is to say, that in the construction of their habitations and other
arrangements for providing for their wants, they act intuitively, and
apparently without the intervention of reason; and that the things
which they construct, though often of a more or less complex character,
are usually of a fixed type; that they are repeated by nearly all
animals of the same kind with but little variety; and that within the
limited space of time during which we are able to observe them, they do
not appear to be susceptible of progress, although evidence has been
adduced to show that animals, even in a wild state, do change their
habits to a certain extent with the change of external conditions.
On the other hand, we recognize in many animals the operation of a
reasoning mind. In their efforts to escape, or when conditions of a
novel character are presented to them, they act in a manner that shows
clear evidence of intelligence, although they show this to a very
limited extent as compared with man. We also know that habits acquired
by animals during domestication, or taught them by the exercise
of their reasoning faculties, become instinctive in them, and are
inherited in their offspring, as in the familiar case of the pointer
dog. We also know that under domestication animals lose the instincts
acquired in a wild state.
In the human mind we recognize the presence of all these phenomena,
only in a different degree. We are conscious of an intellectual mind
capable of reasoning upon unfamiliar occurrences, and of an automaton
mind capable of acting intuitively in certain matters without effort
of the will or consciousness. And we know that habits acquired by the
exercise of conscious reason, by constant habit, become automatic,
and then they no longer require the exercise of conscious reason to
direct the actions, as they did at first; as, for example, the habit
of walking upright, which the child learns with pain and labour, but
in time performs without conscious effort of the mind. Or the habit
of reading and writing, the learning of which requires a strong and
continuous effort of the intellect, but which in time becomes so
completely automatic that it becomes possible to read a whole page
aloud whilst the intellectual mind is conscious of being engaged in
other things.
We perceive clearly that this automatic action of the brain is
dependent on frequent repetition by the intellectual brain, as in
the familiar case of learning by heart; and also that the transfer
of the action from the intellectual to the automaton brain--if
indeed there are separate portions of the brain allotted to these
separate functions, as appears probable--is a gradual and not a sudden
process, and that there are intermediate stages in which an action
may be performed partly by direction of the intellect and partly
automatically. This is shown in the case of a person who, wishing to
make an effective speech at a public meeting, reasons out his address
carefully, and then learns it partially by heart. When the time comes
to address the assembly, the speech having been partly referred to the
automaton brain, the intellect is relieved from action, and, being
unoccupied, is apt to wander and engage itself in other matters that
are passing at the time; but the automaton brain, being insufficiently
prepared to bear the whole responsibility, is unable to continue, and
the intellectual brain, having already started on a journey elsewhere,
is unable to return quick enough to take up the thread of the
discourse. The result is that the would-be orator breaks down pitiably
in the middle of his speech, owing to his having learnt his lesson too
well for one function of his mind, and not well enough for the other.
The same is seen in many business transactions, which, from frequent
repetition, become what is called a second nature, and in the conduct
of which the conscious intellect is partly freed from the control of
the actions.
We see also that both automatic and intellectual activity are inherited
in different degrees by different persons. Thus it is a matter of
common observation that there are some persons who are able to acquire
with great facility the power of conversing upon simple subjects in
many different languages, whilst upon more complex subjects, requiring
intellectual effort, they never acquire the power of conversing in any
language. Thus, also, it is frequently seen that some children show
a remarkable aptitude for learning in their youth. It is said to be
a pleasure to educate them; everything speedily becomes automatic in
them; great hopes are entertained of their future prospects; but they
frequently become a grievous disappointment to their parents, who have
built castles in the air upon the strength of their apparent precocity,
whereas an acute observer might have seen that they had never from the
first showed signs of great intellectual capacity. On the other hand,
we hear of dunces who are the despair of their tutors, who can with
difficulty be taught to read and write and spell, but in after years
become philosophers and scientists, all which might have been foretold
from the first if the system of education had been such as to call
forth the intellectual powers.
It is not merely that some inherit automatic capacity whilst in others
the capacity is intellectual. There is, without doubt, in both cases
an hereditary capacity for special things. Thus, whilst some acquire
a knowledge of music with facility, others can never be made to
appreciate a note of music, and so with respect to other arts.
