368 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 



present volume, in the group including the cure by sucking, 

 the couvade, and others, such as the wide-spread superstitions 

 connected with sneezing, on which Mr. Haliburton gave a lec- 

 ture, in 1863, at Halifax, Nova Scotia,^ may be adduced as 

 facts for the occurrence of which in distant times and places 

 it is hard to account on any other hypothesis than that of deep- 

 lying connexion, by blood or intercourse, among races which 

 history, and even philology, only knows as isolated sections of 

 the population of the world. 



On the whole, it does not seem to be an unreasonable, or 

 even an over-sanguine view, that the mass of analogies in Art 

 and Knowledge, Mythology and Custom, confused and indis- 

 tinct as they at present are, may already be taken to indicate 

 that the civilizations of many races, whose history even the 

 evidence of Language has not succeeded in bringing into con- 

 nexion, have really grown up under one another^s influences, 

 or derived common material from a common source. But that 

 such lines of argument should ever be found to converge in the 

 last instance towards a single point, so as to enable the student 

 to infer from reasoning on a basis of observed facts that the 

 civilization of the whole world has its origin in one parent 

 stock, is, in the present state of our knovyledge, rather a theo- 

 retical possibility than a state of things of which even the most 

 dim and distant view is to be obtained. 



On another subject, on which it would not be prudent to 

 offer a definite opinion, a few words may nevertheless be said. 

 Every attempt to trace back the early history of civilization 

 tends, however remotely, towards an ultimate limit — the pri- 

 mary condition of the human race, as regards their knowledge 

 of the laws of nature and their power of modifying the outer 

 world for their own ends. Such lines of investigation as go 

 back from the Bronze or Iron Ages to the time of the use of 

 implements of stone, from the higher to the lower methods of 

 fire-making, from the boat to the raft, from the use of the spin- 

 dle to the art of hand-twisting, and so on, seem to enable the 

 student to see back through the history of human culture to a 

 state of art and science somewhat resembling that of the savage 



' 'Anthropological Review,' Not. 1863, p. 491. 



i 



