits it is not open to dis—
pute that the early condition of Mankind is
accessible to research. Contemporary history
reaches back a certain way. Existing monu-
ments afford their evidence for a considerable
distance farther. Tradition has its own pro-
vince still more remote; and latterly Geology
and Archaeology have met upon common
ground—ground in which Man and the

LMammoth have been found together.

It has not, however, been sufficiently ob-
served that the inquiry into the Primitive

Condition of Mankind resolves itself into three

 

THREE SUBJECTS OF INQUIRY. 25

 

separate questions,—that is to say, three
questions which, though connected with each
other, can be. and indeed must be, separately
dealt with:— ‘

Ist. The Origin of Man considered simply'
as a. Species,—that is to say, the method of ’
his creation or introduction into the world.

2d. The Antiquity of Man, or the time in
the geological history and preparation of the
globe at which this creation or introduction
took place.

3d. His Mental, Moral, and Intellectual Con-
dition when first created.

No doubt the theory as to the Origin of
Man at which Sir J. Lubbock glances when
he speaks of the “first being worthy to be

called a. man " (which is obviously the theory

K
s

 

26 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

that this first man was born from some pre-
existing creature not worthy to be so called),
is most naturally connected with the farther
theory that his mental condition was one of
“utter barbarism." But this is not at all a
“necessary consequence. The first man, how-
ever created, may have had special knowledge
conveyed to him as well as a special material
organization. Special powers of acquiring
knowledge he certainly must have had, since
we know that these are inseparably connected
with the organization which made him
“' worthy to be called a man.” The two
questions, therefore, of the Origin of Man,
and of his Primitive Condition, are clearly
separable. In like manner, as regards Anti-

quity, the question of Time has no. neceSo

 

MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 27

 

sary connection either with his Origin or his
Primitive Condition.

There is another point connected with this
division of the whole subject into three sepa-
rate questions, which has not perhaps been
sufficiently considered, and that is the different
degrees of connection which these questions
have respectively, with the Mosaic narrative.
I have already said that the inquiry as con—
ducted both by Archbishop Whately and Sir
J. Lubbock is avowedly conducted on a purely
scientific basis. It is in the same light that
it will be considered here. But it may be
useful to observe in passing, that in regard to
some of these questions the Mosaic account of
Creation (apart altogether from any suggestions

which have been raised as to the allegorical

 

28 PRXMEVAL MAN.

 

elements it may contain) leaves room, even
according to its most literal interpretation,
for a much wider latitude of speculation than
seems to be generally supposed. As regards
the Origin of Man, undoubtedly,‘ the im-
pression conveyed is that the Creation of
Man was aspecial act—which indeed, what-
ever may have been its method, it must in a
sense have been; but, as regards the Primitive
Condition of Mankind, it must be remembered
that, according to the narrative in Genesis,
there never was any generation of men which
lived and walked in the primal light. It was
the first man who fell. The second man was
a murderer. The causes, therefore, of degra-
dation are represented as having begun, so

far as the race is concerned, at once; and it

 

DEFINITION, OF TERMS NEEDED. 29

 

is a special peculiarity of the account that
those causes are said to have gone on in an
accelerating ratio until the Flood. Even after
that event there was no immunity from the ope:
ration of the same causes, and existing races,:’;
therefore, .may have passed through stages of.
any degree of barbarism since .the days of Fifi.
Adam without involving any necessary incon— 1
sistency whatever with the Mosaic account.

It is farther to be observed that writers
on the Primitive Condition of Man are
generally guilty of the oversight of forget-
ting to define the sense in which they use
the words “ civilized ” and “uncivilized.” This
is a strange oversight on the part of such a

logician as Dr. Whately. Sir J. Lubbock

naturally enough feels himself relieved from an

 

3O , PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

inconvenient obligation. But implicitly, if not
explicitly, the Savage-theory and the reasoning
in support of it assume that civilization con-
sists mainly if not exclusively in a knowledge
of the arts. Knowledge, for example, or igno-
rance, of the use of metals, are, as we shall
see, characteristics on which great stress is
laid. Now, as regards this point, as VVhately
truly says, the narrative of Genesis distinctly
states that this kind of knowledge did not
belong to Mankind at first, but was the fruit
of subsequent discovery, through the ordinary
agency of those mental gifts with which Man
at his creation was endowed. It is assumed
in the Savage-theory that the presence or
absence of this knowledge stands in close

and natural connection with the presence or

 

MAN DIVINELY TAUGHT. 31

 

absence of other and higher kinds of know-
ledge, of which an acquaintance with the
metals is but a symbol and a type. Within
certain limits this is true, and we may
assume, therefore, that in Genesis also, the
intimation given on this subject implies that
so far as civilization means a command over
the powers of nature, Man was left to make
his own way, through his powers of reason,
and through his instincts of research.
Whately has indeed inferred, from the de-
scription given of Cain as a tiller of the
ground, and of Abel as a keeper of flocks,
that the great economic principle of the
division of labour was at the first divinely
taught to Man. But, if we are to understand

this literally, not of tribes tracing their descent

 

32 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

from Cain and Abel, but of the individual men
who were the third and fourth human beings
upon earth, then we must suppose that the pos-
session of domestic animals and acquaintance
with artificial cultivation were either divinely
communicated to Man, or instinctively dis-
covered by him, at once. It may have been so,
and it may be the intention of the narrative
to assert it; but, at all events, it is perfectly
conceivable, that beyond a knowledge of the
simplest arts which were necessary for the
sustenance of life, Man’s primitive condition
may have been a condition of mere childhood.

As regards the third element in the whole
question—the element of Time—it is well
known that all calculations in regard to it

rest upon data respecting which there has

 

THE QUESTION OF TIME. 33

 

always been much doubt and difficulty, and
that similar data taken from the three
existing versions of the Old Testament,—
the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septua-
gint,——give results which vary from each
other, not by years, or even by tens of
years, but by many centuries. Where differ-
ences exist of such magnitude, no confidence
can be felt in any of the results. It seems
more than questionable how far the history
of Man given in the Old Testament either is,
or was intended to be, a complete history, or
more than the history of typical men and of
typical generations. At all events, it would
be worse than idle to deny that this ques-
tion of Time comes naturally and necessarily
within the field of scientific investigation, in

D

 

34 - PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

so far as science can find a firm foundation
for any conclusions in regard to it.

Having already quoted St. Augustine upon
the general subject of the desire of knowledge,
I cannot close even this cursory reference to
the relation in which the Mosaic narrative
stands to scientific research, without dwelling
for a moment on the very striking passage in
which that great man deals with the only
account which the world possesses of the
history of Creation. St. Augustine was not
the man to be dead to all those curious
speculations and inquiries which that account
excites, and which it does not profess to
satisfy. His Confessions, he says, would not
be the humble confessions he desires them to!

V
be, were he not to confess that as regards

 

AUGUSTINE’S DECLARATION. 35

 

many of those questions, he does not under-
stand the sense in which Moses wrote. All
the more does he admire his words, “so
sublime in their humility, so rich in (their
reserve" (aim lmmz'lz'ter, paum copiose); then
follows (lib. xii. c. 31) a passage which,—
considering the age in which it was written,
considering also the vague notions entertained
by St. Augustine himself, and by all the
world in his time, on the rank and import-
ance of the natural sciences,—is surely one of
the most remarkable passages ever written by
Theologian or Philosopher. “For myself,” he
says, “I declare boldly, and from the bottom
of my heart, that if I were called to write
something which was to be invested with
supreme authority, I should desire most so to

D2

 

36 PRIMEVAL MAN.

~

 

write that my words should include the widest
range of meaning, and should not be confined
to one sense alone, exclusive of all others, even
of some which should be inconsistent with my
own. Far from me, O God, be the temerity
to suppose that so great a Prophet did not
receive from Thy Grace even such a favour!
Yes; he had in view and in his spirit, when
he traced these words, all that we can ever
discover of the truth—even every truth which
has escaped us hitherto, or which escapes us
still, but which nevertheless may yet be dis-
covered in them.” Certain it is, that whatever
new views may now be taken of the origin and
authorship of the first chapter of Genesis, it
stands'alone among“ the traditions of mankind

in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of

 

THE GROUND CLEARED. 37

 

its words. Specially remarkable—miraculous
it really seems to be—is that character of
reserve which leaves open to reason all that
reason may be able to attain. The meaning
of those words seems always to be a meaning
a-head of science—not because it anticipates
the results of science, but because it is inde-
pendent of them, and runs, as it were, round
the outer margin of all possible discovery.
Having now cleared the ground of some
preliminary difficulties which might otherwise
have impeded us in a proper access to the
subject, I shall proceed in the next Part to
deal with the first of the three questions into
which that subject is divided—viz. the Origin of
Man considered as a Species, in so far as this

question appears to be accessible to reason.

PART II.
THE ORIGIN OF MAN.

“HE Human Race has no more knOW«
ledge or recollection of its own origin

than a child has of its own birth. But a
child drinks in with its mother’s milk some
knowledge of the relation in which it stands
to its own parents, and as it grows up it
knows of other children being born around it.
It sees one generation going and another
generation coming, so that long before the

years of childhood close the ideas of birth

 

IDEAS OF BIRTH AND DEATH. 39

 

and death are alike familiar. Whatever sense
of mystery may, in the first dawnings of
reflection, have attached to either of these
ideas, is soon lost in the familiar experience
of the world. The same experience extends
to the lower animals—they, too, are born and-
die. But no such experience ever comes to
us casting any light on the Origin of our
own Race, or of any other. Some varieties of
form are effected in the case of a few animals,
by domestication, and by constant care in the
selection of peculiarities transmissible to the
young. But these variations are all within-
certain limits; and wherever- human care re-
laxes or is abanddned, the old forms return,
and the selected characters disappear. The

founding of new forms by the union of

 

4O PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

different species, even when standing in close
natural relation to each. other, is absolutely
forbidden by the sentence of sterility which
Nature pronounces and enforces upon all
hybrid offspring. And so it results that Man
a. has never seen the origin of any species.
‘ fECreation by birth is the only kind of creation
he has ever seen; and from this kind of
creation he has never seen a new species
come. And yet he does know (for this the
science of Palaontology has most certainly
revealed), that the introduction of new species
has been a work carried on constantly and
continuously during vast but unknown periods
of time. The whole face of animated nature
has been changed, not once, but frequently;

not suddenly for the most part, perhaps not

 

METHOD OF CREATION. 41

 

suddenly in any case, but slowly and gradually,
and yet completely; When once this fact is
clearly apprehended—whenever we become
familiar with the idea that Creation has had
a History, we {are inevitably led to the con-
clusion that Creation has also had a Method.
And then the further question arises,—What
. has thislmethod been? It is perfectly natural
that men who have any hopes of solving this
question should take that supposition which
seems the readiest; and the readiest sup-
position is, that the agency by which new
species are created is the same agency by ‘4
which new individuals are born. The difiiculty
of conceiving any other compels men, if they
are to guess at all, to guess upon this founda-

tion. Such is the origin and genesis of all{ /

 

42 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

the theories of Development, of which Mr.
Darwin's hypothesis is only the latest form.
It is not in itself inconsistent with the Theistic
argument, or with belief in the ultimate
agency and directing power 'of a Creative
Mind. This is clear, since we never think of
any difficulty in reconciling that belief with
our knowledge of the ordinary laws of animal
and vegetable reproduction. Those laws may}
be correctly, and can only be adequately,
described in the language of religion and
theology. “He who is the alone Author and
Creator of all things,” says the present Bishop
of Salisbury, “ does not by separate acts of
creation give being and life to those creatures
which are to be brought forth, but employs

His living creatures thus to give effect to His

 

ORIGIN OF SPECIES. 43

 

will and pleasure, and as His agents to be the
means of communicating life.”6 The same
language might be applied, without the altera—
tion of a word, to the origin of species, if it,
were indeed true that new kinds as well as
new individuals were created by being born.
The truth is, that the argument which has so
often been employed to elevate our conception
of the wisdom hid in secondary causes, is an
argument which only gains increasing strength
and force in proportion to the number and
involution of those causes, and to the extent
and scope of their effects. If it does not
diminish, but only augments the wonder of
Organic Life, that it has been so contrived

as to be capable of propagating itself, neither

”’ Charge, 1867.

 

44 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

would it diminish that wonder, but rather
enhance it to an infinite degree, that Organ-
isms should be gifted with the still more
wonderful power of developing Forms of Life
other and higher than their own. So far,
therefore, as belief in a Personal Creator is
concerned, the difficulties in the way of
accepting this hypothesis are not theological.
The difficulties are scientific. The first funda—
mental diflficulty is simply this,-—that all the
theories of Development ascribe to known"
causes unknown effects—unknown as regards
the times in which we now live, and unknown
so far as has hitherto been ascertained
in all the past times of which there is any
record. It is true that this record—the geo-

logical record—is imperfect. But, as Sir

 

THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. 45

 

Roderick Murchison has long ago proved,
there are parts of that record which are
singularly complete, and in those parts we
have the proofs of Creation without any
indication of Development. The Silurian
rocks, as regards Oceanic Life, are perfect
and abundant in the forms they have pre-
served, yet there are no Fish. The Devonian
Age followed, tranquilly, and without a break;
and in the Devonian Sea, suddenly, Fish
appear—appear in shoals, and in forms of the
higliesc and most perfect type. There is no
trace of links or transitional forms between
the great class of Mollusca and the great
class of Fishes. There is no reason whatever
to suppose that such forms, if they had

existed, can have been destroyed in deposits

 

46 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

which have preserved in wonderful perfection
the minutest organisms. So much for the
Past.

As regards the Present, Organisms are
known to reproduce life, but always life which
is like their own. And if this likeness admits
of degrees of difference, the margin of variety
is not known to be ever broad‘enough for
the foundation of a new species. This, too,
is remarkable,—that such margin of variety
as does ever exist among the offspring of the
same parents becomes smaller and smaller in
proportion as we rise in the scale of Organic
Life. That any organism, therefore, can ever
produce another which varies from itself in
any truly specific character, is an assumption

not justified by any known fact. No organism

 

THE THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT. 47

 

is ever seen to exert such a power now.
There are many indications which tend to
show that all organisms have been equally
incapable of modification since the earliest
monuments of Man. There is no proof that
any organism ever did fulfil such functions at
any time. The hypothesis is resorted to
because of the difficulty of conceiving any
method of creation except creation by birth.
But this is no adequate standing-ground for a
scientific theory. It would be well for those
who speculate upon this subject to remember,
that whenever a new species or a new class
of animal has begun to be, something must
have happened which is not in the “ordinary
course of nature,” as known to us. Some-

thing, therefo.¢, must have happened which

v

 

48 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

we have a difficulty, probably an insuperable
difficulty, in conceiving. If, therefore, the
theory of Development can be shown to
involve difficulties of conception which are
quite as great as those which it professes to
remove, then it ceases to have any standing-
ground at all. An hypothesis which escapes
from particular difficulties by encountering
others which are smaller, may be tolerated at
least provisionally. But an hypothesis which,
to avoid an alternative supposed to be incon-
ceivable, adopts another alternative encom-
passed by many difficulties quite as great,
is not entitled even to provisional acceptance.
Now, the difficulties attending the theory of
Development, or of creation by birth. attain

their maximum in the case of Man. Some

 

DIFFICULTIES ATTENDING IT. 49

 

of them are referred to in a cursory manner
by Dr. Whately. Let us examine them ' a
little nearer.

