The past in the present: what is civilisation?

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Preface

The publication of these Lectures, which were written under many difficulties; has been delayed in the hope that I should find time to re- write them. The necessary leisure, however, has not come, and I have consented to publish them as they were delivered — in all their incompleteness and with all their faults of style and arrangement. One change only I have made. I have struck out all merely amplifying, coupling, or recapitulating paragraphs. By this, perhaps, I have made them read less runningly. But those who have the printed Lectures in hand do not require such aids, and will gladly exchange them for shortness.

I do not need to point out the objects I have in view in the first six Lectures. To those who read them I think it will be plain that in showing how often the Past is seen in the Present — how many neo-archaic 1 objects and customs exist among us — I have sought and found opportunities of showing that the methods followed in archaeological inquiries should

1 Professor Rolleston suggested to me the use of this word.

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be as strict as those which are deemed necessary in other departments of science. I have chosen a way of doing this which is perhaps unusual, but which I thought likely to be effective.

I have endeavoured, in a special manner, to show that strict methods should be followed in those archaeological inquiries which are at the same time anthropological, because in them there appears to be a special liability to fail in seeing the whole significance of the observations from which conclusions are drawn as to the antiquity and condition of the so-called Primeval Man.

Many things were said in the first sis Lectures which had a possible bearing on the question of the condition of Early Man, and these were considered to be of such a character as to make it desirable that I should state my views as to the nature and origin of Civilisation. Hence the last four Lectures. The views expressed in them appear to me so plainly, or rather so necessarily true, that it is difficult to believe they have not been previously enunciated. So far as I am aware, however, this has not been done. I am conscious that this part of my subject is incompletely worked out, but I do not think the broad conclusion will be affected by any side issues that may be raised.

PREFACE. Vll

I have to thank Captain F. W. L. Thomas, Mr. John Ritchie Findlay, Mr. Joseph Anderson, and Dr. John Sibbald, for reading the proof-sheets. I have also to thank Captain Thomas for allowing me to reproduce his drawings and plans of the Beehive - houses, and the Council of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland for the use of a considerable number of woodcuts. Of the new woodcuts — which are numerous — some are notably inferior to others. Those which are faulty are made from poor sketches taken from the objects by myself. I chose rather to let their defects remain than to have them removed by the imagination of a draughtsman. It would have been an advantage if all the neo-archaie objects had been drawn to scale; but this advantage I could not practically obtain. I have endeavoured to supply the defect by giving, as often as I could, such measurements and weights as would show their size and character.

For the emblem on the title-page I am indebted to the kindness of my friend Sir J. Noel Paton. It is above praise.

It would be difficult to acknowledge all obligations ; but I cannot omit the repetition here of acknowledgments elsewhere made of my indebtedness to the works of Mr. Alfred R. Wallace, Mr. Herbert

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Spencer, Mr. Hubert Howe Bancroft, and M. Fustel de Coulanges. I have found their writings full of suggestiveness, and I have had frequent occasion to quote from them in the last four Lectures which treat of Civilisation. Their views, however, differ in important respects from those I have advanced. The quotations from their works, which are given in the Appendix at greater length than in the -Lectures, indicate the direction of these differences.

A. M.

34 Drttmmond Place, Edinburgh, 1st June 1880.

Contents

PAET I.

The Past in the Present.

LECTUKE I.