Prehistoric and Savage Man 1 8 1 



may seem to require filling. For tribes of men have been 

 found naked and not ashamed, dwelling in caves or forests, 

 almost as devoid of artificial weapons as are some animals, 

 uttering only uncouth guttural sounds, which seem hardly 

 human, and so cruel and bloodthirsty as to appear devoid 

 of every germ of morahty. Such beings may seem to be not 

 far removed from those ' missing-links ' which are required to 

 directly connect the human species with the lower animals. 



In reply to all this I may first observe, in passing, that 

 few Evolutionists now maintain that existing savages are the 

 survivors of primitive mankind. Even Mr. Herbert Spencer 

 says : ^ ' Probably most, if not all, of them had ancestors in 

 higher states.' With respect to the degradation of savage 

 races I refer with pleasure to a remarkable address delivered 

 in 1873, before the Literary and Philosophical Society of this 

 city, by Mr. Albert J. Mott, but I shall not enter on this 

 matter myself, as it is one quite beside the main question. 

 That question is — Are there any indisputable and deeply 

 important characters by which all tribes of men funda- 

 mentally agree with the Greeks of the time of Pericles, and 

 with the members of our own learned societies, and alto- 

 gether differ from even the highest brutes ? I maintain that 

 the gift of rational speech is such a character, and to this 

 may be added the power of moral perception. No tribe has 

 ever yet been discovered which has not such language, and 

 there is abundant evidence that even the lowest of them can 

 form judgments as to justice and injustice — in other words, 

 that they are capable of ethical perception. Hence arises a 

 very plain argument in favour of the unity and essential 

 distinctness of our human nature. But this argument is 

 met by three assertions which demand careful consideration. 

 They are — (1) Mere animals also have language; (2) Man's 

 brute ancestors had themselves language, and this begot 



1 Principles of Sociology, vol. i. p. 106. 