“Man’s place in nature " has long been, and
still is, the grand battle-ground of anatomists
and physiologists; but the points on‘ which
they are disagreed among themselves have
not really any importance . corresponding to
the vehemence with which they have been
disputed. The great French anatomist, Cuvier,
was of opinion that the distinctions between
Man’s organism and the organism of the
highest among the beasts are of such magni-
tude and importance, that the human race
cannot be classified as belonging to the same
“Order” with any other creature, but must be

held to constitute an “ Order” by itself. In

E

 

50 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

our own time Professor Owen holds the same
opinion. Professor Huxley, on the other
hand, has undertaken to prove that the
anatomical differences between the human
frame and the frame of the Gorilla, or Chim-
panzee, are not such, either in kind or in
degree, as to justify this wide distinction.
But he specially limits this conclusion to the
differences of physiology, and confesses that, if
in defining Man we are to take into account
the phenomena of Mind, there is between
Man and those beasts which stand nearest to
him in anatomy, a difference so wide that it
cannot be measured—an “enormous gulf "-—
“a divergence immeasurable ” and “practically
infinite.” But this last conclusion is really

incompatible with the first. Thcre is m

574uazrw .— j/Mr/fér-e 91/17”.

 

MIND CORRELATED WITH ORGANIZATION. SI

 

inseparable connection between the phenomena _

of Mind and the phenomena of Organization.
They must be taken together, and be inter-
preted together. .The structure of every
creature is correlated with the functions which
its several parts are fitted to discharge; and
the mental character, dispositions, and instincts
off the creature are again strictly correlated
with these functions. We must accept from
anatomists all the facts which anatomy can
teach; but the value to be placed on these
facts is a very different question. All
classification is ideal, and depends on the
relative value to be placed on facts which are
in themselves indisputable. On this question
of the comparative value of anatomical facts
we have other facts to go by which do not

E2

 

52 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

. belong to the science of Physiology. Nature
is her own interpreter, and her evidence is
clear. Whatever may be the anatomical
difference between Man and the Gorilla, that
difference is the equivalent, in physical orga-
nization, of the whole mental difference between
a Gorilla and a Man. This is the measure
of value which Nature has set upon the kind
and degree of divergence which separates these ‘
two Material Forms. Any other measure of
value which may be set on that divergence
must be founded on an arbitrary and partial
selection among the facts of which all sound
classification must take account. Imperfect
as all existing systems of classification are,
they are not so bad in the case of any group

of the lower animals as to separate organs

 

CUVIER’s CLASSIFICATION. 53

 

from the functions they discharge, and from
the mental habits which peculiarities of struc-
ture merely represent, embody, and subserve.
Although the resemblances which have been
seized upon for the purpose of grouping
together a certain number of animals into
Classes, or Families, or Orders, have been
for the most part resemblances arbitrarily
selected, and have borne no consistent refer-
ence to any one standard of comparison
throughout the creatures to be arranged,
yet those resemblances have not been so
arbitrary nor so fallacious as to join
together in one common “Order” animals
separated from each other in powers and
habits by an impassable gulf. Of the eight

“Orders” (exclusive of Man) into which Cuvier

 

54 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

divided all the animals whose young are
suckled (Mammalz'a), one is distinguished from
the others by the prehensile character of
both feet and hands (Quadrztmana); another
Order is distinguished by the nature of its
food (Carizivora); the third is distinguished
by peculiarities in the production of the young
(Marsupialia); the fourth and fifth are distin-
guished by the nature of their teeth (Rodmtia
and Edentata); the sixth are distinguished by
the texture of their skin (Pat/zydermata);
the seventh by peculiarities of the digestive
system- (Rumz'nantz'a); and the last by the
fish-like form and fish-like habitat of the
Whales and Dugongs (Cetacm). Now, although
it is obvious that no one principle of classifi-

cation is consistently adhered to in this system,

 

MAN AND THE CHIMPANZEE. 5:

 

—although there is no common standard
to which they are all referred,—yet, as a
matter of fact, the peculiarities chosen are not
only the most salient and the most character-
istic peculiarities of the animals as a whole, -
but they are connected with others which run
through the whole organism, and with some
corresponding similarities of instinct and dis-
position. But no such defence can be offered
for the system which groups Man in the same
Order with the Chimpanzee or the Ourang-
outang, upon the ground merely that the
limbs 0t those animals are terminated by
organs which are anatomically “true feet and

true hands ; ”

or because they have the same
number of teeth; or because the same primary

divisions exist in the structure of the brain.

 

56 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

‘The difference between the hand of a monkey
and the'hand of a man may seem small when
they are both placed on the dissecting table;
but in that difference, whatever it may be, lies
the whole difference between an organ limited
to the climbing of trees or the plucking of
fruit, and an organ which is so correlated with
man’s inventive genius that by its aid the Earth
is weighed, and the distance of the Sim is
measured. In like manner let us assume it
to be true that the difference between the
brain of Man and the brain of the Gorilla
may be reduced to a difi’erence of volume,
to that visible difl'erence alone, and even as
regards volume to a difference in quantity
comparatively small. “Cranial capacity ” is

measured by the cubic inches of space which '

 

CRANIAL CAPACITY. 57

 

a skull contains. Professor Huxley tells us,*
on the authority of Professor Schaafhausen,
that some Hindu skulls have as small a
capacity as 46 cubic inches, whilst the largest
Gorilla yet measured contained upwards of 35
cubic inches. This represents a difference of
volume of less than II cubic inches. But
the difference between this Hindu skull and
the largest European skull (114 cubic inches)
amounts, according to the same authority, to
no less than 68 cubic inches. Nevertheless
the significance set by the facts of nature
upon that difference of 11 cubic inches
between the Gorilla and the Man, is the
difference between an irrational brute confined

to some one climate and to some limited area

Lyell’s " Antiquity of Man," p. 84.

 

5i PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

of the globe,———which no outward conditions can
modify or improve,—and 3. Being equally
adapted to the whole habitable world, with
powers, however undeveloped, of comparison,
of reflection, of judgment, of reason, with a
sense of right and wrong,—-and with all these
capable of accumulated acquisition, and there-
fore of indefinite advance. It is not true to
affirm that these characteristics stand wholly
apart—separated by an “enormous gulf ”-—
from his physical organization. There is an
.adjustment between these peculiarities of Mind
and the special peculiarities of his Frame as
nice, and as obvious to sense and reason, as
there is between the ferocious disposition of a
Tiger and his powerful claws, or between the

retractile' character of these and his soft and

INCONSISTENCY OF ANATOMISTS. 59

 

stealthy tread. When anatomists object to
erect a separate “Order” for Man on the
plea that it is an attempt to reconcile two
different orders of ideas,——namely, ideas of ana-
tomical structure, and ideas of mental power,—
they are simply refusing to place that value
on anatomical differences which nature puts
on them. They find no similar difficulty as
regards other animals in co-ordinating ana-
tomical structure with mental powers and
instincts. The canine teeth of the Carnivora
stand in close and consistent relation with
'their dispositions. The prehensile character
of the feet or tail in monkeys is a true and
adequate expression of their arboreal habits;
and the small and simple brains of the

Marsupials (Kangaroos, &c.) are strictly cor-

 

60 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

related with their low intelligence. We may
not—and we do not—understand how these
phenomena of Matter and of Mind are thus
dependent on each other; but as a fact we
see that this dependence is universal, and the
distinctions which we found on anatomical
structure have their value corroborated and
confirmed by close and inseparable corre-
spondences of instinct and intelligence. Man
is no exception whatever to this universal
law; and any system of classification which
places a value on his anatomical peculiarities,
separating by an impassable gulf between his
Body and his Mind, is a system altogether
inconsistent with philosophy. The value set
upon any given anatomical peculiarity, or

group of peculiarities, in a-sound system of

 

SOUNDNESS OF OWEN'S ARGUMENT. 6!

 

classification, ought evidently to correspond as
nearly as possible with the value assigned to
those peculiarities in the system of nature.
The significance of any anatomical feature
hinges on the number 'and variety of other
peculiarities to which it stands related. Pro-
fessor Owen’s argument is therefore clearly
sound in p'rinciple,—that the “consequences”
of any such peculiarity must be considered in
estinhting its systematic value. Take the
case of the differences, anatomically small,
which distinguish the arms of Man from the
arms of a monkey “ The consequences,”
says Professor Owen, “of the liberation of one
I pair of limbs from all service in station and
progression, due to the extreme modification

of the other pair for the exclusive discharge

 

62 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

of those functions, are greater, and involve a
superior number and quality of powers than
those resulting from the change of an ‘ungu—
late’ (hoofed, one of Cuvier’s sub-class divisions)
into an ‘unguiculate,’ or claw-bearing, condi-
tion of limb, and they demand therefore an
equivalent value in a zoological system.”
Accordingly, Professor Owen has attempted
to found a system of classification on the
degrees of cerebral development, as being the
anatomical feature which on the whole stands
in the most governing relation to other
peculiarities of structure. This proposal has
been vehemently. contested; but the contest
seems to have turned on a point not really
vital to the question. Objectors do but aim

at proving that all the leading divisions in the

 

OWEN’s CLASSIFICATION. 63

 

brain of Man exist also in the brain of
monkeys; and thus, that the difference is
reduced to one of volume or quantity alone.
But this difference of quantity, relative to the
size of the organism, even if no other can
be detected by the knife, is correlated with
a whole host of other anatomical peculiarities
which span the whole breadth of the chasm
that yawns between the brutes and Man.
These peculiarities must be tallen as a whole,
in their assemblage, and in their actual
connection. The size of Brain is but the
index of many other differences, all! closely
related to one Purpose, and contributing to
one result. It is no answer to this argument
to say that an equal amount, or even a

greater amount, of difference in mere bulk is

 

64 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

found to exist between the lowest and the
highest human brain, because the fact with
which we have to deal is this, that a certain
minimum quantity of that mysterious sub-
stance is constantly and uniformly associated
.with all the other anatomical peculiarities
of Man. Below that minimum the whole
accompanying structure undergoes far more
than a corresponding change,—even the whole
change between the lowest Savage and the
highest Ape. Above that minimum, all
subsequent variations in quantity are accom-
panied by no changes whatever in physical
structure. In placing, therefore, a high value
—a value in classification of Order, or even
of Class—upon the eleven cubic inches of

brain—space which lie between the Hindu and

 

CHASM BETWEEN MAN AND ANIMALS. 65

 

the Gorilla, when .we place no such value on
the sixty—eight cubic inches which lie between
the Hindu and Sir Isaac Newton, we are but
accepting the evidence of Nature—following
where she leads, and classifying according to
her award.

The bearing of this conclusion on thc‘I
Origin of Man is simply this, that in
proportion as the difference between Man
and the lower animals is properly appreciated
in the light of nature, in the same proportion
will the difficulty increase of conceiving how
the chasm could be passed by any process
of Transmutation or Development. J

This difficulty is still further increased if
we advert for a moment to the direction in

which the human frame diverges from the

F

 

66 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

structure of the brutes. It diverges in the
direction of greater physical helplessness and
weakness. That is to say, it is a divergence
which of all others it is most impossible to
ascribe to mere “Natural Selection.” The
unclothed and unprotected condition of the
human body, its comparative slowness of foot,
the absence of teethadapted for prehension or
for defence, the same want of power for similar
purposes in the hands. and fingers, the blunt-
ness of the sense'ioiillsmell, such as to render
it useless for the detection of prey which is
concealed,——all these are features which stand
in strict and harmonious relation to the mental
powers of Man. But, apart from these, they
would place him at an immense disadvantage

in the struggle for existence. This, therefore,

 

LUBBOCK’S PROGENITOR OF MAN. 67

 

is not the direction in which the blind forces
of Natural Selection could ever work. The
creature “not worthy to be called a man,” to
whom Sir I. Lubbock has referred as the pro-
genitor of Man, was, ex fiypoz‘lzesz', deficient in
those mental capacities which now distinguish
the lowest of the human race. To exist at
all, this creature must have been more animal
in its structure; it must have had bodily
powers and organs more like those of the
beasts. The continual improvement and per-‘
fection of these would be the direction 9! ‘2 RC‘
variation most favourable to the continuance '
of the species. These could not be modified
in the direction of greater weakness without
inevitable destruction, until first by the gift
of reason and of mental capacities of con-

F2

 

68 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

trivance, there had been established an
adequate preparation for the change. The
loss of speed or of climbing power which is
involved in the fore-arms becoming useless for
locomotion, could not be incurred with safety
until the brain was ready to direct a hand.
The foot could not be allowed to part with
its prone or prehensile character until the
powers of reason and reflection had been pro-
vided to justify, as it now explains, the erect
position and the upward gaze. And so through
all the innumerable modifications of form
which are the peculiarities of Man, and which
stand in indissoluble union with his capacities
of thought. The lowest degree of intelligence
which is now possessed by the lowest Savage,

is not more than enough to compensate him

 

AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINES. 69

 

for the weakness of his frame, or to enable
him to maintain successfully the struggle for
existence. With many Savages it is a hard
struggle, despite senses of sight and hearing
trained by necessity so as almost to approach a
the instincts of the lower animals; despite
also all those powers of reasoning which,
however low, are yet peculiar to himself, and
separate him, as is confessed, by an impassable
gulf from the highest of the beasts. Many
of the Aborigines of Australia could do no
more at times than support a precarious
existence by scraping up roots, and- eating
snakes and other reptiles. The rotten blubber
of a dead whale cast upon the beach was,
and is often, not only a luxury and a feast,

‘mt deliverance from actual starvation. Sir

 

7O PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

J.‘ Lubbock’s theory is, that in these Savages
we see something rather above than under
the primitive condition of Mankind. But it
may be safely said that a very small
diminution of mental capacity below that of
an Australian Savage, would render Man’s
characteristic structure incompatible with the
maintenance of his existence in most, if not
in all, of the countries where he is actually
found. If that frame was once more bestial,
it may have been better adapted for a bestial
existence. But it is impossible to conceive
how it could ever have emerged from that
existence by virtue of Natural Selection. Man
‘must have had human proportions of mind
:(Ebefore he could afford to lose bestial pro-

portions of body. If the change in mental

 

THE THEORY OF TRANSMUTATION. 71

 

power came simultaneously with the change
in physicalorganization, then it was all that
we can ever know or understand of a new
creation. There is no ground whatever for
supposing that ordinary generation has been
the agency employed, seeing that no effects
similar in kind are ever produced by that
agency, so far as is known to us. The theory
of Transmutation in all its forms, even as
applied to the lower animals, is exposed to '
many difficulties greater than those which it
professes to remove. But as applied to Man,
those difficulties are accumulated to an in-
calculable degree. Most of them, too, are
altogether of a special kind, because the
divergence which ordinary generation is sup-

posed to have produced in the case of Man is

 

72 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

a divergence, to use Professor Huxley's words,
“immeasurable—practically infinite.”

