24 
rather than complicated. I answer, Max Muller has so devoted himself to 
the Aryan branch of philology, that I do not think he has sufficiently grasped 
the thought, that it must be with languages as it is with habits and customs 
and other things — you must allow for different races different kinds of genius. 
In the whole of the Aryan languages, stretching from India to Iceland, you 
have a tendency to simplify — that is the genius of race. But that is no 
reason why the Mongolian family should not have a different genius, and 
their genius, even in civilization, may have a complicating tendency. That 
is quite conceivable, and is as much in accordance with the rules of common 
sense as any other theory. The objection raised by Mr. Newton is urged on 
another ground. He finds a difficulty in the existence of slavery in these 
primitive times. He says, with reference to certain archaeological remains in 
Central Africa, We know they were made by slaves, ergo , there must have 
been barbarism side by side with civilization. That proves that barbarism 
is as old as civilization ; ergo , your paper is wrong. But I contend that 
slavery has no kind of connection of necessity with barbarism. The Greek 
slaves were not barbarians, neither were the Israelites in Egypt. The opinion 
of those who have studied the monuments of Egypt, and who are competent 
to speak on the point, is that most of those monuments were the work of 
Israelitish slaves. In the monuments dating as far back as the fourth century, 
there are figures of slaves at work, and they are represented, not as of the 
black or negro race, but with regular Jewish faces and features. Slaves may 
exist side by side with civilization, but not necessarily as barbarians. They 
are degraded, it is true, because conquered ; and I can conceive the Mexicans 
taking hold of a conquered race and reducing them to a state of bondage, 
without their being in a state of savagedom. If that is true of the Egyptians 
and the Israelites, it may be true of the Mexicans, and of old races contem- 
poraneous with the Aztecs, —I have now disposed of all the objections which 
have been raised against my paper, but I have been rather disappointed that 
there should be so few. I anticipated more, and, with your permission, if I 
have not already wearied you, I will raise a few myself, and endeavour to 
answer them. Nothing has been said to-night with respect to the argument 
deduced from Monotheism. I expected some one would have said it is in 
vain to appeal to any underlying substratum of religious belief on the side of 
Monotheism, as that would prove nothing, because it is only a natural instinct 
of the human mind to worship a pure spirit, and that it is only, a priori, to 
be expected in all parts of the world side by side with idolatry. But we 
have evidence to the contrary. For instance, the Kaffirs stand out excep- 
tionally in Africa as being without idols, and as worshipping a pure spirit. 
You cannot show of the Bushmen and the Hottentots that they have any 
notion of a pure spirit. Another objection has also struck me. Granting 
that races now savage have fallen from a state of civilization, that does not 
prove they were aboriginally civilized, but only that they have fallen back 
into their original state of barbarism. It may be that in their present state 
they have only fallen back to that from which they originated, like domesti- 
cated plants and animals, which, when left without cultivation, revert to 
