184 GROWTH AND DECLINE OF CULTURE. 



civilization is however mostly caused by their being superseded 

 by something higher, and this can hardly be called a decline 

 of culture, which must not be confounded with the physical and 

 moral decline of so many tribes under the oppression and 

 temptation of civiHzed men. Real decline often takes place 

 when a rude but strong race overcomes a cultivated but weak 

 race, and of this we have good information ; but neither this 

 change, nor that which takes place in the savage in presence of 

 the civilized invader, gives the student of the low races all the 

 information he needs. What he wants besides is to put the 

 high races out of the question altogether, and to find out how 

 far a low race can lose its comparatively simple arts and know- 

 ledge, without these being superseded by something higher ; in 

 fact, how far such a race can suffer pure decline in culture. 

 This information is, however, very hard to get, 



Livingstone^ s remarks on the Bakalahari of South Africa 

 show us a race which has fallen in civilization, but this fall has 

 happened, partly or wholly, through causes acting from with- 

 out. The great Kalahari desert is inhabited by two races, the 

 Bushmen, who were perhaps the first human inhabitants of the 

 country, and who never cultivate the soil, or rear any domestic 

 animals but dogs, and the Ba-Kalahari,, who are degraded 

 Bechuanas. These latter are traditionally reported to have 

 once possessed herds of cattle like the other Bechuanas, and 

 though their hard fate has forced them to live a life much like 

 that of the Bushmen, they have never forgotten their old ways. 

 They hoe their gardens annually, though often all they can 

 hope for is a supply of melons and pumpkins. And they care- 

 fully rear small herds of goats, though Livingstone has seen 

 them obliged to lift water for them out of small wells with a 

 bit of ostrich egg-shell, or by spoonfuls.-^ This remarkable ac- 

 count brings out strongly the manful struggle of a race which 

 has been brought down by adverse circumstances, to keep up 

 their former civilization, while the Bushmen, who, for all we 

 know, may never have been in a higher condition than they 

 are now, make no such efibrt. If we may judge these two races 

 by the same standard, the Bushmen are either no lower than 



' Liyingstone, p. 49. 



