PRIMITIVE MAN AND WOMAN 235 



civilization have in every instance been brought 

 about from without. Only through external in- 

 fluences, the coming of missionaries, explorers, 

 merchants, or similar events, has a savage tribe 

 ever been raised to civilization. "Herbert Spen- 

 cer," says Dr. Dwight, "speaks in his 'Sociology' 

 of the degradation from something higher of 

 most, if not of all, the savage tribes of today." 10 

 Had man appeared upon the scene of life as a 

 primitive savage, a savage he would have re- 

 mained, with the probability of sinking still deeper 

 into a more hopeless decline. In countless in- 

 stances we can directly trace the indications of 

 a higher stage of culture, as in the extraordinary 

 structures of Yucatan. So, to give but one exam- 

 ple, the discoveries in the Polynesian Islands, says 

 a writer, "prove that the uncivilized occupants 

 of these islands were preceded by a people who 

 were architects and builders, who possessed tools 

 by which the stones they used were cut and chis- 

 elled, and powerful machinery by which enormous 

 blocks were moved and fixed. And if the first 

 men of these regions were savages, and their de- 

 scendants are uncivilized, who built these temples 

 and fortifications and Stonehenges? Between 

 early man, as a savage, and uncivilized people of 

 later times there is no place for these architectural 

 remains." n 



" "Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist," p. 170. 



n B. C. Y., "The Remote Antiquity of Man Not Proven," p. 97- 



