Their legislation was simple, and the penalties which gave law its
sanctions well defined. Their league stood in the consent of the
governed. It was a representative popular government, conceived in
the wisdom of genuine statesmanship, and with the sagacity to provide
against some of the dangers which beset popular institutions. It is
said that the framers of our own (the American) government borrowed
some of its features from the Iroquois league. Whether or not this be
true, it is a matter of history that as early as 1755 a suggestion
came from the Iroquois nation to the colonies that they should unite
in a confederacy like their own for mutual protection.
It is the fashion to quote against these favorable statements cases
of cruelty committed by the Red Indians or the New Zealanders in
their wars among themselves and in their resistance to their white
enemies. But let us not forget the bloody pages of our own history.
We should probably say that the eighteenth century was one of the
most brilliant in the history of Europe. We should probably assign to
England at that time a foremost place among European countries, and
we know how high a position Scotchmen took during the last century
in general culture, in philosophy, in science, and statesmanship.
Yet, in his “History of England in the Eighteenth Century,” Mr. Lecky
describes the common people of Scotland as broken into fierce clans,
ruled by wild chieftains; as thieves and cattle-lifters, kidnappers
of men and children to be sold as slaves; as ferocious barbarians,
besotted with the most brutal ignorance, and the grossest and gloomiest
superstitions, possessed of the rudest modes of agriculture, scratching
the earth with a crooked piece of wood for a plough, and for a harrow
a brush attached to the tail of a horse, otherwise devoid of harness;
their food, oatmeal and milk, mixed with blood drawn from the living
cow; their cooking, revolting and filthy, boiling their beef in the
hide, and roasting fowls in their feathers, with many like customs and
demoralising habits unknown to aboriginal life among the Red Indians.
It will be clear after these few specimens, which might have been
considerably increased, that we shall make no step in advance if we
continue to use the word savage so vaguely as it has been hitherto
used. To think is difficult, but it becomes utterly impossible if we
use debased or false coin. I have been considered too inquisitive for
venturing to ask anthropologists what they meant by a fetish, but I
must expose myself once more to the same reproach by venturing to ask
them to state plainly what they mean by a savage.
Whatever other benefits a study of the science of language may confer,
there is one which cannot be valued too highly—namely, that it makes us
not only look _at_ words, but _through_ words. If we are told that a
savage means an uncivilised man, then, to say that the first man was a
savage is saying either nothing or what is self-evident. Civilisation
consists in the accumulated wisdom of countless generations of men,
and to say that the first generation of men was uncivilised is
therefore pure tautology. We are far too tolerant with respect to such
tautologies. How many people, for instance, have been led to imagine
that such a phrase as the survival of the fittest contains the solution
of the problem of the survival of certain species and the extinction
of others? To the student of language the survival of the fittest is a
mere tautology, meaning the survival of the fittest to survive, which
is the statement of a fact, but no solution of it.
It is easy to say that the meaning of savage has been explained
and defined by almost every writer on anthropology. I know these
explanations and definitions, but not one of them can be considered as
answering the requirements of a scientific definition.
Some anthropologists say that savage means wild and cruel. But in
that case no nation would be without its savages. Others say that
savages are people who wear little or no clothing. But in that case
the greatest philosophers, the gymnosophists of India, would have
to be classed as savages. If it means people without a settled form
of government, without laws and without a religion, then, go where
you like, you will not find such a race. Again, if people who have
no cities and no central government are to be called savages, then
the Jews would have been savages, the Hindus, the Arabs, the ancient
Germans, and other of the most important races in the history of
the world. In fact, whatever characteristics are brought forward as
distinctive of a savage, they can always be met by counter-instances,
showing that each definition would either include races whom no one
dares to call savage, or exclude races whom no one dares to call
civilised. It used to be imagined that the use of letters was the
principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a
herd of savages incapable of knowledge or reflection. Without that
artificial help, to quote the words of Gibbon, “the human memory soon
dissipates or corrupts the ideas committed to her charge, and the
nobler faculties of the mind, no longer supplied with models or with
materials, gradually forget their powers, the judgment becomes feeble
and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.” Such arguments
might pass in the days of Gibbon, but after the new light that has been
thrown on the ancient history of some of the principal nations of the
world they are no longer tenable.
No one would call the ancient Brahmans savages, and yet writing was
unknown to them before the third century B.C. Homer, quite apart from
his blindness, was certainly unacquainted with writing for literary
purposes. The ancient inhabitants of Germany, as described by Tacitus,
were equally ignorant of the art of writing as a vehicle of literature;
yet for all that we could not say, with Gibbon, that with them the
nobler faculties of the mind had lost their powers, the judgment had
become feeble, and the imagination languid.
And as we find that the use of letters is by no means an indispensable
element of true civilisation, we should arrive at the same conclusion
in examining almost every discovery which has been pointed out as a
_sine quâ non_ of civilised life. Every generation is apt to consider
the measure of comfort which it has reached as indispensable to
civilised life, but very often, in small as well as great things, what
is called civilised to-day may be called barbarous to-morrow. Races who
abstain from eating the flesh of animals are apt to look on carnivorous
people as savages; people who abstain from intoxicating drinks
naturally despise a nation in which drunkenness is prevalent. What
should we say if we entered a town in which the streets were neither
paved nor lighted, and in which the windows were without glass; where
we saw no carriages in any of the thoroughfares, and where, inside the
houses, ladies and gentlemen might be seen eating without forks and
wearing garments that had never been washed? And yet even in Paris no
street was paved before 1185. In London Holborn was first paved in
1417, and Smithfield in 1614, while Berlin was without paved streets
far into the seventeenth century. No houses had windows of glass before
the twelfth century, and as late as the fourteenth century anything
might be thrown out of window at Paris, after three times calling out
“_Gare l'eau!_” Shirts were an invention of the Crusades, and the fine
dresses which ladies and gentlemen wore during the Middle Ages were
hardly ever washed, but only refreshed from time to time with precious
scents. In 1550 we are told that there existed in Paris no more than
three carriages—one belonging to the Queen, the other to Diane de
Poitiers, and the third to René de Laval. In England coaches (so called
from the Hungarian _kossi_) date from 1580, though whirlicotes go
back to the fourteenth century. So far as we know, neither Dante nor
Beatrice used forks in eating, and yet we should hardly class them as
savages.
