164 LESSONS FROM NATURE. [CHAP. VI. 



view is to be regarded as a primitive condition, whatever yet 

 earlier state may in reality have lain behind it,&quot; he fully 

 admits that, as far as research carries us, the same human 

 characteristics come again and again before us on every hand. 

 He concludes with the following emphatic tribute to the 

 essential unity of man in all ages, all climes, and all con 

 ditions : 



&quot; The historian and the ethnographer must be called upon to show 

 the hereditary standing of each opinion and practice, and their inquiry 

 must go back as far as antiquity or savagery can show a vestige, for 

 there seems no human thought so primitive as to have lost its bearing 

 on our own thought, nor so ancient as to have broken its connection 

 with our own life.&quot; 



With these declarations we may well rest contented, and 

 conclude from the absence of opposing evidence, as well 

 as from such admissions on the part of a witness whose bias 

 is in an opposite direction that one common fundamental 

 human nature is present in all the tribes and races of men 

 (however contrasted in external appearance) which are 

 scattered over the whole surface of the habitable globe. 

 We are now in a position to draw our conclusions from 

 the foregoing data, and state the results which the 

 teaching of Mr. Tylor and Sir John Lubbock seem 

 to force upon us. The works referred to and quoted have 

 been, as we said, selected for citation because their authors 

 are not only most justly esteemed for their information and 

 capability, not only because they are representative men in 

 ethnology and archaeology, but also because their bias is 

 favourable to the monistic view of evolution, and their evi 

 dences, and admissions made by them which tell against 

 that view, can be more safely relied on. We have considered 

 facts brought forward by one or other of them, and judg 

 ments expressed on those facts with regard to speech, mo 

 rality, religion, progress, and community of nature in the 

 most diverse tribes of mankind, with a view of discovering 

 (1) whether any evidence can be adduced of man s existence 

 in a brutal or irrational condition ; (2) whether the evidence 



