207 
lowest condition referred to by Sir John Lubbock, as “worthy 
to be called a man.” Omitting the imbecile and fatuous 
human beings, the most savage and uncivilized individuals of 
the human family possess a marked characteristic of not only 
defending themselves against lower animals by means of their 
natural structure, but can construct weapons of offence and 
defence, which the highest anthropoid ape never has been 
able to do. Though capable of being trained to imitate many 
of the actions that they see man performing around them, they 
can only make use of nuts, hard fruits, stones, and branches 
of trees to act offensively either upon man or other animals. 
In domestication, although a pet monkey has long been 
accustomed to sit by the side of a fire or stove, and daily 
seeing it kindled and kept up by the addition of fuel, it has 
never yet been known to add a small billet of wood or bit of 
coal to the fire, but continued to sit shivering at the cold 
stove, with plenty of combustibles lying around. This is 
certainly a very marked characteristic of the most elementary 
kind, capable of separating man from mammals. Man by his 
language is still more distinct “ from the beasts which perish,” 
and also by his inventive arts and intellectual operations of 
his genius, and the boundless sense of the Infinite, which 
raises in him the true sense of devotion. 
In strong contrast to the most elevated anthropoid apes, 
who have never yet succeeded in constructing any offensive or 
defensive weapon, we may refer even to the lowest and most 
uncivilized of the human family who can not only construct 
weapons but use them for the best purposes of offence. I beg 
to notice the Yacoots, an arboreal human race living in the 
forests of the Malay peninsula, who construct weapons, spears, 
and arrows tipped with metal, and by means of a long tube 
of hollowed bamboo discharge their small arrows with such 
dexterity and precision that they can, at the distance of forty 
yards, strike a mark of the size of our half-crown, three times 
out of four chances ; a degree of precision not easily equalled 
among more highly-favoured races ; which is evidently a com- 
pensation for their other disadvantages of bodily weakness and 
low mentality, evidently exemplifying a physical law of nature. 
The next, or Black variety, including the Caffre, Hottentot, 
and Bushmen, as well as the Polynesian, show a higher de- 
velopment of mentality in a more varied construction of war- 
like weapons, and of canoes and other means of transport. 
When, again, we rise to the Ethiopian race (those on the 
coast of Guinea and in the interior of Africa), there can be no 
doubt of the vast progressive rise in the human scale of bodily 
powers and mentality. Their history, from the earliest times, 
has recorded the existence of populous kingdoms, governed 
