SCIENCE. 



195 



they may and often do become so stunted that nothing 

 but the rudiments remain. 



With such immense possibilities of change inherent in 

 the nature of man, we have to consider the great ele- 

 ment of Time. Strangely enough, it seems to be very 

 commonly assumed that the establishment of a great an- 

 tiquity for the human race has some natural, if not some 

 necessary, connection with the theory that piimeval Man 

 stood on seme level far lower even than any existing 

 savage. And no doubt this connection would be a real 

 one if it were true that during seme long series of ages 

 Development had not only been always working, but had 

 always been working upwaids. But if it be capable of 

 working, and if it has been actually working, also in the 

 opposite direction, then the element of time in its bearing 

 upon conditions of modern savagery must have had a 

 very different operation. For here it is to be remembered 

 that the savage of the present day is as far removed in 

 time from the common origin of our race as the man 

 who now exhibits the highest type of moral and intellec- 

 tual culture. Whether that time is represented by six 

 thousand, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand years, 

 it is the same for both. If therefore the number of years 

 since the origin of Man be taken as a multiplier in the 

 processes of elevation, it must be taken equally as a mul- 

 tiplier in the processes of degradation. Not even on the 

 theory which soms hold, that the human species has 

 spread from more than one centre of birth or of crea- 

 tion, can this conclusion be affected. For even on this 

 hypothesis of separate origins, there is no reason what- 

 ever to suppose that the races which are now generally 

 civilized are of more recent origin than those which are 

 generally savage. Presumably, therefore, all the ages 

 which have been at work in the development of civiliza- 

 tion have been at work equally in the development of 

 savagery. It is not possible in the case of savagery, any 

 more than in the case of civilization, that all those age's 

 have been without effect. Nor is it possible that the 

 changes they have -wrought have been all in one direc- 

 tion. The conclusion is, that neither savagery nor civil- 

 ization, as we now see them, can represent the primeval 

 condition of Man. Both of them are the work of time. 

 Both of them are the product of Evolution. 



When, however, this conclusion has been reached, we 

 naturally seek for some understanding — some definite 

 conception — of the circumstances and conditions under 

 which development in Man has taken a wrong direction. 

 No similar explanation is required of the origin of civili- 

 zation. This is the development of Man's powers in the 

 natural direciion. Great interest, indeed, attaches to the 

 steps by which knowledge has been increased, and by 

 which invention has been added to invention. But there 

 is no mystery to be encountered here — no dark or dis- 

 tressing problem to be solved. This kind and direction 

 of development is all according to the constitution and 

 course of things. It is in harmony with all the anal- 

 ogies of Creation. Very different is the sense of painful 

 wonder with which we seek an explanation of the 

 wretched condition of Man in many regions of the globe, 

 and, still more, with which we seek the origin of the 

 cause of all the hideous customs which are everywhere 

 prevalent among savage men, and which often, in their 

 ingenuity of evil, and in the sweep of their destructive 

 force, leave it a wonder that the race survives at all. 



There are, however, some considerations, and some 

 facts, on which we may very safely advance at least a 

 few steps towards Ihe explanation we desire. Two 

 great causes of change, two great elements of Develop- 

 ment or Evolution, have been specified above — namely, 

 the external conditions aDd the internal nature of Man. 

 Let us look at them for a little separately, in so far as 

 they can be separated at all. 1 



1 ?» h i e ar ,? umcnt wh 'ch follows was urged in a former work on " Prim- 

 eval Wan. It has been here re-written and re-considered with reference 

 lo various objections and replies 



It is certain that external or physical conditions have a 

 very powerful, and sometimes a very rapid, effect both 

 on the body and on the mind of Man. The operation cf 

 this law has been seen and ncted even in the midst of 

 the most highly civilized corr munities. There are kirds 

 of labor which have been found to exert a rapid influence 

 in degrading the human frame, and in deterioratirg the 

 human character. So marked has been this effect, that 

 it has commanded the attention of Parliaments, and the 

 course of legislation has been turned aside to meet the 

 dangers it involved. Moreover, our experience in this 

 matter has been very various. Different kinds of em- 

 ployment, involving different kinds of unfavorable influ- 

 ence, have each tended to develop its own kind of mis- 

 chief, and to establish its own type of degradation, 

 The particular conditions which are unfavorable may be 

 infinitely vaiious. The evils which arise out of the 

 abuses of civilized life can never be identical with the 

 evils to which the earlier races of Mankind may have 

 been exposed. But the power of external conditions in 

 modifying the form, and in molding the character of men, 

 is stamped as a general law of universal application. 



In connection with this law, the first great fact which 

 calls for our attention is the actual distribution of Man- 

 kind in relation to the physical geography of the globe. 

 That distribution is nearly universal. From the earliest 

 times when civilized men began to explore distant re- 

 gions, they found everywhere other races of men already 

 established. And this has held true down to the latest 

 acquisitions of discovery. When the New World was 

 discovered by Columbus, he found that it must have 

 been a very old world indeed to the human species. 

 Not only every great continent, but, with rare exceptions, 

 even every habitable island has been found peopled by 

 the genus Homo. The explorers might find, and in 

 many cases did actuary find, everything else in Nature 

 different from the country of their birth. Not a beast, 

 or bird, or plant, — not an insect, or a reptile, or a fish, 

 might be the same as those of which they had any pre- 

 vious knowledge. The whole face of Nature might be 

 new and strange — but always with this one solitary ex- 

 ception, that everywhere Man was compelled to recog- 

 nize himself — represented, indeed, often by people of 

 strange aspect and of strange speech, but by people nev- 

 ertheless exhibiting all the unmistakable characters of 

 the human race. 



In ancient times, before the birth of physical science, 

 this fact might not appear so singular and exceptional as 

 it really is. Before Man had begun to form any definite 

 conceptions as to his own origin, or as to his place in 

 Nature, it was easy to suppose in some vague way that 

 the inhabitants of distant regions were "Aborigines," 

 or as the Greeks called them " Autocthonoi " — that they 

 were somehow native to the soil, and had sprung from it. 

 But this conception belongs essentially to that stage and 

 time when tradition has been lost, and before reasoning 

 has begun. Those who refuse to accept the Jewish 

 Scriptures as in any sense authoritative, must at least 

 recognize them as the records of a very ancient and a 

 very sublime Cosmogony. That Cosmogony rests upon 

 these four leading ideas — first, that the globe has been 

 brought to its present condition through days of change ; 

 secondly, that from a state which can only be described 

 as chaos, it came to be divided into sea, and land, and 

 atmosphere ; thirdly, that the lower animals were born 

 first, — Man being the last as he is the highest product of 

 Creation ; fourthly, that he appeared first at one place 

 only in the world, and that from one pair has all the earth 

 been overspread. 



It is remarkable that in this general outline of events, 

 and especially in the unity of Man's origin, the progress 

 of discovery, and those later speculations which have 

 outrun discovery, are in strict accordance with the tra- 

 dition recorded by the Jewish Prophets. There are, in- 

 deed, some, scientific men who think that different races 



