SECT. II.] PRIMITIVE STATE OP MAN. 287 



from the same stock, must have required. The break up of an 

 original into several filial languages may in some cases have 

 proceeded more or less rapidly ; but from the circumstance that 

 the mass of radically different languages is so large compared 

 with the probable original cradles and stocks of mankind, we 

 are justified in assuming the age of mankind upon the globe to 

 reach back for a long series of thousands of years, especially 

 when we consider that language is only propagated by tradi- 

 tion from generation to generation, and that it is seldom that 

 great changes in a language are produced within a short lapse 

 of time. What has just been stated in regard to language 

 applies also to physical types, which everywhere exhibit a high 

 degree of fixity, and are at any rate only changeable within 

 long periods. Whether we derive the intermediate gradations 

 between the extreme types from long continued climatic or 

 other influences, or from intermixture of originally and essen- 

 tially different types, everything points to a past period which 

 cannot be measured by our historical standard. 



There is, then, no hope of finding man anywhere in an actual 

 primitive or natural state. Whence, then, are we to derive our 

 notions of such a state ? To this question three answers may 

 be given, which we shall have to examine separately. What 

 man is by nature must be exhibited by the human child, which 

 proceeds immediately from nature ; we must, then, empirically 

 study the so-called savages, whose state, though not absolutely 

 primitive, more or less approaches it. 



There is much to be said against judging of the primitive con- 

 dition of man from the condition of infancy. Infancy is a rapidly 

 passing stage of development of the individual, with which we 

 may, perhaps, compare the youthful state of mankind, but can- 

 not exactly parallelize it. Deficiency of experience and of 

 mental development are common to both, but in this there 

 prevail so many differences, that for our object very little can 

 be inferred. We need only be reminded that the primitive man 

 neither possesses the undeveloped physical organization of the 

 child, which renders the latter so helpless, nor is he, like the 

 child, led to a higher development by example and imitation. 

 Moreover, the child is already born with the peculiarities be- 





