SCIENCE. 



213 



attributable to one cause, that of internecine and devas- 

 tating wars. And these again are the result of a natural 

 and universal instinct which has its own legitimate fields 

 of operation, but which like all other human instincts 

 is liable to degenerate into a destructive passion. The 

 love of dominion is strong in all men, and it has ever 

 been strongest in the strongest races. But the love of 

 fighting and of conquest very often does sink into a mere 

 lust of blood. The natural rivalry of different communi- 

 ties may become such implacable hatred as to be satisfied 

 with nothing short of the extermination of an enemy. 

 Inspired by this passion, particular races or tribes have 

 sometimes acquired a power and a ferccity in fighting, 

 against which other tribes of a much higher character 

 and of a much more advanced civilization have been un- 

 able to contend. 



This is no fancy picture. It is a mistake to suppose 

 that the decline of civilization in the American continent 

 has been due to the invasion of it by Europeans since the 

 discovery of Columbus. Just as the older civiliza'ion of 

 that continent was an indigenous civilization founded on 

 the cultivation of a cereal peculiar to the American con- 

 tinent, so also does the decay and loss of this civilization 

 seem to have been a purely indigenous decay. Mr. Wil- 

 son, in his very interesting work on " Prehistoric Man," 

 gives an account of the process by which barbarism has 

 been actually seen extending among the Red Indian 

 tribes. When the valley of the St. Lawrence first came 

 under the observa' ion of Europeans, some of those tribes 

 were found to be leading a settled life, practicing agri- 

 culture, and constituting communities in possession of 

 all the elements of a civilization fairly begun, or probably 

 long inherited. The destruction of these communities 

 was affected by the savage hostility cf one or two partic- 

 ular tribes, such as the Iroquois and the Mohawks. In 

 these tribes the lust of blood had been developed into an 

 absorbing passion, so that thtir very name became a ter- 

 ror and a scourge. Wholly given up to war as a pursuit, 

 their path was red with blcod, and the more peaceful 

 and civilized branches of the same stock were driven, a 

 scanty remnant, into forests and marshes, where their 

 condition was necessarily reduced to that of savages, liv- 

 ing wholly by the chase. It is a curious and instructive 

 fact that this sequence of events was so vividly and pain- 

 fully remembered among some of the Red Indian tribes 

 that it had become embodied in a religious myth. It 

 was said that in old times the Indians were increasing so 

 fast that they were threatened with want, and that the 

 Great Spirit then taught them to make war, and thus to 

 thin one another's numbers. 7 Although this myth stands 

 in very close connection with the universal tradition of a 

 Golden Age, or of a Past in some measure better than 

 the Present, it is remarkable on account of the specific 

 cause which it assigns for deterioration and decay, a 

 cause in respect to which we have historical evidence of 

 its actual effect. When the great French navigator.Xar- 

 tier, first explored the St. Lawrence in 1534-5, he as- 

 cended to that point of its course whence the city of 

 Montreal now looks down upon its vast and splendid 

 prospect of fertile lands and of rushing waters. He found 

 it occupied by the Indian town of Hochelaga— inhabited 

 by a comparatively civilized people, busy not only in 

 fishing or in hunting-, but also in a successful husbandry. 

 The town was strongly fortified, and it was surrounded 

 by cultivated ground. Within one hundred and seven 

 years— some time between 1535 and 1642— Hochelaga 

 had utterly disappeared, with all its population, and all 

 its culture. It had been destroyed by wars, and its site 

 had returned to forest or to bush. To this day when 

 men dig the foundations of new houses in Montreal they 

 dig up the flint implements of the Hochelagans, which, 

 although about 350 years old, may now be reckoned by 

 the scientific anthropologist as relics of the "Stone 



' " Fossil Men," Principal Dawson, p. 47. Montreal, 1880. 



Age," 8 and of an ancient universal savagery. The same 

 course of things prevailed over the greater part of Can- 

 ada. During the first half of the seventeenth century a 

 large part of the valley of the St. Lawrence, and vast 

 tracts of country cn both shores of the great Lakes, are 

 known to have been devastated by exterminating wars. 

 In 1626 a Jesuit missionary penetrated into the settle- 

 ment of a tribe called the Attiwenderonks. He found 

 them inhabiting towns anel villages, and largely cultiva- 

 ting tobacco, maize antl beans. The country inhabited 

 by the tribe which has left its name in Lake Erie, is stated 

 to have been greatly more extensive, and is everywhere 

 covered with the marks of a similar stage of civilization. 

 Within less than thirty years another missionary found 

 the whole of these regions a silent desert. In like mar- 

 ner the country round Lake Huron was, at the same 

 period of time, seen to be full of populous villages de- 

 fended by walls, and surrounded by cultivated fields. 

 But the same fate befell them. 9 They were extirpated 

 by the Mohawks. 



Here then we see in actual operation, within very re- 

 cent t'mes, a true cause — which is quite capable of pro- 

 ducing the effects which, by some means or another, have 

 certainly been produced — and that, too, on the largest 

 scale — upon the American continent. It is a cause aris- 

 ing out of one of the universal instincts of Mankind, de- 

 veloped in such excess as to become a destructive mania. 

 Many nations most highly civilized have been extremely 

 warlike — and the ambition they have cherished of sub- 

 duing other nations has been the means of extending 

 over the world their own knowledge of the arts of gov- 

 ernment, and their own h'gh attainments in the science 

 of jurisprudence. But when the same passion takes 

 possession of ruder men, and is directed by irrational an- 

 tipathies between rival families and rival tribes, it may 

 be, and has often been one of the most desolating scour- 

 ges of humanity. In itself an abuse and a degradation 

 which none of the lower animals exhibit, it tends always 

 to the evolution of further evils, to the complete destruc- 

 tion of civilized communities or to the reduction of their 

 scanty remnants to the condition and the habits of sav- 

 age life. 



It results from these facts and considerations, gathered 

 over a wide field of observation and experierce, that the 

 processes of Evolution and Development as they work in 

 Man, lead to consequences wholly different from those 

 to which they lead in other departments of Creation. 

 There, they tend always in one of two directions, both of 

 which are directions predetermined and in perfect har- 

 mony with the unity of Nature. One of these directions 

 is that of perfect success, the other of these directions is 

 that of speedy extinction. Among the lower animals, 

 when a new Form appears, it suits exactly its surround- 

 ing conditions ; and when ii ceases to do so it ceases to 

 survive. Or if it does survive it lives by change, by giving 

 birth to something new, and by ceasing to be identical 

 with its former self. So far as we can actually see the 

 past work of development among the beasts, it is a work 

 which has always led either to rapid multiplication or to 

 rapid ext nction, There is no alternative. But in man 

 the processes of Evolution lead in a great variety of di- 

 rections — some of them tending more or less directly to 

 the elevation of the creature, but others of them tending 

 very speedily and very powerfully to its degradation. In 

 some men they have led to an intellectual and moral 

 standing, of which we can conceive it to be true that it is 

 only a "little lower than the angels." In others they 

 have ended in a condition of which it is too evidently true 

 that it is a great deal lower than the condition of beasts. 



We can get, however, a great deal nearer towards the 

 understanding of this anomaly than the mere recognition 

 of it as a fact. Hitherto we have been dealing only with 



8 " Fossil Men," Principal Dawson, pp. 29-42. Montreal, 1880. 

 ' " Prehistoric Man," Dan. Wilson, pp. 359, 60. 