It is easy to say that all these are matters of small importance. No
doubt they are, but we often see them treated as matters of great
importance, when we speak of races with red skins or black skins.
With us civilisation, whether consisting of these small or great
matters, has often become a burden, a check rather than a help to
the free development of all that is noble in human nature; while
many conditions of life which we are inclined to call barbarous were
almost essential for the growth of the human mind during its earlier
stages. Can we imagine a religion growing up in modern Paris? Would
a travelling bard, such as Homer, find an audience in the streets of
London? Would a Socrates be listened to by the professors of Berlin? A
Panini sitting almost naked under a pippal tree and composing the rules
of his marvellous grammar of Sanskrit, a Bâdârâya_n_a with dishevelled
hair, spinning out of his mind the subtle web of Vedânta philosophy,
would be shunned as wild creatures by a young English officer, and
yet, on the ladder that leads to the highest excellence of intellect,
how many steps would the former stand above the latter! For carrying
out the chief objects of our life on earth, very little of what is now
called civilisation is really wanted. Many things are pleasant, without
being really essential to our fulfilling our mission on earth. For
laying the foundations of society, for settling the broad principles of
law and morality, for discovering the deep traces of order and unity in
nature, and for becoming conscious of the presence of the Divine within
and without, a life in the forests, on the mountains, ay, even in the
desert, is far more favorable than a lodging in Bond Street.
The latest attempt which has been made at defining the true character
of a savage restricts the distinctive characteristics of a savage to
three—(1) that he murders his children, (2) that he kills and eats his
fellow-men, (3) that he disregards certain laws of nature.
Now in that sense it seems quite clear that the first man could not
have been a savage, for if he had murdered his children we should not
be alive; if he had eaten his fellow-men, supposing there were any to
eat, again we should not be alive; and if he had disregarded certain
laws of nature, in that case also, probably, we should not be alive.
What, then, is to be done? Are we to say that there never were any
savages, or that it is impossible to distinguish between a savage and
a non-savage? Certainly not. All we have to do is to be on our guard
against a very common trick of language, or rather against a very
common mistake of philosophers, who imagine that the same name must
always mean the same thing. All the difficulties hitherto detailed
which have prevented anthropologists from agreeing on any real
definition of savage have arisen from their having mixed up under the
same name at least two totally different classes of men, both called
savages in ordinary parlance, but each occupying its own place in the
history of the world. How this should have happened is difficult to
explain, but I think we can trace the first beginnings in the works
of some of the earlier anthropologists, who were carried away by the
idea that we can study in the illiterate races of the present day, such
as we find in Africa, America, and Polynesia, the true character of
the primitive man, as he emerged new-born from the bowels of nature.
Scientific ethnologists have long since awaked from this fond dream,
but the primitive savage has remained as a troublesome legacy in other
quarters. Nothing can be more interesting than the study of races who
have no literature, but whose former history may be read in their
languages and their tools, and whose present state of civilisation or
savagery may certainly be used to throw collateral light on many phases
in the history of more highly civilised nations. Only let us remember
that these races and their languages are as old as the most civilised
races and their languages, while their history, if so we may call it,
seldom carries us back beyond the mere surface of the day. If we in
England are old, the Fuegians are not a day younger. If the question
as to the age of the European and American races could be settled by
geological evidence, it would seem as if America is now able to produce
human skulls older than the Neanderthal skull.[14] No one, so far as
I know, has ever succeeded in proving that after man had once been
evolved or created, a new evolution or creation of man took place,
attested by contemporaneous witnesses. The Duke of Argyll goes so far
as to maintain[15] that those who hold the opinion that different races
of men represent different species, or a species which spread from more
than one place, stand outside the general current of scientific thought.
But while scientific anthropologists have long given up the idea that,
if we want to know the condition of primitive man, we must study it
among the Fuegians or Eskimos, the subject has lost none of its charms.
It is, no doubt, a very amusing occupation to run through the books of
modern and ancient travellers, traders, or missionaries, to mark with
pencil a strange legend here, and an odd custom there, to point out
a similarity between a Shâman and an Archbishop, between a Hottentot
and Homer. This kind of work can be done in the intervals of more
serious studies, and if it is done with the facile pen of a journalist
or the epigrammatic eloquence of a young lawyer, nothing can be more
delightful. But it is dangerous work—so dangerous that the prejudice
that has lately arisen among scientific anthropologists against
Agriology seems justified, at least to a certain extent. There are
truly scholarlike works on savages. I say scholarlike intentionally,
because they are based on a scholarlike study of the languages spoken
by the races whose mental organisation has to be analysed. The works
of Bishops Callaway and Caldwell, of Brinton and Horatio Hale, of
Gill, Bleek, and Hahn, the more general compilations of Waitz, Tiele,
Lubbock, Tylor, and Reville, the clever contributions of A. Lang,
John Fiske, and others, are but the first that occur to my mind as
specimens of really useful work that may be done in this line. But the
loose and superficial appeals to savages as the representatives of a
brand-new humanity, fresh from the hands of the potter, the ignorant
attempts at explaining classical myths from Melanesian tattle, the wild
comparisons of Hebrew customs with the outrages of modern cannibals,
have at last met with their well-merited reward, and the very name of
savage is gradually disappearing from the best works on anthropology
and philosophy.
