364 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



fire lias succeeded tlie ruder art of stone-boiling ; in three dis- 

 tant countries tlie art of writing sounds is found developing 

 itself out of mere picture-writing, and this phonetic writing has 

 superseded in several districts the use of quipus, or knotted 

 cordsj as a means of record and communication. In the chap- 

 ter particularly devoted to evidence of progress, a number of 

 facts are stated which seem to be records of a forward develop- 

 ment in other arts, in times and places beyond the range of 

 history. On the other hand, though arts which flourish in 

 times of great refinement or luxury, and complex processes 

 which require a combination of skill or labour hard to get 

 together and liable to be easily disarranged, may often de- 

 generate, yet the more homely and useful the art, and the less 

 difficult the conditions for its exercise, the less likely it is to 

 disappear from the world, unless when superseded by some 

 better device. Eaces may and do leave off building temples 

 and monuments of sculjDtured stone, and fall ofi" in the execu- 

 tion of masterpieces of metal-work and porcelain, but there is 

 no evidence of any tribe giving up the use of the spindle to 

 twist their thread by hand, or having been in the habit of 

 working the fire-drill with a thong, and going back to the 

 clumsier practice of working it without, and it is even hard 

 to fancy such a thing happening. Since the Hottentots have 

 learnt, within the last two centuries or so, to smelt the iron ore 

 of their country, it is hard to imagine that anything short of 

 extirpating them or driving them into a country destitute of 

 iron, could make them go back to the Stone Age in which 

 their ancestors lived. Some facts are quoted which bear on 

 the possible degeneration of savage tribes when driven out into 

 the desert, or otherwise reduced to destitution, or losing their 

 old arts in the presence of a higher civilization, but there seems 

 ground for thinking that such degeneration has been rather of 

 a local than of a general character, and has rather affected the 

 fortunes of particular tribes than the development of the world 

 at large. I do not think I have ever met with a single fact 

 which seems to me to justify the theory, of which Dr. von Mar- 

 tins is perhaps the leading advocate, that the ordinary condition 

 of the savage is the result of degeneration from a far higher 



