48 THJfc STHNOLOOT OF TH* IMBIAIT ARCHTPSLAOO, 



rammnded by abetting instead of counteracting influences, might 

 originate barbarous and stagnant tribes, 



Tket* to another point of view in which intellectual transition 

 state* have an important* for ethnology. When tfe mind once 

 rebels aganwt ihe dominion of habit and ceases to look upon 

 everything ancestral as sacred, when it thirsts for freedom and 

 can only bud it in deep draught* of the new, it ha* passed to a 

 state ofauaccptibiltty and inventiveness, which is capable of seiz- 

 ing and assimilating every hint that is presented to it This is 

 the condition in which all ethnic development or rather their 

 germs, individual development*, originate. If an advanced and 

 elaborate foreign civilisation be offered to the mind so excited 

 U will expend its energy in adopting or adapting it. If only 

 ■ome detached fragments of such a civiiwation reach it, these 

 will become the germs of fresh indigenous forms of civilisation 

 because when it has raised tfcalf to the conception and adoption of 

 these fragm , w« it has, at the same time, acqnired a new direction for 

 its activity , a.al a tendency to give a practical form to the sugges- 

 tions that constantly radiate through it from ever 7 new idee m 

 neceseanly as light does ; from flame. In the Indian Archipelago 

 we shall find abundant ilhiutmiuns of tab indigenous germinntion 

 ot foreign ideas, but generally with that low degree of vitality 

 and imperfection of results, which were to be expected from th\>' 

 comparatively feeble and aluggish organism and intellect of jib tribes. 



In every great era after the earliest thrre must have been many 

 stagnant and a few progressive tribes. It will probably prove 

 that most of the existing tribes and languages have »H?en derived 

 from the latter, many of the more ancient stagnant or more 

 barbarous tribes lining been successively destroyed and transformed 

 or assimilated by them,-and that most of the present barbarous 

 tubes belong to some of these early civilisations, their long 

 Btagnai.on arising from their having become partial! y isolate? 

 and so secluded from the operation of later civilisations. That 

 the prevailing civilisations of the world have proceeded from a 

 few foci of light successively kindled in the onward march of 

 mankind, », * think, now capable of being satisfactorily proved, 

 lhat the prevailing languages have also derived their organism 

 from a few intellectual revolutions, becomes yearly more probable. 



It appears likely that there will prove to have been one great 

 development of intellect m S. W. Asia,* consequent on a more 



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EHffi-SfSSS f fe T e *f ,K,nJon ol , ;i " bvlmrtc Africa forms if African tribeS 

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