Origin and Primal Condition of Man. 



57 



and successive transformations of character, keeping pace 

 with expanding knowledge and civilization, we assert that 

 history furnishes no instances of a nation or people purify- 

 ing itself, and abandoning vice, merely as a consequence 

 of increased mental acquirement, or in any other way by 

 yirtue of its own inherent power of reformation, without 

 being also influenced by extraneous religious teaching or 

 direct divine revelation. TTe cannot lose sight, even in 

 the study of man's natural history, as he how exists, of the 

 great and pervading fact of man's sinfulness. We must, 

 therefore, hold with the Duke of Argyll, that the savage 

 nations now existing consist of men fallen and degraded 

 from their pristine excellence, and are not to be regarded 

 as typical of primitive man. These degraded savages are 

 found in many cases in locations utterly uncongenial and 

 unfitted to sustain life, except in a feeble and wretched 

 condition. They have been thrust forth by war and other 

 calamities from their former homes, and must fain conform 

 to their new and unpropitious surroundings as best they 

 may ; locations that cannot on any theory of creation be 

 considered adequate to have produced man originally. 

 Indeed no American tribes can be considered autochthon- 

 ous, as we have already seen that man is an old-world 

 type ; and it would doubtless puzzle even Lubbock to de- 

 fine any marked difference between the ethical and psy- 

 chical condition of the American tribes, such as Eskimo 

 and Terra del Fuegans, on the one hand, and the South 

 sea islanders and Bushmen on the other, of such a nature 

 that he can claim these as types of primeval man, and reject 

 those as also typical, though indeed the first are at a far 

 greater remove from their original abode than the other. 

 These scattered tribes might easily lose in their migrations, 

 all memory of their early abode, and of such arts and culture 

 as they may then have acquired, but on no tenable theory 

 of creation can autochthonous tribes have sprung up in 

 [Trans. vii.~] 8 