And yet there are savages, only we must distinguish. There are, as
I pointed out long ago, two classes of savages, to say nothing of
minor subdivisions—namely, _progressive_ and _retrogressive_ savages.
There is a hopeful and a hopeless barbarism, there is a growing and
a decaying civilisation. We owe a great deal to the Duke of Argyll,
particularly in his last great work, _The Unity of Nature_, for having
laid so much stress on the fact that of all works of nature man is the
one most liable to two kinds of evolution, one ascending and the other
descending. Like the individual, a whole family, tribe, or race of men
may, within a very short time, rise to the highest pitch of virtue and
culture, and in the next generation sink to the lowest level of vice
and brutality.
The first question, therefore, which we have to ask when we have to
speak of savages, is whether there is any indication of their having
once reached a higher stage from which they have descended, or whether
they are only just ascending from that low but healthy level which must
precede every attempt at what we call civilisation. We may call both
by the same name of savages, but, if we do so, we must always remember
that, from an historical point of view, no two stages in civilised life
can be more apart from each other than that of the retrogressive and
that of the progressive savage.
But even after we have laid down this broad line of demarcation, we
shall by no means find it easy to catch either a progressive or a
retrogressive savage _pur et simple_. If looking out for retrogressive
or decaying savages, most people would naturally think of Fuegians,
Tasmanians, Hottentots, Ashantis, Veddas, and Red Indians, and one of
the strongest proofs of their decay would be derived from the fact that
they are dying out wherever they are brought in contact with European
civilisation. Now it is true that the Tasmanians have become extinct,
and that several of the Red Indian tribes, too, have actually been
destroyed by our civilisation. But we must not generalise too quickly.
Some of these very tribes, the Red Indians,[16] seem to be recovering,
seem to increase again, and to be able to hold their own against the
baneful influences which threatened to destroy them. The negroes also
are by no means dwindling away. On the contrary, they are increasing
both in Africa and in America. We must therefore be careful before we
deny the recuperative powers even of retrogressive savages, and we must
look for other evidence beyond mere statistics in support of their
hopeless degeneracy.
Historical evidence of such gradual degeneracy is, from the nature of
the case, almost impossible. We must trust, therefore, to less direct
proof. I believe there is some distinct historical evidence in the
case of the Central and South American races, that at the time of the
arrival of Columbus and his successors civilisation had really been
decaying for some time in America.[17] But in nearly all other cases
we have to look out for other proofs in support of a higher antecedent
civilisation possessed by tribes who, as we know them at present, have
to be classed as savages. Such proofs, if they exist, must be sought
for in language, religion, customs, tools, and works of art.
As I look upon language neither as a ready-made gift of God nor as a
natural growth of the human mind, but as, in the true sense of the
word, a work of human art, I must confess that nothing has surprised
me so much as the high art displayed in the languages of so-called
savages. I do not wish to exaggerate; and I know quite well that a
great abundance of grammatical forms, such as we find in these savage
dialects, is by no means a proof of high intellectual development.
But if we consider how small is the number of words and ideas in the
ordinary vocabulary of an English peasant,[18] and if then we find
that one dialect of the Fuegians, the Tagan, consists of about 30,000
words,[19] we certainly hesitate before venturing to classify the
possessors of so vast an inherited wealth as the descendants of poor
savages, more savage than themselves. Such facts cannot be argued away.
We cannot prevent people from despising religious concepts different
from their own, or from laughing at customs which they themselves could
never adopt. But such a treasure of conceptual thought as is implied
in the possession of a vocabulary of 30,000 entries cannot be ignored
in our estimate of the antecedents of this Fuegian race. I select the
Fuegians as a crucial test simply because Darwin[20] selected them as
the strongest proof of his own theory, and placed them almost below
the level reached by the most intelligent animals. I have always had a
true regard for Darwin, and what I admired in him more than anything
else was his fearlessness, his simple devotion to truth. I believe
that if he had seen that his own theories were wrong, he would have
been the first to declare it, whatever his followers might have said.
But in spite of all that, no man can resist the influence of his own
convictions. When Darwin looked at the Fuegians, he no doubt saw what
he tells us, but then he saw it with Darwinian eyes. According to his
account, the party of Fuegians whom he saw resembled the devils which
come on the stage in such plays as _Der Freischütz_.[21] “Viewing such
men, one can hardly believe,” he says, “that they are fellow-creatures,
and inhabitants of the same world” (p. 235). “Their language, according
to our notions, scarcely deserves to be called articulate. Captain Cook
has compared it to a man clearing his throat, but certainly no European
ever cleared his throat with so many hoarse, guttural, and clicking
sounds.”
