Primeval man: an examination of some recent speculations

Preface

PAVING now no immediate prospect of being able to expand or to illustrate the argument contained in the following pages, I republish it with very little alteration from the form in which it originally appeared in " Good Words/' I am well aware how much it requires both expansion and illustration. But I hope that at least the main lines of that argument are traced with sufficient clearness to enable others with more

VI PREFACE.

leisure to pursue them farther, and to test the results arrived at by our growing knowledge in the sciences which bear upon the early condition of Mankind. The distinctions here taken between different branches of the subject, have not, so far as I know, been elsewhere laid down with adequate precision. Yet all safe reasoning depends upon such distinctions being carefully observed. If they are sound, they place an insuperable bar in the way of certain conclusions respecting Primeval Man, which have been too hastily assumed as following from recently discovered facts. At all events these conclusions

PREFACE. Vll can only be reached by new arguments and by new methods of proof.

Many of the questions which are involved in the reasoning of this Essay, are questions which touch upon the profoundest problems of our nature and of our history : — On the connection, seemingly inseparable, between all mental phenomena and physical organization ; on the truthfulness of any system of classification which does not take equal cognizance of both; on the distinction between intellectual powers and moral character ; on the distinction, again, between the mere results of accumulated knowledge, and the working of the original facul-

Vlll PREFACE.

ties of Reason ; on the question howfar the first use and the first direction of his mental powers may have been as purely instinctive in Man as in the Bee or in the Beaver ; on the relation between the two tendencies in Man to advance and to decline ; on the causes of degradation which are born with him and seem to be inseparable from his nature ; on the bearing upon the whole argument of existing facts respecting his distribution on the globe, and the obvious effects upon him of hardship and of suffering to produce, or to intensify, a barbarous condition ; — on each and all of these questions, which enter into the

PREFACE. IX reasoning of this Essay, whole volumes might be written without exhausting what is to be said upon them. I shall be content, in the meantime, if this slight sketch of so great a subject should be of any use in directing others into some well-defined paths of thought and of investigation in regard to it.

London, Dec. 9, 1868.

Part I. Introductory

A T the meeting, in 1867, of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, a paper was read by Sir J. Lubbock upon "The Early Condition of Mankind." It purports to be a reply to a lecture on the " Origin of Civilization" by Dr. Whately, the late Archbishop of Dublin, which was published in 1854 The Archbishop's position is shortly this, — that mere savages — that is to say, "men in the lowest degree, or even anything approaching to the

B

PRIMEVAL MAN.

lowest degree, of barbarism in which they can possibly subsist at all — never did and never can, unaided, raise themselves into a higher condition ; " that even when they are brought into contact with superior races, it is extremely difficult to teach them the simplest arts ; that they " seem never to invent or discover anything," because even "necessity is not the mother of invention except to those who have some degree of thoughtfulness and intelligence;" that whatever the natural powers of the human mind may be, they require to have some instruction from without wherewith to start. He holds it to be "a complete moral certainty that men left unassisted in what is called a state of nature — that is, with the faculties Man is born

WHATELY S ARGUMENT.

with not at all unfolded or exercised byeducation — never did, and never can, raise themselves from that condition." Therefore, " according to the present course of things, the first introducer of civilization among savages is, and must be, man in a more improved state." But as " in the beginning of the human race there was no man to effect it," this must have been the work of another Being. '■' There must have been, in short, something of a revelation made to the first or to some subsequent generation of our species." The conclusion is that, as Man must have had a Divine Creator, it seems equally certain that, to some extent also, he must have had a Divine Instructor.

This is the argument which Sir J. Lubbock B 2

PRIMEVAL MAX.

has undertaken to refute. His conclusion is, that the " primitive condition of mankind was one of utter barbarism ; " that from this condition certain races have independently raised themselves ; and, of course, that, instead of existing savages being the degenerate descendants of ancestors who were more advanced, all races now civilized are the children of men who were once in the same low condition. A further conclusion, though not formally asserted, is plainly indicated, viz. this, — that the "utter barbarism" of the first man was itself an advance on the condition of some progenitor. I infer that this idea is intended to be conveyed when the " first men" are explained to mean the "first beings worthy to be so called."

SIR JOHN LUBBOCK S PROPOSITIONS. 5

The two main lines of argument pursued by Sir J. Lubbock connect themselves with the two following propositions which he undertakes to prove: — 1st, "That there are indications of progress even among savages ; " and 2d, "That among the most civilized nations there are traces of original barbarism."