How then are we to account for this innate indifference in the
capacity of individuals, unless by supposing it to be proportioned
to the length of time during which, or the degree of intensity with
which, the ancestors of the individuals have had their minds occupied
in the particular branch of culture for which capacity is shown?
Unfortunately the difficulty of tracing the channel of hereditary
transmission stands in the way of obtaining any certainty on this
point, although the labours of our Vice-President, Mr. Galton, have
already thrown much light on this interesting subject. But on this
assumption, it is easy to account for the more perfect action of
instinct in the lower animals than in men, when it is considered
that the minds of their progenitors must have been confined to the
experience of those particular things for which instinct is shown, far
longer than is the case with man; and this brings us to the point which
has an important bearing upon the question before us, viz. that every
action which is now performed by instinct, has at some former period in
the history of the species been the result of conscious experience.
But, in adopting this theory, it is not necessary to assume that the
ideas themselves have been communicated by hereditary transmission.
The doctrine of innate ideas, exploded by Locke, I believe, can never
again establish itself. What is inherited is no doubt a certain
organization of the nervous system, which, by repeated use through
many generations, aided by natural selection, has become exquisitely
adapted to the recognition of experience of a particular kind, and
which, by the constant renovation that is going on within the body,
has grown in harmony with those experiences, so that, when the spring
is touched, as it were, the machinery is at once set in motion; but,
until the necessary external conditions are presented to the mind,
there can be no consciousness of them in the mind. The mind creates
nothing apart from experience; its function is limited to building with
the materials presented to it through the medium of the senses. The
broader the basis of experience, the more lofty the superstructure that
can be raised upon it. Or, to use the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer[4],
‘the supposition that the inner cohesions are adjusted to the outer
persistencies by accumulated experience of these outer persistencies,
is in harmony with all our actual knowledge of mental phenomena. Though
in so far as reflex actions and instincts are concerned, the experience
hypothesis seems insufficient; yet, its seeming insufficiency occurs
only where the evidence is beyond our reach. Nay, even here, such few
facts as we can get, point to the conclusion that automatic physical
connexions result from the registration of experiences continued for
numberless generations.’ And further on he says: ‘In the progress of
life at large, as in the progress of the individual, the adjustment of
inner tendencies to outer persistencies must begin with the simple and
advance to the complex, seeing that, both within and without, complex
relations, being made up of simple ones, cannot be established before
simple ones have been established.’
From the foregoing considerations it follows that, in studying the
evidence of intellectual progress, the phenomena which we may expect
to observe are--firstly, a continuous succession of ideas; secondly,
that the complexity of the ideas will be in an increasing ratio in
proportion to the time; and thirdly, that the tendency to automatic
action upon any given set of ideas will be in proportion to the length
of time during which the ancestors of the individual have exercised
their minds in those particular ideas. Hence it follows, as a corollary
to this, that at the present time the tendency to automatic action
will be greater in the lower animals than in the higher, because the
minds of their progenitors have been exercised in the simple ideas, for
which instinct is shown, for a greater length of time than those of the
higher animals, amongst whom the simpler ideas have, at a comparatively
recent period in the history of the race, been replaced, or otherwise
modified, by ideas of a more complex character, which latter have not
yet had time to become instinctive. And this is in accordance with what
is practically observed in nature.
Now, in applying these principles to the study of progress in man, we
must expect to find that the phenomena observed will be in proportion
to the spaces of time we have to deal with in treating of man as
compared with animals in general.
Assuming this psychological standard of humanity to have been at the
level at which we find the highest of the lower animals that exist at
the present time, we may suppose primaeval man to have been so far
acquainted with the use of tools as to be able to employ a stone for
the purpose of cracking the shells of nuts, but incapable of trimming
the stone into any form that would answer his purpose better than that
into which it had been shaped by rolling in a river bed or upon the
seashore.