Now, even with regard to their physical aspect, Darwin must have either
been very unlucky in the Fuegians whom he met, or he cannot have kept
himself quite free from prejudice. Captain Parker Snow, in his _Two
Years Cruise of Tierra del Fuego_ (London 1857), speaks of them as
without the least exaggeration really beautiful representatives of the
human race. Professor Virchow, when exhibiting a number of Fuegians
at Berlin, strongly protested against the supposition of the Fuegians
being by nature an inferior race, so that they might be considered as a
connecting link between ape and man. But what shall we say of Darwin's
estimate of the Fuegian language? Here we can judge for ourselves,
and I doubt whether, so far as this sound is concerned, anyone would
consider Fuegian as inferior to English. Giacomo Bove, when speaking of
the Tagan dialect, says, “le parole di quella sono dolci, piacevoli,
piene di vocali.” And though he admits that some of the other dialects
are harsher, yet that is very far as yet from the sound of clearing the
throat.
And, even if the sound of their language was as guttural as some of
the Swiss dialects, how shall we account for the wealth of their
vocabulary? Every concept embodied in their language is the result of
hard intellectual labor; and although here again excessive wealth may
be an embarrassment, yet there remains enough to prove a past that must
have been very different from the present.
The workman must at least have been as great as his work; and if
the ruins of Central America tell us of architects greater than any
that country could produce at present, the magnificent ruins in the
dialects, whether of Fuegians, Mohawks, or Hottentots, tell us of
mental builders whom no one could match at present. Even in their
religious beliefs there are here and there rays of truth which could
never have proceeded from the dark night of their actual superstitions.
The Fuegians, according to Captain FitzRoy, believe in a just god and a
great spirit moving about in forests and mountains. They may believe in
a great deal more, but people who believe in a great spirit in forests
and mountains, and in a just god, are not on the lowest step of the
ladder leading from earth to heaven.
The Duke of Argyll, in examining the principal races that are commonly
called savage, has pointed out that degraded races generally inhabit
the extreme ends of continents or tracts of country almost unfit for
human habitation, or again whole islands difficult of access except
under exceptionally favorable conditions. He naturally concludes that
they did not go there of their own free will, but that they represent
conquered races, exiles, weaklings, cowards, criminals, who saved
nothing but their life in their flight before more vigorous conquerors,
or in their exile from countries that had thrown them off like poison.
Instead of looking on the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego as children
of the soil, Autochthones, or the immediate descendants of the mythical
Proanthropoi, the Duke points out that it is far more likely they may
have come from the north; that their ancestors may have participated
in the blessings of the soil and climate of Chili, Peru, Brazil,
or Mexico, possibly in the early civilisation of that part of the
world; and that the wretchedness of the country into which they were
driven fully accounts for their present degradation. Take away the
wretchedness of their present home, educate a baby, as Captain FitzRoy
did, under the beneficent influences of an English sky and of European
civilisation, and in one generation, as Mr. Darwin tells us, “his
intellect was good, and his disposition nice.”
It is quite fair that those who oppose this theory should call upon the
Duke to establish his view by the evidence of language. If the Fuegians
were the descendants of the same race which reached a high pitch of
civilisation in Peru, Mexico, or Central America, their language ought
to show the irrefragable proof of such descent. If it did, his position
would be impregnable. Unfortunately the materials now at hand have not
yet been sufficiently examined to enable us to say either yes or no.
Nor must we forget that language, when it is not fixed by a popular
literature, is liable among nomadic tribes to unlimited variation.
The number of languages spoken[22] throughout the whole of North
and South America has been estimated to considerably exceed twelve
hundred; and on the northern continent alone more than five hundred
distinct languages are said to be spoken, which admit of classification
among seventy-five ethnical groups, each with essential linguistic
distinctions, pointing to its own parent stock. Some of these languages
are merely well-marked dialects, with fully developed vocabularies.
Others have more recently acquired a dialectic character in the
breaking up and scattering of dismembered tribes, and present a very
limited range of vocabulary, suited to the intellectual requirements
of a small tribe or band of nomads. The prevailing condition of life
throughout the whole North American continent was peculiarly favorable
to the multiplication of such dialects and their growth into new
languages, owing to the constant breaking up and scattering of tribes,
and the frequent adoption into their numbers of the refugees from other
fugitive broken tribes, leading to an intermingling of vocabularies
and fresh modifications of speech. It is to be hoped that the study
of native American languages may before long receive that attention
which it so fully deserves. It must be taken up in good earnest, and
with all the accuracy which we are accustomed to in a comparative study
of Indo-European languages. All ethnological questions must for the
present be kept in abeyance till the linguistic witness can be brought
into court, and it would be extraordinary if the laurels that can here
be gained should fail to stimulate the ambition of some young scholar
in America.
As to the Fuegians at Cape Horn, so at the North Pole the Eskimos,
however low their present state of civilisation, have been looked upon
as immigrants from a centre of civilisation located in a more temperate
zone. The Eskimo leads the only life that is possible in his latitudes.
Why he should have migrated there, unless driven by _force majeure_,
is impossible to say. Unless we are willing to admit a special Eskimo
Adam, we have no choice except to look upon him either as a withering
offshoot of the American moundbuilders, or as a weak descendant of
Siberian nomads.
In Africa, the most degraded races, the Bushmen, are clearly a
corruption of the Hottentots, while it is well known that some
eminent ethnologists look upon the Hottentots as degraded emigrants
from Egypt. How much higher the civilisation of Africa stood in
former ages, we know from the monuments of Egypt and Nubia, from the
histories of Phœnicia, Carthage, and Numidia. If among the ruins of
these ancient centres of civilisation we now find tribes whom European
travellers would call savage, we see again that in the evolution of man
retrogression is as important an element as progression.