Sir J. Lubbock's paper has confirmed an impression I have long had, that Whately's argument, though strong at some points, is at others open to assault ; and that, as a whole, the subject now requires to be differently handled, and regarded from a different point of view. On the other hand, the same paper has convinced me that the argument in favour of what may be called the Savage-theory is very much the weaker of the two, and rests

PRIMEVAL MAN.

upon a method of treatment much more inadequate and incomplete.

I propose in this, and in some following chapters, to set forth the reasoning upon which these convictions rest.

There are, however, some preliminary considerations which it may be well to deal with before proceeding farther.

It will be observed that both arguments are avowedly conducted irrespective of any belief in the Mosaic narrative of Creation. They both profess to be purely scientific ; that is, founded on natural knowledge, and using for the discovery of truth such facts and inferences as are ascertainable by reason. Whately expressly says that in his argument he has not appealed to the Book of Genesis

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. J

as an authority, because he "thought it important to show, independently of that authority and from a monument actually before our eyes — the existence, namely, of civilized man — that there is no escaping such conclusions as agree with the Bible narrative." The opposite argument is, of course, maintained always from the same basis of scientific independence, and those who urge it do not generally profess or care to reconcile the conclusion arrived at, with the Mosaic narrative. Sir J. Lubbock at the close of his paper says emphatically, " These views follow, I think, from strictly scientific considerations." No doubt, if the inquiry is to be pursued at all upon this basis, it must be conducted honestly, and the conclusions legitimately reached

PRIMEVAL MAN.

must be accepted with just so much of conviction as is justified by the nature of the data, and the nature of the reasoning employed.

The question may well arise in many minds in reference to this subject, whether it is a legitimate subject of speculation at all — whether it does not transcend our faculties to ascertain the truth.

Respecting this question, there is one answer which is obvious, although it may not go far to satisfy those whose scruples are most sincere. When men in the position of the late Archbishop of Dublin enter upon this discussion, and declare that, independent of all authority, certain conclusions can be shown to be unavoidable by natural reason, we cannot

IS THE DISCUSSION LEGITIMATE? 9

prohibit others from entering upon the same ground, or from producing such arguments as they may be able to find in support of an opposite conclusion. But there are some better arguments than this. This, indeed, is enough to show that the discussion must, as a matter of necessity, be encountered, even though it should be deplored. But other considerations may perhaps convince us that it ought not to be avoided. It may be true, and I believe it to be true, that the desire of knowledge is capable of excess. The spirit which in the ordinary concerns of life is condemned as idle or vicious curiosity has, surely, its counterpart in the higher pursuits of intellect. David seems to imply as much when he pleads in favour of his own character and conduct before God — " I do not exercise myself in things too high for me." On the other hand, we must remember that in nothing has the human race been more liable to the delusions of superstition than in the conception of the matters which were to be held, or were not to be held, as forbidden to investigation. Those physical laws of nature which are now so familiar to us as the peculiar field of observation and discovery — a field on which the march of intellect has been so rapid and so triumphant — were once held by the early Greek philosophers as belonging to the most secret things of God. They thought, perhaps not unnaturally, that a region which lay, or seemed to lie, so much nearer to themselves, even

METAPHYSICAL SPECULATION. II

their own mind and spirit — its phenomena and its methods of procedure — must be the ground most open to their search, and must afford results most comprehensible to the understanding. And so they plunged into all the problems of Metaphysics. But there are no mysteries so deep as these — none in which the human mind reaches so soon the limit of its powers — none in which the temptation is stronger to strain after knowledge which is shrouded in impenetrable darkness. The greatest intellects which the world has ever seen have laboured at such problems, and, in respect at least to many of them, have left them as they found them. The same tendency of metaphysical speculation, blending, through the school of Alexandria, with the mysticism of the East, infected the Theology of the early Church, and heretics were not seldom divided from the orthodox upon questions which were not only beyond the reach of reason, but equally beyond the scope of Revelation. In the Confessions of St. Augustine there is a curious indication of this transposition of the questions which are deemed to be the most legitimate, .and the most accessible, subjects of our research. In early life he had been, as is well known, led away by the curious and idle speculations which pass in ecclesiastical history under the name of the Manichaean heresy. He pours out his lamentations over the subtleties which had once engrossed and perplexed his mind — subtleties of which

AUGUSTINE S DEFINITION.

