movement than for its intelligent retrospect of the past. It is
reconstructive as well as progressive. The light which is kindled by
the practical discoveries of modern science, throws back its rays,
and enables us to distinguish objects of interest, which have been
unnoticed in the gloom of bygone ages, or passed over with contempt.
Men observe only those things which their occupations or their
education enable them to understand and appreciate. When a savage is
introduced on board the deck of a European vessel, he notices only
those objects with the uses of which he is familiar--the sewing of a
coat, a chain, or a cable, at once rivets his attention, but he passes
by the steam-engine without observation, and if a work of art is forced
upon his notice, he is unable to say whether it represents a man, a
ship, or a kangaroo![14] So in past ages the flint implements of the
drift, the parents of all our modern implements, whether for war or
handicraft, must have been carted away in hundreds, unobserved, and in
ignorance that these inconspicuous objects would one day be the means
of upsetting the received chronology of our species.
Whilst, therefore, we devote our energies chiefly to progress, and
fix our attention upon the present and future of war, it cannot fail
to interest those who are actively engaged in the duties of their
profession, if we occasionally take a glance backward and see what
recent discoveries have done towards elucidating its origin and early
history.
It might, perhaps, assist a right understanding of the principles on
which the weapons and implements of savages deserve to be studied, if
I were to notice some of those great questions respecting the origin
of our species, and man’s place in nature, which the investigations
of science have been the means of raising in our day. I need hardly
say that the rude implements, which I am about to describe, are of
little practical interest in themselves, as models for instruction or
imitation. We have no need of bows and arrows in the existing state
of war, and if we did require them, the appliances of modern times
would enable us to construct them in far greater perfection than could
be acquired by any lessons from savages. These weapons are valuable
only, in the absence of other evidence, from the light they throw
on prehistoric times, and on those great questions to which I have
alluded, and from their enabling us to trace out the origin of many of
those customs which have been handed down to us by past generations.
As, however, the discussion of these interesting subjects would lead
me into matters that are hardly suited to the Lecture-room of this
Institution, I must pass over the consideration of them with a few
brief remarks.
In so doing, I may appear to postulate some opinions upon points
that are still the subject of animated controversy in the scientific
world. But it would require a far broader field of investigation than
is here afforded me, in order to treat these inquiries successfully,
and to adduce all the evidence that would be necessary to support the
hypotheses put forward; and I am anxious to devote no greater space to
these preliminary remarks than is necessary to point out some of the
main features of interest that are involved in the particular study
which forms the subject of my lecture.
We are apt to speak of the creation of the universe as a thing of
the past, and to suppose that the world, with all the varied life
upon it, previous to man’s appearance, having been created for his
especial happiness and supremacy, was afterwards left to his control
and government. But this view of the subject belongs to an age in which
the laws of nature in their all-sufficiency and completeness were but
little studied and appreciated. Modern science finds no evidence of
any such abandonment of the universe to man’s jurisdiction. The more
comprehensively the subject is viewed, the more restricted appear to be
those limits over which the free will of mankind is permitted to range,
and the more evident it becomes, that in his social advancement, his
laws, arts, and wars, he moves on under the influence and development
of those same laws which have been in force from the very first dawn
of creation. The lower the archaeologist searches in the crust of the
earth for the relics of human art, the more faint become the traces of
that broad gulf, which in our times appears to separate man from the
brute creation. In all the numerous and varied offsprings of the human
intellect, in the arts, and even in speech, the more we investigate and
trace them back, the more clearly they appear to point to a condition
of the human race in which they had no existence whatever. The great
law of nature, ‘natura non facit saltum,’ was not broken by the
introduction of man upon the earth. He appears to have been produced in
the fullness of time, as the work of creation required a more perfect
tool, and to have ameliorated his condition, only as the work to be
performed became more complicated and varied, just as in the hands of
man, the rougher tool is employed for felling, and the finer tool for
finishing and polishing.
By this view we come to look upon even the most barbarous state of
man’s existence, as a condition, not so much of degradation, as of
arrested or retarded progress, and to see that, notwithstanding many
halts and relapses, and a very varied rate of movement in the different
races, the march of the human intellect has been always onward.
