[DD.] Part I. Chap. ii. § 4. p. 60.

The following extracts are from the fifth Lecture on Political Economy, being the portion alluded to in the text.

"When we dismiss for a moment all antecedent conjectures, and look around us for instances, we find, I think I may confidently affirm, no one recorded, of a tribe of savages, properly so styled, rising into a civilized state, without instruction and assistance from people already civilized. And we have, on the other hand, accounts of various savage tribes, in different parts of the globe, who have been visited from time to time at considerable intervals, but have had no settled intercourse with civilized people, and who appear to continue, as far as can be ascertained, in the same uncultivated condition. No savage tribe appears to have risen into civilization, except through the aid of others who were civilized. We have, I think, in this case all the historical evidence that a negative is susceptible of; viz. we have the knowledge of numerous cases in which such a change has not taken place, and of none where it has; while we have every reason to expect, that, if it had occurred, it would have been recorded. . . . . There are several circumstances which have conduced to keep out of sight the important fact I have been alluding to. The chief of these probably is, the vagueness with which the term 'Savage' is applied. I do not profess, and indeed it is evidently not possible, to draw a line by which we may determine precisely to whom that title is, and is not, applicable; since there is a series of almost insensible gradations between the highest and the lowest state of human society. Nor is any such exact boundary-line needed for our present purpose. It is sufficient if we admit, what is probably very far short of the truth, that those who are in as low a state as some tribes with which we are acquainted, are incapable of emerging from it, by their own unassisted efforts. will be no reason, I think, for believing, that there is any exception to the positions I have here laid down: the impossibility of men's emerging unaided from a completely savage state; and, consequently, the descent of such as are in that state (supposing mankind to have sprung from a single pair) from ancestors less barbarous, and from whom they have degenerated.

There

"Records of this descent, and of this degeneracy, it is, from the nature of the case, not likely we should possess; but several indications of the fact may often be found among savage nations. Some have even traditions to that effect; and almost all possess some one or two arts not of a piece with their general rudeness, and which plainly appear to be remnants of a different state of things; being such, that the first invention of them implies a degree of ingenuity beyond what the savages who retain those arts, now possess. As to the causes which have occasioned any portions of mankind

thus to degenerate, we are, of course, in most instances, left to mere conjecture but there seems little reason to doubt, that the principal cause has been war. A people perpetually harassed by predatory hostile incursions, and still more, one compelled to fly their country and take refuge in mountains or forests, or to wander to some distant unnocupied region, (and this we know to have been anciently a common occurrence,) must of course be likely to sink in point of civilization. They must, amidst a series of painful struggles for mere existence, have their attention drawn off from all other subjects; they must be deprived of the materials and the opportunities for practising many of the arts, till the knowledge of them is lost; and their children must grow up, in each successive generation, more and more uninstructed, and disposed to be satisfied with a life approaching to that of the brutes. But whatever may have been the causes which in each instance have tended to barbarize each nation, of this we may, I think, be well assured, that though, if it have not sunk below a certain point, it may, under favourable circumstances, be expected to rise again, and gradually even more than recover the lost ground; on the other hand, there is a stage of degradation from which it cannot emerge, but through the means of intercourse with some more civilized people. The turbulent and unrestrained passions the indolence and, above all, the want of forethought, which are characteristic of savages, naturally tend to prevent, and, as experience seems to show, always have prevented, that process of gradual advancement from taking place, which was sketched out in the opening of this Lecture; except when the savage is stimulated by the example, and supported by the guidance and instruction, of men superior to himself.

Any one who dislikes the conclusions to which these views lead, will probably set himself to contend against the arguments which prove it unlikely that savages should civilize themselves; but how will he get over the fact, that they never yet have done this? That they never can, is a theory; and something may always be said, well or ill, against any theory; but facts are stubborn things; and that no authenticated instance can be produced of savages that ever did emerge unaided from that state, is no theory, but a statement, hitherto uncontradicted, of a matter of fact.

"Now if this be the case, when, and how, did civilization first begin? If man when first created was left, like the brutes, to the unaided exercise of his natural powers of body and mind-those powers which are common to the European and to the New Hollander-how comes it that the European is not now in the condition of the New Hollander? As the soil itself, and the climate, of New Holland are excellently adapted to the growth of corn, and yet (as. corn is not indigenous there) could never have borne any to the end of the world, if it had not been brought thither from another coun

5 Whence the name of "Savage," Silvagio.

try, and sown; so, the savage himself, though he may be as it we. a soil capable of receiving the seeds of civilization, can never, in the first instance, produce it, as of spontaneous growth; and unless those seeds be introduced from some other quarter, must remain for ever in the sterility of barbarism. And from what quarter then could this first beginning of civilization have been supplied to the earliest race of mankind? According to the present course of nature, the first introducer of cultivation among savages. is, and must be. Man, in a more improved state; in the beginning therefore of the human race, this, since there was no man to effect it, must have been the work of another Being. There must have been, in short, a Revelation made, to the first, or some subsequent generation, of our species. And this miracle (for such it is, as being an impossibility according to the present course of nature) is attested, independently of the authority of Scripture, and consequently in confirmation of the Scripture accounts, by the fact, that civilized man exists at the present day. Taking this view of the subject, we have no need to dwell on the utility-the importance-the antecedent probability-of a Revelation it is established as a fact, of which a monument is existing before our eyes. Divine instruction is proved to be necessary, not merely for an end which we think desirable, or which we think agreeable to Divine wisdom and goodness, but, for an end which we know has been attained. That man could not have made himself, is appealed to as a proof of the agency of a divine Creator: and that Mankind could not in the first instance have civilized themselves, is a proof, exactly of the same kind, and of equal strength, of the agency of a divine Instructor.