Christianity had revealed the folly. And among the temptations which he still desires to overcome is the appetite of knowledge — a "vain and curious desire hiding under the name of science " (lib. x. c. 35). This is the desire which pretends, he says, to reach the inmost secrets of nature — secrets which when discovered could have no value, and of which men desire and expect nothing except to know. Now, here we have an exact definition of the true scientific spirit — a spirit which has, indeed, in its results, richly " endowed the human family with new mercies," but which never has had this dower in view as its only, • or even as its chief, inducement. It is not perhaps exactly relevant to observe that the glorious facts of Astronomy are among the secrets of nature which Augustine rejoices to say he no longer desires to know ; because, in his mind, Astronomy took the form of Astrology, to which in his youth he had been much addicted. But Augustine is right when he detects this same love of mere knowledge in the instinctive arrest of his attention by the commonest works of nature. He desires to be delivered even from this. He has given up many pleasures of the eye and curiosities of the mind in which he once delighted, — not only the transits of the heavenly bodies and the response of oracles, but even the public spectacles of the Roman world. Still, he deplores that this wretched love of mere knowledge, — this lust of the eyes, — is ever

AUGUSTINE'S DESIRE OF KNOWLEDGE. 15

pursuing him as he walks and lives. Although no longer tempted to go to the Amphitheatre to see the race of hound and hare, he complains that the same sight, if seen accidentally in the fields, will divert his attention from some profound meditation. Even from the windows of his home his eye is caught by some little lizard catching flies upon the wall, or by some spider spreading for the capture her wondrous web. The smallness of these creatures, he confesses, does not diminish his instinctive curiosity. True it is that he might pass from these creatures to magnify the Creator of them all. But he is conscious that this was not present to his thoughts when they were arrested and fixed upon the things he saw.

Most true ! and equally true was it that this desire of knowledge was burning intensely in him when it wrung from him no confession ; or rather, when it was interwoven into the very tissue of which his immortal Confessions are composed. In them no more splendid passages occur than those in which he turns the eye of his curiosity inwards upon the secrets of his own nature, and asks a thousand unanswerable questions on the structure and the power of Memory. What and where are those innumerable chambers, — those vast halls, — which hold in perpetual imagery not only all he had ever seen, but all he had ever conceived and known ? How can the immensities of Time and Space, of earth, and sky, and ocean, be thus contained ?

MEMORY. 17

How can they be recalled into what seemed a lost existence ? What depths and mysteries of being ! How little can we understand ourselves ! Does it not seem then as if the mind were too narrow to comprehend itself? And so, through pages of most subtle and eloquent analysis, he revels in that faculty of Wonder, which is the very root and principle of all curious inquiry. I do not say that these questions are wholly vain. But they are useful only as all knowledge may be useful, in teaching us — if it be nothing else — how small that knowledge is. St. Augustine was right in thinking that this wonderful power of Memory lies close to the final secrets on which our very being and personality depend. An eminent philosopher of our own time has

c found in Memory the only insuperable difficulty in the way of reducing the definition of ourselves into that of mere " Possibilities of Feeling."* But in pursuing these speculations into the most inscrutable of all subjects, St. Augustine is but following the instincts of the same restless and curious intellect which had once struggled with the questions, What Matter is, and How Evil came to be ? There is no inquiry in which the human mind comes so immediately to the limit of its powers, as in the analysis of itself. Inscrutable questions may indeed be asked as to what Man once was. But questions much more inscrutable

* Mr. J. S. Mill. I have discussed elsewhere the logic and Tie adequacy of this definition: — "The Reign of Law." Fifth Edition. Note D.

IMPOTENCE OF HUMAN UNDERSTANDING. 19

may be asked, and are habitually asked, as to what Man now is. No conclusions in respect to the original condition of our race can be more shocking to reason and common sense, than many conclusions which metaphysicians have pretended to establish respecting its condition now.

Another reason against declining this inquiry, is to be found in the fact that the plea of impotence against the human understanding, is a plea which may be urged ift the service of the most irrational error, as easily as, perhaps more easily than, in the service of the most certain truths. Men engrossed by some particular theory are under immense temptation to denounce the power of faculties whose function it is to apprehend C 2

PRIMEVAL MAN.

ideas differing from their own. At the present moment this is the habitual practice of a whole school of thinkers, who have eyes for nothing but a particular class of facts, and who therefore very naturally resort to the assertion that all eyes with a wider range of vision are eyes of " phantasy." And if this has been sometimes the result of the anatomy of Mind, what are we to say of the anatomy of the Body ? We cannot even think of our bodily frames without encountering at once all the facts which connect the phenomena of Mind with the structure and condition of Material Organs. And then our Organism as a whole, how close it stands to that of the beasts that perish ! Are we to close these paths of investigation also, because some