By the repeated use of stones for this and similar purposes, it would
be found that, as Sir John Lubbock has pointed out, they sometimes
split in the hand, and that the sharp edges of the fractured portions
were more serviceable than the stones before fracture. By constant
repetition of the same occurrence, there would grow up in the mind of
the creature an association of ideas between the fracture of the stone
and the saving of labour effected by the fractured portion, and also a
sequence of ideas by which it would be perceived that the fracture of
the stone was a necessary preliminary to the other, and ultimately, by
still continued repetition, the creature would be led to perform the
motions which had been found effectual in cracking the stone before
applying it to the purposes for which it was to be used. So also in
using the various natural forms of the branches of trees which fell
into his hands, it would be found that particular forms were of use
for particular purposes; and by constant repetition there would arise
an association of ideas between those forms and the purposes for which
they were useful, and he would begin to select them for such purposes;
and in proportion to the length of time during which this association
of ideas continued to exist in the minds of successive generations of
the creatures which we may now begin to call men, would be the tendency
on the part of the offspring to continue to select and use these
particular forms, more or less instinctively--not, indeed, with that
unvarying instinct which in animals arises from the perfect adaptation
of the internal organism to external condition, but with that modified
instinct which assumes the form of a _persistent conservatism_.
‘The savage,’ says Mr. Tylor, ‘is firmly, obstinately conservative.
No man appeals with more unhesitating confidence to the great
precedent-makers of the past; the wisdom of his ancestors can control
against the most obvious evidence of his own opinions and actions.’
In a similar manner mankind would be led to the conception of many
other ideas, but of the majority of them no record would be preserved;
it is only where the ideas have been associated with material forms
that any record of them would be kept in prehistoric times; and this
brings us to what I conceive to be the object of an anthropological
collection--to trace out, by means of the only evidence available, the
sequence of ideas by which mankind has advanced from the condition of
the lower animals to that in which we find him at the present time, and
by this means to provide really reliable materials for a philosophy of
progress. We may not be able to find in these objects any associations
that may lead us to form an estimate of the highest aspirations of
the mind at any period of its development, but their importance to
anthropologists consists in their value as evidence. Affording us
as they do the only available evidence of man in his most primitive
condition, they are well worthy of our attention, in order that by
studying their grammar, we may be able to conjugate their forms.
Yet, although our data are thus limited to the material arts of
mankind, only a small portion of those of prehistoric races are
available for our purpose. As already said, only those tools and
implements which were constructed of durable materials have remained;
the rest have perished, and we have only the implements of existing
savages by which to judge of them. The question, therefore, is, to what
extent they may be taken as the representatives of the implements of
prehistoric men, seeing that in point of time they are contemporaneous
with the arts of the most civilized races, and not with those of
prehistoric races.
Scattered over the world in various localities are savage races
showing various degrees of culture, some higher and some lower than
others, many of which have now been greatly influenced by contact with
civilized races, but of the majority of which we have more or less
detailed records, dating from the time of their first discovery by
Europeans, when their arts may be regarded as indigenous, or, at any
rate, free from any admixture with the arts of civilized races.
If these savage races have been degraded from a higher condition of
culture, then, seeing that sequence of ideas is necessary to the
existence of any ideas whatever, we must inevitably find traces in
their arts of those higher arts from which they descended. But if, on
the other hand, they have risen from a lower state, and their present
savage condition arises from their having advanced less rapidly than
those races which are now above them in the social scale, then what are
the conditions which we must expect to find prevailing amongst them?
We shall find, firstly, that the forms of their implements, instead of
showing evidence of having been derived from higher and more complex
forms, will, in proportion to the low state of their civilization, show
evidence of being derived from natural forms, such as might have been
employed by man before he had learnt the art of modifying them to his
uses; and secondly, we shall find that the persistency of the forms is
proportioned to the low state of their culture.
Now this is found to be the case with nearly every race of savages of
whose condition we have any knowledge. Lowest amongst the existing
races of the world of whom we have any accurate knowledge are the
Australians. All their weapons assimilate to the forms of nature; all
their wooden weapons are constructed on the grain of the wood, and
consequently their curves are the curves of the branches out of which
they were constructed. In every instance in which I have attempted to
arrange my collection in sequence, so as to trace the higher forms
from natural forms, the weapons of the Australians have found their
place lowest in the scale, because they assimilate most closely to the
natural forms.
Of this many examples may be given. I will not now again enter into the
history of the boomerang, to which I have already drawn the attention
of the Society on former occasions. Those who wish to see the subject
treated in greater detail will find it discussed in my catalogue of
the collection, in which are also given the authorities for many facts
that are mentioned here, and which the limits of time and space do
not enable me to quote at length. Suffice to say that the whole of
the Australian weapons can be traced by their connecting links to the
simple stick, such as might have been used by an ape or an elephant
before mankind appeared upon this earth, and I have arranged them so as
to show this connexion on the screens. Here also we are able to trace
the development of the idea of a shield to cover the body, which in
its simplest form is a simple parrying-stick held in the centre, and
which expands gradually into an oval shield. It is also shown upon the
screens how the simple waddy, or club with a lozenge-shaped head, by a
gradual development of one side, grew into a kind of wooden hatchet,
which ultimately became converted into a hatchet-boomerang.