As, in the lower creation, we find no individuals that are capable of
self-improvement, though some appear, by their imitative faculties,
to contain within them the germs of an improving element, so the
aboriginal man, closely resembling the brutes, may have passed through
many generations before he began to show even the first symptoms
of mental cultivation, or the rudiments of the simplest arts; and
even then his progress may have been, at first, so slow, that it is
not without an effort of imagination that the civilized races of
our day can realize, by means of the implements which he has left
us, the minute gradations which appear to mark the stages of his
advancement. This appears to be the view taken by Sir Charles Lyell in
his _Antiquity of Man_, when, in comparing the flint implements found
in the higher and lower-level gravels of the valley of the Somme, he
arrives at the conclusion ‘that the state of the arts in those early
times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods’. ‘We see,’
he says, ‘in our own time, that the rate of progress in the arts and
sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge increases,
and so, when we carry back our retrospect into the past, we must
be prepared to find the signs of retardation augmenting in a like
geometrical ratio; so that the progress of a thousand years at a remote
period, may correspond to that of a century in modern times, and in
ages still more remote man would more and more resemble the brutes in
that attribute which causes one generation exactly to imitate, in all
its ways, the generation which preceded it’ (4th ed. 1873, p. 421).
In order to understand the relationship which the savage tribes of
our own time bear to the races of antiquity, it is necessary to keep
in view that, neither in historic nor prehistoric times is there any
evidence that civilization has been equally or universally distributed;
on the contrary, it appears always to have been partial, and confined
to particular races, whose function it has been, by means of war and
conquest, to spread the arts amongst surrounding nations, or to
exterminate those whose low state of mental culture rendered them
incapable of receiving it.
Assuming the whole of the human species to have sprung originally
from one stock, an hypothesis which, although disputed, appears to me
by all existing evidence and analogy of known facts, to be the most
reasonable assumption, the several races appear to have branched off at
various and remote periods, many of them, perhaps, previously to the
present geographical arrangement of land and water, and to have located
themselves in the several regions in which they are now found, in a
state which probably differs but little from that in which they existed
at the time of their separation from the parent stem.
Each race, after separation, shows evidence of arrested growth; and,
finally, the intellect of the nation fossilizes and becomes stationary
for an indefinite period, or until destroyed by being brought again in
contact with the leading races in an advanced stage of civilization,
precisely in the same way that the individuals composing these races,
after propagating their species, stagnate, and ultimately decay, or, in
a low state of savagery, are often destroyed by their own offspring.
Taking a comprehensive view of the development of civilization, it may
be compared to the growth of those plants whose vigour displays itself
chiefly in the propagation of their leading shoots, which, overtopping
the older and feebler branches, cause them to be everywhere replaced by
a fresh growth of verdure. The vegetable kingdom thus furnishes us with
the grand type of progress; continuity and bifurcation are principles
of universal application, uniting the lowest with the highest created
thing.
The analogy of tree growth has been frequently employed in relation
to natural phenomena, and it may very well be taken to explain the
distribution of the human race, and the progress and expansion of the
arts. It forms the key to the Darwinian theory of natural selection,
which is essentially monogenistic in its application to the origin of
the human race.
Thus the existing races of mankind may be taken to represent the
budding twigs and foliage, each in accordance with the relative
superiority of its civilization, appertaining to branches higher and
higher placed, upon the great stem of life.
So little is as yet known of the early history of any but our own
family of nations, that in the existing state of knowledge, the
attempt to classify and place them on their proper branches, must be
attended with much difficulty, and great liability to error. However,
by arranging the existing races according to their civilization, a
tolerably correct judgement may perhaps be formed as to the value of
this system of classification, if we distribute them with those of
antiquity in some two or three broad divisions. The Caucasian races
of modern Europe, for example, may be said to bear to their ancestors
of the historical period the same relationship that geologists have
shown the existing mammalia of our forests to bear to the mammalia
of the tertiary geological period. The semi-civilized Chinese and
Hindoos, in like manner, may be classed with the races of ancient
Assyria, Egypt, and other nations immediately prior to the first dawn
of history, the civilization of which nations they still so greatly
resemble, and appear to have retained, in a state of retarded progress
from those ages to our own. A third division may perhaps be made of the
Malay, Tartar, and African negro nations, which, though now in an age
of iron, may, by the state of their arts, and more especially by the
form of their implements, be taken as the best representatives of the
prehistoric bronze period of Europe, towards which they appear to hold
the same relationship that the fish and reptiles of our seas bear to
those of the secondary geological period. In a fourth division may be
included the still more barbarous races of our times, the Australian,
Bushman, and hunting races of America, whose analogy to those of the
stone age of Europe may be typified by that of the mollusca of recent
species to the mollusca of the primary geological period.
In all these existing races, we find that the slowness of their
progression and incapacity for improvement is proportioned to the low
state of their civilization, thereby leading to the supposition that
they may have retained their arts with but slight modification from the
time of their branching from the parent stem, and may thus be taken
as the living representatives of our common ancestors in the various
successive stages of their advancement.
