Chapter XII · SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON TRADITION.

De Maistre’s View.[234]

“We have little knowledge of the times which preceded the Deluge.... A single consideration interests us, and it must never be lost sight of, and that is, that chastisements are ever proportioned to crimes, and crimes always proportioned to the knowledge of the criminal; in such sort that the Deluge supposes unheard-of crimes, and that these crimes suppose a knowledge infinitely transcending that which we possess.... This knowledge, freed from the evil which had rendered it so noxious, survived in the first family the destruction of the human race. We are blinded as to the nature and advance of science by a gross sophism which has fascinated every eye; it is to judge of times when men saw effects in their causes by those in which men painfully ascend from effects to causes, in which they are only concerned with effects, in which they say it is useless to occupy themselves with causes, and in which they do not know what constitutes a cause. They never cease repeating—‘Think of the time that has been required to know such and such a thing.’ What inconceivable blindness! A moment only was required. If man would know the cause of a single phenomenon of nature, he would probably comprehend all the rest. We are unwilling to see that truths, the most difficult to discover, are very easy to understand.... ‘These things,’ as Plato says, ‘are perfectly and easily learned if any one teaches them, ει διδὰσκοι τις; but,’ he adds, ‘no one will teach them us, unless, indeed, God shows him the road, άλλ’ οὐδ ἄν διδαξειεν ει μὴ Θεος υφηγοῖτο.’ ‘I doubt not,’ said Hippocrates, ‘that the arts were in the first instance favours (θεων χαριτας) granted to men by the gods.’... Listen to sage antiquity in its account of the first men: it will tell you that they were marvellous men, and that beings of a superior order deigned to favour them with the most precious communications. On this point there is no disagreement, ... reason, revelation, all human tradition make up a demonstration which the mouth only can contradict. Not only, then, did mankind commence with science, but with a science different from ours, and superior to ours.... No one knows to what epoch remounts, I do not say the early commencements of society, but the great institutions, the profound knowledge, and the most magnificent monuments of human industry and human power.... Asia, having been the theatre of the greatest marvels, it is not astonishing that its people should have preserved a leaning to the marvellous stronger than what is natural to man in general, and than each one recognises in himself individually. Hence it comes that they have always shown so little taste and talent for our science of conclusions. One would say rather that they recalled something of primitive science and of the era of intuition. Would the enchained eagle ask for a balloon to raise himself into the air? No, he would demand only that his fetters should be broken. And who knows if these people are not destined yet to contemplate sights which will be refused to the cavilling genius of Europe? However this may be, observe, I pray you, that it is impossible to think of modern art without seeing it constantly environed with all the contrivances of the intellect and all the methods of art.... On the contrary. So far as it is possible to discover the science of primitive times at such an enormous distance, we see it always free and isolated, flying rather than marching, and presenting in all its characteristics something of the ærial and supernatural.[235]... But then comes the corollary.... If all men descend from the three couples who repeopled the universe, and if the human race commenced with knowledge, the savage cannot be more, as I have said to you, than a branch detached from the social tree.... Now, what matter does it make at what epoch such and such a branch was separated from the tree? It suffices that it is detached: no doubt as to its degradation; and I venture to say no doubt as to the cause of degradation, which can only have been some crime. A chief of a nation having altered the principle of morality in his household by one of those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no longer possible in the actual state of things, because happily our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become culpable in this degree; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the curse to his posterity; and every constant force being accelerating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon his descendants, has ended in making them what we call savages. Two causes extremely different have thrown a deceptive cloud over the lamentable state of savages: the one of ancient date, the other belonging to our century.... One cannot for an instant regard the savage without reading the curse written, I do not say only in his soul, but even in the exterior form of his body. He is an infant, robust, yet deformed and ferocious, in whom the flame of intelligence no longer throws more than a lurid and intermittent glare.... I cannot abandon this subject without suggesting an important observation: The barbarian who is intermediate between the civilised man and the savage, has been and may be again civilised by some sort of religion; but the savage, properly so called, has never been so except by Christianity. It is a prodigy of the first order, a species of redemption, exclusively reserved to the true priesthood.[236]... For the rest, we must not confound the savage with the barbarian.

“No language could possibly have been invented, either by a single man, who could not have extorted obedience, or by many who would not have made themselves understood to each other.... But I would wish, before concluding this subject, to recommend to your notice an observation which has always struck me. Whence comes it that in the primitive language of every ancient people, we find words which necessarily suppose a knowledge foreign to these people? Whence, for instance, have the Greeks, three thousand years ago at least, found the epithet ‘physizoos’ (giving or possessing life), which Homer sometimes gives to the earth?.... Where have they taken the still more singular epithet of ‘philomate’ (liking or thirsting for blood), given to this same earth in a tragedy? (Euripides, Phœn. v. 179). Æschylus had alluded before ‘to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one slain by the other.’[237] Humboldt (‘Monum. des Peuples Indigènes de l’Amerique,’ Paris, 1816) has said: ‘Many idioms which at present belong only to barbarous nations seem to be the remains of rich and flexible languages, which indicate a high culture.... But tell me, I pray you, how it entered the heads of the ancient Latins, at a time when they were only acquainted with the arts of war and of tillage, to express by the same word the idea of prayer and of punishment? Who taught them to call fever the “purifier,” or the “expiator”?’[238] Would not one say that there was here a judgment, a veritable knowledge of the cause, by virtue of which the people affirmed the name so justly? But do you believe that these sorts of judgments could possibly have belonged to a time when they scarcely knew how to write, when the Dictator dug his garden, and in which they composed verses which Varro and Cicero no longer understood?... The Greeks had preserved some obscure traditions in this regard—[Mr Gladstone has shown them to be neither few nor obscure],—and who knows if Homer does not attest the same truth, perhaps without knowing it, when he speaks of certain men and certain things ‘which the gods called after one manner, and men after another?’”—Count Joseph de Maistre, “Soirées de St Petersbourg,” i. Deux: Entretien.[239]

Against this view of De Maistre, which I consider to be indirectly sustained by the testimony of all antiquity, stands the theory of Sir John Lubbock. There is the constant historical tradition and testimony of the human race on one side, and there is the history of “Pre-historic Times” on the other. Nevertheless, I venture to say, that the author of “Pre-historic Times” only takes up with man at the point where De Maistre leaves him.