It needs only to be added to this sketch,
that such as Man now is, Man, so far as we
yet know, has always been. Two skeletons
at least have been found respecting which
there is strong ground for believing that they
belong to the very earliest human race which
lived in Northern Europe. I defer any refer-
ence to the probable epoch of time when
those skeletons were clothed with flesh and
blood. This belongs to the next division of
our subject, which is the Antiquity as
distinguished from the Origin of Man.
Suffice it here to say that although one of
those skeletons indicates a coarse, perhaps

even what we should call—as we might fairly

 

ANCIENT SKELETONS. 73

 

call some living specimens of our race—a
brutal man, yet even this skeleton is in all
its proportions strictly human. Its cranial
capacity indicates a volume of brain, and
some peculiarities of shape not materially 3‘ /
different from many skulls of Savage races:
now living. The other skeleton, respecting
which the evidence of extreme antiquity is
the strongest, is not only perfectly human
in all its proportions, but its skull has a
cranial capacity not inferior to that of many
modern Europeans. This most ancient of all
known human skulls is so ample in its
dimensions that it might have contained the
brains of a philosopher; So conclusive is
this evidence against any change whatever in

the specific characters of Man since the oldest

 

74 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

Human Being yet known was born, that
Professor Huxley pronounces it to be clearly
indicated “that the first traces of the
primordial stock whence Man has proceeded
need no longer be sought, by those who
entertain any form of the doctrine of
progressive development, in the newest ter-
tiaries,”—(that is, in the oldest deposit yet
known to contain human remains at all.)
“But,” he adds, “they may be looked for in
an epoch more distant from the age of those
tertiaries than that is from us.” So far,
therefore, the evidence is on the side of the
originality of Man as a. species, nay, even
V as a Class by himself, separated by a gulf
practically immeasurable from all the crea—

* Lyell, “Antiquity of Man,” p. 89.

 

MAN AN ORIGINAL SPECIES. 75

 

tures that are, or' that are known ever to
have been, his contemporaries in the world.
In possession of this ground, we can wait
for such further evidence in favour of Trans-
mutation as may be brought to light.
Meanwhile at least we are entitled to remain
incredulous, remembering, as Professor Phillips
has said, that “everywhere we are required
by the hypothesis to look somewhere else;
which may fairly be interpreted to signify
that the hypothesis everywhere fails. in the
first and most important step. How is it
conceivable that the second stage should be

everywhere preserved, but the first nowhere?”

* “Life—the Origin and Succession,” by Professor John

Phillips.

PART III.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

IN passing from the subject of Man’s Origin

to the subject of his Antiquity, we pass
from almost total darkness to a question
which is comparatively accessible to reason_
and open to research. Evidence bearing upon
this question may be gathered along several
different walks of science, and these are all
found tending in one direction, and pointing to
one general result. First comes the evidence

of History, embracing under that name all

 

VARIETY OF THE EVIDENCE. 77

 

literature, whether it professes to record events,
or does no more than allude to them in
poetry and song. Then comes Archaeology,
the evidence of Human Monuments, belonging
to times or races whose voice, though not
silenced, has become inarticulate to us.
Piecing on to this evidence, comes that
which Geology has recently afforded from
human remains associated with the latest
physical changes on the surface and in the
climates of the globe. Then comes the evi-
dence of Language, founded on the facts of
Human Speech, and the laws which regulate
its development and growth. And lastly,
there is the evidence afforded by the existing
physical structure, and the existing geogra-

phical distribution of the various Races of

 

78 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

Mankind. According as we may have made
one or other of these great branches of inquiry
our favourite pursuit, we may be disposed
to place a different estimate on their com—
parative value. But perhaps we shall not go
far wrong if we arrange them in the order
here given, as the order in which they stand
relatively to the .directness and certainty of
the testimony they afford.

One distinction, however, it is important
to bear in mind. Chronology is of two kinds,
——first, Time measurable by years,—and
secondly, Time measurable .only by an
ascert‘ained order or succession of events.
The one may be called Time-absolute, the
other Time-relative. Now, among all the

sciences which afford us evidence on the

 

TWO KINDS OF CHRONOLOGY. 79

 

Antiquity of Man, one, and one only, gives
us any knowledge of Time-absolute; and
that is History. From all the others we can
gather only the less definite information of
Time-relative. They can tell us of nothing
more than of the-order in which certain events
took place. But of the length of interval
between those events, neither Archaeology, nor
Geology, nor Ethnology can tell us anything.
Even History, that is, the records of Written
Documents, carries us back to times of which
no contemporary account remains, and the
distance of which in years from any known
epoch is, and must be, a‘ matter of con-
jecture. No other history than the Hebrew
History even professes to go back to the

Creation of Man, or to give any account of

 

So PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

the events which connect existing generations
with the first Progenitor of their Race. And
of that History, the sole object appears to be,
to give in outline the order of such transac—
tions as had a special bearing on Religious
Truth, and on the course of Spiritual Belief.
The intimations given in the earlier chapters
of the Book of Genesis on all matters of
purely secular interest, are incidental only,
and exceedingly obscure. And yet it is not
a total silence. Enough is said to indicate
how much there lay beyond and outside 'of the
narrative which is given. The dividing of the
Tribes of the Gentiles among the descendants
of Japhethf“ conveys the idea of movements
and operations which probably occupied long

' Gen. x. 2. 5.

 

GENEALOGY 0F SHEM. Sr

 

intervals of time, and many generations of
men. The same impression must arise from
the condensed abstract given of the origin
and growth of communities capable of
building such cities as Resen and Calah
and Nineveh are described to be.* In the.
genealogy of the family of Shem, we have
a list of names, which are names and nothing
more to usT It is a genealogy which neither
does, nor professes to do, more than to trace
the order of succession among a few families
only out of the millions then already existing
in the world. Nothing but this order of
succession is given, nor is it at all certain
that this order is consecutive or complete.
Nothing is told us of all that lay behind

* Gen. x. u, 12.

G

 

82 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

that curtain of thick darkness, in front of
which these names are made to pass. And
yet there are, as it were, momentary liftings,
through which we have glimpses of great
movements which were going on, and had
long been going on, beyond. No shapes are
distinctly seen. Even the direction of those
movements can be only guessed. But voices
are heard which are as the voices of many
nations. The very first among the descen-
dants of Noah whose individuality and
personality is clear to us,——the very first
whose doings can be brought into relation
with events otherwise known or recognizable
in the. History of Man,—is introduced in a
manner which reveals the fact that different

races of the human family had then already

 

ABRAHAM. 83

 

been long established and widely spread.
The memorable and mysterious journey
which brought Terah into Haran on his
way to Canaanfi‘E was a journey beginning
in that ancient home, Ur, already known as
“of the Chaldees.” And when the great
figure of his son Abraham appears upon
the scene, we find ourselves already in the
presence of the 'Monarchy of Egypt, and
of the advanced civilization of the Pharaohs.
In the same narrative, on another side,
we come into the presence of one of
those great military Kingdoms of the East
which in succession occupy so large a space
in the history of the ancient world. Chedor—
laomer, with his tributary Princes, was then
’rGen. xi. 31.

6'2

 

84 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

the ruler of nations capable of waging wars
of conquest at great distances from the seat
of their government, and the centre of their
power. We see in him therefore the Sovereign
of a longJestablished and powerful race. And
yet these migrations and wars of Abraham
stand, if not at the very beginning of
History, at least at the very beginning of
Historical Chronology. They mark the very
earliest date in the history of Man, on
which, within moderate limits of discrepancy,
all chronologists are agreed. That date may
be fixed at 2,000 B.C. This is the boundary,
in looking backwards, of Time-absolute: All
beyond, is Time-relative. We have, indeed,
other evidence of an historical character to

show that the Monarchy of Egypt had been

 

‘ THE EGYPTIAN MONARCHY. S

U|

 

founded long before the time of Abraham.
But how long, is a question on which there
is the widest discrepancy of opinion. The
most moderate computation, however, carries
the foundation of that Monarchy as far back
. as 700 years before the visit of the Hebrew
Patriarch. Some of the best German
scholars hold that there is evidence of a
much longer chronology. But seven centuries
before -Abraham is the estimate of Mr. R.
Stuart Poole, of the British Museum, who is
one of the very highest authorities, and
certainly the most cautious, upon questions
of Egyptian chronology. This places the
beginning of the Pharaohs in the twenty-
eighth century BC. But according to Ussher’s

interpretation of the Hebrew Pentateuch, the

 

86 PRIMEVAL MAN.

0

 

twenty-eighth century BC. would be some
400 years before the Flood. On the other
hand, a difference of 800 years is allowed
by the chronology which is founded on the
Septuagint Version of the Scriptures. But
the fact of this difference tells. in two ways.
A margin of variation amounting to eight
centuries between two versions of the same
document, is a variation so enormous, that
it seems to cast complete doubt on the
whole system of interpretation on which such
computations of time are based. And yet
it is more than questionable whether it is
possible to reconcile the known order of
events with even this larger estimate of the
number of years. It is true that, according

to this larger estimate, the Flood would be

 

CHEDORLAOMER. S7

 

carried back about four and a half centuries
beyond the beginning of the Pharaohs. But '
is this enough? The founding of a Monarchy
is not the beginning of a race. The people
amongst whom such Monarchies arose must
have grown and gathered during many
generations. Nor is it in regard to the
peopling of Egypt alone that this difficulty
meets us in the face. The existence in the
days of Abraham of such an organized
government as that of Chedorlaomer, shows
that 2,000 years B.C. there flourished in Elam.
beyond Mesopotamia, a nation which even
now would be ranked among “the Great
Powers.” And if nations so great had thus
arisen, altogether unnoticed in the Hebrew

narrative—if we are left to gather as best

 

83 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

we may from other sources, all our know-
ledge of their origin and growth, how much
more is this true of far distant lands over
which the advancing tide of human population
had rolled, or was then rolling its mysterious
wave? If the most ancient and the most
sacred literature in the world tells us so
little of the early history of the men who
lived and flourished on the banks of the
Euphrates, the Tigris, or the Nile, what
information. can we expect to find in it
respecting those who were probably already
settled on the Indus and the Ganges, or
were spreading along the banks of the
Brahmaputra and of the Yellow River?
What of those tribes who were following

the Volga and the Oxus, or the Danube

 

LONGER CHRONOLOGY NECESSARY. £59

 

and the Rhine? What of that vast Continent
whose secrets are being revealed at last only
in our own day—the Continent of Africa?
When and how did that Negro Race begin,
which is both one of the most ancient and
one of the most strongly marked among the
varieties of Man? And what again can we
learn from Genesis of the peopling of the New
World? When did Man first come upon the
inland seas of America, and follow the great
rivers which fall into the Gulf of Mexico?
It is not possible to suppose that some
450 years before the foundation of the Egyp-
tian Monarchy is a period long enough to
account even for the few facts which are
implied in the Mosaic narrative itself, respect-

ing the dispersion and geographical distribution

 

90 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

of Mankind. And to those facts must be
added others resting on evidence which is still
\historical. There is another civilization which
appears to have been almost as ancient as
that of Egypt, and which has been far more
enduring. The authentic records of the
Chinese Empire are said to begin in the
twenty-fourth century B.C.——that is, more
than 300’ years before the time of Abraham.*
They begin, too, apparently with a Kingdom
already established, with a capital city, and
with a settled government-l- Yet this civili-

zation first appears at the farthest extremity

‘ “The Chinese ;” G. T. T. Meadows, p. 34.

1' Since this passage was published I have been favoured with
an interesting letter from the Rev. James Legge, who has spent
many years as a Missionary in China1 and has published

valuable editions of the Historical works of the Chinese.

 

CHINESE HISTORY. ()1

 

of Asia, separated by many thousands of
miles, and by some of the most impassable
regions of the world, from the cradle of the
Human Race, and from the country where
Noah and his family were saved. Such facts
seem to point to one or other of two con-
clusions—either that the Flood must have
happened at a period in the history of Man
vastly earlier than any that has been usually
supposed, or else that the Flood destroyed
only a small portion of the Human Family.
That the Deluge affected only a small portion
It is this gentleman’s opinion that the Chinese Tribe was only
beginning to grow into a kingdom about 2,000 B.C. and,
that 1,200 years later, the kingdom did not extend nearly so
far south as the Yang-tsze river. The general conclusion to
which these dates point, is not, I think, materially affected

by this somewhat shortened estimate of Chinese Historical

Chronology.

 

92 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

of the globe which is now habitable is almost
certain. But this is quite a different thing
from supposing that the Flood affected only
a small portion of the world which was then
inhabited. The wide, if not the universal
prevalence among the heathen nations, of a
tradition preserving the memory of some
such great catastrophe, has always been con-
sidered to indicate recollection carried by
descent from the surv1ving few. And this
tradition seems to be curiously strong and
definite among tribes which are now separated
by half the circumference of the globe
from the region affected by the Flood. At
all events this is clear, that the difficulty of
reconciling the narrative of Genesis with an

indefinitely older date is a very small diffi-

 

AREA OF THE FLOOD.

\3
(a)

 

. culty indeed, as compared with the difficulty
of reconciling it with a very limited destruc-
tion of the Human Race. The evidence for
a higher antiquity of Man is derived from
countries in comparatively close proximity
with those which, under any possible supposi-
tion as to the area of a Deluge, must have
been then submerged. On the other hand,
we have seen how utterly uncertain and
how enormously different are the chronologies
which profess to be founded on the Penta-
teuch. They all involve suppositions as to
the principle of interpretation, and as to
the import of words descriptive of descent,
which are in the highest degree doubtful,
and which it is evident cannot be applied

consistently throughout. Thus, when we

 

9.]. FRIMEVAL MAN.

 

read“ of Canaan, the grandson of Noah, that.
he “begat Sidon, his firstborn, and Heth,” we
seem to have the names of individual men;
but, when it is immediately added that he
also “begat the Jebusite, and the Amorite,
and the Girgasite, and the Hivite, and the
Arkite, and the Sinite,” &c. &c., it is clear that
we are dealing not with single generations, but
with a condensed abstract of the origin and
growth of Tribes. No definite information
is given in such abstracts as to the lapse of
time. The chronology of changes not specially
included in the narrative, can only be gathered
from the general character of the events
described. And that general character is such
as fully to corroborate the evidence we have

'_Gen. x. 15—18.