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"You will, I suspect, find this argument press so hard on the adversaries of religion, that they will be not unlikely to attempt evading its force, by calling on you to produce an instance of some one art, peculiar to civilized men, and which it may be proved could not have been derived but from inspiration. But this is a manifest evasion of the argument. For, so far from representing as peculiar to civilized men all arts that seem beyond the power of savages to invent, I have remarked the direct contrary: which indeed is just what might be expected, supposing savages to be, as I have contended, in a degenerated state.

"The argument really employed (and all attempts to misrepresent it are but fresh presumptions that it is unanswerable) consists in an appeal, not to any particular art or arts, but to a civilized condition generally. If this was not the work of a divine instructor, produce an instance, if you can, of a nation of savages who have civilized themselves!"

The arguments urged against these conclusions by writers not deficient in intelligence, are such as to furnish no small confirmation to any unbiassed mind; being what no man of sense would resort to, except when very hard-pressed indeed. E. G. It has been urged that

no super-human instruction in any of the arts of life could ever have been afforded to Man, because the Jews, who are supposed to have been peculiarly favoured with revelations respecting religion, were, in the days of Solomon, ignorant that the diameter of a circle is less than one-third of the circumference. This is inferred from what is said in the Second Book of Chronicles (chap. ii. v. 2), though the inference is somewhat hasty; since the difference is so minute between one-third of the circumference and the diameter, (which is less than

and more than of the circumference,) that practically it may generally be disregarded altogether; and many a person well-aware of the geometrical truth, will yet, in describing some building, &c., speak as if the circumference were treble the diameter; even as he might speak of a straight line from one place to another on the earth's surface; though well knowing that in reality the line must be not quite straight, but a very small arch of a circle. However, let it be supposed that the Jews were thus ignorant: the conclusion thence drawn is such as, in any other subject, would be laughed to Scorn. E. G. A man has his several sons educated for the different professions he designs them for; the Church, the Law, Medicine, the Navy, &c., and then if it be found that the Lawyer is no anatomist, that the Sailor has but little knowledge of Law and Medicine, and that the Clergyman does not understand navigation, this objector would be bound, on his own principle, to infer that the father cannot have provided any education at all for any of his children!

More recently, the assertion has been made that a solution has been found of the problem I proposed;-that there is an instance of Savages civilizing themselves without external aid. Such, it has been said, were the tribe of American Indians called the Mandans, near the Rocky Mountains; who have been described by Mr. Catlin as having possessed a considerable degree of civilization, though surrounded by savage tribes. These latter, not long ago, fell upon and destroyed the whole remnant of the tribe, after it had been thinned by small-pox.

Now all that is wanted, in reference to the case here produced, is-precisely the very thing that is wanted in all others-proof that they had been Savages, and had civilized themselves. And this, which is the very point at issue, instead of being proved, is taken for granted! Such is the short and easy refutation which "Science," we are told, furnishes of the position I was maintaining!

It is assumed, 1st, that these Mandans were of the same Race with the Savage tribes around them; 2ndly, that the state in which all of them had originally been was that of Savages; and 3rdly, that the Mandans raised themselves from that state without any external aid. And of no one of these assumptions is there, or can there be found, even a shadow of proof! To assume at pleasure any premises whatever that may suit one's purpose, is certainly neither Baconian nor Aristotelian "Science."

1st. How do we know that these Mandans were of the same Race as their neighbours? I had an opportunity, in a casual interview with Mr. Catlin, of asking his opinion on this point; he instantly replied that he had never doubted their being a different Race: their complexion, he said, their very remarkable and peculiar kind of hair, -their customs and whole character, all indicated a distinct Nation.

They may, for aught we know, have been a remnant either of the aboriginal inhabitants of the region, or of some colony which had been fixed there; the others having been destroyed-as these Mandans ultimately were-by the surrounding Savages.

2nd. Again, if we suppose, in defiance of all indications to the contrary, that this tribe did belong to the same Race as their neighbours, and that consequently all were, once, at the same level, how do we know that this may not have been the higher level, from which the others had degenerated?

3rdly, and lastly, supposing that the Mandans did emerge from the Savage state, how do we know that this may not have been through the aid of some strangers coming among them-like the Manco-capac of Peru-from some more civilized Country, perhaps long before the days of Columbus?

Of all these different suppositions there is not one that is not incomparably more probable (since there are recorded instances of the like) than that which is so coolly assumed.

On the whole, the reasoning employed in this case much resembles that of some of the Alchymists. When they found a few grains of gold in a large mass of ore of some base metal, they took for granted that the whole had been originally one kind of metal; and also, that this one was, not gold, of which part had degenerated into lead, but lead, of which part had ripened into gold; and thence they easily inferred the possibility of transmutation.

Such attempts at refutation as this, serve to show the strength of the position assailed. The position however was one which it was necessary to assail somehow or other, from its being fatal to the attempt made to revive Lamarck's theory of the spontaneous transition of one species into another of a higher character; the lowest animalcules having, it seems, in many generations, ripened into fish, thence into reptiles, beasts, and men. Of the earlier stages of these supposed transmutations I never had occasion to treat; but the view I took of the condition of Savages, "breaks the pitcher" (as the Greek proverb expresses it)" at the very threshold," supposing the animalcule safely conducted, by a series of bold conjectures, through the several transmutations, till from an Ape it became a Man, there is, as I have shown, an insuperable difficulty in the last step of all, from the Savage to the Civilized-Man.

There is however in truth, a similar difficulty-or rather, impossibility-in every preceding stage. The theory proceeds throughout on unsupported and most improbable conjectures. One, and only