30 



The Seventeenth General Meeting. 



civilisation is to be obtained by direct observation ; that is, by con- 

 trasting the condition of a low race at different times, so as to see 

 whether its culture has altered in the meanwhile. The contact requisite 

 for such an inspection of a savage tribe by civilized men, has much the 

 same effect as the experiment which an inquisitive child tries upon 

 the root it put in the ground the day before, by digging it up to see 

 whether it has grown. At all events, it is a general rule, that 

 original and independent progress is not found among a people of 

 low civilisation in presence of a race in a higher state of culture. 

 It is natural enough that this should be the case, and it does not in 

 the least affect the question, whether the lower race was stationary 

 or progressing before the arrival of the more cultivated foreigners. 



There is less difficulty in disposing of the other assertion, that 

 savages seem never to invent or discover anything for themselves. 

 If collections, such as that in the Blackmore Museum, teach any- 

 thing at all, it is, that savages in every stage of culture do invent, 

 and do discover things for themselves. The isolation of particular 

 forms of weapons or tools in particular islands or regions, naturally 

 leads to the supposition that they were independently invented by 

 the people who alone use them. For instance, I have said that the 

 Fijians were excellent potters, this excellence in the manufacture of 

 pottery led to an extraordinary development of the art of cookery, 

 for they were able to expose their ware to the direct heat of the 

 fire, and to boil their food in this manner. This development 

 of the art of cookery among the Fijians led to the, apparently, 

 independent invention of that very civilised instrument, the fork, 

 which they used for fishing the hot morsels out of their various 

 soups and stews, and the use of which appears to be unknown, 

 (except as introduced by Europeans) to the other islanders of the 

 Pacific. Indeed, the use of forks in eating was unknown to people 

 so advanced as the Greeks and Romans, and in England forks only 

 came into general use at the beginning of the seventeenth century. 



But, if we admit that savages can invent and consequently 

 progress in the industrial arts and in knowledge, we must also allow, I 

 think, that decline is possible. Indeed few persons will deny that both 

 decline and progress in art and knowledge are now actually going 