 

A TWILIGHT TIME. 95

 

from other sources—that long before the Call
of Abraham, that is to say, long before the
twentieth century B.C., the Human Race had
been increasing and multiplying on the earth
from such ancient days that in many regions,
far removed from the centre of their dis-
persion, great nations had arisen, powerful and
civilized governments had been establishedf
So far, then, we have the light of History
shining with comparative elearness over a
period of 2,000 years before the Christian
era. Beyond that we have a twilight tract
of time which may be roughly estimated at
700 years—a period of time lying in the
dawn of History, at the very beginning
of which we can dimly see that there were

already Kings and Princes on the earth.

 

96 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

But this is the outer margin of Time-absolute.
No farther, with even an approximation
to the truth, can we measure the order of
events by the lapse of years.

I But there is a point at which the evidence
of Archaeology begins before the evidence of
History has closed. There is a border-land
where both kinds of evidence are found to-
gether, or rather, _where some testimony
exists of which it is difficult to say whether
it is the testimony of written documents or
of the inarticulate monuments of Man. It
was the habit of one of the most ancient
nations in the world to record all events in
the form of pictorial representation. Their
domestic habits, their foreign wars, their

religious beliefs, are thus all presented to

 

ORIGIN OF RACES. 97

 

the eye. And one of the questions on which
this testimony bears is a. question of para-
mount importance in determining the anti-
quity of the Human Family. That question
is not the rise of Kingdoms, but the
origin of Races. The varieties of Man
are a great mystery. The physical dif-
ferences which these varieties involve may
be indeed, and often are, much exaggerated.
Yet, these differences are distinct, and we
are naturally impelled to ask When and How
did they begin? These are two separate
questions; but the one bears upon the other.
The question When stands before the ques-
tion How. The fundamental problem to be
solved is this: Can such varieties have
descended from a single stock? And if

H

 

98 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

they can, then must not a vast and indefi-
nite lapse of time have been occupied in
the gradual development of divergent types?
On this question we have no datum on
which to reason, unless we can ascertain
how far back in Time—absolute these diVCr-
gences had already become established.
Now, this is the datum which Egypt gives
us. In one of the most perfect of the
paintings which have been preserved to us,
a great Egyptian monarch is symbolically
represented as ruling with the power of
life and death over subject races: and these
are depicted with accurate and characteristic
likeness. Conspicuous in this group is one
figure, painted to the life both in form and

colour, which proves that the race which

 

THE NEGRO. 99

 

l

departs most widely. from the European
type, had then acquired exactly the same
characters which mark it in the present day.
The Negro kneels at the feet of Sethos I.,
in the same attitude of bondage and sub-
mission which typifies only too faithfully
the enduring servitude of his race. The
blackness of colour, the woolliness of hair,
the flatness of nose, the projection of the
lips, which are so familiar to us,—all these
had been fully established and developed
thus early in the known history of the
world. And this was about 1,400 years
before the Christian era—that is to say,
more than 3,200 years ago. I am informed
by Professor Lepsius (through the kindness
of Mr. Poole) that there are some still

112

 

IOO PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

earlier representations of the Negro—referable
to the “Twelfth Dynasty,” or to about
1,900 BC. In these it is curious that the
Negro colour is strongly marked, but not the
Negro feature. This, however, may be due to
the unskilfulness of early art, or to the fact,
too often forgotten, that some African tribes
——as, for example, the Nubians—have not the
low flat nose or the projecting lips. Nor
is this the whole evidence afforded by the
Egyptian pictures. At periodsnot much later
in the history, we have elaborate representa-
tions of battles with Negro nations,——represen-
tations which go far to show that the race
was then, more able to maintain a contest
with other races than it has ever been in

recent times. And of this a further proof

 

MR. BONOMI’S DRAWINGS. 101

 

is to be found in the fact, that at a period

 

at least 7,000 years B.C.——that is about the

 

102 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

time of Abraham—mention is made in hiero-
glyphic writings of Black or Negro troops
being raised by an Egyptian king, to assist
him in the prosecution of a great war.*
Since, then, the Negro race was already,
in the days of Abraham, just what it is
now, what is the time we must allow for
the development of this variety of Man,
supposing it to have descended from a
common stock? We have absolutely no
measurement of time by which to estimate
the growth of such varieties. We know
that changes of climate and of food do
* Drawings by the skilful hands of Mr. Bonomi are given
on p. 101 and on the Frontispiece in illustration of the facts stated
in the text. They are taken from an Egyptian temple at

Beyt-el-Welee, in Nubia, of the reign of Rameses II., son

and successor of Sethos I.

 

THE ELEMENTS OF COLOUR. m3

 

produce upon Mankind some modifications of
colour, and of features. But we know also
that such changes are extremely slow.
Colour is in all the lower animals one of
the least constant—that is to say, one of
the most variable,—-—of external characters;
and under circumstances of domestication
changes of colour are sometimes sudden,
and are connected with causes altogether
unknown. But we have no evidence to
show that human colour is liable to changes
of a like kind. On the contrary, all ex-
perience seems to point to the conclusion

that varieties of complexion can only be

established very gradually, and we have no [A
absolute proof that a change from white @flf‘lfl.
w

to negro blackness is possible at all. A w

 

104 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

|very able and ingenious writer, whose work
is unfortunately anonymous,* but whose
opinions are endorsed by the high authority
of Mr. Poole, has assumed that'this change
is not within the compass of any natural
causes; and cannot be accounted _ for by
any lapse of time. On this as well as on
other grounds he adopts the theory that
Adam was the progenitor of the white
races only; and that before the creation of
Adam, the Black Race had been established
in the Continent of Africa. He maintains
that in the Mosaic narrative, contrary to
the usual interpretation, there are clear indi-
cations of the existence of pre-Adamite
races. This theory undoubtedly explains

* “ Genesis of the Earth and of Man.”

 

“SONS OF GOD.” 105

 

one passage in Genesis, which seems other-
wise wholly unintelligible, namely, that in
which mention is made. of unions between
the “Sons of God ” and the daughters of
men. Our author affirms that for the “Sons
of God” we ought to substitute as the true
meaning in the original, “the servants of
the gods,” or in other words the idolatrous
races of the world. In like manner the
daughters of men should be translated, “the
daughters of the Adamite.” The passage
would thus refer to intermarriages between
the children of Adam and the pre-existing
idolatrous nations of the world. It is true also
that this theory would remove or diminish
some other difficulties attending the received

interpretation. But on the other hand the

 

106 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

Unity of Mankind is so deeply interwoven
with the fundamental doctrines of Chris-
tianity, as hitherto universally understood,
that the new difficulties raised 'are far greater
than those which would be thus removed.
No doubt it may be said that the Unity of
Mankind as a species, does not necessarily
depend upon descent from a single pair; and
it is true that this Unity is a matter of fact
which cannot under any hypothesis be
denied; because we know that the barrier
of hybrid barrenness which nature sets
against the mixture of different species
does not impede the amalgamation of even
the most diverse varieties of Man. It is there-
fore certain that in this sense, which involves

the full possession of a common nature, “God

 

DESCENT FROM A SINGLE PAIR. 107

 

hath made of one blood all nations of men
{or to dwell on all the face of the earth.” It
is of course conceivable that this full com-
munity of nature may have been given by the
Creator to two or more original pairs. But all
the evidence of science tends to the conclusion
that each well-marked species has spread from
some one centre of creation, and presumably
from a single pair. There is no clashing
between this evidence and the testimony
of Revelation as that testimony has hitherto
been interpreted. Strongly marked as the
varieties of Man now are, the variation is
strongest in respect to colour, which in all
organisms is notoriously the most liable to
modification and to change. And in this

feature of colour it is remarkable that we

 

108 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

have every possible variety of tint from the
fairest tO-the blackest races, so that the one
extreme passes into the other by small and
insensible gradations. As regards structure,
the differences between different varieties
of Man are comparatively trifling, and it
I may safely be affirmed that all the efforts
'of anatomists and physiologists who have
been most determined to magnify every
point of variation, have utterly failed to
render it impossible or improbable that all
men have had a common ancestor. But in
exact proportion as we hold to this conclu-
sion as the only satisfactory explanation of
the Unity of Man, must we be prepared
to accept the high probability, if not the cer-

tainty, of the very great antiquity of the Race.

 

EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE. 109

 

Next comes the science of Language, of
which those who have made it a special study
affirm, that it affords the most conclusive
evidence of all, that the articulate voice of
Man has been sounding in the world during
vast though indefinite periods of time. “The
evidence of language,” says Professor Max
Muller, “is irrefragable, and it is the only
evidence worth listening to with regard to
ante-historical periods.” And what does this
evidence go to prove? Let us take one

’

example. “There was a time,’ says the same
author, “when the ancestors of the Celts, the
Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and
Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living

together beneath the same roof—separate

from the ancestors of the Semitic (Hebrew)

 

IIO PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

and Turanian races.” The principle on
which the evidence of language is interpreted
is very simple. The sounds or words by
which men designate things are for the most
part arbitrary, and therefore conventional.
The sign and the thing signified have no
natural or necessary connection. The names
of a very few animals may be imitations of
their voice. No argument, for example, could
be founded on the word Cuckoo being used
by the most diverse tribes to designate a bird
which sounds these two syllables in its cry.
But such cases are very rare even in the
names of beasts. Wherever the same thing is
denoted by the same word, and where there

is no natural connection between them, there

‘ “ Chips from a. German Workshop,” vol. i. pp. 63, 64.

 

MAX MULLERfis CONCLUSIONS. III

 

must have been once a common under-
standing amongst men who dwelt together, as
to the meaning of that sound. And when
this common understanding is found to affect
the nearest relationships of life, and the
animals domesticated in primeval times, the
evidence of ancient consanguinity is complete.
In this case “the terms for God, for house,
for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and
cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree,
identical in all the Indo—Germanic words, are
like the watchwords of soldiers.” But when
was it that the fathers of nations now so far
apart as Germans and Hindus were living
together under one roof? This is a question
which, in the terms of Time-absolute. no

man can answer. Only we know that before

 

112 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

the time of Abraham the languages of those
great leading stocks must have been nearly
as far apart as they are now. Professor Max
Muller'is of opinion that to the Hymns of
the Vedas a later date cannot be assigned
than 1,200 B.C. Homer and Hesiod are in all
probability referable to a later date, but not
so much later as to cast any doubt on the
conclusion that both Greek and Sanskrit were
then perfectly developed. Those who have
studied the growth of languages, and the
mysterious laws by which that growth is
regulated, are lost in conjecture as to the
lapse of time which may probably have been
required to account for the wonderful creations
of Human Speech.

Next comes the evidence of Geology, which

EVIDENCE OF GEOLOGY. 113

 

only in very recent years has been found to
'speak with any distinctness upon the question
of Man’s Antiquity. Not that there is any
change in the general bearing of that evidence
as it stood before. There is none whatever.
The evidence of Geology has always been,
that among all the creatures which have in
succession been formed to-live upon this
earth, and to enjoy it, Man is the latest born.
This great fact is still the fundamental truth
in the History of Creation: that history, as
Geology has revealed it, has been a history
of successive Creations, and of successive‘
Destructions,—Old Forms of Life perishing,
and New Forms appearing, so that the whole
face of nature has been many times renewed.
But until very lately it was supposed that '

I

 

114 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

these vast cycles of change had’been finally
completed before Man appeared. And as
regards fresh creations this supposition is still
supported by the testimony of science. So
far as we yet know, no New Form of Life
has been created since the Highest Form
was made. But it now appears that since
that event many Old Forms have died. The
Cycles of Creation had closed, but not the
Cycles of Destruction. Of itself, it might be
supposed that this fact has little bearing
upon the question of Time. The extinction
of some noxious animals in particular parts ‘
of the globe, as for example in our own
country, has taken place within the period
of history, and some few species of Wingless

birds, as the Dodo and the Great Auk, have

.—

 

EXTINCTION 0F ANIMALS. I15

 

,een destroyed in very recent times. But
,iiese have been extinctions effected through
he agency of Man. What is now proved
33 that a whole group or fauna of great
quadrupeds have utterly perished since Man
appeared. And the causes of this destruc-
tion seem 'to have been of the some kind
as the causes which in all former ages had
produced similar results—viz., great changes
in the climates of the globe, and great
movements affecting the configuration of. its
surface. In these last circumstances lies the
real stress of the evidence derived from the
new discoveries. It is conceivable that old
kinds of Elephant and Rhinoceros may
have roamed over Northern Europe when
its surface and its climate were the same as

12

 

116 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

they now are. It is less probable that the
small streams which now exist in England
should have harboured herds of Hippopotami.
But the position in which the remains of
these great animals are foundindicates that
since they flourished there have been con-
siderable changes in physical geography. It
indicates, too, that a great change of climate
has accompanied certain changes in the con-
figuration of land and sea. I know no better
example of the evidence to this effect than
one which is very easily accessible in our own
country. We have only to go down to the
pleasant shores of Devon, and to one of the
pleasantest spots upon those shores—the
south—western promontory of Torbay. Over-

hanging the little harbour of Brixham, where

 

BRIXHAM CAVE. n7

 

two hundred years ago William of Orange
landed, there is a steep limestone hill, at
the foot and on the face of which the houses
of the town are built. Close to the summit
a few years ago a cavernous hollow was
discovered. It extends a. considerable distance
through the limestone rocks, and no one who
goes through it can fail to see that it has
once been the bed of a stream. The smooth
surfaces worn by the long action of running
water are perfectly preserved, and the rounded
pebbles which were found in the bed of this
ancient stream are additional evidences of
the fact. Now let any one stand at the
entrance, or at the exit of this cavern and
cast his eye on . the surrounding landscape.

Whence can this stream have flowed, and

 

118 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

whither? The hill is now separated from
all higher ground by valleys which are at
least sixty feet below the level of the cave.
it is evident at a. glance that the whole
physical geography of the country must have
been different, when running water channelled
this limestone hill. Yet in this cave the
works of Man, flint arrow-heads and knives,
were found, along with the bones of the
Elephant, the Rhinoceros, the Bear, the
Hyaena, and the Reindeer. As regards one
of these animals, the whole leg was found
together, showing that the bones had been
covered With flesh when they were carried
by the stream. This is only one case out of
very many which have now been discovered

in various parts of Europe.