Of course I do not seek to detach Sir John Lubbock from the evidence he has collected; neither do I forget that he is the representative of an opinion and a school; at any rate, that there is an opinion of which he is the most conspicuous exponent.

So far as my limited acquaintance with the special subjects with which Sir John Lubbock deals extends (and with these I am only indirectly concerned), he appears perfectly straightforward and candid; and, moreover, I must acknowledge my obligations to him, for he has written with remarkable breadth and ability; and it is with the aid of the interesting matter which he has accumulated,[240] expressly in disparagement of tradition, that I venture to undertake to reinstate it in honour.

Neither do I wish to ignore that Sir John Lubbock’s main argument is the geological argument derived from the discovery of the fossils and implements in the drift. But on this point I beg to be allowed to say a word in protest.

As a geologist Sir John Lubbock may be entitled to rely mainly upon the geological evidence of a palæolithic age;[241] but as an ethnologist dealing with history and writing on the subject of tradition, his argument, however incontrovertible he may deem it, sinks to the second rank; and secondary I shall take the liberty of considering it. On the same grounds, though I think with more reason, that Sir J. Lubbock seeks to be relieved from “the embarrassing interference of tradition” (“Pre-historic Times,” p. 336), I protest, when tradition is the subject-matter of the discussion, against a geological argument being brought to take the ground from under our feet!

In the first place, I beg to urge that if Sir J. Lubbuck’s argument be well founded, Professor Rawlinson’s reconstruction of Assyrian history cannot be true. Now I assume that the one order of facts is as well established as the other.

If Professor Rawlinson takes back Assyrian history and corroborates history and tradition by the evidence of recent excavations to B.C. 2234, identifies the Erech of Scripture with the Huruk of the cuneiform tablets and the modern Urka; similarly identifies the other three cities of Nimrod; and, finally, identifies Nimrod himself as Bil-Nipru; and if, further, bronze implements are found (Rawlinson, i. 101, 123, 211), along with flint doubtless (but this was common throughout the bronze age, as Sir John himself admits), at an early period;—and bronze, though comparatively rare, yet exists among the very early Assyrian remains—there seems no good reason to suppose that the knowledge of metals, which we know (Gen. iv. 22) to have existed before the Deluge, and which the construction of the ark presupposes, was ever lost.

A stone age, exclusive of metals, common to the whole world and to all mankind, is therefore an untenable hypothesis according to the testimony of history. If it existed anywhere it must have been only partially, locally, and contemporaneously with this traditional knowledge of metals, which seems to be historically proved.[242] I may at least be permitted to believe in the accuracy of Professor Rawlinson’s conclusions, and to regard them as the verdict of history: and if the historical arguments so pronounce, why should the geological or palæontological argument override it? Is not history supreme on its own ground—and if Scripture is always found in perfect consistency with history, is it not as much as in strictness we should have a right to expect? “Tradidit mundum disputationi eorum” (Eccles. iii. 11).

Now, secondly, as it happens that bronze is only a combination of copper and tin in certain proportions, and as neither existed on the spot (in the Mesopotamian valley), it is a curious question how they could have hit upon the discovery through actual experiment. Tin, for instance, is only found in Cornwall, Banca (between Sumatra and Borneo), Spain, Saxony, and Siberia. Now, how did it enter the heads of even these wise Chaldæans to go to these distant countries in search of this metal unless they knew beforehand through tradition, that if procured along with copper it would produce the useful amalgam they sought? True, it might have been brought to them through commerce, but in that case there must have been some other race more advanced in civilisation than themselves. If the Phœnicians, much the same argument will recur. If some race in the countries where tin was procured, where is it now? If it exists it must be represented by some race at present or historically known to have been in a state of barbarism. This, however, at this stage of the argument, would be too precipitate an admission of degeneracy!

Now, in a certain modified sense, I should be quite prepared to admit a stone age. Nothing more probable than that in the dispersion certain families would have taken only what came readiest to hand. Those who made long marches, and came to countries where minerals were scarce, would have been in the way of losing the knowledge of metals altogether, except in so far as they preserved the tradition of them; and this would much depend upon how far they preserved other traditions.[243] Some instance should be given us—and as there are savages who are still using nothing but flint, there is still the chance—of some set of savages who have spontaneously hit upon the plan of fusing different metals, or even of smelting metals which were under their eye? Certainly not our supposed flint ancestors, who, as Professor Nillson and Sir J. Lubbock agree, must have got their knowledge of bronze from Asia: Sir J. Lubbock inclining to an Indo-European, Professor Nillson to a Phœnician “origin of the bronze age civilisation.” (“Pre-historic Times,” p. 49.) All this perfectly coincides with the view I have indicated, that the contrast arose through the divergence of the lines of the dispersion, leading the tribes to varied fortunes, some losing and others retaining the tradition; and those who retained it eventually communicating it to those who had lapsed. But then there are those unfortunate Bashkirs, who, Professor Nillson tells us, are still in their stone age, and who have remained Bashkirs since Herodotus described them as such 2300 years ago. As they have resisted the contact of civilisation so long, one can only watch with careful curiosity the transitionary process by which they will pass by internal development from their stone to their bronze age.[244]

I must now revert to what I at present wish to limit the discussion, viz. Sir J. Lubbock’s views on the subject of tradition.

