CHAPTER XIX.
CONCLUSION.
Practical results of the study of Primitive Culture—Its bearing least upon Positive Science, greatest upon Intellectual, Moral, Social, and Political Philosophy—Language—Mythology—Ethics and Law—Religion—Action of the Science of Culture, as a means of furthering progress and removing hindrance, effective in the course of Civilization.
It now remains, in bringing to a close these investigations on the relation of primitive to modern civilization, to urge the practical import of the considerations raised in their course. Granted that archæology, leading the student's mind back to remotest known conditions of human life, shows such life to have been of unequivocally savage type; granted that the rough-hewn flint hatchet, dug out from amidst the bones of mammoths in a drift gravel-bed to lie on an ethnologist's writing-table, is to him a very type of primitive culture, simple yet crafty, clumsy yet purposeful, low in artistic level yet fairly started on the ascent toward highest development — what then? Of course the history and præ-history of man take their proper places in the general scheme of knowledge. Of course the doctrine of the world-long evolution of civilization is one which philosophic minds will take up with eager interest, as a theme of abstract science. But beyond this, such research has its practical side, as a source of power destined to influence the course of modern ideas and actions. To establish a connexion between what uncultured ancient men thought and did, and what cultured modern men think and do, is not a matter of inapplicable theoretic knowledge, for it raises the issue, how far are modern opinion and conduct
443