 

THREE GENERAL CONCLUSIONS. 119

 

I need not here go farther into detail as
regards this kind of evidence. Suffice it to
say, that all the facts tend to these three
general conclusions: Ist, that Man appeared
in Northern Europe at a. time when it was
covered with great quadrupeds now wholly
extinct; 2d, that the surface of the Earth
has since that period been subjected to modi-
fications, which imply great changes in phy-
sical geography; and 3d, that the period
when those animals flourished, and when Man
co-existed with them, was one when a colder
climate prevailed. Now no one conclusion of
geological science is more firmly established
than this, that there was a time, compara-
tively very recent, when an Arctic climate

prevailed far down into latitudes which are

 

120 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

now temperate; and when a great part of
Northern Europe and of our own islands was
submerged under a Glacial Sea. This sea
was ploughed by floating icebergs, which as
they melted dropped their rocks and boulders
upon the bottom. That bottom has since
been raised again into dry land, and these
boulders now. interrupt the drainer in Culti-~
vated fields, and strew the surface of our
wildest moors. Many concurring indications
go far to prove that it was when this Glacial
Period had nearly passed away, when a
milder climate was beginning to prevail over
the land which we now know, that Man also
began to find his way into Northern Europe.
There he sought his living among herds of

animals, of which the greater number are now

 

ORDER OF EVENTS. 121

 

.extinct and a few remain only in those
regions which are still Arctic. This is the
order of events as we can read it with
tolerable certainty in the language of Time-
relative. But we have little means of
knowing what relation this order of events
bears to Time-absolute. It is still disputed
among Geologists how far the causes of _ geo-
logical change were once more intense in
their action than they are now. It is quite
certain that during the passing away of a
V glacial climate, the cutting power of rivers
must have been intensified by the increasing
rapidity with which ice and snows were
melted. There are also facts connected with
the position in which remains of the extinct

animals are often found, which cannot, in my

 

122 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

opinion, be explained, except by violent and
sudden action since or during the period of
their entombment. Great caves, packed closely
from floor to roof with the bones of the
Hippopotamus and Rhinoceros; other caves,
equally full of the bones of extinct Oxen,
are proofs of some diluvial action of which
Man has had no experience in historic times.
But, even allowing for the greater activity of
geological causes, the time required for such
changes of climate has in all probability been
very great. And when we consider that
many of these evidences of Geology apply to
the New World as well as to the Old, we can-
not fail to see that the proofs of a very high
antiquity for the Human Race are proofs of

a cumulative character, gathered along several

 

RESULT NECESSARILY INDEFINITE. 123

 

different paths of investigation, and all
tending to one general result.

That result, however, is necessarily inde-
finite, and cannot be expressed in years. Of
the evidence from the dispersion of the
Human Race, it may be fairly said that we
do not know how rapidly Man may have
spread when the beasts of the chase were yet
unacquainted with his destructive powers,
when they probably swarmed in innumerable
herds, and when from their tameness they
must have fallen an easy prey. Of the
evidence from Language it may again be said
that we do not know how rapidly the forms
of human speech may have altered among
tribes wandering and unsettled, rapidly

changing place, and as rapidly accommodating

 

124 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

themselves to new scenes and new necessities.
In like manner, of the evidence from Geology
it may be said that we do not know how
rapidly changes of climate may have been
effected if the agencies which determine the
distribution of Sea and Land were more
active than they have been in historic times.
All these are pleas in mitigation of extreme
demands in point of time, and they are pleas
which may be fairly urged. But when all
due allowance has been made for the consid-
erations to which they point, there remains a
weight and concurrence of authority in favour
of a long chronology Which grows and in-
creases in the minds of all who have studied
each one of the separate branches of inquiry.

For my own part I see no reason to be

 

GEOLOGICAL TIME. 225

 

jealous of the conclusions of science in this

matter. The question is, after all, a small

one. It is a question of a few thousand years :

more or less; and thousands of years are as
less than seconds in the Creative Days. The
estimates of Time which have been given us
by Geology have been compared with the
estimates of Space given us. by Astronomy.
But there is an important difference. There
is no visible limit to Astronomical Space.
The apparent magnitude of the largest of the
Heavenly Bodies shows that millions of miles
are quantities inappreciable even to our eyes,
and that worlds are scattered like dust through
illimitable depths. But it is not so with Geo-
logical Time. Its periods are indeed very

long, but the beginning of them can be seen.

 

125 PRIMEVAL MAN.

v

 

It is not a boundless ocean, it is only a very
broad sea. On the other side of it there rise
the mountains of a Lifeless Land. Successive
creations mark the distance between us and
them, and- although we cannot say what that
distance is, we can say that it is a finite
distance—that beyond a boundary which we
can see, the world was not a world such
as we now live in, but a world com-
paratively “without form and void.” The
question of Man’s Antiquity involves no
attempt to measure the breadth of this great
space, but only the breadth of a little bay or
creek, close to the shores on which we are
now standing. Be this breadth greater or
smaller by one, two, or three, or four, or five,

or ten thousand years, its relative place in the

 

CAUTION NECESSARY. 127

 

great Tracts of Creative Time undergoes no
change whatever. Man is the latest work.
Recent discoveries have thrown no doubt on
this, but, on the contrary, have all tended
to confirm it. I know of no one moral or ,
religious truth which depends on a short
estimate of Man’s antiquity. On the contrary,
a high estimate of that antiquity is of great
value in its bearing upon another question
much more important than the question of
time can ever be—viz., the question of
the Unity of the Human Race. We must
indeed be very cautious in identifying the
interests of Religion with any interpretation
(however certain we may have hitherto as-
sumed it to be) of the language of Scripture

upon subjects wmcn are accessible to scien-

 

128 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

tific research. We know from past experience
how foolish and how futile it is to do so.
But unquestionably the Unity of the Human
Race, in respect to origin, is not easily separ-
ated from some principles which are of high
value in our understanding both of moral
‘duty and of religious truth. And precisely in
proportion as we value our belief ‘ in that
Unity ought we to be ready and willing to
accept any evidence on the question of Man’s
Antiquity. The older the Human Family can
be proved to be, the more possible and pro-
bable it is that it has descended from a single
pair. My own firm belief is that all scientific
evidence is in favour -of this conclusion; and I
regard all new proofs of the Antiquity of Man

as tending to establish it on a firmer basis.

PART IV.
MAN’S PRIMITIVE CONDITION.

S the question of Man's Origin is different
from the question of his Antiquity, and

as the Antiquity of Man is a different question
from his Primitive Condition, so again the last
question includes within itself several different
matters of inquiry. There is first the question,
What consciousness had Primeval Man of
Moral Obligation, and what communion with
his Creator? Next there is the question,
\Vhat were his innate powers of Intellect or

K

 

120 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

Understanding? And, thirdly, there is the
question, What was his condition in respect
to Knowledge, whether as the result of in-
tuition, or as the result of teaching? It is a
fatal fault in the discussion of this subject, as
conducted both by Archbishop W'hately and
by Sir J. Lubbock, that these distinctions are
either not seen or not distinctly kept in view.
Perhaps, indeed, it may be thought that the
Savage-theory is independent of such close
analysis. But this is by no means the case.
The distinction between the possession of
Faculties capable of acquiring knowledge, and
the possession of knowledge actually acquired,
is a fundamental distinction. Not less funda-
mental is the distinction between a creature

who is morally good but intellectually un-

 

SIR jOHN LUBBOCK'S ARGUMENT. 131

 

informed, and a creature who is both igno-
rant and vicious. Sir I. Lubbock speaks of
Primeval Man as having been in a condition
of “utter barbarism." But no one, speaking
philosophically, has a right to use such terms L
as “barbarism” and “ civilization ” without
some definition of their meaning. What were
those Faculties which made the first creature
who possessed them “worthy to be-called a
Man?” A Mind capable of reason, disposed
to reason, and able to acquire, to accumulate,
and to transmit knowledge,—this is the dis-
tinctive attribute of Man. The first Being
“worthy to be so called,” must have had such
a mind. But it could not properly be said of
such a Being, on the ground merely of his
ignorance of mechanical arts, that he was in

K2

 

132 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

a condition of “utter barbarism,l’ if he were
at the same time conscious of moral obliga-
tions and obedient to them. It is, of course,
open to a theorist to assume that the First
Man was. both ignorant and bad, or that the
, sense of right and wrong was rudimentary
and wholly uninformed. But all I desire to
point out here is, that there is no necessary
connection between a state of mere childhood
in respect to knowledge, and a state of “utter
barbarism”—-w0rds which, if they have any
definite meaning at all, imply the lowest
moral, as well as the lowest intellectual con—
dition. Consequently no proof, if proof there
be. that Primeval Man was ignorant of the
industrial arts can afford the smallest pre-

sumption that he was also ignorant of duty

 

 

FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS TO IT. 133

 

01 ignorant of God. This is a fundamental
objection to the whole scope of Sir I. Lubbock’s
argument. It interposes an impassable gulf
between his premises and his conclusion.

But there is another objection equally
fundamental. Traces or remains of barbarismfl ’
properly so called, that is, traces of customs
savage or immoral, in the usages of civilized
nations, may be an indication of the fact that ‘
those nations, or the races from which they
sprang, have passed through a. stage of‘
barbarism. But it affords no presumption
whatever that barbarism was the Primeval
Condition of Man, any more than the traces
of Feudalism in the laws of modern Europe
prove that feudal principles were born with

the Human Race. All such customs may

 

I34 I PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

have been, and as many think, probably have
been, not Primeval but Medieval, that is to
say, the result of time and of development,
and that development (a development of cor-
ruption.) 'To assume that they were original,
or that they were even better or less bar-
barous than others which preceded 'them,
is to assume the whole question in dispute.
Yet .this assumption runs through all Sir J.

Lubbock’s arguments. Wherever a brutal or

, savage custom prevails it is at once asSumed to

be a sample of the original condition of Man-
kind. And this in the teeth of facts which
prove that many of such customs not only
may have been, but must have been, the result
of corruption. Take cannibalism as one of

these. Sir J. Lubbock seems‘to admit that

 

CANNIBALISM. _I35 -

 

this loathsome practice was not primeval,
probably because he considers it as un-
natural.* And so it is,—that is to say, it
is against the better nature of Man; but the
fact of its existence proves that within the
limits of that nature there are elements liable
to perversions even so horrible as this. _ And
so we come upon the fact of the two natures
of Man, and of the power of the worst parts
of his nature to overcome the best. It is1
thus that customs the most cruel and
depraved beec-me established. But if this be
the explanation, and the only possible ex-
planation, of cannibalism, is it not evident
that this may also be the explanation of
other customs which are violent and horrible

' “Prehistoric Times,” p. 37!.

 

I36 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

only in a less degree?— Cruel rites of
worship, and savage customs as regards
marriage and the relation of the sexes,
come under the same category.* Canni-
balism is only an extreme case of a general
law, and it is a crucial test of_the fallacy
of a whole class of arguments commonly
assumed by those who support the Savage-
theory respecting the Primeval Condition of
Mankind. .

On the other hand, I think it cannot be
denied that the argument of Whately is
equally defective in. failing to recognise the
essential distinctions to which I have referred.

"’ Much stress is laid on these by Sir ]. Lubbock. Yet
many of the customs he refers to, such as Bride-catching,

although they may have arisen in very early times, cannot

possibly have been Primeval in the strict sense of that term.

.

 

\VHATELY’S ARGUMENT DEFECTIVE. 137

 

Ilis assertion, repeated over and over again,
’5 that mere savages “never did and never
:ould raise themselves, unaided, into a higher
condition.” Now it may be perfectly true

that Man never could “unaided ” discover
religious truth, or rise to any adequate idea
of the nature, or of the demands, of moral
obligation; and yet it may be wholly untrue
that he is equally incompetent to discover the
physical laws of nature, or to find out by
mechanical skill how to adapt them to his
own use. Again, Whately admits, that “when
men have once reached a certain stage in
the advance towards civilization, it is then
possible for them (under favourable circum-
stances) to advance further and further in the

same direction.” But there is no attempt to

I

_

13S PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

define either what civilization in this sense
means, or to specify what kind and what
amount of preliminary instruction is the
minimum from which further advance is
rendered possible. If by civilization is meant
a knowledge of the industrial arts, the doc-
trine that Man never did and never could
“unaided” raise himself from one step in
mechanical invention to another, is a doctrine
involving two separate assertions which re-
quire to be separately examined. Of these
two assertions, the first, that Savages never
have “raised themselves,” is an assertion
which, from its very nature, it is difficult if
not impossible to ~prove. Whately defies the
supporter of Development to produce a single

case where this has been actually done. Sir

 

 

LUBBOCK’S REPLY TO IT. :39

 

J. Lubbock replies by defying his opponent
to show that it has not been done and done
often. He urges, and urges as it seems to
me with truth, that the great difficulty of
teaching many savages the arts of civilized
life, is no proof whatever that the various
degrees of advance towards the knowledge
of those arts which are actually foundamong
semi-barbarous nations, may not have been
of strictly indigenous growth. Thus it.
appears that one tribe of Red‘ Indians,
called “ Mandans,” practised the art of
fortifying their towns. Surrounding tribes,
although they saw the advantages derived
from this art, yet never practised it, and
never learned it. Whately, fixing his eyes

on the ruder tribes, says, “See how Clear it

 

14‘0 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

is that savages are utterly unteachable.”
His opponents, fixing their eyes on the
more advanced tribes, say, “See how clear
it is that .men once savage can invent and
practise useful arts.” Whately says, “Prove
to me, first, that these Mandans had ever
been as savage as their neighbours; and
secondly, that they had raised themselves.”
Sir J. Lubbock replies that on the conditions
laid down by Whately no such proof is
possible. If any record could be found of
the former condition of the Mandans, the
very existence of such a record would prove
former contact with civilized peoples, and if
such contact were. proved, Whately would
attribute to such contact the improvement

which is observed. On the other hand, if

 

 

"I

I
ORIGIN OF MECHANICAL ARTS. I41

 

the Mandans had “raised themselves” from
a more savage condition, without any teaching
from more civilized races, there could be no
record of the fact. The same objection
applies to the demand made by Whately as
regards all other races among whom different
mechanical arts have been found established.
It is impossible by counter assertions to settle
dogmatically the origin 'of such arts, and the
absence of recorded cases of indigenous ad-
vance is itself rather favourable than adverse
to the theory iof those who assert that such
advance is possible, and has actually taken
place. It is precisely when this advance has
been most strictly indigenous that the pre-
servation of the fact by record would become

impossible.

