14 
The art of spinning and the use of the bow are quite unknown to many 
races of savages, and yet would hardly be likely to have been abandoned 
when once known.” 
This is surely extraordinary reasoning. It assumes that all 
the people of a race know all their arts ; and that arts may be 
preserved without the means of perpetuating them. Spinning, 
for instance, was , for I can scarcely now say is, known in this 
country ; but it was not necessarily known to every family ; 
and migrations from our people might have taken place, and no 
doubt have actually taken place, of persons among whom spin- 
ning was quite unknown. But supposing they did know it 
once, but that the place to which they went did not furnish 
them with flax or other material for spinning, How soon would 
the art be forgotten ? Why it is even all but forgotten among 
ourselves in its primitive form. And so, of the bow. A tribe 
who once knew its use might be driven out or migrate volun- 
tarily from their native soil. They might go in peace,, or have 
no necessity for the bow in the place in which they sojourned, 
or which they “ colonized " ; and if so, the use of the bow, 
and in a few generations and with further dispersions, the very 
memory of it, — might easily perish. Unless it has been lately 
introduced as an amusement, I venture to say the British 
colonists both of America and Australia carried no specimens 
or even memories of the bow, once very well known in these 
islands, along with them. Tens of thousands of our people 
now know nothing of the bow, though of course its. memory is 
preserved by means of books and a literature, which did not 
however exist among the primitive races and in the primeval 
times with which our argument is concerned. 
23. But these are not the worst of Sir John Lubbock's 
arguments in support of this view. He further says : — 
“ The mental condition of savages seems also to me to speak strongly 
against the ‘degrading’ theory. Not only do the religions of the low 
races appear to be indigenous, but according to almost universal testimony , 
— that of merchants, philosophers, naval men, and missionaries alike, — 
there are many races of men who are altogether destitute of a religion. 
The cases are, perhaps, less numerous than they are asserted to he ; but 
some of them rest on good evidence.” 
The recklessness of the statement here made is extreme. What 
is first called “ almost universal testimony/’ emphasised with 
the parenthesis that this means, that the testimony “ of 
merchants, philosophers, naval men and missionaries, alike/' 
is to the effect that many races of men have no religion, 
immediately is qualified and dwindles down to this, that 