Sir John says that history can throw no light upon the question of the stone and bronze age, “because the use of metals has in all cases preceded that of writing.” I should like to know whether Sir John is prepared to adhere to this “dictum” under all circumstances, inasmuch as, if he does, he must allow me to trace the use of metals in Assyria even beyond the date at which Professor Rawlinson seems actually to have found evidence of their use; for (pp. 80, 198) “in the ruins of Warka, the ancient Huruk or Erech” (the city of Nimrod) we find inscriptions on bricks of the date of the reign of Urukh or Orchamus, who, according to classical tradition, was the seventh in succession from Bel or Nimrod; which tradition, says Rawlinson (p. 189), “accords very curiously with the information derived from the inscriptions.” There is nothing to indicate that the bricks here discovered were the first bricks ever inscribed; on the contrary, wherever we find bricks and metals there will be a prima facie presumption as to their previous use.[245] Only upon Sir John Lubbock’s “dictum,” finding evidence of writing at this date, we must necessarily conclude that the use of metals preceded it. This would bring us well up the seven reigns, and into close contact with the time of Nimrod.

“Nor,” says Sir J. Lubbock (p. 335), “will tradition supply the place of history. At best it is untrustworthy and shortlived. Thus in 1770 the New Zealanders had no recollection of Tasman’s visit. Yet this took place in 1643, less than one hundred and thirty years before, and must have been to them an event of the greatest possible importance and interest.... I do not mean to say that tradition would never preserve for a long period the memory of any remarkable event. The above-mentioned facts (De Soto’s expedition is also referred to) prove only that it will not always do so; but it is unnecessary for us to discuss this question, as there is in Europe no tradition of the Stone Age, and when arrow-heads are found the ignorant peasantry refer them to the elves or fairies; stone axes are regarded as thunderbolts, and are used not only in Europe but also in various other parts of the world for magical purposes” (p. 336).

“Relieved” then “from the embarrassing interference of tradition, the archæologist can only follow the methods which have been so successfully pursued in geology” (p. 336).[246]

This is partly a limitation of the question to oral tradition, and partly an anticipated denial of what I shall now venture to assert, namely, that we can only look for the savages’ traditions of things known to them before they were savages, religious impressions which have not been effaced from their minds, legends connected with their race, facts which have determined their destiny. The very characteristic of the savage is that he lives only for the present; that he has little memory for the past, and no forecast for the future; that his mind is stricken with a hopeless sterility and fixedness, so that he only seems to remember things that are bred in the bone, and the tradition of which he cannot divest himself.[247]

And so the ignorant peasantry when these flints were first dug up, although they had “no tradition,” rushed instinctively upon these hatchets and considered them magical, apparently on no better grounds than that they had belonged to a former race of men whom they associated with elves and fairies. Was not this their way of saying with Cicero, “Antiquitas proxime accedit ad deos.”[248]

And so far from tradition supplying us with no clue to solve the problem of the stone age, does it not in this way suggest a very decided though an antagonistic view to that of Sir John Lubbock. The superstitious regard of the peasantry for these newly found relics—which I presume came under Sir John’s own observation when exploring the northern coast-finds—is really very curious, because it shows that their ideas and feelings in these matters were, after the lapse of at any rate a thousand years, identical with those of their ancestors. In evidence of which I adduce the following passage from Professor Nillson, having reference to the legend of the “guse arrows” or “Orvar Odd’s saga”:—

“This ancient romance shows very clearly that at the time when it was composed, neither arrows, nor other weapons of stone were in common use as weapons, but that even then the opinion was generally current that these stone weapons, which owed their existence to the dwarf race skilled in sorcery, were endowed with a magic power against witches and witchcraft which no other weapons possessed.”—Professor Nillson, “Stone Age,” p. 199.

But this suggests the further reflection, whether this stone age among certain tribes was not as much in rejection as in ignorance of metals. Professor Nillson (p. 97, 98) shows that flint was used for sacred sacrificial purposes by the Jews, Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Latins, long after they were acquainted with weapons of metal. Among these the traditional idea about flint, whatever it was, was kept in due subordination; but among tribes that had sunk into savagery it is conceivable that it may have become a superstition, and dominated.

I am not sure that we do not underrate the capacity for tradition among savages where it has once taken hold; still, if it had been a question of mere savages, at the first glance I should have been disposed to agree with Sir John Lubbock. But let us take the case of Tasman, which Sir John puts forward as a sort of crucial case, and which may be accepted as such, seeing that the New Zealanders may fairly claim to be regarded as “barbarians.”[249]

In the first place, I find the following in a note to “Cook’s Voyages” (Smith, 1846):—“Mr Polack, in his ‘Narrative of Travels and Adventures during a residence in New Zealand between the years 1831–37,’ collected all the particulars relating to Cook’s brush with the natives, 1769, on the spot.”

Next, let us see what Cook says on the subject of Tasman (“Cook’s Voyages,” i. 164)—

“But the Indians still continued near the ship, rowing round many times [hardly the most favourable conditions under which to recover a tradition], conversing with Tupia [the Otaheitan interpreter] chiefly concerning the traditions they had among them with respect to the antiquities of their country. To this subject they were led by the inquiries which Tupia had been directed to make, whether they had ever seen such a vessel as ours, or had ever heard that any such had been on their coast. These inquiries were all answered in the negative, so that tradition has preserved among them no memorial of Tasman, though by an observation made this day we find we are only fifteen miles south of Murderers’ Bay!”

Evidently the shrewd and gallant investigator himself was not satisfied with the cross-examination, for we find at p. 170—

“When we were under sail one old man, Topaa [a native], came on board to take leave of us; and as we were still desirous of making further inquiries whether any memory of Tasman had been preserved among their people, Tupia was directed to ask him whether he had ever heard that such a vessel as ours had before visited the country. To this he replied in the negative; but said that his ancestors had told him there had once come to this place a small vessel from a distant country called Ulimaroa, in which were four men, who upon coming on shore were all killed. Upon being asked where this distant land lay he pointed to the northward.”

