Reason and Instinct, 



6197 



What I have called the human agency may have been carried out 

 by the irruption and indwelling of an at least comparatively civilized 

 community among the hitherto uncivilized, as was the case with our 

 own British ancestors from the period of the Roman conquest of this 

 country to that of the final departure of the conqueror Irom its shores. 

 Or it may have been, though considerably more rarely and limitedly, 

 by the long-continued visits, for the purposes of comn)erce,* of a 

 civilized to an uncivilized community ; or in one or two other but 

 less potential ways which might be mentioned. In the case of the 

 other agency specified, though the human agent has often, perhaps 

 usually, been weak as to his own proper agency or influence, both as 

 to its kind and degree, as contrasted with the work befere him, yet his 

 ability for that work, hovvever defective per se or in this sense, has 

 been more than supplemented by the energy of the superhuman ele- 

 ment. I refer of course to the case of the Christian missionary of all 

 ages, when — himself a weaponless, despised, persecuted man — he has 

 gone out to make converts, not with the aid of fire and sword, but by 

 using only the arms of the Gospel, and possibly the arts of a higher 

 human culture, to aid him in his labours. And as an instance of a 

 process of civilization thus induced 1 may refer to wliat is going on 

 in our own time in New Zealand. 



But still, except in the case just cited, and one or two analogous 

 ones on even a smaller scale, I am alVaid we must say that we have 

 no records existing which describe the several phases of the mind 

 and nature of the one-time savage as he passed on along his transi- 

 tion ary course from the savage condition through the ])rogressive 

 stages which finally conduct to civilization, possibly to high civiliza- 

 tion ; at all events, none which describe those phases with sufficient 

 minuteness and precision to enable us to trace with satisfactory dis- 

 tinctness the concurrent relative changes in the subtle influences of 

 Reason and Instinct. None but the agents employed could, for the 

 most part, trace or record the effect they produced. In few cases 

 were they qualified or disposed to note those effects in their psychical 

 bearing ; and thus as to points of utmost interest to us in our present 

 discussion it would be altogether vain, should it happen that records 

 of civilizing influences and effects on any given people in any given 

 age could be produced, to look in them for any precise or reliable 



* It is perhaps possible that some influence of this kind had been at work among 

 our remote forefathers anterior to the Roman advent, because, though cerlainly 

 "uncivilized" by comparison, they cannot widi strict Irulh be said to have been 

 "savage" at that period. 