Even in Australasia, where we meet with the most repulsive customs and
the most hopeless barbarism, the Duke of Argyll shows that, according
to the principles of evolution, the separation of the islands from the
Asiatic continent would date from a period anterior to the age of man,
and that here too man must be an immigrant, a degraded offshoot from
that branch of the human race which in China or India has risen to some
kind of civilised life. For further details the pages in the last book
of the Duke of Argyll, particularly chapter x., on the “Degradation of
Man,” should be consulted. It must suffice here to quote his summing
up:—
Instead of assuming these (savage) tribes to be the nearest living
representatives of primeval man, we should be more safe in assuming
them to represent the widest departure from that earliest condition of
our race which, on the theory of development, must of necessity have
been associated at first with the most highly favorable conditions of
external nature.
We have thus seen that, wherever we seem to lay hold of primeval
savages who are supposed to represent to us the unchanged image of the
primeval man, the evidence of their having been autochthonous in the
places where we now find them is very weak, the proofs that they have
never changed are altogether wanting; while geographical, physical,
and linguistic considerations make it probable, though no more, that
they originally came from more favored countries, that they were driven
in the struggle for life into inhospitable climates, and that in
accommodating themselves to the requirements of their new homes they
gradually descended from a higher level of civilisation, indicated by
their language and religion, to that low level in which we find them
now. Some of them have sunk so low that, like individual members of the
noblest families in Europe, they can no longer be reclaimed. Others,
however, though shaken by sudden contact with the benefits and the
dangers of a higher civilisation, may regain their former health and
vigor, and, from having been retrogressive savages, become once more
progressive in the great struggle for existence.
But if in the cases just mentioned we feel inclined to recognise the
influence of degradation, and if we class such races as the Fuegians,
the Eskimos, the Bushmen and Hottentots, the Papuans and brown
Polynesians, as retrogressive savages, the question arises where we
can hope to find specimens of the progressive savage, or rather of the
natural man, who might teach us something of what man may have been
before civilisation completely changed him into an artificial being,
forgetful of the essential purposes of life, and who feels at home no
longer in fields and forests, on rivers or mountains, but only in that
enchanted castle of custom and fashion which he has erected for himself
out of the unmeaning fragments of former ages?
My answer is that after we have collected the primitive tools and
weapons which lie buried beneath the abodes of civilised man, our best
chance of learning some of the secrets of primitive civilisation is to
study the sacred hymns and the ancient legends of India, the traditions
embodied in the Homeric poems, and whatever has been preserved to us
of the most ancient literature of the progressive races of the world,
the Italic, Celtic, Slavonic, and Teutonic races. This of course
applies to the Aryan race only. The Semitic races are represented to
us in their progress from a nomadic to a more or less civilised life
in the Old Testament, in the earliest ballads of the Arabs, and in
passages scattered in the inscriptions of Assyrians, Babylonians, and
Phœnicians. China too in its ancient literature allows us an insight
into the age of a nascent society, while Egypt discloses to us the most
ancient of all civilisations, which can boast of a literature at a time
when the very idea of writing was as yet unknown to all other nations.
It is easy to say that all this is modern. In one sense no doubt it
is. The Vedic literature, the most ancient of the whole Aryan race,
presupposes a succession of intellectual strata which no chronology
can measure. The language of the Veda is a work of art which it must
have taken generations to build up. But is it reasonable to expect
anything less modern in the history of the human race? And is there not
a continuity in language and thought which allows us to see even in
these literary remains, call them as modern as you like, something of
the first dawn of human life. French is a very modern language, but in
_chien_ we still hear the Sanskrit _ṥvan_; in _journal_ we recognise
the old Vedic deity _Dyaus_. In the same way we can go back from
what is common to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, to what was the common
language of the Aryans before they broke up in different nationalities.
In that common Aryan vocabulary, again, we can distinguish between
what is radical and primitive and what is formal and secondary. Thus
we may go back beyond all so-called historical limits to a stage of
primitive thought, represented by a small number of radical concepts,
and a still smaller number of formal elements. And is not that enough?
Is it not more historical and more trustworthy, at all events, than
all _à priori_ speculations? and have we not at least a right to
demand this from our _à priori_ friends, that, in running their tunnel
from the other end, they should take care that when it emerges into
the daylight of history it should meet the tunnel which comparative
philology, mythology, and theology have carefully dug out on the
opposite side through the solid rock of facts? It will never do for
_à priori_ theories to run counter to _à posteriori_ facts. It is a
fact, for instance, proved by historical evidence, that fetichism
represents a secondary stage in the growth of religion, and that it
presupposes an earlier stage, in which the name and the concept of
something divine, the predicate of every fetich, was formed. It would
be fatal, therefore, to any system of _à priori_ reasoning if it placed
fetichism before that phase in the development of human thought which
is represented by the first formation of divine concepts. It would be a
real hysteron-proteron.
Again, it is a fact, proved by historical evidence, that all the words
of the Aryan languages are derived from definite roots, expressive of
definite concepts. It would therefore be fatal, again, to any system
of _à priori_ reasoning if it attempted to derive words direct from
more or less inarticulate cries or imitations of cries, and not from
that small number of roots which has been proved to supply all that is
really wanted in explanation of all the facts of Aryan speech.
Again, it is a fact, proved by historical evidence, that most of the
ancient deities of the Aryan nations have names expressive of the
great powers of nature, and it would be an insult to all historical
scholarship if our _à priori_ friends were to attempt to prove once
more that the worship of Zeus was derived from a general reverence
felt for a gentleman of the name of Sky, or the belief in Eos from
a sentimental devotion excited by a young lady of the name of Dawn.
I believe it will be admitted by all honest anthropologists that the
philological identification of one single word, Dyaus in the Veda and
Zeus in Homer, has done more for rectifying our ideas of the true
course of ancient Aryan civilisation than all the myths and customs of
savages put together.
