FROM SAVAGE TO CIVILIZED LIFE. 183 



course of long ages of experiment, of acquiring a knowledge of himself and the 

 external world around him by his own unaided exertions, are founded on hypo- 

 theses equally without foundation. No authority is referred to no evidence is 

 produced not a single recorded instance is pointed out of the circumstances they 

 allege, beyond the suppositions of those poets and philosophers, for assuming the 

 facts to be as they have stated them. That man, in certain states of civilization, 

 and with the transmitted knowledge which is the appanage of his race, is capable 

 of increasing his dominion over nature to an incalculable extent, and even of dis- 

 covering his progressive improvement here to be connected with a future state of 

 existence, is apparent from many considerations. But it is equally apparent, even 

 on the recognised principles of philosophic observation, that if man had been cre- 

 ated a degraded being, procuring his scanty subsistence from the spontaneous 

 produce of nature, he never could, by his unaided exertions, have risen above 

 that state, he never could have arrived even at the first period of the philoso- 

 phical gradation, or the hunter's state ; for the hunter's state necessarily presup- 

 poses knowledge which an acorn-eating savage could not possibly acquire. Man 

 has none of the instinctive propensities which guide the lower animals to their 

 food with unerring certainty. He must be trained to be what he is ; and the 

 transmitted knowledge which he inherits as the descendant of a civilized proge- 

 nitor, though it may be so far lost or deteriorated, cannot be acquired by the un- 

 taught exertions of the savage. Though the habit of flying from predaceous ani- 

 mals did, according to LAMARCK, lengthen the limbs and quicken the pace of the 

 gazelles and antelopes,* so as to produce, through ages of practice, the present 

 handsome and light forms which these animals now bear ; yet, extravagant as 

 this theory is, it would not be more so than that which would suppose a naked 

 and fruit-eating savage, with no instinctive propensities for blood and animal fibre, 

 no means of pursuit, and no implements of chase, to discover that the animals 

 which fled from him would serve him for food. 



But not only was man, according to the opinion of some authors, created a 

 savage, scarcely raised above the animals around him, but, in the opinion of others, 

 he was created a mute savage ; and hence it has been the object of philosophers, 

 taking this also for granted, to trace the steps which led him, from natural signs, 

 to acquire articulate speech.f Dr ADAM SMITH, in his " Dissertation on the Origin 

 of Languages," endeavours to trace these fancied steps. " Two savages," says he, 



* Philosophic Zoologique, tome i. p. 255. 



t According to LAMARCK, the dominant race, or man, having multiplied their wants as society be- 

 came more numerous, felt the necessity of communicating their ideas to their companions. The result 

 was, to augment and vary the signs proper for the communication of these ideas ; and pantomimic signs, 

 and all possible inflections of the voice, having failed to keep pace with the multitude of acquired ideas, 

 they came at last, by redoubled efforts, to form articulate sounds. From thence the origin of the admi- 

 rable faculty of speech. (Philosophic Zoologique, torn. i. 356, 357.) 