But what does Tasman himself say?—

“On the 17th December these savages began to grow a little bolder and more familiar, insomuch that at last they ventured on board the Heemskirk, in order to trade with those in the vessel. As soon as I perceived it, being apprehensive that they might attempt to surprise that ship, I sent my shallop, with seven men, to put the people in the Heemskirk on their guard, and to direct them not to place any confidence in these people. My seven men, being without arms, were attacked by these savages, who killed three of the seven, and forced the other four to swim for their lives; which occasioned my giving that place the name of the Bay of Murderers.[250] Our ship’s company would undoubtedly have taken a severe revenge if the rough weather had not prevented them.”—Tasman’s Voyage of Discovery, Pinkerton, xi.

Now, I submit that this old man Topaa’s recollection of the tradition of an event which occurred one hundred and thirty years before his time, was much more perfect than Captain Cook’s, Sir Joseph Banks’, Dr Solander’s, and Sir J. Lubbock’s recollection of the same event from geographical records.

Emboldened by this instance of the fallibility of scientific men, I now proceed to question the truth of the two following propositions of Sir J. Lubbock, after which I shall ask to be allowed to enunciate a proposition of my own.

First, Sir J. Lubbock says: “It has been asserted over and over again that there is no race of man so degraded as to be entirely without a religion—without some idea of the Deity. So far from this being true, the very reverse is the case” (p. 467).[251]

Second, “It is a common opinion that savages are, as a general rule, only the miserable remnants of nations once more civilised; but although there are some well-established cases of national decay, there is no scientific evidence which would justify us in asserting that this is generally the case” (p. 337).

In opposition to the first proposition, I maintain that there is no race of men so degraded as to be without some vestige of religion.

And in opposition to the second, I assert that if they have a vestige of religion, and nothing else, they have still that which will convict them of degeneracy.

First, To say that a savage has no idea of the Deity, is to say merely that he is a savage; and it appears to me that this extinction of all knowledge of the Deity among a people, precisely marks the point where the barbarian lapses into the savage.

Taking the range of the authorities quoted by Sir J. Lubbock,[252] I find a great concurrence of testimony to the fact that there is some vestige of religion. One only—whose authority on any other point incidental to African travel I should regard as of the highest value—Captain Richard Burton, asserts without qualification, and in language sufficiently explicit, that “some of the tribes of the lake district of Central Africa admit neither God, nor angel, nor devil.” Others assert the same negatively—they did not come upon any signs of religion, any external observances, any trace of ceremonial worship. For instance, it is said that the Tasmanians had no word for a Creator (p. 468, Lubbock), which need not excite surprise, as it is also said of them that they were incapable of forming any abstract ideas at all (p. 355, Lubbock). Again, in many of those cases where it is more or less roundly asserted that there is no vestige of religion, we find it plainly intimated that there is a belief in the devil, e.g. Lubbock, p. 469.

“The Tonpinambas of Brazil had no religion, though if the name is applied ‘à des notions fantastiques d’êtres surnaturals et puissans on ne sauroit nier qu’ils n’eussent une croyance religieuse et même une sorte de culte exterieur.’”—Freycinet, i. 153.

Now, although the devil may, and in many instances no doubt has,[253] made a special revelation of himself to his votaries, the ordinary channel of information concerning him is through tradition, and through the tradition of the fall of man.

But I ask further of those who dispute this, If savages are found with this fear of the supernatural world, after they have lost the idea of God, how do they get it? If not from tradition, then from reflection? But savages do not reason (Lubbock, p. 465). Moreover, at p. 470, Sir J. Lubbock says, what really brings us very nearly to agreement, “How, for instance, can a people who are unable to count their own fingers, possibly raise their minds so far as to admit even the rudiments of a religion?” This is said with reference to a previous allegation, “That those who assert that even the lowest savages believe in a Deity, affirm that which is entirely contrary to the evidence” (p. 470). But there is a great concurrence of evidence that “even the lowest savages” believe in the devil. Belief in the devil involves a realisation more or less obscure of the fallen angel, of the Spirit of Evil—and this for the savage who “cannot count his fingers” is as great an intellectual effort as would be, merely considered as an intellectual effort, a belief in the Deity. On any theory of growth or development how could he (“the lowest savage”) have got the idea?

Several writers who are quoted, whilst they deny the existence of any notion of religion among a particular people, mention facts which are incompatible with that statement. I may also say, parenthetically, that to detect or elicit the sentiment of religion in others, one must have something of the sentiment in ourselves; e.g. there is the instance of Kolben (Lubbock, p. 469), “who, in spite of the assertions of the natives themselves, felt quite sure that certain dances must be of a religious character, let the Hottentots say what they will.” Now I must say there is great à priori probability in the truth of Kolben’s conviction, although he was probably led to it merely by the insight of his own mind. Let it be taken in connection with the following evidence in Washington Irving’s “Life of Columbus,” iii. 122–124:—

“The dances to which the natives seemed so immoderately addicted, and which had been at first considered by the Spaniards mere idle pastimes, were found to be often ceremonials of a serious and mystic character.” Again—“Peter Martyn observes that they performed these dances to the chant of certain metres and ballads handed down from generation to generation, in which were rehearsed the deeds of their ancestors. Some of these ballads were of a sacred character, containing their traditional notions of theology, and the superstitions and fables which comprised their religious creeds.”