There was a time when the students of Oriental literature were inclined
to claim an extravagant antiquity for the books which they had rescued
from oblivion. But that tendency has now been changed into the very
opposite. There may be traces of it among Chinese, sometimes among
Egyptian and Accadian scholars, but wherever we have to deal with a
real literature, whether in India, Persia, or Palestine, scholars are
far more anxious to point out what is modern than what is ancient,
whether in the Veda the Avesta, or the Old Testament. I certainly do
not feel guilty of ever having claimed an excessive antiquity for the
Rig-Veda. From the very first, though I placed the whole of Vedic
literature before Buddhism, say the sixth century B.C. and though,
owing to the changes in language, style, and thought which are clearly
perceptible in different parts of Vedic literature, owing also to
certain astronomical dates, I ventured to place it between 1000 and
1500 B.C., yet I have never concealed my impression that some portions
of the Veda may turn out to be of far more recent origin.[23]
But is not that sufficient? Is it not perfectly marvellous that so
much that is really old, so much that carries us back more than 3,000
years, should have been preserved to us at all? Why will people ask
for what is impossible? Savages they say, do not read and write, and
yet they want to have trustworthy information from literary documents
composed by those very savages who cannot read and write. Among the
Aryan nations, I do not believe in any written books before the sixth
century B.C. In China, books may have been older, papyri are older in
Egypt, and clay tablets in Babylon. But even when literature began,
the very last that ancient people do is to write about themselves,
about their manners and customs. What we know of the manners and
customs of ancient people, when they were still passing through that
phase which we call progressive savagery, comes to us from strangers
only. As modern travellers give us full accounts of the life of savages
who cannot speak and write for themselves, our only chance of learning
something about our own ancestors, before they began to write, would
be from ancient travellers who were interested in these promising
savages. Now it is a piece of excessive good luck that, with regard to
one of the Aryan races, with regard to our own Teutonic ancestors, we
possess such a book, written by a stranger who felt deeply interested
in German savages, and who has told us what they were, before they
could write and tell us themselves what they were. If we want to study
the progressive savage, not as he ought to have been, according to _à
priori_ philosophy, nor as he might have been, according to what we see
among Fuegians of the present day, but as he really was according to
the best information that could be collected by the best of historians,
we must, read and read again the _Germania_ of Tacitus.
If history means the evidence of contemporary eye-witnesses, I doubt
whether history will ever enable us to see further into the natural
transition of barbarism into civilisation than in the _Germania_ of
Tacitus. To divide civilisation from barbarism by a sharp line is of
course impossible. There are remnants of barbarism in the most advanced
state of civilisation, and there are sparks of civilisation in the most
distant ages of barbarism—at least of that healthy barbarism which is
represented to us in the _Germania_, and of which we find but scanty
fragments in the ancient literature of the civilising nations of the
world.
Here we may see ourselves as we were not quite two thousand years ago.
Here we may see from how small beginnings the highest civilisation may
be reached. Here we may study the natural man as he really was, in some
respects certainly a savage, but a progressive savage, as we know from
his later history, and certainly without one sign of that corruption
and decay which is so plainly visible in Hottentots and Papuans.
This book, the account of the site, the manners, and the inhabitants of
Germany, by Tacitus, has had various fates. To every German, to every
member of the Teutonic race, it has always been a kind of national
charter, a picture of a golden age, adorned with all that is considered
most perfect, pure, and noble in human nature; whereas French _savants_
have often either ridiculed the work of Tacitus as a mere romance,
or so interpreted his words as to turn the ancient Germans into real
Hottentots.
This controversy has been carried on during several centuries. M.
Guizot, for instance, in his _History of Civilisation_ completely
ignoring the distinction between retrogressive and progressive savages,
tried to show that there was little to choose between the Germans of
Tacitus and the Red Indians of the present day.
This controversy became embittered by a curious circumstance. Whereas
Tacitus and other Roman writers spoke in glowing terms of the Teutonic
races, their remarks on the Gauls, the ancient inhabitants of France,
were not only far from complimentary, but happened to touch on points
on which Frenchmen are particularly sensitive. Tertullian, who was
a great admirer of the Jews, was very wroth with Tacitus because he
used very anti-Semitic language. He actually calls Tacitus a “brawler,
and the greatest teller of lies,”[24] The French do not differ much
from that opinion, not so much because Tacitus spoke ill of the Jews,
and likewise of the Celts of Gaul, as because he spoke so well of
the _paysans du Danube_. The ancient classical writers dwell rather
strongly on the unfavorable side of the Celtic character. It is well
known how low an opinion Aristotle formed of Celtic morality. Strabo
says that the Celts are simple, but proud and sensitive, fond of
dress and ornaments. It is even hinted that they dyed their hair,
and allowed their mustache to grow, so that it interfered with the
comfort of eating and drinking.[25] Strabo goes on to say that they
are not malicious, but reckless, changeable, fond of innovation, and
never to be depended on. They are quick in their resolutions, but
often inconsiderate, fond of war, brave, but intolerably conceited if
victorious, and quite demoralised if defeated. Polybius confirms that
their first onslaught is terrible, but both Cæsar and Livy agree as to
their want of steadiness and perseverance. Other Latin authors add that
they are unmanageable and inclined to revolutions, and that, owing to
continual factions, many are obliged to leave the country, and to try
their fortunes as adventurers elsewhere. Still darker colors were added
by others to this picture of national depravity. The state of morality
in Gaul was such that it was considered infamous for a father to be
seen in company with his son before the latter had come of age. At the
death of a nobleman his widow was, as a matter of course, subjected to
a trial as to whether she had been the cause of her husband's death.
