llô fiOEATIO HALE ON LANGUAGE 



of chipped stone, and were unacquainted with the metals, seems to be established. But 

 it should be borne in mind that civilization does not depend upon a knowledge of the 

 metals. It begins as soon as men have acquired a settled habitation, and hare learned to 

 tame the useful animals and to cultivate the useful plants. If the earliest men of the 

 existing species possessed, as we have every reason to believe, intellectual faculties equal 

 to those of their descendants, how long would they be in acquiring these first elements of 

 civilization ? Imagine the first human beings to be dwellers in a fruitful oasis of northern 

 Arabia, and consider what must necessarily have been their social condition. Being human 

 (to repeat a former remark) they must have spoken to one another in articulate language. 

 And, moreover, we know from the laws of linguistic science that this language must 

 not only have been a completely organized speech, but that it was more complex in its 

 forms than any dialect which has been derived from it. If, for example, it was, as 

 would seem probable from the supposed locality, a language of the Hamito-Semitic stock, 

 it certainly did not belong to the group of Hamitic tongues, which are as much simpler 

 in their forms, and therefore younger, than those of the S:?mitic group, as are the languages 

 of Polynesia compared with the ancestral Malaisian tongues, or as is the English lan- 

 guage compared with the German. 



If the first human beings had all the natural instincts of their species, they belonged 

 to the class of pairing animals. Their first social organization was that of the family. 

 The first government was neither patriarchal nor matriarchal, but parental. The woman 

 in her own sphere, and in her special prerogatives, was equal to the man. They were 

 mutual helpmates. And in the first development of the arts of civilization, it is probable 

 that the woman took the leading part. This part has been vividly suggested by an ingenious 

 French writer, in a passage which well deserves to be quoted: — "It is to woman, I 

 think," writes M. Elie Reclus, " that mankind owes all that has made us men. Burdened 

 with the children and the baggage, she erected a permanent cover to shelter the little 

 family. The nest for her brood was perhaps a hollows carpeted with moss. By the side 

 of it she set up a pole, with large leaves laid across, and when she thought of fastening 

 three or four of these poles together by their tops the hut was invented — the hut, the first 

 ' home.' She placed there the kindled brand, with which she never parts, and the hut 

 became illuminated ; the hut was warmed ; the hut sheltered a hearth."' " A day comes 

 when by the side of a doe which the man has slain, the woman sees a fawn. It looks at 

 her with pleading eyes. She has compassion on it, and carries it away in her arms. The 

 little creature becomes attached to her, and follows her everywhere. Thus it was that 

 woman reared and tamed animals, and became the mother of pastoral peoples. And that 

 is not all. While the husband devoted himself to the greater game, the woman, engaged 

 with her little ones, collected eggs, insects, seeds, and roots. Of these seeds she made a 

 store in her hut ; a few that she let fall germinated close by, ripened, and bore fruit. On 

 seeing this she sowed others, and became the mother of agriciiltural peoples In fact, 

 among all uncivilized men cultivation may be traced to the housewife. Notwithstanding 

 the doctrine which holds sway, I maintain that woman was the creator of the primordial 

 elements of civilization." ' 



' " Primitive Folk ; Studies in Comparative Ethnology." By Elie Reclus (in the '' Contemporary Science 

 Series " ) : p. 58. 