Pritchard, “Researches into Phys. Hist. of Man” (i. p. 205), quoting Oldendorp, and speaking of the African negroes, says:—“At the annual harvest feast, which nearly all the nations of Guinea solemnise, thank-offerings are brought to the Deity. These festivals are days of rejoicing, which the negroes pass with feasting and dancing.” Vide also “Hist. of Indian Tribes of North America, 120 portraits from the Ind. Gal. in Depart. of War at Washington, by T. M’Kenney (late Ind. Dep. Wash.) and J. Hall of Cincinnati” (Philadelphia, 1837).

“Dancing is among the most prominent of the aboriginal ceremonies; there is no tribe in which it is not practised. The Indians have their war dance and their peace dance, their dance of mourning for the dead, their begging dance, their pipe dance, their green-corn dance, and their Wabana (an offering to the devil). Each of these is distinguished by some peculiarity ... though to a stranger they appear much alike, except the last.... It is a ceremony and not a recreation, and is conducted with a seriousness belonging to an important public duty.”

At p. 437 (Lubbock) it is said, “Admiral Fitzroy never witnessed or heard of any act of a decidedly religious character among the Fuegians.” Still, as Sir John admits, “some of the natives suppose that there is a great black man in the woods who knows everything, and cannot be escaped.” If this is not the devil, it looks very like him. Again, p. 469, Mr Mathews says, speaking of the Fuegians, “he sometimes heard a great howling or lamentation about sunrise in the morning; and upon asking Jemmy Button what occasioned the outcry, he could obtain no satisfactory answer; the boy only saying, ‘people very sad, cry very much.’” Upon which Sir John remarks, “This appears so natural and sufficient an explanation, that why the outcry should be ‘supposed to be devotional’ I must confess myself unable to see” (469).

Now, if this was not their traditional notion and mode of prayer, degraded according to the measure of their degeneracy, the degeneracy is at least proved in another way, for, being still reasonable beings, they had, according to the account, congregated together to send up a lamentation, which, if it was not prayer, could be likened only to the moonlight howling of wolves. This mode of prayer resembles what Father Loyer and the missionary Oldendorp (Pritchard, i. 197) tells us of the negroes. Father Loyer “declares that they have a belief in a universally powerful Being, and to him they address prayers. Every morning after they rise they go to the river side to wash, and throwing a handful of water on their head, or pouring sand with it to express their humility, they join their hands and then open them, whisper softly the word ‘exsuvais.’” Oldendorp says (p. 202): “The negroes profess their dependence on the Deity, ... they pray at the rising and setting of the sun,[254] on eating and drinking, and when they go to war.” Compare also Helps’ “Spanish Conquest in America,” i. 285:—

“The worship of the Peruvians was not the mere worship of the sun alone as of the most beautiful and powerful thing which they beheld; but they had also a worship of a far more elevated and refined nature, addressed to Pachacamac, the soul of the universe, whom they hardly dared to name; and when they were obliged to name this Being, they did so inclining the head and the whole body, now lifting up the eyes to heaven, now lowering them to the ground, and giving kisses in the air. To Pachacamac they made no temple and offered no sacrifices, but they adored him in their hearts.”[255]

At p. 468 Sir John somewhat too roundly asserts that “Dr Hooker tells us that the Lepchas of Northern India have no religion.”

Turning to Dr Hooker’s “Himalayan Journal,” I find (i. 135), “The Lepchas profess no religion, though acknowledging the existence of good and bad spirits.... Both Lepchas and Limboos had, before the introduction of Lama Boodhism from Tibet, many features in common with the natives of Arracan, especially in their creed, sacrifices, faith in omens, worship of many spirits, absence of idols, and of the doctrine of metempsychosis” (p. 140). We have already seen (supra, p. 224) that they had a very distinct tradition of the Deluge; indeed there is much in the account of them which reminds us of the primitive monotheism.

So, too, Sir John asserts, p. 469, “Once more Dr Hooker states that the Khasias, an Indian tribe, had no religion. Col. Yule, on the contrary, says that they have, but he admits that breaking hens’ eggs is the principal part of their religious practice.”

It is true that Dr Hooker says (ii. 276), “The Khasias are superstitious, but have no religion;” he adds, however, “like the Lepchas, they believe in a Supreme Being, and in deities of the grove, cave, and stream.” It seems, however, that the only outward manifestation of their religion is in “breaking hens’ eggs”! What can be more ludicrous! yet here, too, would seem to be a vestige of primitive tradition. We know (vide Wilkinson, “Ancient Egyptians,” second series) how primitive truth was concealed under material symbols. Gainet (i. 127) also says, “Even upon the hypothesis that these fragments of the Egyptian cosmogony were lost, one of the hieroglyphics which this people has left us would suffice to convince us of their belief in a Creator. It is the image of the god Kneph, whom they represent with an egg in his mouth; this egg being the natural image of the world taking its birth from this divinity.” Again, p. 115, “In the mysteries of Bacchus[256] the dogma of the Creation was proposed under the emblem of that celebrated egg, of which the poets have so often spoken, which contained the germ of all things.” “The egg,” says Plutarch, “is consecrated to the sacred ceremonies of Bacchus, as a representation of the Author of nature who produces and comprehends all things in himself.” There is a passage in Athenagoras to the same effect.