 

I42 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

O

I do not agree, therefore, with the late
Archbishop of Dublin, that we are entitled
to assume it as a fact that, as regards the
mechanical arts, no savage race has ever
raised itself. The other assertion that no
such race ever could so raise itself, is
confessedly a theory, and a theory the truth
of which is by no means self-evident. In
the first place, when the possibility of
progress is admitted, provided some elemen—
tary instruction is supposed as a foundation
on which to work, it is evident that we are
dealing with a proposition altogether hazy,
unless there be some clear definition of the
nature and amount of this elementary
instruction which is demanded. Whately says

that “the earliest generations of mankind

 

FORM OF DIVINE INSTRUCTION. I43

 

had received only very limited, and what
may be called elementary instruction, enough
merely to enable them to make further
advances afterwards by the exercise of their
natural powers.” But how much was this
“enough?” And what is meant by “in-
struction,” as distinguished from inborn or
intuitive powers of observation and of
reasoning? May not this have been the
form in which the Creator first “instructed ”
Man? For here it is important to observe
that in direct proportion as we assume Man’s
Primitive Condition to have been such as
to require elementary teaching, in the same
proportion do we suppose that his primitive
condition in respect to intellect was low and

weak. Accordingly, Whately assumes as an

 

I44 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

indisputable fact, that Man has no instincts
such as enable the lower animals to construct
nests, and cells, and lairs. My own belief
is, that this is an assumption which is not
only unproved, but one which in all pro-
bability is false. As Whately himself admits,
“Man is.an animal” as well as the creatures
that are below him. It is true that he has
not instincts of the same kind as they have.
But this is no proof whatever that he has
not, and had not originally, instincts which
stand in strict correlation with the peculiarities
of his higher physical organization. This is
a department of inquiry which has been far
too much neglected both by physiologists and
by metaphysicians. There are many facts

which go far to prove that Man has, and

 

IMPLEMENTS PECULIAR T0 MAN. I45

 

must always have had, instincts which afford
all that is required as a starting-ground for
advance in the mechanical arts. Few persons
have reflected on how much is involved in
the-most purely instinctive acts, such as the
throwing of a stone, or the wielding of a
stick as a weapon of offence. Both these
simple acts involve the great principle‘of the
use of artificial tools. Even in the most
rudimentary form, the use of an implement ;
fashioned for a special purpose is absolutely
peculiar to Man, and arises necessarily and
instinctively out of the structure of his body.
The bodies of the lower animals are so
i constructed that such implements as they
are capable of directing are all supplied in
the form of bodily organs. All effects which

L

 

x46 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

they desire to produce, or are capable of
producing, are effected directly by the use
of those organs under the guidance of
implanted instincts. There are some very
curious cases among the lower animals of . a
near approach to the principle involved in
the use of tools—that is to say, the use of
natural force through artificial means. Thus
the common GreyorHooded Crow is con-
stantly in the habit of lifting shell-fish to a
certain height in the air, and then letting
them fall upon the rocks of the shore, in
order to break the shells. Some species of
Monkey will even use any stone which may
be at hand for the purpose of striking and
breaking a nut. The Elephant tears branches

from the trees and uses them as an artificial

E]?
.«v

 

GULF BETWEEN MAN AND THE BRUTES. I47

 

tail to fan himself and to keep off the flies.
But between these rudiments of intellectual
perception and the next step—that of

adapting and fashioning an instrument for a

particular purpoSe,—there is a gulf in which '

lies the whole immeasurable distance between «

Man and the brutes. In no case whatever
do they ever use an implement made by
themselves as an intermediate agency between
their'bodily organs and the work which they
desire to do. Man, on the contrary, is so
constructed that in almost everything he
desires to do he must employ an agency
intermediate between his bodily organs and
the effect which he wishes to produce. But
this necessity, which in one aspect is a
physical disability, is correlated with a mind

L2.

\\

 

14S PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

capable of Invention, and ‘with certain-
implanted instincts which involve all the
rudiments of mechanical skill. The man who
'first lifted a stone and threw it, practised an
art which not one of the lower animals is
capable of practising. This is an act which
in all probability is as strictly instinctive and
natural to Man as it is to a Dog to bite, or.
to a Bull to charge. Yet the act involves
the idea and the knowledge of projectile
force, and of the arts by which direction can
be given to that force. The wielding of a
stick is, in all probability, an act equally
of primitive intuition, and from this to the
throwing of a stick, and the use of javelins,
is an easy and natural transition. Simple as

these acts are, they involve both physical

 

 

INSTINCTIVE IDEAS. I49

 

and mental powers capable of all the
developments which we see in the most
advanced industrial arts. These acts involve
the instinctive idea of the constancy of
natural causes, and the capacity of thought
which gives men the conviction that what
has happened under given conditions will
under the same conditions always happen
again. Did Dr. Whately mean that Man
must have been instructed by God how to
throw a stone, or to wield a stick, or to
hurl a javelin, or to build a hut? And if so,
at what point did such lessons in mechanics
stop? Is it not evident that the more perfect
we suppose the first man to have been, so far
as regards at least his powers of thought,

of observation, and of reflection, the less

 

ISO PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

needful is it to suppose that the few and
simple arts necessary for the sustenance of
his life were communicated to him in any
other form than that of intuitive powers of
perception and discovery?

And here it is important to observe that
even if savage races be taken as the type
of man’s Primeval Condition; the evidence
afforded by these races is all in favour of the
conclusion that as regards his characteristic
mental powers, Man has always been Man,
and nothing less. There is quite as much in-
genuity and skill in the manufacture of a
knife of flint, as in the manufacture of a
knife of iron. And the skill displayed by the
men who used stone implements is not con-

fined to that which is involved in the selection

 

INSTANCES OF SAVAGE SKILL. 15!

 

of mineral substances suitable for the purpose.
That skill is also eminently displayed in the
use made of those stone implements after
they had been fashioned. The smaller imple:
ments of bone, or of horn, or of wood, which
the stone knives and hatchets were employed
to make, are often highly ingenious, and
sometimes eminently beautiful. The truth is
that high qualities of reasoning and ready
faculties of observation are called forth in
the inverse ratio of the acquired knowledge
with which they are provided and from which
they start. The great ingenuity and resource
shown by many of the rudest tribes in their
weapons, and the sense of beauty evinced by
them in the choice and in the invention of

ornamental forms, have hardly been suf-

 

152 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

-ficiently appreciated. It is impossible, for
example, to read the description given by Sir
J. Richardson of the bows and arrows of the
Eskimo without being struck by the admi—
.rab1e skill with which their scanty resources,
and their limited command of natural mate-
rial, are turned to the very best account.
The throwing-stick of the Australian Savage
is a most ingenious application of the prin-
ciple of the lever. The boomerang must have
been discovered, as so many other discoveries
are made among ourselves, by pure accident—
by some savage throwing a crooked branch,
and by his observing its curious and unex-
pected flight. But every one of these inven-
tions anddiscoveries involves and exhibits in

full operation the peculiar and characteristic

' was

 

GREATNESS OF EARLY INVENTIONS. 153

 

gifts of the human intellect. The same gifts
and thesame powers start in the case of each
new generation from a higher vantage-ground
of inherited, and therefore of ‘ accumulated
knowledge; and it is thus that, without any
change‘in their own nature, and even without
any increase in their own inherent strength,
they attain gradually to higher ‘and more
complicated results. And' if we are to assume
with the supporters of the Savage-theory
that Man has himself invented all he now
knows, then the very earliest inventions of
our race must have been the most wonderful
of all, and the richest in the fruits they bore.
The men who first discovered the use of fire,
and the use of .those grasses which we now

know under the name'of corn. were dis—

 

154 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

coverers compared with whom, as regards the
value of their ideas to the world, Faraday
and Wheatstone are but the inventors of
ingenious toys.

It may possibly be true, as Whately argues,
that Man never could have discovered these
things without divine instruction. If so, it is
fatal to the Savage—theory. But it is equally
fatal to that Theory if we assume the opposite
position, and suppose that the noblest dis-
coveries ever made by Man were made by
him in primeval times.

On these, as well as on other grounds, I
have never attached much importance to
VVhately’s argument. I do not mean to say
that the conclusion to which it points may

not possibly be true, but it is a. conclusion

 

 

MAN CAPABLE OF DEGRADATION. 155

 

which I look upon as incapable of positive
proof.

The question of Man’s Primitive Condition
must therefore be approached from another
side. We can only hope to reach the Un-
known by reasoning from the Known; and,
starting from this ground, we have the
indisputable fact that Man is capable of
Degradation. This is a subject which, as
it appears to me, Sir J. Lubbock deals
with in the most cursory and superficial
manner. In fact, as far as it is possible
to do so, he avoids it altogether. In his
work on “Prehistoric Man” a single page
exhausts all he has to sa}r on one of the most
prominent facts of History and of Nature, and

this page is headed, “No Evidence of Degra-

 

156 PaIMEVAL MAN.

 

dation.” Yet nothing in the Natural History
of Man can be more certain than that both
morally, and intellectually, and physically he
can, and _he often does, sink from a higher
to a lower level. This is true of Man both
collectively and individually—of men and of
societies of men. Some regions of the world
are strewn with the monuments of civilizations
which have passed away. Rude and barba—
rous tribes stare with wonder on the remains
of Temples, of which they cannot conceive
the purpose, and of Cities which are the dens
of beasts. It is not necessary to assume, as
it has sometimes been assumed, that there
is a law of decay affecting communities as
certain in its operation as the law which

operates on the individual frame. It is enough

 

MORAL AND MENTAL DEGRADATION. 157

 

to note the indisputable fact that men are lia-
ble to degradation and decline,—and this even
as regards the knowledge and the practice of
those industrial arts on which the, very exis-
tence of large populations may depend. As
regards, moral character the possibility [and the
fact of degradation is not less certain. It is a
result only too common and familiar, both as
regards individuals and societies of men. In
truth this kind of decline almost always pre-
cedes the other. The higher elements of civili-
zation depend on qualities of the mind. It is
by moral and intellectual force that all the
triumphs of civilization are achieved; When
that force declines, the agencies of degradation
establish their ascendency, and the complete-

ness with which they have done their work is

 

153 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

one of the standing wonders of the world.
No doubt, the ancient civilizations which have
been so utterly destroyed were in many cases
brought to a violent, and as it may be
argued, to an accidental end. They were
overrun and swept away by the rush of
barbarous hordes. But these are accidents
which did not happen to civilized nations so
long as their civilization was yet undecayed.
I am far, however, from denying the powerful
influence of external conditions in favouring
the development of the peaceful arts, or, on
the contrary, in arresting that development,
or even in destroying it when it had been
long established. Nor am I disposed to keep
in the background the effects produced on

ancient civilizations by the wars and the great

 

 

CAUSES OF DEGRADATION. 159

 

primeval migrations of our race. On the con-
trary, these are facts which form the next
step in the argument I am now maintaining
——a step which goes far to connect the pos-
sibility of degradation with the known causes
which have operated, and in the very
nature of things must have operated, in
producing it.

For it matters not which of the two theories
we adopt in regard to the Origin of the
Human Race, whether we suppose it to have
proceeded from one or from two, or even
from several different centres of creation; it
matters not whether we suppose with Sir I.
Lubbock that the “first being worthy to be
Mlhd a Man” was born of some inferior

Jture, or whether we believe with VVhately,

 

16o PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

that he was truly human in his powers,
but required some “elementary instruction to
enable his faculties to begin their work.”
In any case we may safely assume that Man
must have‘begun his course in some one or
more of those portions of the earth which 'are
genial in climate, ’rich in natural fruits, and
capable of yielding the most abundant return
to the very simplest arts. It is under such
conditions that the first establishment of the
human race can be most easily understood;
nay, it is under such conditions only that it is
conceivable at all. And as these are the con-
ditions which would favour the first establish—
ment, and the most rapid increase of Man, so
also are these the conditions under which

knowledge would most rapidly accumulate,

 

THE LAW OF INCREASE. 161

 

and the earliest possibilities of material civi-
lization would arise.

Now what are the changes of external cir-
cumstance which first, in the natural course
of things, would bring an adverse influence to
bear upon Mankind? Here again we are on
firm ground, because we know one great
cause which has been always operating, and
we know its natural and inevitable effects.
This cause is simply the law of increase. It
is the consequence of that law that popula-
tion is always pressing upon the limits of
subsistence. Hence the necessity of migra-
tions, and the force which has propelled suc-
cessive generations of men farther and farther.
in ever-widening circles round the original
centre or centres of their birth. Then, as it

M

gar-II—

 

162 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

would always be the weaker tribes who would
be driven frorn the ground which had become
overstocked, and as the lands to which they
went forth were less and less hospitable in
climate 'and productions, the struggle for
life would be always harder. And so it
always happens in the natural and necessary
course of things, that the races which were
driven farthest would be the rudest—the
most engrossed in the pursuits of mere
animal existence.

And now, does not this key of principle
fit into and explain all the facts? Do they
not seem in the light of that explanation to
take form and order? Is it not true that the
lowest and rudest tribes in the population

of the globe have been found at the farthest

 

THE ESKIMO RACE. 163

 

extremities of itsgreat Continents, and in the
distant Islands which would be the last refuge
of the victims of violence and misfortune?
“The New World " is the Continent which
presents the most uninterrupted stretch of
habitable land from the highest northern to
the lowest southern latitude. On the extreme
north we have the Eskimo,* or Inuit race,
maintaining human life under conditions of
extremest hardship,‘ even amid the perpetual
ice of the Polar Seas. And what a life it
is! Watching at the blow-hole of a seal for
many hours, in a temperature of 75° belowi

freezing point, is the constant work of the

* I have adopted the form of this name (usually spelt
Esquimaux), which is adopted as the most correct by Sir J.
Richardson in his work on the Polar Seas. “Inuit” is the

native Eskimo name for their ownrace.

M 2

 

I64 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

’Inuit hunterf“ And when at last his prey
is struck, it is his luxury to feast upon the
raw blood and blubber. To civilized Man it
is hardly possible to conceive a life so
wretched; and in many respects so‘brutal
as the life led by this race during the long
lasting night of the arctic winter. Not even
the most extravagant theorist as regards
the plurality of Human Origins, can suppose
" that there was an Eskimo Adam—that any
man was originally ‘created or developed in
the icy regions round the Pole. Here then
we have a. , case beyond all question, of

races driven by wars and migrations, from

‘ Veryf curious details on Eskimo hunting, feasting, and
habits generally are given in Captain C. F. Hall’s most.
interesting work, “Life with the Esquimaux." (Sampson
Low, Son, & Marstog. 1864.) l

 

 

NATIVES 0F ARCTIC REGIONS. 165

 

the more temperate regions of the globe.
So long as they were still in those
regions, the ancestors of the Eskimo must
have lived in another manner, and must have
had wholly different habits. They may
have practised such simple agriculture as~
we know was practised among the most
ancient people who have left their remains
in the Swiss Lake Dwellings. They may
have been nomads living on their flocks
and herds. But neither an agricultural ‘nor a
pastoral life is possible on the borders of a.
frozen sea. The rigours of the region they
now inhabit have reduced this people to the
condition in which we now see them, and
whatever arts their fathers knew, suited to

more genial climates, have been, and could

if

 

166 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

not fail to be, utterly forgotten. It is a very
remarkable fact that this process, by which
even the most sterile regions of the globe
have been peopled, is a process which appears
to be still in operation. Arctic voyagers have
long known that there are lands nearer the
Pole than those which they have hitherto been
able to reach, and it has been even suspected
that there exists there a somewhat milder
climate and a more open sea. A whaling
ship, which in 1867 reached a more northern
point than had hitherto been attained, has
brought the curious information that a tribe
wandering near Cape Chelagskoi had recently
driven another tribe before them across the
Frozen Sea to a land lying so far north that

only its mountain tops could be occasionally

 

NATIVES or TIERRA DEL FUEGO. 167

 

seen from the Siberian Headlands.* This
farther land has never yet been trodden by
civilized Man; and if he ever does reach it,
he will thus probably find it occupied by
men who may have forgotten how and
whence their fathers came.

