108 HORATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



the savage Athabascans to the bountiful pastures and fertile valleys of New Mexico, 

 give them horses, cattle, and sheep to tend, and wheat and fruits and edible roots to cril- 

 tivate, and presently their torpid faculties rebloom, and they become the quick-witied and 

 inventive Navajos. Remove the shrewd, industrious, enterprising, improving Dravidians 

 to the barren plains of Australia, and they sink in time to what has been deemed the low- 

 est level of humanity. 



This naturally leads us to consider some of the theories which have lately been put 

 forth in regard to the condition and character of primitive man. Strange to say, the 

 modern representatives of this unknown individual have been looked for in places where, 

 by the common consent of all physiologists, he could not possibly have come into being — 

 in Australia, in South Africa, in the Pacific Islands, and in America. Many works have 

 been put forth in which speculations, based entirely ou what has been learned of the 

 inhabitants of these regions (but generally iu utter disregard of the teachings of linguistic 

 science), have represented the earliest men as sunk in the lowest debasement of mind and 

 morals. In this " primitive horde," as it has been styled, human beings have been 

 described as herding together like cattle, utterly without family ties, and living in what 

 is euphemistically termed "communal marriage," or, in other words, in promiscuous 

 intercourse. From this dismal condition, we are assured, they have slowly and gradually 

 emerged, by long and painful struggles, of which the stages and methods have been 

 ingeniously suggested, and the indications pointed out as surviving in various customs 

 and institutions, such as wife-capture, mother-right, father-right, endogamy, exogamy, 

 totemism, the clan-system, and others of like character. There is no doubt that all these 

 customs or social conditions have prevailed among barbarous races, except only that of 

 promiscuous intercourse, which, as Darwin has clearly shown, is contrary to the very 

 nature of man as a " pairing animal," and never could have existed.' All of them are 

 doubtless well worthy of careful investigation. But if the conclusions drawn from the 

 facts recorded in the previous pages of this essay are correct, all these peculiar usages of 

 barbarous tribes are simply the efforts of men pressed down by hard conditions below 

 their natural stage to keep themselves from sinking lower, and to preserve as far as pos- 

 sible the higher level ol' intellectual, moral, and social life to which their innate faculties 

 tended to exalt them. They are like the struggles of a bird in a cage to keep its wings in 

 use for flight. A child who should assume that the primitive canary could only flutter 

 for a distance of a few yards would be as wise in its inference as the philosopher who 

 regards the Australians, and Fuegians as representatives of primitive man. The physiolo- 

 gist sees at a glance in the structure of the bird's wings the kind of flight for which it 

 was intended, and the philologist discerns in the Australian and Fuegian languages evi- 

 dences of the mental endowments which, under other circumstances, would have placed 

 the speakers of those idioms very far above their actual condition. 



It may be well to attempt to gather from the evidence in our possession what was 

 the real condition and character of primeval man. We possess in three important works, 

 lately given to the world by three authorities of the first rank, the latest conclusions of 

 science on the c^uestion of the probable birthplace of the human species. It is of interest 

 to observe that these eminent authorities differ widely on certain important questions, 



' On this subject the admirable work of Mr. Edward Westermarck, of the University of Finland, " The History 

 of Human Marriage," (published since this essay was written) should be consulted. 