Superstitions were also connected with cocks and hens in Khasia. Whether these again were connected with the symbolical representation of the egg can only be conjectured. It may possibly be that the representation had a common origin with the cock of Apollo and the cock of Æsculapius, if, indeed, these were not also originally derived from the same primal conception. This would be only to renew the old classical dispute as to whether the hen proceeded from the egg, or the egg from the hen, which I take to be only the form in which the great question of the First Cause was debated by the Gentile world after their ideas of a Creator had become indistinct, and with reference to this ancient symbol. However that may be, I wish to point out that this ceremonial use of the cock may be traced in Europe, Asia, and Africa: e.g. Asia—“The Lepchas scatter eggs and pebbles over the graves of their friends.... Among the Limboos, the priests of a higher order than the Lepcha, Bijoras officiate at marriages, when a cock is put into the bride-groom’s hands, and a hen into those of the bride. The Phedangbo then cuts off the birds’ heads, when the blood is caught in a plantain leaf, and runs into pools, from which omens are drawn” (Dr Hooker, “Himalayan Journal,” i. 238). Africa—vide Pritchard, “Phys. Hist. of Man,” i. 203, 204, 208: “Even the dead are not buried without sacrifices. A white hen is slain by the priest before the corpse comes to the grave, and the bier whereon the body lies is sprinkled with its blood. This custom was introduced by the nation of Kagraut.” Europe—If any one will turn to the Illustrated London News of Nov. 14, 1868, he will find an account and illustration of a local ceremony peculiar to the village of Gorbio in the Maritime Alps, in which the priest, on a particular day in the year, is solemnly presented with four cocks hung upon a halberd—together with an apple by the bachelors and spinsters of the village—from which it would seem to have had originally some connection, as we have seen above, with a marriage ceremony. Wilson (“Archæologia”) remarks that the custom of “Easter, or, in the north, Paste eggs (Pasch), was very prevalent in the north.”[257]

It strikes me that it would be difficult to assign a Christian origin for the custom. It must then have been a custom which the Church diverted or sanctioned in giving it an innocent or Christian application; in which case, in so far as it is pagan, it may possibly be traced to a common origin with the practices in Khasia among the Lepchas.

It would extend the inquiry too far to follow Sir J. Lubbock through all the cases adduced by him. I will conclude, therefore, with his account of the Andaman islander—who, with the Australians, Esquimaux, and Fuegians, dispute the point of being considered the lowest of mankind. It is said of the Andamans, “that they have no idea of a Supreme Being, no religion, or any belief in a future state of existence” (p. 346). It is, however, casually mentioned that, “after death, the corpse is buried in a sitting posture.” Now this mode of burial is common to them with Esquimaux (p. 409), the Australians (p. 353), the Maories (p. 369), and the natives of the Feegee Islands (p. 361), among whom we seem to get a clue to this strange mode of burial; “the fact is, they (the Feegee islanders) not only believe in a future state, but are persuaded that as they leave this life, so will they rise again.” Sir J. Lubbock, in his “Introduction to Prof. Nillson” (xxxiii.), says that this was the common mode of burial in the Stone Age; and Prescott (“Hist. of Mexico,” ii. 485) says, “Who can doubt the existence of an affinity, or at least an intercourse, between tribes, who had the same strange habit of burying the dead in a sitting position, as was practised to some extent by most if not all of the aborigines from Canada to Patagonia?”[258] But not only may it be presumed that they had an affinity and intercourse, but a common religious idea. It may be doubted then whether even the naked Andaman is so entirely destitute of all religious impressions as he is supposed to be.

I have already urged that if any vestiges of religion remain they must be considered as evidence of tradition and proof of degeneracy. I think the following reflection will tend to clench this argument.

Although it is obscure and disputed to what extent certain savages do retain glimmerings of religion, it is certain and admitted that some savages have religion and a religious ceremonial. Now, as Sir J. Lubbock says, “How, for instance, can a people who are unable to count upon their fingers possibly raise their minds so far as to admit even the rudiments of religion.” It is clear, then, that the lowest grade of mankind did not invent it, how then did the higher grade get it, “assuming always the unity of the human race”?

Finally, if man commenced with the knowledge of the devil, how did they proceed on to the idea of God? “The first idea of a God is almost always as an evil spirit” (Lubbock, p. 468). How then did they advance to the knowledge of the God of purity and love, or even of “the Great Spirit” of the Indians?[259]

Let us at least know whether it is supposed that this was the order of knowledge ordained by Divine Providence, or whether it is believed that man in this manner developed the idea of God out of his own consciousness, his primitive, or perhaps innate, idea being, the conception of evil and of the evil spirit.[260] Sir John says (p. 487), “There are no just grounds for expecting man to be ever endued with a sixth sense.” But why not? If by his own mental vigour he can out of the primitive idea of evil generate the idea of good—what may we not expect?

Yet, if any one will compare the evidence which Sir John has collected, he will come, I think, to the conclusion, that the invention and adaptability of the savage is very slight indeed. He will find (p. 350) that the inhabitants of Botany Bay had fish-hooks, but no nets; those of Western Australia, nets but not hooks; that those who had the throwing-stick and boomerang, were ignorant both of slings and bows and arrows; that those who had retained the knowledge of the bow did not pass on to the use of the bola; that the northern tribes visited by Kane were skilful in the capture of birds with nets, yet were entirely ignorant of fishing (452); that the nearest approach to the South American bola is among the Esquimaux (450); that the throwing-stick is common only to the widely distant Esquimaux, Australians, and some of the Brazilian tribes (id.); that the “sumpitan” or blowpipe of the Malays occurs only in the valley of the Amazons. Does not this point to a traditional knowledge of these things? Nevertheless, this mass of evidence seems to have produced the very opposite conviction with Sir J. Lubbock.

“On the whole, then, from a review of all these and other similar facts which might have been mentioned, it seems to me most probable that many of the simpler weapons, implements, &c., have been invented independently by various savage tribes, although there are no doubt also cases in which they have been borrowed by one tribe from another” (p. 451). Instances in which they have been borrowed from each other are not infrequent, but then neither are they inconsistent with the theory of tradition; but the instances of invention are limited to one. (See for instance p. 394.) At p. 394 we find—“Although they (the Esquimaux) had no knowledge of pottery, Captain Cook saw at Unalashka vessels “of flat stone, with sides of clay, not unlike a standing pye.” We here obtain an idea of the manner in which the knowledge of pottery may have been developed. After using clay to raise the sides of their stone vessels, it would naturally occur to them, that the same substance would serve for the bottom also, and thus the use of stone might be replaced by a more convenient material.”

