212 



SCIENCE. 



would bring an adverse influence to bear upon Mankind. 

 Here we are on firm ground, because we know the law 

 from which comes the necessity of migrations, and the 

 force which has propelled successive generations of men 

 farther and farther in ever widening circles round the 

 original centre or centres of their birth. Then, as it would 

 be always the feebler tribes which would be driven from 

 the ground which has become overstocked, and as the 

 lands to which they went forih were kss and less hospit- 

 able in climate and productions, the s'ruggle for life 

 would be alwaye harder. And so it would generally hap- 

 pen, in the natural course of ihings, that the races which 

 were driven farthest would become the rudest and the 

 most engrossed in the pursuits of mere animal exist- 

 ence. 



Accordingly, we find that this key of principle fits into 

 and explains many of those'facts in the distribution and 

 condition of Mankind, which, in the case of the Fue- 

 gians, excited the wonder and curiosity of Darwin. In 

 the light of this explanation, these facts seem to take 

 form and order. It is a fact that the lowest and 

 rudest tribes in the population of the globe have been 

 found, as we have seen, at the farthest extremities of 

 its larger continents — or in the distant islands of its 

 great oceans, or among the hills and forests which in 

 every land have been the last refuge of the victims of 

 violence and misfortune. These extreme points of land 

 which in both hemispheres extend into severe latitudes 

 are not the only portions of the globe which are high- 

 ly unfavorable to man. There are other regions quite 

 as bad, if not, in some respects, even worse. In the 

 dense, uniform and gloomy forests of the Amazon and 

 Orinoco there are tribes which seem to be among the 

 lowest in the world. It cannot be unconnected with 

 the savagery of the condition to which they have been 

 reduced that we find the remarkable fact that all those 

 regions of Tropical America are wholly wanting in 

 the animals which are capable of domestication ; and 

 which are inseparable from the earliest traces of human 

 culture. The Ox, the Horse, and the Sheep are all ab- 

 sent — even as regards the genera to which they belong. 

 There are indeed the Tapir, the Paca, and the Curassow 

 Turkey, and all these are animals which can be tamed. 

 But none of them will breed in confinement, and the 

 races cannot be established as useful servants of Man- 

 kind. In contrast with these and with other insupera- 

 ble disadvantages of men driven into the forests of Trop- 

 ical America, it is instructive to observe that the same 

 races, where free from these disadvantages, were never 

 reduced to the same condition. In Peru the Indian 

 races had the Llama, and had also an advanced civiliza- 

 tion. 4 In India, too, it is always the Hill Tribes who 

 furnish the least favorable specimens of our race. But 

 in every one of these cases we have the presence of ex- 

 ternal circumstances and physical conditions which are 

 comparatively unfavorable. It is quite certain that these 

 conditions must have had their own effect. It is equally 

 eertain that the races which have been subject to them 

 for a long and indefinite time must have been once under 

 the influence of conditions much more favorable ; and 

 the inevitable conclusion follows, that the savagery and 

 degradation of their existing state is to a great extent the 

 result of development in a wrong direction. 



There are other arguments all pointing the same way, 

 the force of which cannot be fully estimated, except by 

 those who are familiar with some of the fundamental con- 

 ceptions which seem to rise unbidden in the mind from the 

 facts which geology has revealed touching the history of 

 Creation. One of these facts is that each new organic 

 Form, or each new variety of birth, seems to have been 

 introduced with a wonderful energy of life. It is need- 

 less to repeat that this fact stands in close connection 

 with every possible theory of Evolution. If these new 



* " Naturalist on the Amazons," Bates, vol. i. p. 191-3. 



Forms were the product of favoring conditions, the pre- 

 valence of these conditions would start them with force 

 upon their way. The initial energy would be great. 

 Where every condition was favorable— so favorable in- 

 deed that the new birth is assumed to have been nothing 

 but their natural result — then the newly-born would be 

 strong and lusty. And such, accordingly, is the fact in 

 that record of creation which Palaeontology affords. The 

 vigor which prevails in the youth of an individual is but 

 the type of the vigor which has always prevailed in new 

 and rising species. All the complex influences which 

 led to their being born, led also to their being fat and 

 flourishing. That which caused them to arise at all 

 must have had the effect of causing them to prevail. The 

 condition of all the lowest races of men is in absolute 

 contrast with everything which this law demands. 

 Everywhere, and in everything, they exhibit all 

 the characteristics of an energy which is spent 

 — of a force which has declined — of a vitality 

 which has been arrested. In numbers they are station- 

 ary, or dwindling ; in mind they are feeble and un- 

 inventive ; in habits they are stupid or positively suicidal. 



It is another symptom of a wrong development beirg 

 the real secret of their condition that the lowest of them 

 seem to have lost even the power to rise. Though indi- 

 vidually capable of learning what civilized men have 

 taught them, yet as races they have been invariably 

 scorched by the light of civilization, and have withered 

 before it like a plant whose roots have failed. The power 

 of assimilation seems to have departed, as it always does 

 depart, from an organism which is worn out. This has 

 not been the result with races which, though very bar- 

 barous, have never sunk below the pastoral or the agri- 

 cultural stage. It is remarkable that the Indian races 

 cf North America are perhaps the highest which have 

 exhibited this fatal and irredeemable incapacity to rise ; 

 and it is precisely in their case that we have the most di- 

 rect evidence of degradation by development in a wrong 

 direction. There are abundant remains of a very ancient 

 American civilization, which was marked by the con- 

 struction of great public works and by the development of 

 an indigenous agriculture founded on the maize, which 

 is a cereal indigenous to the continent of America. This 

 civilization was subsequently destroyed or lost, and then 

 succeeded a period in which Man relapsed into partial 

 barbarism. The spots which had been first forest, then, 

 perhaps, sacred monuments, and thirdly, cultivated 

 ground, relapsed into forest once more. 5 So strong is 

 this evidence of degradation having affected the popula- 

 tion of a great part of the American continent, that the 

 distinguished author from whom these words are quoted, 

 and who generally represents the savage as the nearest 

 living representative of primeval man, is obliged to ask, 

 " What fatal cause destroyed this earlier civilization ? 

 Why were these fortifications forsaken — these cities in 

 ruins? How were the populous nations which once in- 

 habited the rich American valleys reduced to the poor 

 tribes ot savages whom the European found there? Did 

 the North and South once before rise up in arms against 

 one another? Did the terrible appellation, the 'Dark 

 and Bloody Land,' applied to Kentucky, commemorate 

 these ancient wars?" 6 Whatever may have been the 

 original cause, the process of degradation has been go- 

 ing on within the historic period. When Europeans first 

 came in contact with the Indian tribes, there was more 

 agriculture among them then than there is now. They 

 have long descended to the condition of pure hunters. 

 The most fundamental of all the elements of a civilized 

 and settled life — the love and practice of agriculture — 

 has been lost. Development in the wrong direction had 

 done its work. There is no insoluble mystery in this re- 

 sult. It is, in all probability, if indeed it be not certainly, 



6 Lubbock, " Prehistoric Times," p. 234. 

 ibid., p. 236. 