And now let us pass to the other ex-
tremity of the great Continent of America—-
to Cape Horn, and to the Island off it, which
projects its desolate rocks into one of the
most inhospitable climates in the world. The
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego are perhaps
the most degraded among the races of man-
kind. How could they be otherwise? “Their
country,” says Mr. Darwin, “is a broken

’ See letter in the T z'mer of December 30, 1867, from

Captain Sherard Osborne.

 

168 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

mass of wild rocks, lofty hills, and useless
forests; and these are viewed through mists
and endless storms. The habitable land is
reduced to the stones of the beach. In search
of food they are compelled to wander un-
ceasingly from spot to spot, and so steep is
the coast that they can only move about in
their wretched canoes.” They are habitual
cannibals, killing and eating their old women
before they kill their dogs, for the sufficient
reason, as explained by themselves—“Doggies
catch otters, old women no.” Of some of these
people who came round the Beagle in their
canoes, the same author says—“These were
the most wretched and miserable creatures
I anywhere beheld. They were quite naked,

and even one full—grown woman was absolutely

 

DARWIN’S QUESTION. 169

 

so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh
water, together with the spray, trickled down
her body. In another harbour not far dis-'
tant, a woman, who was suckling a new-born
child, came one day alongside the vessel and
remained there out of mere curiosity, whilst
the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom
and on the skin of her naked baby. These
poor wretches were stunted in their growth,
their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint,
their skins filthy and greasy, their hair
entangled, their voices discordant, and their
gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can
hardly imake oneself believe that they are

fellow-creatures and inhabitants of the same
world.” Well might Darwin add, “Whilst

beholding these savages one asks, Whence

 

I70 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

have they come? What could have tempted,
or what change compelled, a tribe of men
to leave the fine regions of the North, to
travel down the Cordillera, or backbone of
America, to invent and build canoes which
are not used by the tribes of Chili, Peru, and
Brazil, and then to enter on one of the most
inhospitable countries within the limits of the
globe?” * There can be but one explanation;
Quarrels and wars between tribe and tribe,
induced by the mere increase of numbers
and the consequent pressure on the means of
subsistence, have been always, ever since Man
existed, driving the weaker races farther and
farther from the older settlements of man-
kind. And when the ultimate points of the

‘ Darwin’s “ Naturalist’s Voyage,” ed. 1852, p. 216.

 

FUEGIANS CAPABLE OF IMPROVEMENT. I71

 

habitable world are reached, the conditions
of existence cause and necessitate a savage
and degraded life. Darwin gives the true
9explanation of their condition when he says,
“How little can the higher powers of the
mind be brought into play! What is there
for imagination to picture, for reason to com-
pare, for judgment to decide upon?” The
case of the Fuegians is a case in which there
can be no doubt whatever of the causes of
their degraded condition. On every side
of them, and in proportion as we recede
from their wretched country, the surrounding
tribes are less wretched and better acquainted
with- the simpler artsa And it is remarkable
that in the case of this people we have proof

of another point of great interest and impor-

 

I72 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

tance, viz., this—that even the most degraded
savages have all .the perfect attributes of
humanity, which can be and are developed,
the moment they are placed under fa-
vourable conditions. Captain Fitzroy had in
1830 carried off some of these people to
England, where they were taught the habits
and the arts of civilized life. Of one of
these who was taken back to his own country
in the Beagle, Mr. Darwin tells us that his
“intellect was good,” and of another that
he had a “nice disposition.” We see, there-
fore, ‘that every fact and circumstance
connected with the F uegians agrees with
the supposition that their “utter barbarism”
was due entirely to the cruel conditions of

their life, and the wretched country into

 

THE POLYNESIAN RACES. I73

 

which they had been driven. The Bushmen
of South Africa are another case in point.
It seems to be clearly ascertained that they
belong to the same race as other tribes who
are far less degraded, and that they are
simply the descendants of outcasts driven to
the woods and rocks!“ So, again, among the
great islands of the Pacific, the natives of
Van Diemen’s Land were the most utterly
degraded of all the Polynesian races.

VVith' these facts staring us in the face,
connecting themselves in an obvious order
with causes which we know to be all
operatinglin one direction, is it not absurd
to argue that the condition of these outcasts
of the human family can be assumed asl ,

* Pritchard's “Natural History of Man,” vol. ii.

 

I74 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

[representing the aboriginal condition of Man?
Is it not certain that whatever advances
towards civilization may have been made
among their progenitors, such advances must
necessarily have been lost under the conditions
to which their children are reduced? Sir J.
Lubbock urges, in reply to Whately, that
the low condition of Australian savages affords
no proof whatever that they could not raise
themselves, because the materials of improve-
ment are wanting in that country, which
affords no cereals, nor animals capable of
useful domestication. But Sir I. Lubbock
does not perceive that the same argument
which shows how improvement could not
possibly be attained, shows also how degra-

dation could not possibly be avoided. If

 

THE AUSTRALIANS. I

\l
U l

 

with the few resources of the country it was
impossible for savages to rise, it .follows that
with those same resources it would be
impossible for a half-civilized race not to
fall. And as in this case again, unless we
are to suppose a separate Adam and Eve
for Van Diemen’s Land, its natives must
originally have come from one or other of
the great continents where both corn and
cattle were to be had, it follows that the
low condition of these natives is much more
likely to have been the result of degradation
than of primeval barbarism. Man as an
animal does not belong to the Fauna of
Australia. The scientific evidence, therefore,
is conclusive that he came to it from other

lands. But it is highly improbable that the

 

176 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

circumstances of his arrival in the Islands
were such as would have enabled him to bring
either corn or cattle with him. Whatever
knowledge of these things he had before,
must necessarily have been lost. The present
condition, therefore, of the Australian Savage
in respect to these important elements of
civilization, affords no presumption whatever
that it represents the condition of those from
whom he is descended. There is hardly a
single fact quoted by Sir J. Lubbock in
favour of his own theory, which, when
viewed in connection with the same in-
disputable principles, does not tell against
that theory rather than in its favOur.
The facts indeed which I have hitherto

quoted prove only that forgetfulness of arts

 

LUBBOCK'S FACTS AGAINST HIS THEORY. 177

 

once practised and of knowledge once pos-
sessed, must inevitably have arisen among
tribes driven into inhospitable regions. But
there are other facts also referred to by Sir
J. Lubbock himself, which show that there
are cases in which we have proof of this
process having actually taken place. Thus,
in regard to the Eskimo, he quotes the case
of a tribe in Baffin’s Bay who “could not
be made to understand what was meant by
war, nor had they any warlike weapons.”
No wonder, poor“ people! They had been
driven into regions where no stronger race
could desire to follow them. But that their
fathers had once known what war and
violence meant, there is no more conclusive
" “ Prehistoric Times,” p. 410.

N

 

17:3 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

proof than the dwelling-place of their chil-
dren. So again, Sir I. Lubbock quotes the
testimony of Cook in respect to the Tasma-
nians, that they had no canoes. Yet their
ancestors could not have reached the island
by walking on the sea. Some of the tribes
did not know how fire could be obtained if
it were once extinguished.* Again, of the
Australians, Sir J. Lubbock reminds us that
in a cave on the north-west coast “tolerable
figures of sharks, porpoises, turtles, lizards,
canoes, and some quadrupeds,” &c., were
found; and yet that the present natives of
the country where they were found were
utterly incapable of realizing the most vivid
artistic representations, and ascribed the draw-

" “ Prehistoric Times,” pp. 354' 5-

 

'IHE ARGUMENT FROM IMPLEMENTS. I79

 

ings in the cave to diabolical agencyf'e In
_all these cases we have direct evidences of
degradation or of forgetfulness, even since
Man, first reached the shores of those distant
Islands, and we see how it could not fail to
be so under the known effect of known cause
upon the condition of our race.

And now we can better estimate the value
to be set on the arguments which have been
founded on the rude implements found in
the river drifts and in the caves of northern
Europe. I, for one, accept the evidence
which Geology affords that these implements
are of very ancient date. I accept too the
evidence which that science affords, that these
implements were in all probability the ice

* “Prehistoric Times,” p. 348.

N2

V.

 

180 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

hatchets and rude knives used by tribes

which towards the close of the Glacial Age

had pushed their way to the farthest limits
i of the lands which were then habitable. And

what follows ? The inevitable conclusion is, that V
it must be about as safe to argue from those
implements asto the condition of Man at that
time in the countries of his Primeval Home,
as it would be in Our own day to argue
from the habits and arts of the Eskimo as to
the state of civilization in London or in Paris.

For here I must observe that Archreologists
are using language on this Subject which, if
not positively erroneous, requires, at least,
more rigorous definitions and limitations of
meaning than they are disposed to attend

to They talk of an Old Stone Age (Palaeo-

 

THE “AGES” OF ARCHIEOLOGY. 181

 

lithic), and of a Newer Stone Age (Neolithic)

and of a Bronze Age, and of an Iron Age.

Now, there is no proof whatever that such '
Ages ever existed in the world. It may be . )
true, and it probably is true, that (all‘?
nations in the progress of the Arts havcl
passed through the stages of using stone“,
for implements before they were acquainted‘
with the use of metals. But knowledge of
the metals must have arisen at very different
epochs in different regions of the earth.) Inf
South Africa flint implements have lately
been discovered in abundance, but over a
large portion of that vast continent the
knowledge and the use of iron seems to have
been of very ancient date; and I am in-

formed by Sir Samuel Baker that iron ore is

 

182 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

so common in Africa, and of a kind so easily
reducible by heat, that its use might well be
discovered by the rudest tribes. As a matter
of fact, they are now all excellent workers
in iron. Then again, it is to be remembered
that there are some countries in the world
Awhere stone is as rare and difficult to get as
metals. In them the use of stone imple-
ments may imply even an extended com-
merce. The great alluvial plains of Meso-
potamia are a case in point. Accordingly,
we know from the remains of the First
Chaldaean Monarchy that a very high civili-
zation in the arts of agriculture and of
f commerce co-existed with the use of stone
implements of a very rude characterfil6 This

' Rawlinson’s “ Five Great Monarchies,” vol. i. pp. 119, 120.

””1“ \ A

 

TWO FUNDAMENTAL OBJECTIONS. 183

 

fact proves that rude stone implements are
not necessarily any indication whatever of
a really barbarous condition. Assuming then 5
that the use of stone has in all cases pre-
ceded the use of metals, {it is quite certain.
that the same Age which was an Age;
of Stone in one part of the world was an 1
Age of Metal in another.7 As regards the;
Eskimo and the South-Sea Islanders we
are now, or were very recently, living in a
Stone Age. And so it has been in all past
times of which any record remains. The
whole argument therefore which has been-
founded on flint implements, is an argument
liable to these two fundamental objections,
first that flint implements are a very un-

certain index of civilization, even among the

 

134 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

tribes who used them; and secondly that

. they are no index at all of the state of

civilization among other tribes who lived at

the same timein other portions of the globe.

The finding of flint implements for example,

however rude, in England, or in Denmark, or

V in France, affords- no evidence whatever of

\1 tlathe condition of the Industrial Arts in the

if isame age upon the banks of’ the Euphrates
:or the Nile.

There is one argument of Sir I. Lubbock

in favour of the Savage—theory, which I

iobserve with as much. astonishment as that

which he expresses in reference to some of

the arguments of Whately. Sir J. Lubbock

says that some savages have been found who

have no religion at all. Such, he argues,

 

RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE MAY BE LOST. 185

 

was probably the condition of Primeval Man,
because he “feels it difficult to believe that
any people which once possessed a. religion
would ever entirely lose it.” Surely, if there
is one fact more certain than another in
respect to the nature of Man, it is that he
is capable of losing religious knowledge, of
ceasing to believe in religious truth, and of
falling away from religious duty. If by
“ religion ” is meant the existence merely'
of some impressions of powers invisible and
“supernatural ”—-evenvthis, we know, can not
only be lost, but be scornfully disavowed by
men who are highly civilized. Nor does Sir
J. Lubbock’s comment upon this subject gain
by the further explanation which he gives.

He says that “ Religion appeals so strongly

 

186 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

to the hopes and fears of men, it takes so
deep a hold on most minds, it is so great a
consolation in times of sorrow and sickness,
that I can hardly think any nation would
ever abandon it altogether.” There are two
obvious replies to such reasoning: the first
is, that many false religions do not answer
to this description so far as regards their
self-recommending and consoling power; the
second is, that neither does true religion
answer this description to those who are
corrupt and vicious. Belief in a God who is
“of purer eyes than to behold iniquity” is
a belief which bad men may not have liked
to cherish. As regards the first of these
two replies, Sir J. Lubbock himself bears

emphatic testimony to its force. In his work

 

REPLY TO LUBBOCK’S ARGUMENT. 187

 

on “Prehistoric Man,” speaking of the savage,
he says,* “Thus his life is one prolonged
scene of selfishness and fear; even in his
religion, if he has any, lze create: for himself
a new source of terror, and peoples the world
will: invisible enemies.” Yes, and this is
mildly stated. The most cruel and savage
customs in the world are the direct eflect
of its “religions.” And if men could drop
religions when they would, or if they could
even form the wish to get rid of those which
sit like a nightmare on their life, there would
be many more nations without a “religion”
than there are found to be. But religions
can neither be put on nor cast of? like
garments, according to their utility, or ac-

" P. 484.

I
l

 

I

133 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

cording to their beauty, or according to their
power of comforting. Among the causes
which have determined their form and cha-
racter in different 'nations we must reckon
the moral corruption of human nature. I
am not speaking of 'this corruption in a
dogmatic and theological sense; I speak of
it as an unquestionable fact, whatever be the
history of its origin. By the corruption of
human nature, I mean the undeniable fact
that Man has a constant tendency to abuse his
powers, to do what according even to his
own standard of right or wrong he knows
he ought not to do; to be unjust and
cruel towards others, and to fall into horrible
and degrading superstitions. Human corrup-

a tion in this sense is as much a fact in the

 

HUMAN CORRUPTION A FACT. 189

 

natural history of Man as that he is a Bipcd
without feathers. It is entirely independent
of any belief, or any theory as to Man’s
original condition. Sir J. Lubbock’s argu-
ment implies that the tribes, if such there be,
(which, by the way, is extremely doubtful)
who are not known to have any ideas
at all in respect to spiritual beings or to
another world, are in a lower condition than
tribes which have a “religion,” however cruel
and horrible its rites may be. According to
this theory, even devil-worship would be a
step in ascent towards “civilization” from
the “utter barbarisrn” of Primeval Man. But
this is a theory as contrary to reason as it
is contrary to all the evidence we have on

the history of Man. The farther we go back

 

IQO , PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

in that history the more clear become the
traces of some pure traditions, and the rays
of some primeval light. Such evidence as
history and philosophy and criticism afford
on the course of religious knowledge is not
in favour of the doctrine of a gradual rise,
but, on the contrary, of continuous corruption
and decline. “If there is one thing,” says
Professor Max Muller, “which a comparative
study of religions places in the clearest light,
it is the inevitable decay to which every
religion is exposed . . . . Whenever we can
trace back a religion to its first beginnings,
we find it free from many blemishes that
affected it in its later stages.”ale One of the
most ancient religions of the world is re-

“ “ Chips from a German Workshop,” vol. i., prefi, xxiii.

