514 NATURE OF ROOTS AND WORDS. 



shape, and bearing what are known as palsseolithic characteristics, 

 and that they greatly exceed, in number at least, and probably also 

 in antiquity, any remains of human bones yet discovered. These 

 data may seem very meagre ones from which to draw any valid con- 

 clusion as to the intellectual, moral and social condition of these first 

 tool-makers. But it is in the solution of this problem that the science 

 of primitive culture, in the hands of such men as Sir John Lubbock 

 and Professor Wilson, has achieved its greatest triumphs, and been 

 raised to the rank of an inductive science. The archseologists have 

 pointed out that primitive man, so far from being extinct, and known 

 only by his remains, still occupies a considerable portion of the 

 habitable globe, and that " primitive " is synonymous with " savage." 

 They have applied the comparative method, which has produced such 

 vfonderful results in the study of language, to their own science, and 

 have inferred the condition of the first men from the phenomena 

 actually observable among existing savage races, many of them still 

 in the palaeolithic stage, manufacturing and using tools which are 

 exact reproductions for the most part of those found with the remains 

 of extinct mammalia. Sir John Lubbock* pictures primeval man as 

 ignorant of pottery, spinning and agriculture, having no domestic 

 animals, perhaps not even the dog, unable to count to ten, "his 

 weapons of the rudest character, and his houses scarcely worthy of 

 the name." As to his moral condition, we may add that he was 

 probably destitute of all religious ideas, or of any conception of a 

 future state, and that he was in some cases, though exceptionally, a 

 cannibal. As to his social state, he was certainly gregarious, living 

 in communities of greater or less extent. In fact, he was a savage, 

 wretched indeed, clad in skins and living by the uncultivated products 

 of the earth and the spoils of the chase, hunting the lower animals 

 wiih most rudimentary weapons of stone, bone, flint, &c. ; his wants 

 few, but pressing, and dictated by hunger, thirst and cold. 



The picture is dark enough, yet not too dark to be a faithful 

 representation of many savage races at the present day : The Hotten- 

 tots and Bushmen of Africa, the Yeddahs and Andaman Islanders of 

 Asia, the Australians and Feejeeans of Australasia, the Esquimaux 

 and Nootka-Columbians of our own northern half-continent, the 

 Brazilians, Patagonians and Fuegians of South America. Of this 

 any one may satisfy himself by a glance at Sir John Lubbock's most 



* Prehistoric Times, 2nd ed., ch. xvi. 



