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CHAPTER XIII. 



CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



It has been intimated that the present series of Essays affords 

 no sufficient foundation for a definite theory of the Rise and 

 Progress of Human Civilization in early times. Nor, indeed, 

 will any such foundation be ready for building upon, until a 

 great deal of prepai-atory work has been done. Still, the evi- 

 dence which has here been brought together seems to tell dis- 

 tinctly for or against some widely circulated Ethnological 

 theories, and also to justify a certain amr)unt of independent 

 generalization, and the results of the foregoing chapters in this 

 way may now be briefly summed up, with a few additional 

 remai'ks. 



In the first place, the facts collected seem to favour the view 

 that the wide differences in the civilization and mental state of 

 the various races of mankind are rather differences of develop- 

 ment than of origin, rather of degree than of kind. Thus the 

 Gesture-Language is the same in principle, and similar in its 

 details, all over the world. The likeness in the formation both 

 of pure myths and of those crude theories which have been 

 described as " myths of observation," among races so dissi- 

 milar in the colour of their skins and the shape of their skulls, 

 tells in the same direction. And wherever the occurrence of 

 any art or knowledge in two places can be confidently ascribed 

 to independent invention, as, for instance, when we find the 

 dwellers in the ancient lake-habitations of Switzerland, and the 

 modern New Zealanders, adopting a like construction in their 



