180 MR STARK ON THE SUPPOSED PROGRESS OF HUMAN SOCIETY 



which agrees, too, with the suggestions of reason, the savage state was not the 

 primitive state of man."* 



In 1830, Dr ROBERT HAMILTON of Aberdeen, in a posthumous " Essay on the 

 Progress of Society," followed Mr SUMNER in asserting that man was not, in his 

 earliest state, an ignorant savage. " Revelation does not favour this opinion," 

 says he ; " history does not prove it ; the fables of the poets are unworthy of 

 credit ; and the reasonings which have been adduced in support of it are ex- 

 tremely conjectural."! But Dr HAMILTON, except in this passage, does not allude 

 to the subject further, and the remainder of his Essay is occupied with other 

 topics. 



The theory of the progress of human society from savage to civilized life was 

 afterwards questioned by the present Archbishop of Dublin, who states " the im- 

 possibility of men's emerging unaided from a completely savage state ; and, con- 

 sequently, the descent of such as are in that state (supposing mankind to have 

 sprung from a single pair) from ancestors less barbarous, and from whom they 

 have degenerated. The first race of mankind seem to have been placed merely 

 in such a state as might enable and incite them to commence and continue a 

 course of advancement.":): 



The theory of savage original was also attacked in 1834 by Mr CHARLES TIL- 

 STONE BEKE, in a work entitled " Origines Biblicse, or Researches in Primeval 

 History," of which only one volume has been published. Mr BEKE, however, 

 does not go so far back as the original creation of man for proofs of the earliest 

 state of civilization, but takes his stand on the fact, that " the present human race 

 has sprung, not from a common ancestor in a primitive state of society, but from 

 one who was himself a member of a previous social state, which had already ex- 

 isted for many ages ; that whatever may have been the natural state of the first 

 man ADAM, the progenitor of the antediluvian world, the contemplation of that 

 state cannot aid us in the consideration of the primary condition of the postdilu- 

 vian world, which takes its origin from NOAH and the seven other persons saved 

 in the Ark, who were members of an artificial, and most probably a highly ad- 

 vanced state of society." || 



Within these few months (October 1840), another work has appeared, en- 

 titled " The Natural History of Society in the Barbarous and Civilized State ; an 

 Essay towards discovering the Origin and Course of Human Improvement. By 

 W. COOKE TAYLOR, Esq. LL.D. of Trinity CoUege, Dublin."** In this work, Dr 



* Records of Creation, i. 47. 



t The Progress of Society. By the late Rev. ROBERT HAMILTON, LL.D. F.R.S. Lond. 1830. 

 | Introductory Lectures on Political Economy, p. 129. Lond. 1831. 



Origines Biblicse, or Researches in Primeval History. By CHARLES TILSTONE BEKE. Lond. 1834, 

 8vo. 



II Ibid. i. 49. ** In two volumes 8vo. London, 1840. 



