126 
feelings has been struck out by physical causes acting on his. — 
organism. 
“There can, I think,” he adds, “be no hesitation in affirm- 
ing that our old Biblical doctrine is the more complete and 
scientific of the two, and also that which is most in accord 
with the evidence of history and archeology.’’* 
Observe, that we by no means deny, as some represent, that 
the history of man has been one of gradual progress on the 
whole, especially since God’s latest revelation of his mind to 
man; but we assert the extreme frequency of cases of degra- 
dation, and doubt man’s power of spontaneous elevation to a 
higher plane. M. Michelet well says: ‘‘ Nature has not pro- 
gressed with a continuous flow, but with retrograde move- 
ments and stoppages which allow her to harmonise every- 
thing.’ + 
What are savages, then? let us hear some opinions of 
experts. ‘‘ Savages,” says Sir A. Grant, “are swamps and 
back-waters of the streams of noble humanity.” Not springs 
and sources, observe. 
All savages,” says Niebuhr,{ “are the degenerated rem- 
nants of more civilised races, which had been overpowered 
by enemies, and driven to take refuge in woods (whence the 
name silvaggio, savage), and there to wander, seeking a pre- 
carious subsistence, till they had forgotten most of the arts 
of settled life, and sunk into a wild state.” 
Again, Professor Max Miiller says: “The most degraded 
jargons contain the ruins of former ereatness and beauty.” 
In the most degraded of all races, the Andaman Islanders, 
the Tasmanian and Australian aborigines, the Fuegians, the 
Digger Indians of the Rocky Mountains, the Veddahs of Ceylon, 
the Negrittos of the Hast India Islands, and the Bushmen 
of Africa, we see these “ waifs and strays” of humanity 
harried, persecuted, and pushed back into savage woods or 
sterile deserts, and almost denuded of the first elements of 
civilisation, and yet retaming the Promethean spark ,of 
humanity, which contact with higher races alone can kindle 
into a flame. 
They are not races in early infancy, but in worn-out de- 
créepitude; their ancestors were, doubtless, once far more 
highly civilised, and accordingly we are astonished to find 
amongst many of them stranded relics of lost arts, and very 
often a somewhat complicated code of etiquette. 
* Pp. 814, 815. + L’Insecte, pp. 128, 1058. 
~ Quoted by Archbishop Whately, p. 22. 