Strabo affirms that it was their custom to cut off the heads of their
enemies after a battle, and to hang them on the heads of their horses,
or nail them over their doors. While German scholars composed this
mosaic out of all the stones that classical writers had ever thrown at
the inhabitants of Gaul, French writers retaliated by either throwing
discredit on Tacitus, the supposed encomiast of the Germans, or by
showing that the account which Tacitus gives of the ancestors of the
Teutonic race proves better than anything else that, at his time, the
Germans had not yet emerged from a state of the grossest barbarism, and
were incapable, therefore, as yet of vices of which they maintain are
the outcome of a more advanced state of civilisation.
To my mind, apart from any national idiosyncrasies, the description
which Tacitus gives us of the Germans, as he had seen them, is
perfectly unique and invaluable as a picture of what I should willingly
call the life of progressive savages. What should we give if, besides
the hymns of the Rig-Veda, we had the accounts of travellers who
had actually seen the ancient Rishis of India with their flocks and
families, their priests and sacrifices, their kings and battles? What
should we give if, besides the Homeric poems, we had the work of an
eyewitness who could describe to us the real Troy, and the real fight
between Greece and Asia Minor? This is what Tacitus has done for
Germany, and at a time when the ancient religion was still living,
when the simple laws of a primitive society were still observed, and
when the epic poems of a later time were still being sung as ballads
at the feasts of half-naked warriors! In Tacitus, therefore, and not
in the missionary accounts of Melanesian savages, should we study the
truly primitive man, primitive in the only sense in which we shall ever
know of primitive man, and primitive certainly in a far truer sense
than Papuans or Fuegians are likely to be in the nineteenth century.
I cannot understand how an historian like Guizot could have allowed
himself to be so much misguided by national prejudice as to speak of
Tacitus as a kind of Montaigne or Rousseau, who, in a fit of disgust
with his own country, drew a picture of Germany as a mere satire on
Roman manners, or to call the _Germania_ “the eloquent sulking of
a patriotic philosopher who wishes to see virtue where he does not
find the disgraceful effeminacy and the elegant depravity of an old
society.” Surely the work of Tacitus cannot have been very fresh in the
memory of the great French historian when he delivered this judgment.
If Tacitus, like Rousseau or Voltaire, had intended to draw the picture
of an ideal barbarism, would he have mentioned the many vices of the
German Utopia, the indolence of the Germans, their drunkenness, their
cruelty to slaves, their passion for gambling, and their riotous
revels? Besides, three-fourths of his book treat of subjects which
have no bearing whatever on Roman society, nay, which are of so little
interest to the general reader that I doubt whether many Romans would
have taken the trouble to read them. The facts which came to the
knowledge of Tacitus are so loosely strung together that his book looks
more like a collection of memoranda than the compact and pointed
pamphlet of a political satirist. We need only read the letters of
Voltaire on England, or Montalembert's pamphlet, _De l'Angleterre_,
in order to perceive the difference between a political satire and
an historical memoir. No doubt a man of the temper of Tacitus would
naturally dwell with satisfaction on the bright side of the German
character, and, while holding before the eyes of his own nation the
picture of a brave and simple, religious and independent race, might
naturally think of what Rome once had been, and was no longer. But
there is no more sarcasm or satire in his work than is inseparable from
a straightforward statement of facts when addressed to ears no longer
accustomed to the sound of unvarnished truth.
So little did M. Guizot perceive the unique character of the _Germania_
of Tacitus as an historical document of the earliest stage of society,
that he amused himself with collecting from various books of travel a
number of facts observed among the very lowest races in America and
Africa, which, as he thinks, form an exact parallel to the statements
of Tacitus with regard to the good and bad qualities of the Germans.
His parallel columns, which occupy nearly ten pages, are certainly
amusing, but they prove nothing, least of all that there was no
difference between the healthy sons of Germany and the tattooed
cannibals of New Zealand. If they prove anything, it is that there
is one kind of barbarism through which every nation has to pass, the
childhood and wild youth of a race, to be followed by the mature vigor
of a nation's manhood, and that there is another kind of barbarism
which leads to nothing, but ends in mere brutality, shrinking from
contact with higher civilisation and succumbing when it attempts to
imitate with monkeyish delight the virtues and vices of a more advanced
society. Why is it that the fresh breezes of European civilisation
proved fatal to the consumptive barbarism of the wretched inhabitants
of Australia, while the strong constitution of the Germans of Tacitus
resisted even the poisonous vapors of Roman life? When the results are
so different, surely there must be a difference in the antecedents,
and though M. Guizot is successful in showing that in some respects
the ancient Germans did the same things and said the same things as
Ojibways and Papuans, he forgets in drawing his conclusion the old
proverb, _Si duo dicunt idem, non est idem_.
After these remarks it will perhaps seem less surprising that students
of antiquity should decline to answer the point-blank question whether
man began his life on earth as a savage. Every definition that has
been attempted of a savage in general, has broken down as soon as
it was confronted with facts. The only characteristic of the savage
which remained, and was strong enough to withstand the sharpest
cross-examination, was cannibalism. But I am not aware that even the
most extreme believers in the primitive savage would insist on his
having been necessarily a cannibal, a kind of human Kronos, swallowing
his own kith and kin.
Every attempt to place the savage who can _no longer_ be called
civilised in the place of the savage who can _not yet_ be so-called,
could only end, as it has, in utter confusion of thought.
