GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 161 



the lowestj or even anything approaching to the lowest, degree 

 of barbarism in which they can possibly subsist at all, never did 

 and never can raise themselves, unaided, into a higher condi- 

 tion." This view, it may be remarked in passing, serves as 

 basis for a theory that, though races arrived already at a mode- 

 rate state of culture may make progress of themselves, such 

 races must have been started on their way upwards by a super- 

 natural revelation, to bring them to the point where indepen- 

 dent progress became possible. Now, the denial to the low 

 savage of the power of self- improvement is a broad statement, 

 requiring, to justify it, at least a good number of cases of tribes 

 who have had a fair trial under favovirable circumstances, and 

 have been found wanting. As definite statements of this na- 

 ture, the two following are considered by Archbishop Whately 

 as sufficient to give substance to his argument. 



" The New Zealanders, . . . whom Tasman first discovered 

 in 1642, and who were visited for the second time by Cook, 

 127 years after, were found by him exactly in the same condi- 

 tion.'" Tasman, however, never set foot in New Zealand. The 

 particulars he recorded of the civilization of the natives occupy 

 the space of a page or so in his journal.^ He mentions fires 

 seen on shore ; a sort of trumpet blown upon by the natives ; 

 their dressing their hair in a bunch behind the top of the 

 head, with a white feather stuck in it ; their double canoes, 

 joined above with a platform ; their paddles and sails ; their 

 clothing, which was (as it seemed) sometimes of matting, 

 and sometimes of cotton (he was wrong as to this last point, but 

 very excusably so, considering how little opportunity he had 

 of close examination) ; their spears and clubs ; a white flag 

 carried by a man in a boat; and the square garden- enclosures 

 seen on Three Kings' Island. The evidence to be got from 

 this account, that the civilization of the New Zealanders had 

 not considerably advanced when Cook afterwards visited the 

 country, or, for the matter of that, that it had not as consider- 

 ably declined, does not seem very forcible. 



The other statement lies in the citing of a remark of Dar- 



' Swart, ^Joumaal van deKeis naar het onbekende Zuidland, door AbelJansz. 

 Tasman ;' Amsterdam, 1860, pp. 80-95. 



M 



