ADDRESS ON ANTHROPOLOGY. 885 



these races, and they could take hold of it with their understand- 

 ing ; and, howsoever it may have been put before them, it was 

 immeasurably above the level of heathenism, and considerably 

 above that of Mahommedanism. Whatever the dogmas taught 

 were, the ethics of Christianity were taught with them ; and in 

 most cases the missionaries gave, at the same time, in their lives 

 striking examples of the value of those ethics ; and the fact of 

 their maintenance and exemplification was the main thing.' 



Mr. Bagehot has been quoted by Mr. Darwin, in his ' Descent of 

 Man,' ed. i, vol. i. p. 2^39, ed. 2, p. 182, as saying that 'it is 

 a curious fact that savages did not formerly waste away before the 

 classical nations, as they do now before the modern civilised na- 

 tions ; had they done so the old moralists would have mused over 

 the event ; but there is no lament in any writer of that period over 

 the perishing barbarians.' On reading this for the first, and indeed 

 for a second time, I was much impressed with its beauty and 

 originality; but beauty and originality do not impress men per- 

 manently unless they be coupled with certain other qualities. And 

 I wish to remark upon this statement, first, that it is exceedingly 

 unsafe to argue from the silence of any writer, ancient or modern, 

 to the non-existence of the non-mentioned thing. I do not 

 recollect any mention in the ancient writers of Stonehenge, nor can 

 I call to mind at this moment any catalogue of the vocabularies of 

 the Cimbri and Teutones, of the Ligures and Iberians, with whom 

 the ancients were brought into prolonged contact. These little 

 omissions are much to be regretted, as, if they had been filled up, 

 a great many very interesting problems would thus have been 

 settled for us which we have not as yet settled for ourselves. But 

 these omissions do not justify us in thinking that Stonehenge is an 

 erection of post-Roman times, nor in holding that any of the 

 strange races mentioned were devoid of a language. And, secondly, 

 what we know of the classical nations dates from a time when the 

 'merciless bronze' had begun to give way to the 'dark gleaming' 

 steel. But long before the displacement of bronze weapons by iron 

 ones, the bronze had had abundant time to displace both stone 

 weapons and the people who used them. And it is plain enough to 

 suggest that one reason why the old moralists did not muse over 

 the disappearance of the aboriginal races lies in the fact that these 

 races had neither a contemporary Homer to sing their history, nor 



