given to it on account of its considerable hold on public opinion. As to definite evidence, however, it does not seem to have any ethnological basis whatever. Indeed, I scarcely think that a stronger counter-persuasion could be used on an intelligent student inclined to the ordinary degeneration-theory than to induce him to examine critically and impartially the arguments of the advocates on his own side. It must be borne in mind, however, that the grounds on which this theory has been held have generally been rather theological than ethnological. The strength of the position it has thus occupied may be well instanced from the theories adopted by two eminent French writers of the 18th century, which in a remarkable way piece together a belief in degeneration and an argument for progression. De Brosses, whose whole intellectual nature turned to the progression-theory, argued that by studying what actually now happens 'we may trace men upward from the savage state to which the flood and dispersion had reduced them.'[1] And Goguet, holding that the pre-existing arts perished at the deluge, was thus left free to work out on the most thorough-going progressionist principles his theories of the invention of fire, cooking, agriculture, law, and so forth, among tribes thus reduced to a condition of low savagery.[2] At the present time it is not unusual for the origin of civilization to be treated as matter of dogmatic theology. It has happened to me more than once to be assured from the pulpit that the theories of ethnologists who consider man to have risen from a low original condition are delusive fancies, it being revealed truth that man was originally in a high condition. Now as a matter of Biblical criticism it must be remembered that a large proportion of modern theologians are far from accepting such a dogma. But in investigating the problem of early civilization, the claim to ground scientific opinion upon
Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/54
36
THE DEVELOPMENT OF CULTURE.