MANY FORMS OF PRIESTCRAFT. 21

minds have been led by them to a gross materialism ? It is not on one subject of inquiry, but in all, that we come speedily to questions which cannot be answered. The result therefore is, that we should never be jealous of research, but always jealous of presumption, — that on all subjects Reason should be warned to keep within the limit of her powers, but from none should Reason be warned away. Men who denounce any particular field of thought are always to be suspected. The presumption is, that valuable things which these men do not like are to be found there. There are many forms of Priestcraft. The same arts, and the same delusions, have been practised in many causes. Sometimes, though perhaps not so often as is popularly supposed, men have been warned off particular branches of physical inquiry, in the supposed interests of Religion. But constantly and habitually, men are now warned from many branches of inquiry, both physical and psychological, in the interests — real enough — of the Positive Philosophy ! " Whatever," says Mr. Lewes, "is inaccessible to reason, should be strictly interdicted to research." Here we have the true ring of the old sacerdotal interdicts. Who is to define beforehand what is, and what is not, "inaccessible to reason?" Are we to take such a definition on trust from the priests of this new philosophy? They tell us that all proofs of Mind in the order of the universe, all evidences of purpose, all conceptions of

RESEARCH DEFENDED. 23

plan or of design, in the history of Creation, are the mere product of special " infirmities " of the human intellect. In opposition to these attempts — come from what quarter they may — to limit arbitrarily the boundaries of knowledge, let us maintain the principle that we never can certainly know what is " inaccessible to reason" until the way of access has been tried. In the highest interests of truth, we must resist any and every interdict against research. The strong presumption is that every philosophy which assumes to issue such an interdict, must have reason to fear inquiry.

On these principles it may be affirmed generally that all subjects are legitimate subjects of reasoning in proportion as they are accessible to research ; and that the degree in which any given subject is accessible to research cannot be known until research has been attempted.

Within certain limits it is not open to dispute that the early condition of Mankind is accessible to research. Contemporary history reaches back a certain way. Existing monuments afford their evidence for a considerable distance farther. Tradition has its own province still more remote; and latterly Geology and Archaeology have met upon common ground — ground in which Man and the Mammoth have been found together.

It has not, however, been sufficiently observed that the inquiry into the Primitive Condition of Mankind resolves itself into three

THREE SUBJECTS OF INQUIRY. 25

separate questions, — that is to say, three questions which, though connected with each other, can be, and indeed must be, separatelydealt with : —

1st. The Origin of Man considered simply as a Species, — that is to say, the method of his creation or introduction into the world.

2d. The Antiquity of Man, or the time in the geological history and preparation of the globe at which this creation or introduction took place.

3d. His Mental, Moral, and Intellectual Condition when first created.

No doubt the theory as to the Origin of Man at which Sir J. Lubbock glances when he speaks of the " first being worthy to be called a man" (which is obviously the theory that this first man was born from some pre-existing creature not worthy to be so called), is most naturally connected with the farther theory that his mental condition was one of "utter barbarism.'' But this is not at all a necessary consequence. The first man, however created, may have had special knowledge conveyed to him as well as a special material organization. Special powers of acquiring knowledge he certainly must have had, since we know that these are inseparably connected with the organization which made him " worthy to be called a man." The two questions, therefore, of the Origin of Man, and of his Primitive Condition, are clearly separable. In like manner, as regards Antiquity, the question of Time has no neces-

MOSAIC ACCOUNT OF CREATION. 27

sary connection either with his Origin or his Primitive Condition.

There is another point connected with this division of the whole subject into three separate questions, which has not perhaps been sufficiently considered, and that is the different degrees of connection which these questions have respectively, with the Mosaic narrative. I have already said that the inquiry as conducted both by Archbishop Whately and Sir J. Lubbock is avowedly conducted on a purely scientific basis. It is in the same light that it will be considered here. But it may be useful to observe in passing, that in regard to some of these questions the Mosaic account of Creation (apart altogether from any suggestions which have been raised as to the allegorical elements it. may contain) leaves room, even according to its most literal interpretation, for a much wider latitude of speculation than seems to be generally supposed. As regards the Origin of Man, undoubtedly, the impression conveyed is that the Creation of Man was a special act — which indeed, whatever may have been its method, it must in a sense have been ; but, as regards the Primitive Condition of Mankind, it must be remembered that, according to the narrative in Genesis, there never was any generation of men which lived and walked in the primal light. It was the first man who fell. The second man was a murderer. The causes, therefore, of degradation are represented as having begun, so far as the race is concerned, at once ; and it

DEFINITION OF TERMS NEEDED. 29

is a special peculiarity of the account that those causes are said to have gone on in an accelerating ratio until the Flood. Even after that event there was no immunity from the operation of the same causes, and existing races, therefore, may have passed through stages of any degree of barbarism since the days of Adam without involving any necessary inconsistency whatever with the Mosaic account.