Many examples of this immobility on the part of savages and
semi-civilized races may be given.
[Illustration: PLATE VI.]
Throughout the entire continent of Australia the weapons and implements
are alike, and of the simplest form, and the people are of the lowest
grade. The spear, the waddy, and the boomerang, with some stone
hatchets, are their only weapons; but amongst these it has been noticed
that, like the implements of the drift, there are minute differences,
scarcely apparent to Europeans, but which enable a native to determine
at a glance to what tribe a weapon belongs.[15] This, whilst it
proves a tendency to vary their forms, shows at the same time either
an incapacity, or, what answers the same purpose, a retarding power
or prejudice, which prevents their effecting more than the smallest
appreciable degree of change. In the island of Tahiti, Captain Cook
was unable to make the natives (a superior race to the Australians)
appreciate the uses of metal, until he had caused his armourer to
construct an iron adze (Plate VI, fig. 1 _a_)[16] of precisely the
same form as their own adzes of basalt (Fig. 1 _b_). After that, metal
tools came into general use amongst them, though their old forms are
in a great measure preserved to this day. When, during the American
War, the English endeavoured to utilize the Indians by arming them,
they were compelled to construct for them tomahawks after their own
pattern, having a pipe in the handle (Fig. 2). When the Purus Indians
of South America receive a knife from Europeans they break off the
handle, and fashion the knife according to their own ideas, placing the
blade between two pieces of wood, and binding it round tight with a
sinew.[17] The natives of Samoa now use iron adzes, constructed after
the exact pattern of their ancient stone ones.[18] The Fiji Islanders,
though they have now the means of obtaining good blades and chisels
from Sheffield, and axes from America, prefer plane irons to any other
form of implement, because they are able to fix them by lashing them
on to their handles in the same fashion as the ancient stone adzes of
their own manufacture, which they resemble.[19] The Andaman Islanders
use the European metal that falls into their hands, only to grind it
down into spear- and arrow-heads of the same form as their stone ones.
The same applies to the whole of the Aborigines of North and South
America, which have stood by, for nearly three centuries, passive
spectators of the arts of Europeans, without attempting to copy them.
Crawfurd, in his _History of the Indian Archipelago_,[20] comments
on the obstinate adherence of the Javanese to ancient customs, in
accounting for the kris having been retained by them long after the
causes which produced that peculiar weapon had ceased to operate.
Tylor, in his account of the Anahuac, observes upon the preservation
of old types amongst the present inhabitants of Mexico, which have
remained almost unchanged from generation to generation, enabling
the historian to distinguish clearly those which are of Aztec from
those which are of Spanish origin.[21] Herodotus describes the spears
carried by the Ethiopians in the army of Xerxes as being armed with the
sharpened horn of the antelope.[22] Consul Petherick found still in
use by the Djibba negroes, more than two thousand years after, these
identical spears, armed with the straightened and sharpened horn of the
antelope, and their other weapons also resembled in character those
described by Herodotus, although they had passed from the stone weapons
then used, into an age of metal.[23] The Scythian bow (Plate VI, fig.
3) is the bow still used by the whole of the Tartar races (Fig. 4).
The celt of the Tartar, and the celt and sword of the Negro (Fig. 5)
are still the celt and sword of the European bronze period (Fig. 6),
and this resemblance is not confined to the general outline of the
weapons, but extends to the style and patterns of ornamentation. The
same identity of form exists between the ‘manillas’ (Fig. 7) used as a
medium of exchange in the Eboe country of West Africa and the so-called
penannular rings or ring money (Fig. 8) of gold and bronze which are
found in Ireland, and which, with some modifications, belong also to
Germany and the Swiss Lakes. The corrugated iron blade of the Kaffir
assegai, a section of which is shown in Fig. 9, and which is used also
in Central and West Africa, is identical with those found in the Saxon
graves (Fig. 10), and is intended to give a spiral motion to these
missiles. Chevalier Folard observes that the Gauls were remarkable for
the tenacity with which they clung to their ancient customs, while the
Romans, their conquerors, are mentioned by all historians as peculiar
in their time for the facility with which they adopted the customs of
others, and developed their own.[24] In modern Europe, the Gipsies have
also been noticed as being distinguished from the Europeans in all
the various localities in which they are found, for their remarkable
adherence to especial arts, savouring of an extinct civilization.
Amongst the Chinese and Hindoos, the conservatism which has caused them
to remain for ages in nearly the same condition is too well known to
require comment. It will, however, be remembered (in illustration of
the fact that customs of minor importance often survive great political
changes, and serve to keep up the continuity that would otherwise be
broken), that after the Manchu Tartars had conquered and established
themselves in the Chinese territory, they were nearly driven again
from the country, on account of their forcing upon the subject people
the custom of wearing pigtails, after the fashion of their conquerors;
showing how difficult it is to ingraft, upon an alien race, customs
that are not indigenous.
