130 LESSONS FKOM NATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



will consequently not only maintain that races have existed 

 without articulate speech, or any equivalent symbolic system, 

 without perceptions of &quot;right&quot; and &quot;wrong,&quot; and without 

 religious conceptions, but also that the first men were 

 actually so destitute. He may or may not expect to find 

 specimens of this lowest condition of mankind still sur 

 viving at the present day, but he will surely anticipate that 

 archaeological, historical, and ethnological research must re 

 veal facts pointing plainly towards such an early condition. 

 He will also anticipate that these sciences will bring to our 

 knowledge tribes in an intellectual stage which is less remote 

 from that presumed early condition than from a choice assem 

 blage of men living now say, the members of our own 

 &quot; Koyal Society.&quot; 



A supporter of the dualistic hypothesis must, on the other 

 hand, maintain that man at the very first moment of his ex 

 istence was at once essentially man, and separated, at his very 

 origin, from the highest brutes by as impassable a gulf as 

 that which anywhere exists between them to-day. He will 

 consequently not only maintain that no race will anywhere 

 be found without a mode of rational expression, moral per 

 ceptions, and religious conceptions (however rudimentary or 

 atrophied), but also that the first men possessed all these. 

 He will be confident that no scientific researches will bring 

 to our knowledge any human races devoid of reason, or (what 

 we have in a former chapter seen to be its necessary concomi 

 tant in a &quot; rational animal &quot;) the power of expressing internal 

 thoughts, as distinguished from mere feelings, by external 

 sensible signs. He will also expect to find in all races of 

 men indications of religious conceptions and of an apprehen 

 sion of right and wrong, however curiously or perversely 

 these abstract conceptions may be concretely embodied. 

 Finally, he will be confident that no race will be found less 

 remote intellectually from the highest existing men than 

 from a state of brutal irrationality. The actual first origin 

 of man must for ever remain a problem insoluble by unaided 

 reason a matter incapable of direct investigation, and, reve- 