Recollecting how roast pig came to be discovered, it cannot be said to be impossible that pottery may thus have been invented; but in this instance it might equally have been the rough substitute for the pottery of their recollection. Besides, the proof is wanting that they ever did pass on to the invention of pottery. It may, for anything we know to the contrary, be in this inchoate state amongst them still.

Now, until further evidence is forthcoming, I shall take the liberty of maintaining that savages seem to show no inventive faculty or power of recovery in themselves.[261] Whatever they possess seems to be limited to what they have retained of primitive civilisation, and what they have retained of civilisation seems exactly in proportion to what they have retained of primitive religion.

In supporting this proposition I shall hardly have occasion to go beyond the four corners of Sir J. Lubbock’s “Pre-historic Times.”

It is indeed a moot point with the travellers and ethnologists who have given their attention to the subject, which race of savages is “the lowest in the scale of civilisation.” In this competitive examination a concurrence of opinion seems to decide in favour of the Fuegian, who at any rate is miserable enough, living, when better food fails him, on raw and putrid flesh, eked out with cannibalism; and whose clothing (in Central Fuego) consists “in a scrap of otter skin, about as large as a pocket handkerchief, laced across the breast with strings, and shifted according to the wind” (Darwin, apud Lubbock). Their religion, as we have just seen, consists in a vague apprehension of the black man who lives up in the woods—and their prayer is something slightly elevated above the howl of the wolf. Their civilisation, therefore, like their religion, may be considered to be at a “minimum.” The Australians have been called “the miserablest people in the world” (p. 445). They are said to have “no religion or any kind of prayer, but most of them believe in evil spirits, and all have a dread of witchcraft” (p. 353). Here again we see their civilisation degraded pari-passu with their religious belief—so, too, with the Andaman (vide supra) and the Tasmanian (p. 355).

When, however, we come to the inhabitants of the Feegee Islands, not greatly different from the people surrounding them, their characteristics, manners, and customs being partly Nigrito and partly Polynesian, although in the matter of cannibalism they are simply horrible, and eat their kind, not on any high notion that they are appropriating the spirit and glory of him whom they devour (vide Lubbock, 371), but from a repulsive preference; yet they have a distinct notion of religion, with temples, and ceremonies, and we are told they look down upon the Samoans because they had no religion. Well, we find the Feegeeans in a state of material civilisation exactly corresponding—they live in well built houses, 20 to 30 feet long and 15 feet high, in fortified towns, with earthen ramparts, surmounted by a reed fence, &c. “Their temples were pyramidal in form, and were often erected on terraced mounds like those of Central America” (p. 357). They had efficient weapons, agricultural implements, well-constructed canoes, and (p. 372) pottery.[262]

When, however, we come to the Tahitians we find a very high state of civilisation. Of their religion it is said—“That though they worshipped numerous deities,” and sometimes sacrificed to them, “yet they were not idolators.” “Captain Cook found their religion, like that of most other countries, involved in mystery and perplexed with apparent inconsistencies.” They had a priesthood (p. 387). “They believed in the immortality of the soul, and in two situations of different degrees of happiness somewhat analogous to our heaven and hell, though not regarded as places of reward and punishment; but the one intended ‘for the chief and superior classes,’ ‘the other for the people of inferior rank.’” This is substantially Captain Cook’s account of the Tahitians, and allowing it to be exact, although I have a suspicion that a missionary would have put it somewhat differently,[263] it shows a comparative state of religion very much elevated above anything we have yet seen. They had besides curious customs, such as that of eating apart. “They ate alone,” they said, “because it was right, but why it was right they were unable to explain”—a custom which is common to them with the Bachapins (p. 384), (who, by the way, are also among the races classified as “of no religion”). Although the inhabitants of Tahiti present to us a much higher standard of religion and morality than we have yet met with, also “they, on the whole, may be taken as representing the highest stage in civilisation to which man has in any country raised himself, before the discovery or introduction of metallic implements” (Lubbock, p. 372).

It is impossible within these limits to investigate every case. I have taken the more salient cases, as instanced by Sir J. Lubbock, and contrasted them. I now wish to present the contrast in somewhat livelier form, and I do not see that I can do better than to present to the reader two scenes precisely similar, as to substance, yet under different conditions, in different parts of the world. The first shall be a description of “a whale ashore,” by Sir J. Lubbock, among the Australians; and the second, a description of the same scene by Catlin (“Last Rambles, &c., among the Indians of Vancouver’s Island”).

I must preface that Sir J. Lubbock says that the Australians “have no religion nor any idea of prayer, but most of them believe in evil spirits, and all have great dread of witchcraft” (p. 353).

The following is the scene to which I refer:—

“They are not, so far as I am aware, able to kill whales for themselves, but when one is washed on shore it is a real godsend to them. Fires are immediately lit to give notice of the joyful event.... For days they remain by the carcase, rubbed from head to foot with the stinking blubber, gorged to repletion with putrid meat, out of temper from indigestion, and therefore engaged in constant frays, suffering from a continuous disorder from high feeding, and altogether a disgusting spectacle.”—Capt. Grey, apud Lubbock, p. 347.

This is one picture; now for the other. It may be said that it is only the different idiosyncrasies of the writers transferred to their pages—that one is the narrative of Jean qui pleure, &c., or of the médicin tant pis, &c.; but I do not think so.

Mr Catlin premises by telling us that the scene occurred when on a visit with the chief of the Klah-o-gnats, of whom he says that he knew at first sight by his actions that he was “a chief, and by the expression of his face that he was a good man,” and whom his companion described as “a very fine old fellow; that man is a gentleman; I’d trust myself anywhere with that man.” Of their religion, the chief himself told Catlin that on that western coast of Vancouver’s Island “they all believed in a Great Spirit, who created them and all things, and that they all have times and places when and where they pray to that Spirit, that he may not be angry with them.”

