worship. If, again, high savage or low barbaric types be selected, as among the North American Indians, Polyne sians, and Kafirs of South Africa, the same elements of cul ture appear, but at a more advanced stage, namely, a more full and accurate language, more knowledge of the laws of nature, more serviceable implements, more perfect industrial processes, more definite and fixed social order and frame of government, more systematic and philosophic schemes of religion, and a more elaborate and ceremonial worship. At intervals new arts and ideas appear, such as agriculture and pasturage, the manufacture of pottery, the use of metal implements, and the device of record and communi cation by picture-writing. Along such stages of improve ment and invention the bridge is fairly made between savage and barbaric culture ; and this once attained to, the remainder of the series of stages of civilisation lies
within the range of common knowledge.
The teaching of history, during the three to four thousand years of which contemporary chronicles have been preserved, is that civilisation is gradually developed in the course of ages by enlargement and increased precision of knowledge, invention and improvement of arts, and the progression of social and political habits and institutions towards general well-being. The conditions of such races as the older Jews, Greeks, and Germans, are known to us by ancient chronicles, and by poetry and myth even more valuable than chronicle in the details they unconsciously preserve of the state of society at the time whence they have been handed down. Starting from the recorded con dition of such barbaric nations, and following the general course of culture into the modern world, all the great processes of mental and social development may be seen at work. Falling back or decay also takes place, but only to a limited extent destroys the results of growth in culture. It is thus matter of actual record, that the ancestors of civilised nations were barbaric tribes, and the inference seems reasonable that the same process of development had gone on during previous ages outside the domain of direct history, so that barbaric culture itself arose out of an earlier and ruder condition of primitive culture, more or less corresponding with the state of modern savage tribes. The failure of direct record of this passage from savagery upward to barbarism was to be expected from the circumstances of the case. No people civilised enough to preserve history could have watched the age-long process of a savage tribe developing its culture; indeed, experience shows that independent progress could hardly have taken place among an uncivilised in contact with a civilised race. Nor could a barbaric nation, though it had really and independently risen from savagery within some few thou sand years, give any vabid account of this gradual advance ment, for the very reason of its having taken place while the nation was yet in, or but little removed from, the savage state, one part of the very definition of which is that it has no trustworthy means of preserving the history of events even for a single century, much less for the long period required for so vast a development. This view of the low origin and progressive development of civilisation was already held in ancient times, as in the well-known speculations of the Epicurean school on the condition of the earliest men, who roved like wild animals, seeking their food from the uncultured earth, till arts and social laws arose among them (Lucret., De Rerum Nat., v. 923; Horat., Sat., i. 3); or where the like idea has taken in China the form of ancient legend, recording the time when their nation was taught to use skins for clothing, to make fire, and to dwell in houses (Pauthier, Livres Sacres de l'Orient, p. 26). In opposition to such views of primeval rudeness, traditions of a pristine state of human excellence have long been cherished, such as the " golden age " (Hesiod., Op. et Dies, 108). Till of late wide acceptance has been given to arguments, partly based on theological and partly on anthropological grounds, as to man s incapability of rising from a savage state, and the consequent necessity of a supernatural bestowal of culture on the first men, from whose high level savages are supposed by advocates of this theory to have degenerated. The anthropological evidence adduced in support of this doctrine is, however, too weak for citation, and even obviously erroneous arguments have been relied on (see, for example, Archbishop Whately, Essay on the Origin of Civilisation, and remarks on its evidence in Tylor, Early Hist. of Man., p. 163). It has been especially the evidence of prehistoric archaeology which, within the last few years, has given to the natural development-theory of civilisation a predominance hardly disputed on anthropological grounds. The stone implements, which form the staple proof of man s existence at the period of the river-drift, are of extreme rudeness as compared even with ordinary savage types, so that it is obvious that the most ancient known tribes were, as to the industrial arts, at a low savage level. The remains in the caverns justify this opinion, especially where in central France more precision is given to tho idea of prehistoric life by the discovery of bone weapons for hunting and fishing, which suggest a rude condition resembling that of the Esquimaux (see the preceding section IV., Antiquity of Man}. The finding of ancient stone implements buried in the ground in almost every habitable district of the world, including the seats of the great ancient civilisations, such as Egypt, Assyria, India, China, Greece, &c., may be adduced to show that the inhabitants of these regions had at some time belonged to the stone age. This argument goes far to prove that the ancestors of all nations, high and low, were once in that uncultured condition as to knowledge, arts, and manners generally, which within our experience accompanies the use of stone implements and the want of metals. No- valid refutation of this reasoning has been offered, and it is corroborated by arguments to be drawn from study of the facts of civilisation, of which some will be here mentioned for their bearing on the theory of development.
earnest gnomon—a mere staff set up in order to have its shadow measured—passed into the graduated sun-dial ; or adaptations of old contrivances produce new results, as when the ancient Pan s pipes, blown by a bellows, became the organ, when the earlier block-printing led up to the use of movable types, and when the magnetic-needle was taken out of the mariner s compass to find a new office on the telegraph-dial ; or lastly, more absolutely original inventions arise, the triumphs of the scientific imagina tion, such as the pendulum and the steam-engine. In the evolution of science the new knowledge ever starts from the old, whether its results be to improve, to shift, or to supersede it. The history of astronomy extends far enough back to show its barbaric stages, when the earth was regarded as a flat surface, over-arched by a solid dome or firmament ; and Avhen not only was the sun considered to move round the earth, but its motions, as well as the moon s, were referred to the guidance and even tho impulse of personal deities. Beginning with this first stage of the science, there lies before us the whole record of the exacter observation and closer reasoning which have gradually replaced these childlike savage conceptions by the most perfect of physical theories. Thus, again, the history of medicine shows improvement after improvement on the rude surgical appliances and the meagre list of
efficient drugs which the barbaric leech had at his disposal,
