Note 173.1 — Chapter VI · Notes

It is only of late years that the importance of savagery as a document of human history has been understood. From what I have said I hope you have formed some idea of the extreme importance which the study of savage life possesses for a proper understanding of the early history of mankind. The savage is a human document, a record of man’s efforts to raise himself above the level of the beast. It is only of late years that the full value of the document has been appreciated; indeed, many people are probably still of Dr. Johnson’s opinion, who, pointing to the three large volumes of Voyages to the South Seas which had just come out, said: “Who will read them through? A man had better work his way before the mast than read them through; they will be eaten by rats and mice before they are read through. There can be little entertainment in such books; one set of savages is like another.”173.1 But the world has learned a good deal since Dr. Johnson’s day; and the records of savage life, which the sage of Bolt Court consigned without scruple to the rats and mice, have now their place among the most precious archives of humanity. Their fate has been like that of the Sibylline Books. They were neglected and despised when they might have been obtained complete; and now wise men would give more than a king’s ransom for their miserably mutilated and imperfect remains. It is true that before our time civilized men often viewed savages with interest and described them intelligently, and some of their descriptions are still of great scientific value. Great impulse given to the study of savagery by the discovery of America and of the Pacific. For example, the discovery of America naturally excited in the minds of the European peoples an eager curiosity as to the inhabitants of the new world, which had burst upon their gaze, as if at the waving of a wizard’s wand the curtain of the western sky had suddenly rolled up and disclosed scenes of glamour and enchantment. Accordingly some of the Spaniards who explored and conquered these realms of wonder have bequeathed to us accounts of the manners and customs of the Indians, which for accuracy and fulness of detail probably surpass any former records of an alien race. Such, for instance, is the great work of the Franciscan friar Sahagun on the natives of Mexico, and such the work of Garcilasso de la Vega, himself half an Inca, on the Incas of Peru. Again, the exploration of the Pacific in the eighteenth century, with its revelation of fairy-like islands scattered in profusion over a sea of eternal summer, drew the eyes and stirred the imagination of Europe; and to the curiosity thus raised in many minds, though not in Dr. Johnson’s, we owe some precious descriptions of the islanders, who, in those days of sailing ships, appeared to dwell so remote from us that the poet Cowper fancied their seas might never again be ploughed by English keels.174.1