The whole of the Australian weapons, without exception, are of this
simple character, and in proof of the persistency with which this
nation has continued to employ the same forms, no further evidence
is necessary than the fact that they are the same, with but slight
variations, over the whole continent. The slight differences between
them, as Mr. Oldfield has pointed out, are so minute as scarcely to
be perceptible to a European, but sufficient to enable a native to
determine at a glance from what locality any specimen that may be shown
him has been obtained.
But although all the connecting forms between the forms of nature
and the more advanced forms are found amongst the _existing_ weapons
of these savages, we are not to assume from this that the whole of
the progress observed has been effected in modern times. The whole
sequence of ideas connecting these weapons (which are now constructed
in a manner to show that the art of producing them is partly
automatic) was reasoned out by such processes of the mind as stood for
reason, at various former periods in the history of the race, each
successive improvement constituting a link in the chain of progressive
development. Each link has left its representatives, which, with
certain modifications, have survived to the present time; and it is by
the means of these _survivals_, and not by the links themselves, that
we are able to trace out the sequence that has been spoken of.
This is the hypothesis put forward, and which I profess to justify by
the facts accumulated in this collection.
Every form marks its own place in sequence by its relative complexity
or affinity to other allied forms, in the same manner that every word
in the science of language has a place assigned to it in the order of
development or phonetic decay.
If there is such a thing as a science of language, and none can doubt
it, who shall affirm that there is no such thing as a science of the
arts? Language, it is true, embraces a wider sphere, and includes the
arts; but, on the other hand, it is liable to sources of uncertainty
for the purposes of science, from which the arts are free. Language
is impalpable, invisible to the eye, except through the medium of a
written character, which may or may not accurately express the sounds,
and subject to acoustic changes in the collection of the materials,
which are a perpetual cause of error and misclassification.
In tracing the development of the material arts, on the other hand,
we have, in the earliest periods, the support of collateral evidence
afforded by the fauna with which they are associated and by geological
sequence, all which is wanting in the science of language.
Why, then, has language hitherto received more scientific treatment
than the arts? Merely on account of the greater facility with which the
data are collected. Whilst words take seconds to record, hours and days
may be spent in the accurate delineation of form. Words cost nothing,
are packed in folios, transmitted by post, and stored on the shelves
of every private library. A million classified words may be carried in
the coat pocket without inconvenience, whilst a hundredth part of that
number of material objects require a museum to contain them, and are
accessible only to a few. This is the reason why the arts have never
been subjected to those classifications which form the groundwork of a
science.
Then, again, in approaching prehistoric times, or in studying modern
savages who represent prehistoric man, language loses its persistency,
or fails us altogether. Although, in an advanced stage of civilization,
especially when it has been committed to writing, it affords the
surest test of culture, this is certainly not the case with the
lowest savages, amongst whom language changes so rapidly that even
neighbouring tribes cannot understand one another. And if this is the
case in respect to language, still more strongly does it apply to all
ideas that are communicated by word of mouth. In endeavouring to trace
back prehistoric culture to its root forms, we find that in proportion
as the value of language and of the ideas conveyed by language
diminishes, that of ideas embodied in material forms increases in
stability and permanence. Whilst in the earliest phases of humanity the
names for things change with every generation if not more frequently,
the things themselves are handed down unchanged from father to son and
from tribe to tribe, and many of them have continued to our own time,
faithful records of the condition of the people by whom they were
fabricated.
Of the antiquity of savages we at present know little or nothing;
but when archaeologists have exhausted the antiquities of civilized
countries, a wide and interesting field of research will be open to
them in the study of the antiquities of savages, which are doubtless to
be discovered in their surface and drift deposits; and if the stability
of their form has been such as we have reason to believe, we shall then
be able to arrive at something like certainty in respect to the degree
of slowness or rapidity, as well as the order, in which they have been
developed.