NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION. 235 



come at length to possess between three and four thou- 

 sand languages, all different at least as much as French, 

 German, and English, though, as has been shown, the 

 traces of a common origin are observable in them all. 



What has been said on the question whether mankind 

 were originally barbarous or civilised, will have prepared 

 the reader for understanding how the arts and sciences, 

 and the rudiments of civilisation itself, took their rise 

 amongst men. The only source of fallacious views on 

 this subject is the so frequent observation of arts, 

 sciences, and social modes, forms, and ideas, being not 

 indigenous where we see them now flourishing, but 

 known to have been derived elsewhere : thus Rome 

 borrowed from Greece, Greece from Egypt, and Egypt 

 itself, lost in the mists of historic antiquity, is now sup- 

 posed to have obtained the light of knowledge from some 

 still earlier scene of intellectual culture. This has caused 

 to many a great difficulty in supposing a natural or 

 spontaneous origin for civilisation and the attendant 

 arts. But, in the first place, several stages of derivation 

 are no conclusive argument against there having been 

 an originality at some earlier stage. In the second, such 

 observers have not looked far enough, for, if they had, 

 they could have seen various instances of civilisations 

 which it is impossible, with any plausibiUty, to trace 

 back to a common origin with others ; such are those of 

 China and America. They would also have seen civihsa- 

 tion springing up, as it were, like oases amongst the 

 arid plains of barbarism, as in the case of the Mandans. 

 A still more attentive study of the subject w^ould have 

 shown, amongst living men, the very psychological pro- 

 cedure on which the origination of civilisation and the 

 arts and sciences depended. 



These things, like language, are simply the effects of 



