364 

NATURE 
[March 9, 1871 

civilised monarchs as his inferior, and conyicts of folly 
the acutest of civilised philosophers. Unhappily this 
charming ideal person eludes the search of authentic 
travellers. Theytell us of savages whose presence and bear- 
ing stamp them as gentlemen, they record many keen and 
pregnant sayings of barbaric wisdom ; but the possession 
of the capacity for civilisation thus manifested is a very 
different thing from the possession of civilisation. Manly 
courtesy, strong commons ense, many of the moral virtues, 
are as compatible with a state of barbarism, as the absence 
of all these qualities is compatible with a state of highly- 
advanced civilisation. On the other hand, civilisation 
necessarily implies a familiarity with certain ideas to 
which “a state of mere childhood in respect to knowledge” 
is equally of necessity an utter stranger. In fact, both 
Archbishop Whately and the Duke of Argyll seem to have 
been the victims of a wholly imaginary necessity. They 
appear to have forgotten the syllogism implied in the old 
rhyme, 
When Adam delved and Eve span, 
Who was then the gentleman ? 
and have felt themselves under an obligation of crediting 
our first parents with a degree of civilisation utterly at 
variance with any accepted record of their condition. As 
Sir J. Lubbock observes, “Adam is represented to us 
in Genesis not only as naked and subsequently as 
clothed with leaves, but as unable to resist the most 
trivial temptation, and as entertaining very gross and 
anthropomorphic conceptions of the Deity. In fact, in 
all three characteristics—in his mode of life, in his moral 
condition, and in his intellectual conceptions—Adam was 
a typical savage” (p. 409, note). It may be added, too, 
that Adam’s naming the beasts and birds is by no means 
incompatible with his otherwise barbaric condition. “ It 
is remarkable,” says Sir J. Lubbock, “that, supporting 
such a view, the Duke should regard himself as a cham- 
pion of orthodoxy.” 
With regard to the question of degradation, however, 
the Duke has a slightly stronger case, though he has 
hardly made the most of it. That decline as well as 
progress in civilisation does really go on in the world is a 
historic fact beyond dispute. Egypt and Assyria, Greece 
and Rome, Mexico and Peru, groan with the monuments of 
ruined civilisation, and all history bears witness to periods 
of stagnation and decadence following on periods of pro- 
gress and development. Nor is evidence wanting of an 
analogous sequence of events among the lower races, 
Degeneration is known in some instances to have taken 
place as the result of crossing ill-matched breeds ; in 
others as the result of conquest, when the conquering 
tribe is in any respect less civilised than the con- 
quered ; in others, owing to the oppression of other 
tribes ; in others, by the expulsion of a tribe into 
less favoured territories; in others, by a change in 
the external conditions of life—in short, the whole 
of our present knowledge and experience tends to show 
that in every stage of civilisation from the lowest to the 
highest, development may be and frequently is succeeded 
by decline of greater or less duration and degree. So 
far we quite agree with the Duke of Argyll ; and although 
Sir J. Lubbock admits the fact of occasional degradation, 
he hardly seems to us to recognise its real frequency and 
extent. In fact, however, it is only less universal than 



progress, For just as the present population of the 
world represents the difference between all preceding 
births and deaths, so the existing civilisations of the 
world represent the difference between all foregoing 
developments and declensions in civilisation. In other 
words, the present civilisation of the world bears witness 
to a vast mortality among previous civilisations, much in 
the same way as the present population bears witness to 
a vast mortality among previous populations. This con- 
sideration, however, so far from being favourable to the 
gloomy views of the Duke of Argyll, tells, on the whole, 
manifestly in favour of Sir J. Lubbock’s more hopeful 
theory, for the tendency of civilisation like that of popu- 
lation, is always to increase and multiply. In both cases 
certain conditions may and do counteract the tendency in 
certain times and places, but the tendency remains the 
same, and sooner or later always predominates on the 
whole. It thus happens that all the great civilisations of 
the world have been in some material respect in advance 
of any which preceded them, and at the same time have 
manifested development in a greater number of directions. 
Thus the civilisation of Greece is more complex and more 
advanced than that of Egypt, that of Rome than that of 
Greece, that of Elizabethan England than that of Rome, 
that of modern England than that of Elizabethan England. 
It is to be observed, however, that every civilisation has 
some special and distinctive glory of its own unsurpassed 
byany of the subsequent ones. Grecian art, for instance, of 
certain kinds has never since been equalled, but the student 
of the Roman rule and law will certainly not be disposed 
to rank Grecian civilisation as a whole so high as the 
Latin. In fact, loss of some kind accompanies every 
gain of civilisation. One savage possesses the eye of 
the vulture, a second the scent of the deer-hound, a third 
the fleetness of the stag—civilise these men, and you 
destroy their special characteristics of excellence. Nor is 
this true only of physical qualities. Civilised man knows 
nothing of that barbaric power of perception and memory 
which enables the savage to detect at once the loss of one 
sheep out of three hundred, though he cannot even calcu- 
late the number of his fingers. Such losses, however, are 
in the long run more than compensated by gains in other 
directions, just as the losses incurred by the decay of one 
civilisation are eventually more than compensated by the 
benefits conferred by another. We fully agree, therefore, 
with Sir J. Lubbock in his remark at the conclusion of his 
answer to the Duke, “that the past history of man, has, 
on the whole, been one of progress, and that in looking 
forward to the future, we are justified in doing so with 
confidence and with hope.” 
But we have hitherto said nothing about Sir J. Lub- 
bock’s book itself. When we remember that it is one of 
the first attempts to treat the Origin of Civilisation ona 
rational and philosophic basis, we are not disposed to 
quarrel greatly with its somewhat lax arrangement, Its 
necessarily miscellaneous character lends it no small part 
of its value, and renders it exceedingly readable, but a 
more rigorous method and proportion are required to 
render it easy of complete digestion, In his laudable 
anxiety, too, to collect and co-ordinate facts as the only 
trustworthy foundation of his hypothesis, Sir J. Lubbock 
himself has a provoking way of latitating for a whole 
chapter together behind a heap of quotations, just when 
