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priests? evidently because they had been at one time in general use, and a feeling of respect made the priest reluctant to introduce a new substance into religious ceremonies.

There are, moreover, other considerations; for instance, the gradual improvement in the relation between the sexes, and the development of correct ideas on the subject of relationship, seem to me strongly to point to the same conclusion.

In the publications of the Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science' is an interesting paper, by Mr. Haliburton, on The Unity of the Human Race, proved by the universality of certain superstitions connected with sneezing.' 'Once 'establish,' he says, 'that a large number of arbitrary customs —such as could not have naturally suggested themselves to ' all men at all times-are universally observed, and we arrive at the conclusion that they are primitive customs which have 'been inherited from a common source, and, if inherited, that they owe their origin to an era anterior to the dispersion of 'the human race.' To justify such a conclusion, the custom must be demonstrably arbitrary. The belief that two and two make four, the decimal system of numeration, and similar coincidences of course prove nothing; but I very much doubt the existence of any universal, or even general, custom of a clearly arbitrary character. The fact is, that many things appear to us arbitrary and strange because we live in a condition so different from that in which they originated. Many things seem natural to a savage which to us appear absurd and unaccountable.

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Mr. Haliburton brings forward, as his strongest case, the habit of saying God bless you!' or some equivalent expression, when a person sneezes. He shows that this custom, which, I admit, appears to us at first sight both odd and arbitrary, is ancient and widely extended. It is mentioned by Homer, Aristotle, Apuleius, Pliny, and the Jewish rabbis, and has been observed among the Negroes and Kaffirs; in Koordistan, in Florida, in Otaheite, in New Zealand, and the Tonga Islands.

It is not arbitrary, however, and it does not, therefore, come under his rule. A belief in invisible beings is very general among savages; and while they think it unnecessary to account.

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UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

for blessings, they attribute any misfortune to the ill-will of these mysterious beings. Many savages regard disease as a case of possession. In cases of illness they do not suppose that the organs are themselves affected, but that they are being devoured by a god; hence their medicine-men do not try to cure the disease, but to extract the demon. Some tribes have a distinct deity for every ailment. The Australians do not believe in natural death. When a man dies, they take it for granted that he has been destroyed by witchcraft, and the only doubt is, who is the culprit? Now, a people in this state of mind—and we know that almost every race of men is passing, or has passed, through this stage of development-seeing a man sneeze, would naturally, and almost inevitably, suppose 'that he was attacked and shaken by some invisible being; equally natural is the impulse to appeal for aid to some other invisible being more powerful than the first.

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Mr.Haliburton admits that a sneeze is 'an omen of impending ' evil;' but it is more-it is evidence, which to the savage mind would seem conclusive, that the sneezer was possessed by some evil-disposed spirit; evidently, therefore, this case, on which Mr. Haliburton so much relies, is by no means an 'arbitrary custom,' and does not, therefore, fulfil the conditions which he himself laid down. He has incidentally brought forward some other instances, most of which labour under the disadvantage of proving too much. Thus, he instances the existence of a festival in honour of the dead, at or near the beginning of November.' Such a feast is very general; and, as there are many more races holding such a festival than there are months in the year, it is evident that, in several cases, they must be held together. But Mr. Haliburton goes on to say: The Spaniards were very naturally surprised at finding that, while 'they were celebrating a solemn mass for All Souls on November 22, the heathen Peruvians were also holding their annual commemoration of the dead.' This curious coincidence would, however, not only prove the existence of such a festival, as he says, 'before the dispersion' (which Mr. Haliburton evidently looks on as a definite event rather than as a gradual process), but also that the ancestors of the Peruvians were at that epoch sufficiently advanced to form a calendar, and

MENTAL DIFFERENCES IN DIFFERENT RACES. 479

that their descendants were able to keep it unchanged down to the present time. This, however, we know was not the case. Again, Mr. Haliburton says: The belief in Scotland and ' equatorial Africa is found to be almost precisely identical re'specting there being ghosts, even of the living, who are ex'ceedingly troublesome and pugnacious, and can be sometimes 'killed by a silver bullet.' Here we certainly have what seems at first sight to be an arbitrary belief; but if it proves that there was a belief in ghosts of the living before the dispersion, it also proves that silver bullets were then in use. This illustration is, I think, a very interesting one; because it shows that similar ideas in distant countries owe their origin, not to 'an era before the dispersion of the human race,' but to the fundamental similarity of the human mind. While I do not believe that similar customs in different nations are inherited 'from a common source,' or are necessarily primitive, I certainly do see in them an argument for the unity of the human race, which, however (be it remarked), is not necessarily the same thing as the descent from a single pair.