It is farther to be observed that writers on the Primitive Condition of Man are generally guilty of the oversight of forgetting to define the sense in which they use the words " civilized " and " uncivilized.'' This is a strange oversight on the part of such a logician as Dr. Whately. Sir J. Lubbock naturally enough feels himself relieved from an inconvenient obligation. But implicitly, if not explicitly, the Savage-theory and the reasoning in support of it assume that civilization consists mainly if not exclusively in a knowledge of the arts. Knowledge, for example, or ignorance, of the use of metals, are, as we shall see, characteristics on which great stress is laid. Now, as regards this point, as Whately truly says, the narrative of Genesis distinctly states that this kind of knowledge did not belong to Mankind at first, but was the fruit of subsequent discovery, through the ordinary agency of those mental gifts with which Man at his creation was endowed. It is assumed in the Savage-theory that the presence or absence of this knowledge stands in close and natural connection with the presence or

MAN DIVINELY TAUGHT. 3I

absence of other and higher kinds of knowledge, of which an acquaintance with the metals is but a symbol and a type. Within certain limits this is true, and we may assume, therefore, that in Genesis also, the intimation given on this subject implies that so far as civilization means a command over the powers of nature, Man was left to make his own way, through his powers of reason, and through his instincts of research. Whately has indeed inferred, from the description given of Cain as a tiller of the ground, and of Abel as a keeper of flocks, that the great economic principle of the division of labour was at the first divinely taught to Man. But, if we are to understand this literally, not of tribes tracing their descent

PRIMEVAL MAN.

from Cain and Abel, but of the individual men who were the third and fourth human beings upon earth, then we must suppose that the possession of domestic animals and acquaintance with artificial cultivation were either divinelycommunicated to Man, or instinctively discovered by him, at once. It may have been so, and it may be the intention of the narrative to assert it ; but, at all events, it is perfectly conceivable, that beyond a knowledge of the simplest arts which -were necessary for the sustenance of life, Man's primitive condition may have been a condition of mere childhood. As regards the third element in the whole question — the element of Time — it is well known that all calculations in regard to it rest upon data respecting which there has

THE QUESTION OF TIME. 33

always been much doubt and difficulty, and that similar data 'taken from the three existing versions of the Old Testament, — the Hebrew, the Samaritan, and the Septuagint, — give results which vary from each other, not by years, or even by tens . of years, but by many centuries. Where differences exist of such magnitude, no confidence can be felt in any of the results. It seems more than questionable how far the history of Man given in the Old Testament either is, or was intended to be, a complete history, or more than the history of typical men and of typical generations. At all events, it would be worse than idle to deny that this question of Time comes naturally and necessarily within the field of scientific investigation,^ in

D so far as science can find a firm foundation for any conclusions in regard to it.

Having already quoted St. Augustine upon

the general subject of the desire of knowledge,.

I cannot close even this cursory reference to

the relation in which the Mosaic narrative

stands to scientific research, without dwelling;

for a moment on the very striking passage in

which that great man deals with the only

account which the world possesses of the

history of Creation. St. Augustine was not

the man to be dead to all those curious

speculations and inquiries which that account

excites, and which it does not profess to

satisfy. His Confessions, he says, would not

be the humble confessions he desires them to

be, were he not to confess that as regards

AUGUSTINE S DECLARATION. 35

many of those questions, he does not understand the sense in which Moses wrote. All the more does he admire his words, "so sublime in their humility, so rich in their reserve " (alta hitmiliter, pauca copiose) ; then follows (lib. xii. c. 31) a passage which, — considering the age in which it was written, considering also the vague notions entertained by St. Augustine himself, and by all the world in his time, on the rank and importance of the natural sciences, — is surely one of the most remarkable passages ever written by Theologian or Philosopher. "For myself/' he says, "I declare boldly, and from the bottom of my heart, that if I were called to write something which was to be invested with supreme authority, I should desire most so to D 2 write that my words should include the widest range of meaning, and should not be confined to one sense alone, exclusive of all others, even of some which should be inconsistent with my own. Far from me, O God, be the temerity to suppose that so great a Prophet did not receive from Thy Grace even such a favour ! Yes ; he had in view and in his spirit, when he traced these words, all that we can ever discover of the truth — even every truth which has escaped us hitherto, or which escapes us still, but which nevertheless may yet be discovered in them. ,, Certain it is, that whatever new views may now be taken of the origin and authorship of the first chapter of Genesis,' it stands alone among the traditions of mankind in the wonderful simplicity and grandeur of