One day came the startling announcement that a whale was ashore.

“The sight was imposing when we came near to it, but not until we came around it on the shore side had I any idea of the scene I was to witness. Some hundreds, if not thousands of Indians, of all ages and sexes, and in all colours, were gathered around it, and others constantly arriving. Some were lying, others standing and sitting in groups; some were asleep and others eating and drinking, and others were singing and dancing.” The monster was secured by twenty or thirty harpoons, to which ropes were attached. “These were watched, and at every lift of a wave moving the monster nearer the shore, they were tightened on the harpoons, and at low tide the carcass is left on dry land, a great distance from the water.... The dissection of this monstrous creature, and its distribution amongst the thousands who would yet be a day or two in getting together, the interpreter informed us, would not be commenced until all the claimants arrived.”

Several immense baskets had been brought in which to carry away the blubber. The possession of these baskets made all the difference in the scene which followed. To some this will be a sufficient explanation. How, then, did the others come to know nothing of baskets? Truly there are people who cannot be made to see the effect of “character upon clover.” I rely, however, upon the broad lines of the contrast. The absence in this latter scene of the disgusting sights above so graphically described—their quick use of the harpoons—and the general order and equity of the distribution. “A whale ashore,” Mr Catlin says (“Last Rambles,” p. 105), “is surely a gift from heaven for these poor people, and they receive it and use it as such.”

Whilst quoting from Catlin, I must be allowed to refer my readers to the very striking proof (p. 248) he incidentally affords of the theory of degeneracy in his comparative illustration of the heads of the alto and bas Peruvian, and of the Crow and modern Flathead:—

“The Crow of the Rocky Mountains and the alto-Peruvian of the Andes, being the two great original fountains of American man, to whom all the tribes point as their origin, and on whom, of course, all the tribes have looked as the beau ideals of the Indian race. The Flathead (letter c), aiming at the Crow skull (like the copyists of most fashions), has carried the copy into a caricature; and the Bas-Peruvian (d), aiming at the elevated frontal of the mountain regions, has squeezed his up with circular bandages to equally monstrous proportions.” Also vide Prescott’s “Mexico,” ii. 493, 6th ed., 1850. “Anatomists also have discerned in crania disinterred from the mounds, and in those of the inhabitants of the high plains of the Cordilleras an obvious difference from those of the more barbarous tribes. This is seen especially in the ampler forehead, intimating a decided intellectual superiority.... Such is the conclusion of Dr Warren, whose excellent collection has afforded him ample means for study and comparison.”

Before quitting this subject I must revive a question which I think Sir John Lubbock will admit, if he turns to the evidence dispersed in his pages, is at present involved in some obscurity. It is simply this, “How did the savage come by the knowledge of fire?” Sir John Lubbock suggests (p. 473) “that in making flint instruments sparks would be produced; in polishing them it would not fail to be observed that they became hot, and in this way it is easy to see how the two methods of obtaining fire may have originated.... In obtaining fire two totally different methods are followed; some savages, as for instance the Fuegians, using percussion, while others, as the South-Sea Islanders, rub one piece of wood against another.... Opinions are divided whether we have any trustworthy record of a people without the means of obtaining fire” (p. 453). To this point I shall recur. I will now give Sir John’s quotation from Mr Dove: “Although fire was well known to them (the Tasmanians), some tribes at least appear to have been ignorant whence it was originally obtained, or how, if extinguished, it could be relighted. In all their wanderings,” says Mr Dove, “they were particularly careful to bear in their hands the materials for kindling a fire. Their memory supplies them with no instances of a period in which they were obliged to draw upon their inventive powers for the means of resuscitating an element so essential to their health and comfort as flame. How it came originally into their possession is unknown. Whether it may be viewed as the gift of nature or the product of art and sagacity, they cannot recollect a period when it was a desideratum” (“Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science,” i. 250, apud Lubbock, p. 355).[264]

Now, if it is a tenable opinion—and at least these are the statements of Father Gobien, and of Alvaro de Saavedra, and of Commodore Wilkes, to whose testimony I shall revert, that there are some tribes who are unacquainted with fire—that there are some who have and some who have not the art of rekindling fire, then arises the question whether those who have it not have lost the art, or whether those who now possess it invented it. If they did not invent it, they must have held it as a tradition, until, reaching a lower point of degradation still, they lost it. Mr Dove’s testimony to this effect is very strong. What an emblem that never-extinguished torch of primitive tradition! We find the same tradition among the American Indians. “The Chippeways and Natchez tribes are said to have an institution for keeping up a perpetual fire, certain persons being set aside and devoted to this occupation” (Lubbock, p. 421). Freycinet certainly declares that Peré Gobien’s statement, that the inhabitants of the Ladrone were totally unacquainted with fire until Magellan burnt one of their villages, to be “entirely without foundation.” “The language,” he says, “of the inhabitants contains words for fire, burning, charcoal, oven, grilling, boiling, &c.” Again, as against Commodore Wilkes’ assertion as an eye-witness, that he saw no appearance of fire in the island of Fakaafo, and that the natives were very much alarmed when they saw sparks struck from flint and steel, we are told that “Hale gives a list of Faakaafo words in which we find asi for fire” (Lubbock, p. 454). However, Sir John does not attribute to this argument the same force that Mr Tylor does, as asi is evidently the same word as the New Zealand ahi, which denotes light and heat as well as fire.[265] If, then, we have positive evidence that they have not the thing (Wilkes), and also evidence that they have the word (vide note), does not this prove that it is a tradition which they have lost? and is there not the presumption that they have lost it through degeneracy?