On the other hand, I have attempted to show that ideas, which might at first sight appear arbitrary and unaccountable, arise naturally in very distinct nations as they arrive at a similar stage of progress; and it is necessary, therefore, to be extremely cautious in using such customs or ideas as implying any special connection between different races of men.

PART II.1

Ar the Dundee meeting of the British Association I had the honour of reading a paper On the Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of Man,' in answer to certain opinions and arguments brought forward by the late Archbishop of Dublin. The views therein advocated met with little opposition at the time. The then Presidents of the Ethnological and Anthropological Societies both expressed their concurrence

The substance of this was read before the British Association during their meeting at Exeter in 1869.

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THE WEAPONS OF MONKEYS.

in the conclusions at which I arrived; and the Memoir was printed in extenso by the Association. It has, however, subsequently been attacked at some length by the Duke of Argyll; 1 and as the Duke has in some cases strangely misunderstood me, and in others (I am sure unintentionally) misrepresented my views-as, moreover, the subject is one of great interest and importance I am anxious to make some remarks in reply to his Grace's criticisms. The Duke has divided his work into four chapters:-I. Introduction; II. The Origin of Man; III. and IV. His Primitive Condition.

I did not in my first Memoir, nor do I now, propose to discuss the subjects dealt with in the first half of the Duke's 'Speculations.' I will only observe that in attacking Professor Huxley for proposing to unite the Bimana and Quadrumana in one Order, Primates,' the Duke uses a dangerous argument; for if, on account of his great mental superiority over the Quadrumana, Man forms an Order or even Class by himself, it will be impossible any longer to regard all men as belonging to one species or even genus. The Duke is in error when he supposes that mental powers and instincts' afford tests of easy application in other parts of the animal kingdom. On the contrary, genera with the most different mental powers and instincts are placed, not only in the same order, but even in the same family. Thus our most learned hymenopterologist (Mr Frederick Smith) classes the hive-bee, the humble-bee, and the parasitic apathus in the same subfamily of Apida. It seems to me, therefore, illogical to separate man zoologically from the other primates on the ground of his mental superiority, and yet to maintain the specific unity of the human race, notwithstanding the mental differences between different races of men.

I do not, however, propose to discuss the origin of man, and pass on therefore at once to the Duke's third chapter; and here I congratulate myself at the outset that the result of my paper has been to satisfy him that Whately's argument,2 though strong at some points, is at others open to assault, and that, as a whole, the subject now requires to be differently 'handled, and regarded from a different point of view.' 'I do

1 Good Words: March, April, May, and June, 1868. Also since republished in a separate form. 2 Ibid., 1868, p. 156.

THE WEAPONS OF MONKEYS.

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'not, therefore,' he adds in a subsequent page, agree with 'the late Archbishop of Dublin, that we are entitled to assume it as a fact that, as regards the mechanical arts, no savage race has ever raised itself.' And again: The aid which 'man had from his Creator may possibly have been nothing 'more than the aid of a body and of a mind, so marvellously endowed that thought was an instinct and contrivance a 'necessity.'

I feel, however, less satisfaction on this account than would otherwise have been the case, because it seems to me that, though the Duke acknowledges the Archbishop's argument to be untenable, he practically reproduces it with but a slight alteration and somewhat protected by obscurity.. What Whately called 'instruction' the Duke terms 'instinct;' and he considers that man had instincts which afforded all that was necessary as a starting-ground. He admits, however, that monkeys use stones to break nuts; he might have added that they throw sticks and stones at intruders. But he says, 'Between these rudiments of intellectual perception and the 'next step (that of adapting and fashioning an instrument for 'a particular purpose) there is a gulf in which lies the whole 'immeasurable distance between man and brutes.' I cannot agree with the Duke in this opinion; nor indeed does he agree with himself, for he adds, in the very same page, that- The 'wielding of a stick is, in all probability, an act equally of ' primitive intuition, and from this to throwing of a stick and 'the use of javelins is an easy and natural transition.'

He continues as follows:- Simple as these acts are, they involve both physical and mental powers which are capable of all the developments which we see in the most advanced in'dustrial arts. These acts involve the instinctive idea of the 'constancy of natural causes and the capacity of thought, 'which gives men the conviction that what has happened under 'given conditions will, under the same conditions, always occur again. On these, he says, as well as on other grounds, I have never attached much importance to Whately's argument.' These are indeed important admissions, and amount to a virtual abandonment of Whately's position.

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Good Words, June, 1868, p. 386.

ΙΙ

2 P. 392.