 

THE SANSKRIT VEDAS. 19X

 

presented in its earlier form in the Sanskrit
Vedas, and the contrast between its doctrines
and those of existing Hindooism is but a
sample of the working of a great law which
can be traced in every region of the world.
This is no case confined to some little corner
of the earth, or to some short period of time,
or to some partial and accidental cause. It
is the case of a religion which in all its
branches embraces uncounted millions of the
human race, and the history of which
extends over more than 3,000 years. Nor
is the sense in which corruption and decay
are predicated of this religion at all vague
or indefinite. It has become lower, ruder,
more corrupt,——in its conceptions of the Divine

Nature,—in its notions of acceptable worship,

 

r92 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

:an in the social institutions which are con-
nected with Belief.

The truth is, that Man’s capacities of degra-
dation stand in close relation, and are pro-
portionate,'to his capacities of improvement.
What faculty of the human mind lies nearer
to the very centre of its highest life than
the faculty of Imagination? Without it we
could not interpret Nature, or form any
conception of its laws, or feel their harmony,
or understand their use. Without it we Could
not see the Abstract or read the Future.
Without it we should be without motive to
resist Impulse, or. to maintain Conviction, or
to rise to Duty. We could form no idea
whatever of Religion. It would not be possible

to desire the Unknown or to hope for the

 

IMAGINATION. 193

 

Unseen. And yet Pascal was not wrong
when he placed this same faculty of Ima-
gination at the very head of the “Deceitful
Powers.” For it is, in truth, one of the most
effective causes and instruments of Degrada-
tion. It is its function to give form and
expression to all those vague emotions which
arise inevitably out of contact between the
mind that is in Man and the mind that is
in Nature. These emotions are literally
what the Poet calls them—“ the blank miss
givings of a creature moving about in worlds
not realized.” But without Knowledge given
or acquired, to guide the elements in Imagina-
tion which are purely intellectual, and with:
out virtue to control the elements which are
chiefly moral, this f‘Superb Power,” as 'Pascal

0

 

194 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

also most justly calls it, does terrible work
indeed. It is the mother and the nurse
of all the horrible inventions of Idolatry.
Throughvits operation have arisen, from time
to time, all the diabolical rites which have
degraded, and do still degrade, so many
tribes of men far below the level ‘of the
brutes. But irrational as the superstitions
of heathen nations may appear to be, and
even inconceivable in a Being who is Capable
of reason, it should never be forgotten that
this is true only of the last developments of
Idolatry, and is by no means true of its
first beginnings. On the contrary, these are
among the most natural of all spiritual
temptations, and perhaps the most difficult

to resist. The first of the Commandments

 

ROOTS 0F IDOLATRY. 195

 

is of all others the most difficult to obey:
“Thou shalt have no other Gods before
Me.” The dependence of the human mind
on outward symbols, and then its tendency
to identify the symbols with the concep-
tions they represent—these are the roots of all
Idolatry. The course of thought, in our own
day, even among highly civilized and enlight-
ened men, may well remind us how easy
and how natural it is to lapse into systems
of belief, which in their fundamental cha-
racter are essentially Creature—worship. The
fact is, that so far from there being any
difficulty in understanding how spiritual truth,
once known, could be ever lost, all obser-
vation and experience prove that it is the

most difiicult of all things to maintain with

(‘2

 

196 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

even tolerable purity any high standard of
spiritual faith. A thousand tendencies from
within, and from without, are perpetually at
work to undermine, or to transform it. And
then the awful correlations of Iduman Thought
render it not only probable but inevitable that
the first departures from the knowledge and
the love of Truth, must end in wider and
wider divergence from it. The infinite subtlety
and ingenuity of Imagination will, when it
is ignorant and corrupt amply account for
the origin and growth of even the most
degraded superstitions. This is a subject too
extensive to be pursued here; but it could A
~be shown that even among the South Sea.
Islanders, and other tribes who have been

driven farthest from the original settlements

 

HUMAN SACRIFICES. 197

 

of Man, there were many religious customs
of which those who practised them did not
know the origin or the meaning, and which
clearly indicated their derivation from an
'older, a more intelligible, but a forgotten
faith.

This is also eminently true of the religious
rites and practices of some of the Hill tribes
of India. A most curious and interesting
account of human sacrifices by the Khonds,
one of the Hill Tribes of Orissa, has been
published by my friend, Major—General John
Campbell, who has been mainly’instrumental,
under the Government of India, in the abolition
of this horrid rite. The absolute rule that
the 'victims must be procured by purchase,

stands in unmistakeable relation to the only

 

198 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

intelligible principle in the very idea of sacrifice,
namely, the principle of self-sacrifice.

Here for the present I must leave the
subject. My chief object has been to show
how little really depends on some of the
arguments which have been put forth by
both sides in this controversy, and to indicate
what seems to me to be the true bearing of
the facts which as yet have been clearly
ascertained. I set little value on the argu-
ment of Whately, that as regards the
mechanical arts Man can never have risen
“unaided.” The aid which Man had from
his Creator may possibly have been nothing
more than the aid of a Body and of a Mind,
so marvellously endowed, that Thought was

an instinct, and Contrivance was at once a

 

CONCLUSION. 199

 

necessity and a delight. But I set still 1653?

value on the arguments of Sir J. Lubbock,
that Primeval Man .must have been born in
a state of “utter barbarism,” on the ground
that this is the actual condition of the
outcasts of our race, or that industrial know-
ledge has advanced from small beginnings,
or that there are traces of rude icustoms
among many nations now highly civilized. J
None of these arguments afford any proof
whatever, or even any reasonable presumption,
in favour of the conclusion which they are
employed to support: first, because along
with a complete ignorance of the Arts it is
quite possible that there may have been a
higher knowledge of God, and a closer

communion with Him; secondly, because

.1 f
5

 

230 PRIMEVAL MAN.

 

many cases of existing barbarism can be
distinctly traced to adverse external circum-
stances, and because it is at least possflfle
that all real barbarism has had its origin in
like conditions; thirdly, because the known
character of Man and the indisputable facts
of history prove that he has within him at
all times the elements of corruption—that
even in his most civilized condition, he is
capable of degradation, that his Knowledge
may decay, and that. his Religion may be

lost.

THE REIGN OF LAW.

BY THE DUKE OF ARGYLL.

Second American from the fifth London Edition. Crown 8vo. $2

 

CONTENTS.

I. THE SUPERNATURAL.

2. LAW: ITS DEFINITIONS.

3. CONTRIVANCE A NECESSITY ARISING OUT OF THE REIGN
: OE LAW—EXAMPLE IN THE MACHINERY OF FLIGHT.

4. APPARENT EXCEPTIONS TO THE SUPREMACY 0F PURPOSE.

5. CREATION BY LAW.

6. LAW IN THE REALM OF MIND.

7. LAW IN POLITICS.

NOTES AND INDEX.

 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

Times.

“A very 'able 'book, well adapted to 'meet that spirit of
inquiry which is abroad, and which the increase of our know-
ledge of natural things stimulates so remarkably. It opens
up many new lines of thought, and expresses many deep and
suggestive truths. It is very readable ; and there are few books
in which a thoughtful reader will find more that he will desire

to remember."

2 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

 

Pall Mall Gazette.

“This is the only formal attempt that we know of to dis-
entangle the web of perplexity, suspicion, and doubt in which
many religious minds of the day are involved, through the
confusion of thought and phraseology from which few writings
on scientific matters are free. The aim is lofty, and requires
not only a thorough familiarity with metaphysical and scientific
subjects, but a breadth of thought, a freedom from prejudice,
a generatversatility and sympathetic quality of mind, and a
power of clear exposition rare in all ages and all countries.
We have no hesitation in expressing an opinion that all these
qualifications are to be recognised in the Duke of Argyll,

and that his book is as unanswerable as it is attractive.”

Spectator.

“This is in its way a masterly book—not a book of many
ideas, but of a few very ably and powerfully put, by a man
who has a real and accurate knowledge of many departments
of natural history. It is the first from any Cabinet Minister
of standing on the philosophy of science, and it shows, we
think, almost as large a power of thought and as strong a
judgment within its sphere as any of Sir Comewall Lewis’s
books, and more than many of Mr. Gladstone’s. Nothing can
be abler than the way in which the Duke of Argyll disentangles
and illustrates the various uses of the word ‘Law’ in its scien-

tific sense, and shows how much it really means, what false

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 3

 

meanings have been put upon it, and what are the scientific
reasons for rejecting those false meanings. . . . The last
chapter of all is an exceedihgly thoughtful and masterly essay,
on the extent to which natural law should be accepted as the
- guiding rule of politics. But the book is strong, sound,

mature, able thought from its first page to its last.”

Morning Post.

“The Duke of Argyll has released from the hazy pale of
metaphysics, and placed in the broad light of practical philo-
sophy, questions of vital import, which are closely associated

with the progress and welfare of mankind.”

Saturday Review.

“,The conflict, real or supposed, of theology with science is
indeed, in all its aspects, an urgent topic demanding a more
complete treatment than it has yet received in this country
at the hands of the religious philosopher. That question, with
which the Duke of Argyll deals, is just the point which pious
and practical minds find the most perplexing. Many persons
who are too busy or too little metaphysical to be aware of the
deeper speculative difficulties which beset our conception of
God and Nature, and their mutual relations, will be glad to
have the-suggestions of a thoughtful mind on such a practical

point as, e.g., How is the unchangeableness of natural law

4 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

 

compatible with the religious belief that God hears and answer
prayer? The Duke of Argyll takes up the mental position
which alone can promise usefulness in the treatment of such
a question. He has no reserves on the side of science. He
has no hesitation on the side of religion. It is extremely rare
to find the reconcilement attempted in popular books without
an inclination to one side or the other. The religious people
too often write with a secret disbelief in science, which is
in fact imperfect comprehension, but looks like fear of truth.
The man of science, in his contempt for popular and pulpit
theology, often writes with a. disregard of those great truths
which are the indispensable complement of rational thought
on the system of the universe. In the present writer we miss

neither of the required faculties.”

Examiner.

“A very remarkable volume, which must certainly have
some good result .in clearing the ground for that advance of
truth which, it is evident, the Duke of Argyll desires to pro-
mote even to the prejudice 'of the venerable forms and coverings

of truth which are so dear to him.”

British Quarterly Review.

“ The excellency of the Duke of Argyll’s book is that he
does not present himself as either philosopher or theologian,

but as familiar enough with the lore of both to enable him

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 5

 

fairly to deal with the arguments of both. He is, moreover,
perfectly successful in the maintenance of a judicial feeling;
he conceals no fact of science, he surrenders no fact of revelation.
He believes in the teachings of science as the true exposition
of the material world; he accepts the teachings of revela-
tion as the true exposition of the moral world; and if he has
not always succeeded in establishing the harmony which he
seeks, it is because of imperfect demonstration, and not by
unjustifiable surrender on either side. The volume is full of
vigorous thinking, and most successfully mediates between

science and theology.”

Westminster Review.

“A really valuable contribution to science, and conciliatory

in the best sense of the term.”

The London Review.

“ ‘The Reign of Law’ bears the stamp of original thought,
of accurate acquaintance with the most advanced science, and
of a not unsuccessful intrepidity in combating the positions of
Darwin, Comte, and Mill. Nor is the statesman lost in the
philosopher: the closing chapter on Law in Politics entitles its
noble author to a very high place among the philosophical
politicians of the day. Difficult questions such, e. g., as the
p'inclple of combination of labour, are not only discussed

with more than judicial impartiality, but their functions and

6 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

 

uses, their dangers and tendencies, their connection with
other principles in the individual mind and the system of
Society are examined and brought outwith a profoundness of
thought and width of view, which remind us of some of the
best pages in the writings of Sir Comewall Lewis. . . . We
have said enough, we hope, to recommend this book to all
intelligent readers. From many scientific works now-a-days
we rise with something of depression and bewilderment on
our mind. The-Duke of Argyll’s book leaves exactly a contrary

impression. ”,

The Chronicle.

“The Duke of Argyll’s ‘Reign of Law’ is written with
admirable clearness. His criticism of Mr. Darwin in the
chapter entitled ‘Creation by Law’ is a. model of perspicacity

and neatness.”.‘

The Illustrated Times.

“ We have“experienced the greatest delight in reading the
‘Reign of Law.’ That part of the work which relates to
birds is as interesting as a fairy tale. The style of his Grace
(to say nothing here of his thought, of which others have
spoken words of admiration certainly not too strong) often
runs into poetry; and it has everywhere that indescribable

not-too-much-ncss which is always the tilt/[El of high-class work.”

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 7

 

The Guardian.

“The Duke of Argyll has produced a book which would
do credit to the calmest and most disengaged philosopher.
He has set out his views in lucid and eloquent words, and ex—
plained and adorned them with a wealth and accuracy of illus-
tration which could only be poured forth from the treasures of
a well-stored and highly cultivated mind. And we think, also,
that he has made a real contribution towards the solution of

the great problem which he undertakes.”

The Daily News.

“ The Duke writes with great ease and power and much
metaphysical acuteness, often with no little eloquence, and

always with evident knowledge of his subject."

Blackwood’s Magazine.

“The ‘Reign of Law’ is in all respects a remarkable
book. . . . The chapter on the ‘Flight of Birds’ is among
the happiest of the kind we have ever met with. > We shall
henceforth watch the flight of the sea-gull with additional
interest. . . . The essay appeared originally in that very
spirited periodical, Good W'am’s, and it is highly creditable to
that magazine that it should give its readers a composition of

this sterling character."

8 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

 

Glasgow Herald.

“It is written in a manly, dignified spirit, is never dull, and
frequently rises into true eloquence. Especially is it notable for
clearness of definition and exactness of illustration. sT he author
indeed is unsparing in his denunciation of those who, writing
or speaking on scientific subjects, use vague terms which may
be understood in more senses than one, and thus lead to uncer-
tainty or confusion of mind. With this fault he cannot himself
be charged. The abstmse questions which he takes up are
popularised and made interesting by the use of studiously simple
language, which must be understood by any one of ordinary
intelligence, and in short there is throughout the book a healthy,
invigorating tone of thought which must recommend it to every

reader. ”
Literary Churchman.

“ Nothing can be more interesting than the way in which the
flight of birds is analysed to show the wondrous play and
counterplay of the contrivances by which the laws of Nature
are adjusted to work out the Creator’s purpose. Nothing can
be better than the vivid details by which the rich plumage of
birds are described to establish that ‘Inere beauty and mere
variety for their own sakes’ are objects sought as independently

in the works of Nature as in the works of Man.”

 

GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS, Publishers.

 

 

 

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