192 



Mans Dcpciide7icc on the Lower Animals, 



fluencing the social condition of the whole 

 continent North and South, and of all the 

 facts that have been advanced in support 

 of this theory I do not think that any one 

 is so conclusive as the fact that the Peru- 

 vians dragged their plough through the 

 soil instead of using it as a pick. They 

 could not do nearly as effective work in this 

 way as by digging, and such a method of 

 loosening the soil would never have sug- 

 gested itself to any people who had not 

 grown familiar with it as the one recognized 

 method of tillage. 



Europe, like America, had its aboriginal 

 savage races over its whole area before 

 the Aryans effected settlements, and in 

 every country in Europe the Aryan race 

 has been modified by intermixture, and 

 the difference between the civilization of 

 Europe and that of Central America at the 

 time of the Spanish invasion was no more 

 than — on the assumption of equal aptitude 

 for civilization — might be fairly attributed 

 to the fact that the former people had 

 domesticated the ox and the horse, while 

 the latter had not. The history of the 

 world affords no instance of a higher civi- 

 lization than that of early America having 

 been achieved by any people who had not 

 the ox under domestication. These are 

 truths that would be readily accepted by 

 any one giving the subject even a very 

 slight consideration, but it does appear al- 

 most incredible at first glance, that Chris- 

 tendom deprived of its domestic cattle, 

 would sink into barbarism in a generation; 

 that in spite of our command of steam, and 

 control of the forces of nature, we are not 

 yet so far advanced that we dare kick 

 away the ladder by which we have mounted. 



The first idea to suggest itself is thai 

 the loss of our draught cattle whi( h would 

 be most felt by the farmers would be 

 promptly rej^laced by steam ploughs and 

 implements of all kinds, that we could run 

 light railways in all directions to get the 

 engines and implements to the farms, and 



bring the products away, but a very little 

 calculation will serve to upset that delusion. 

 The whole manual labor of the country 

 would be inadequate to the construction 

 and maintenance of the necessary railways, 

 and this of course would involve an utter 

 suspension of manufactures and arts, and 

 the desertion of the cities, which would 

 render the railways useless; this would be 

 followed by the establishment of local com- 

 munities, cessation of all intercourse be- 

 tween people at a distance, and the rapid 

 lapse into a a simple agricultural commun- 

 ity, attended with enormous loss of life 

 from starvation unless at the outset strenu- 

 ous and well organized measures were 

 adopted for cutting up the arable land into 

 small farms of one or two acres, transport- 

 ing the city population to them and pro- 

 viding for the proper distribution of food 

 and seed. 



It is just possible that the social organi- 

 zation could be maintained over the crisis, 

 provided the effects of the calamity were 

 foreseen and intelligently provided for, but 

 this achieved, the organism would be dis- 

 integrated into a thousand separate com- 

 munities with individual and opposing 

 interests; and perhaps generations of an- 

 archy would have to be passed through 

 before any enduring system of social or- 

 ganization would be again achieved. Nine- 

 tenths of the population would have to be 

 devoted exclusively to agriculture, the 

 other tenth being employed in mining and 

 the ruder arts; and as existing stocks of 

 manufactured articles got worn out they 

 would be replaced by ruder ones. Letters 

 would be forgotten in a generation or two, 

 in fact, all the energies of the people would 

 be required to rai.se the necessary food 

 sujiply, and a few centuries later the civili- 

 zation t)f the nineteenth century would be 

 a dim tradition of the past. 



It is well within the range of possibility 

 that with the progress of man's control 

 over the forces of nature, and the advance 



