Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixv. (1921), No. 13 9 



the granite, we are establishing a connection that is indepen- 

 dent of any chance disturbing causes. That correlation has 

 to be explained, and on the laws of probability, there is only 

 one possible explanation. Some intrinsic property of the 

 granite must have attracted the megalith-builders. That 

 intrinsic property is the presence of gold and tin. This, 

 coupled with the presence of men who valued those things, 

 would produce the correlation. 



This reasoning suggests a method of study of the distribu- 

 tion of any element of human culture. We find that the 

 megalith-builders of Devon and Cornwall settled on the 

 granite. That is to say, the geological formation played some 

 part in determining their presence there. But there is another 

 side to the matter. Given that the gold and tin of the granite 

 was the attracting cause, how does one account for this attrac- 

 tion ? It is well known in other parts of the world, Australia, 

 California, and elsewhere, that the mere presence of the metal 

 has no causative influence in the matter at all. Men have 

 lived in these countries for thousands of years and have not 

 paid the slightest attention to the gold. Men have even lived 

 in such regions, and have witnessed the coming of gold- 

 miners, watched them at their occupation, and still not yet 

 learned to value the metal. Apparently, then, there was 

 something in the minds of the megalith-builders that caused 

 them to assign an arbitrary value to the gold, and they could 

 only have derived that knowledge from regions where the 

 metal possessed this purely arbitrary value. The human 

 mind, therefore, in this case, was the real deciding factor : the 

 presence of the gold was merely an accident. If they had not 

 found it in England thev would have gone elsewhere. On 

 the basis of the study of peoples of low culture in other parts 

 of the world, it is evident that the first ^old-workers of this 

 country must have come from a place where that metal was 

 desired. It would appear, therefore, that one of the ways in 

 which the distribution of civilisation has been effected is by 

 the creation in men's minds of certain desires, and by the 

 efforts to satisfy those desires. We want gold and go where 

 we can find it. So, apparently, did the men of old. They 

 did not work gold just because it existed there. This distinc- 

 tion between the relative roles of the human mind and natural 

 circumstances in the building-up of civilisation is funda- 

 mental, and round it centres the conflicts of the two schools 

 of students — those who believe in the growth and spread of 

 culture, and those who believe that it sprang up in response 

 to natural circumstances in different parts of the earth. 