Something, however, will be gained, or at all events some kind of
mutual understanding will become possible, if in future discussions on
the character of primitive man a careful distinction is made between
the two kinds of savages, the progressive and the retrogressive. When
that distinction has once been grasped, the question whether man began
as a savage has no longer anything perplexing about it. Man certainly
began as a savage, but as a progressive savage. He certainly did not
begin with an innate knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic; but,
on the other hand, there is nothing to lead us to suppose that he was
a being altogether foul and filthy, that when he grew up he invariably
ill-treated his wife or wives, and that still later in life he passed
his time in eating his children.
If we must need form theories or reason by analogy on the primitive
state of man, let us go to the nearest _ci-près_, such as the Vedic
Hindus, or the Germans as described by Cæsar and Tacitus, but not to
Fuegians, who in time and probably in space also are the most widely
removed from the primitive inhabitants of our globe. If we knew
nothing of the manners and customs of the Saxons, when they first
settled in these isles, should we imagine that they must have resembled
the most depraved classes of modern English society? Let us but once
see clearly that the Fuegian, whether as described by Darwin or by
Parker Snow, is the most modern of human beings, and we shall pause
before we see in him the image of the first ancestor of the human race.
Wherever we look we can see the rise and fall of the human race. We
can see it with our own eyes, if we look at the living representatives
of some of our oldest and noblest families; we can read it in history
if we compare ancient India with modern India, ancient Greece with
modern Greece. The idea that the Fuegian was salted and preserved for
us during many thousands of years, so that we might study in him the
original type of man, is nothing but a poetical sentiment unsupported
alike by fact, analogy, and reason.
I know full well that when I speak of the Germans of Tacitus or of
the Aryans of the Veda as the _ci-près_ of primitive man, all the
indications of modern, or at all events of secondary and tertiary
thought which I have pointed out myself in the hymns of the Rig-Veda,
and which might easily be collected from the book of Tacitus, will
be mustered against me. Must I quote the old saying again: _Est
quoddam prodire tenus si non datur ultra_? All I maintain is that
these historical documents bring us as near to the primitive man as
historical documents can bring us; but that the nearest point within
our reach is still very far from the cradle of the human race, no one
has pointed out more often than myself.
There is, however, plenty of work still to be done in slowly following
up the course of human progress and tracing it back to its earliest
stages, as far as literary, monumental, and traditional documents will
allow us to do so. There are many intricate windings of that historical
river to be explored, many riddles to be solved, many lessons to be
learnt. One thing only is quite certain—namely, that the private diary
of the first man will never be discovered, least of all at Cape Horn.
I have thus tried to show how untenable is the theory which would
boldly identify the modern savage with primitive man, and how cautious
we ought to be whenever we take even a few hints here and there from
degraded tribes of the present day in order to fill out our imaginary
picture of the earliest civilisation of our race. Some lessons, and
even important lessons, may be learnt from savages, if only they
are studied in a truly scholarlike spirit, as they have been, for
instance, by Callaway and Codrington, by Waitz and Tylor. But if the
interpretation of an Homeric custom or myth requires care, that of
African or Polynesian customs or myths requires ten times greater care,
and if a man shrinks from writing on the Veda because he does not know
Sanskrit, he should tremble whenever he writes the names of Zulus,
unless he has some idea of what Bântu grammar means.
In arguing so far, I have carefully kept to the historical point of
view, though I am well aware that the principal traits in the imaginary
picture of primitive man are generally taken from a very different
source. We are so made that for everything that comes before us we have
to postulate a cause and a beginning. We therefore postulate a cause
and a beginning for man. The ethnologist is not concerned with the
first cause of man, but he cannot resist the craving of his mind to
know at least the beginning of man.
Most ethnologists used to hold that, as each individual begins as
a child, mankind also began as a child; and they imagined that a
careful observation of the modern child would give them some idea of
the character of the primeval child. Much ingenuity has been spent on
this subject since the days of Voltaire, and many amusing books have
been the result, till it was seen at last that the modern baby and the
primeval baby have nothing in common but the name, not even a mother or
a nurse.
It is chiefly due to Darwin and to the new impulse which he gave to
the theory of evolution that this line of argument was abandoned as
hopeless. Darwin boldly asked the question whose child the primeval
human baby could have been, and he answered it by representing the
human baby as the child of non-human parents. Admitting even the
possibility of this _transitio in aliud genus_, which the most honest
of Darwin's followers strenuously deny, what should we gain by this
for our purpose—namely, for knowing the primitive state of man, the
earliest glimmerings of the human intellect? Our difficulties would
remain exactly the same, only pushed back a little further.
Disappointing as it may sound, the fact must be faced, nevertheless,
that our reasoning faculties, wonderful as they are, break down
completely before all problems concerning the origin of things. We
may imagine, we may believe, anything we like about the first man; we
can know absolutely nothing. If we trace him back to a primeval cell,
the primeval cell that could become a man is more mysterious by far
than the man that was evolved from a cell. If we trace him back to a
primeval pro-anthropos, the pro-anthropos is more unintelligible to us
than even the protanthropos would be. If we trace back the whole solar
system to a rotating nebula, that wonderful nebula which by evolution
and revolution could become an inhabitable universe is, again, far more
mysterious than the universe itself.
The lesson that there are limits to our knowledge is an old lesson,
but it has to be taught again and again. It was taught by Buddha, it
was taught by Socrates, and it was taught for the last time in the
most powerful manner by Kant. Philosophy has been called the knowledge
of our knowledge; it might be called more truly the knowledge of
our ignorance, or, to adopt the more moderate language of Kant, the
knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.—_Nineteenth Century._