These, and many other notices of a similar character that are to
be found in the pages of travel, establish it as a maxim, that the
existing races, in their respective stages of progression, may be
taken as the bona fide representatives of the races of antiquity;
and, marvellous as it may appear to us in these days of rapid
progress, their habits and arts, even to the form of their rudest
weapons, have continued in many cases, with but slight modifications,
unchanged throughout countless ages, and from periods long prior to
the commencement of history. They thus afford us living illustrations
of the social customs, the forms of government, laws, and warlike
practices, which belonged to the ancient races from which they remotely
sprang, whose implements, resembling, with but little difference,
their own, are now found low down in the soil, in situations, and
under circumstances in which, alone, they would convey but little
evidence to the antiquary, but which, when the investigations of the
antiquary are interpreted by those of the ethnologist, are teeming with
interesting revelations respecting the past history of our race; and
which, in the hands of the anthropologist, in whose science that of
antiquity and ethnology are combined with physiology and geology, are
no doubt destined to throw a flood of light, if not eventually, in a
great measure, to clear up the mystery, which now hangs over everything
connected with the origin of mankind.
That such a combination of the sciences should have been brought about
so opportunely in our days, appears to me to be one of those many
indications of an overruling power directing in the aggregate the minds
of men, which must, at all times, strike even the most superficial
observer of nature; for there can be little doubt that in a few years
all the most barbarous races will have disappeared from the earth, or
will have ceased to preserve their native arts.
The law which consigns to destruction all savage races when brought
in contact with a civilization much higher than their own, is now
operating with unrelenting fury in every part of the world. Of the
aborigines of Tasmania, not a single individual remains; those of New
Zealand are fast disappearing. The Australian savage dies out before
the advancing European. North and South America, and the Polynesian
Islands, all tell the same tale. Wherever the generous influences of
Christianity have set foot, there they have been accompanied by the
scourge. Innumerable and often unseen causes combine in effecting the
same purpose; diseases which are but little felt by Europeans, act as
plagues when introduced into uncivilized communities, and cause them
to fall before their ravages, like wheat before the sickle; and the
vices of civilization, taking a firmer hold of the savages than its
virtues, aid and abet in the same work. The labours of the missionary,
if they have produced no other benefit, have been useful in teaching
us the great truth, that notwithstanding the philanthropic efforts
of the intruding race, the law of nature must be vindicated. The
savage is morally and mentally an unfit instrument for the spread of
civilization, except when, like the higher mammalia, he is reduced to
a state of slavery; his occupation is gone, and his place is required
for an improved race. Allowing for the rapidly increasing ratio in
which progress advances, it is not too much to assume, that in half a
century from the present time, savage life will have ceased to have a
single true representative on the face of the globe, and the evidence
which it has been the means of handing down to our generation will have
perished with it.
When we find that the condition of the aboriginal man must have
been one of such complete inanity as to render him incapable of
spontaneously initiating even the most rudimentary arts, it follows
as a matter of course that in the earliest stages of his career, he
must, like children of our own day, have been subject to compulsory
instruction. And in looking to nature for the sources from which such
early instruction must have been derived, we need not, I think, be long
in coming to the conclusion, that the school of our first parent must
be sought for in his struggles for mastery with the brute creation,
and that, consequently, his first lessons must have been directed to
attaining proficiency in the art of war.
Hence it follows that it is to the lower animals that we must look
for the origin of all those branches of primitive warfare which it is
the object of this lecture to trace out. Nor indeed shall we fail to
find abundant evidence that there is hardly a single branch of human
industry which may not reasonably be attributed to the same source.
The province of war extends downward through the animal kingdom,
showing unmistakable evidence of its existence in forms, offensive
and defensive, differing but little from those of the human era,
through the unnumbered ages of the geological periods, long prior to
man’s advent; proving, beyond the possibility of doubt, that from the
remotest age in which we find evidence of organized beings, war has
been ordained to an important function in the creative process.
Judging by results, which I apprehend is the only true method of
investigating the phenomena of life, three primary instincts appear
to have been implanted in nearly all the higher animals[25]:
alimentiveness, for the sustenance of life; amativeness, for the
propagation of species; and combativeness, for the protection of
species, and the propagation by natural selection of the most energetic
breeds; on which latter subject much important information has been
given to the world by Mr. Darwin, in his celebrated work on the origin
of species.