160 GROWTH AND DECLINE OP CULTURE. 



tion in presence of a liiglier race. It is natural enongli that 

 this sliould be the case, and it does not in the least affect the 

 question whether the lower race was stationary or progressing 

 before the arrival of the more cultivated foreigners. Even when 

 the contact has been but slight and temporary, it either be- 

 comes doubtful whether progress made soon afterwards is ori- 

 ginal, or certain that it is not so. It has been asserted, for in- 

 stance, that the Andaman Islanders had no boats in the ninth 

 century, and that the canoe with an outrigger has only lately 

 appeared among them.^ If these statements should prove cor- 

 rect, we cannot assume, upon the strength of them, that the 

 islanders made these inventions themselves, seeing that they 

 could easily have copied them from foreigners. Moreover, the 

 fact that they now use bits of glass-bottles, and iron from 

 wrecks, in making their tools and weapons, proves that, slight 

 as their intercourse has been with foreigners, and bitter as is 

 their hostility to them, their condition has, nevertheless, been 

 materially changed by foreign influence. 



Though direct evidence thus generally fails us in ti-acing the 

 history of the lower culture of mankind, there are many ways 

 of bringing indirect evidence to bear on the problem. The 

 early Culture-History of Mankind is capable of being treated 

 as an Inductive Science, by collecting and grouping facts. It 

 is true that veiy little has as yet been done in this way, as 

 regards the lower races at least ; but the evidence has only to 

 a very shght extent been got into a state to give definite 

 results, and the whole argument is extremely uncertain and 

 difficult : a fact which sufficiently accounts for writers on the 

 Origin of Civilization being able to tell us all about it, with 

 that beautiful ease and confidence which belong to the specu- 

 lative philosopher, whose course is but little obstructed by 

 facts. 



In a Lecture on the Origin of Civilization, since reprinted 

 v/ith a Preface,^ the late Archbishop Whately thus summarily 

 disposes of any claim of the lower races to a power of self- 

 improvement. " For, all experience proves that men, left in 



' Mouat, ' Andaman Islanders,' pp. 7, 11, 315. 



- Whately, ' Miscellaneous Lectures and Reviews ;' London, 1856. 



