TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 145 



bility, the plain appeal to the senses, of this new religion took hold of the imagination 

 of these races, and they could take hold of it with their understanding ; and how- 

 soever 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 mauitenauce and exemplification 

 was the main thing.'' 



Mr. Bagehot has been quoted by Mr. Darwin, in his ' Descent of Man,' ed. 1, 

 vol. i. p. '239, 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 

 civilized nations ; 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 bar- 

 barians." 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 im- 

 press men permanently 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 Stone- 

 henge, nor can I call to mind at this moment any catalogue of the vocabidaries 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 oiu-selves. But these omis- 

 sions do not justify us in thmkiug that Stonehenge is an erection of post-Roman 

 times, nor in holding that any of the strauge races mentioned were devoid of a 

 language. But, secondly, what we know of the classical nations dates from a time 

 when the " merciless bronze " had beg-un 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 an Evans to interpret 

 their weapons after their extinction. The actual Homeric poems deal with a region 

 thickly peopled and long subdued by a Greek-speaking metal-using race. Rhodes 

 and Crete were as dift'erent then from what Fiji and New Guinea are now, as Me- 

 rion and Idomeneus are from Thakombau and Rauparahu. But, thirdly, let us ask, 

 as the philosophers did with regard to the fish and its weight in and out of the 

 bucket of water. Are the facts about which we are to inquu-e really facts? Now I 

 am not going to plunge into the excm'suses appended to editions of Herodotus, nor 

 to discuss the history of the Minyffi, or of any other race of which we know as 

 little. But I will just quote a few verses from a beautiful passage in Job which 

 appear to me to give as exact a description of a barbarous race perishing and out- 

 cast, as could be given now by a poetical observer in Australia or California. 

 Speaking of such a race the poet says : — 



" For want and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness in former 

 time desolate and waste. Who cut up mallows by the bushes, and juniper roots 

 for their meat. They were driven forth from among men, (they cried after them as 

 after a thief ;) To dwell in the cliffs of the valleys, in caves of the earth, and in the 

 rocks. Among the bushes they brayed ; under the nettles they were gathered to- 

 gether. They were children of fools, yea, children of base men ; they were viler 

 th.an the earth" (Job, chap. xxx. ver. 3-8). 



I opine that these unhappy .savages must have "wasted away" under these con- 

 ditions, and that there is no need, with such actual vera; canssa at hand, to postu- 

 late the working of any " mysterious " agency, any inscrutable poisonous action " of 

 the breath of" civilization. What is mysterious to me is not civilization, but the 

 fact that people who are in relation with it do not act up to its behests. And what 

 is the mystery to me is not how an epidemic can, when introduced amongst helpless 

 Polynesians, work havoc, but how it is that epidemics should be allowed to do so 

 here in England from time to time. We are but some four years away from the last 



