EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



that Mrs. Somerville, in her excellent little work on Physical 

 Geography, speaks without hesitation of the " spontaneous 

 civilization" which has arisen among both the African and the 

 South American nations. 



The most conclusive argument against the original civiliza- 

 tion of mankind is to be found in the fact that we do not now 

 see civilization existing anywhere except in certain conditions 

 altogether different from any we can suppose to have existed at 

 the commencement of our race. To have civilization, it is ne- 

 cessary that a people should be numerous and closely placed ; 

 that they should be fixed in their habitations, and safe from 

 violent external and internal disturbance ; that a considerable 

 number of them should be exempt from the necessity of drudg- 

 ing for immediate subsistence. Feeling themselves at ease 

 about the first necessities of their nature, including self-pre- 

 servation, and daily subjected to that intellectual excitement 



ever much we may admire their architecture, their picture-writing, and 

 historical records, it is their astronomical science in particular, as Mr. 

 Prescott observes, which was disproportioned to their advancement in 

 other walks of civilization. They had fixed the true length of the tro- 

 pical year, with a precision unknown to the great philosophers of an- 

 tiquity, which could only be the result of a long series of nice and 

 patient observations. . . . To ascribe the civilization of the Toltecs to 

 an Asiatic origin, while it is admitted that there was no correspondence 

 or relationship between their language and that of any known European 

 nation, appears to me a baseless hypothesis, however true it may be 

 that the aboriginal Americans had derived some hints from foreign 

 sources. ... If, then, a large continent can be inhabited by hundreds 

 of tribes, all belonging to the same race, and nearly all remaining for 

 centuries in a state of apparently hopeless barbarism, while two or three 

 of them make a start in their social condition, and in the arts and 

 sciences ; if these same nations, when brought into contact with Euro- 

 peans, relapse and retrograde until they are scarcely distinguishable in 

 intellectual rank from the rude hunter tribes descended from a common 

 stock ; what caution ought we not to observe when speculating on the 

 inherent capacities of any other great member of the human family. 

 The negro, for example, may have remained stationary in all hitherto 

 explored parts of the African continent, and may even have become 

 more barbarous when brought within the influence of the white man, 

 and yet may possess within his bosom the germ of a civilization as active 

 and refined as that of the golden age of Tezcuco." ii. 38. 



Mrs. Somerville, in her work on Physical Geography, (2 vols. 1848,) 

 takes her place in opposition to Dr. Whately. She says, " A spon- 

 taneous civilization has arisen in various parts of Southern and Tropical 

 Africa, in which there has been considerable progress in agriculture and 

 commerce." Again, "Some of the native South American nations 

 have spontaneously made considerable progress in civilization in modern 

 times." 



