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(4.) Archæology.-The body of facts ac cumulated in the pages of Lubbock and Lyell bearing on the antiquity and ancient condition of man forms a hitherto innominate science (which we must glance at), comprising the history, so far as we know it, of what are called "prehistoric times. We have evidence of man as a tool-using animal, and, what is more remarkable, as an artist, inhabiting the earth, along with genera of animals now extinct, most probably more than 20,000 years ago. He then possessed the same characteristics that he now exhibits; was distinctively man, with remarkable powers of contrivance, and aesthetic tastes, though with less knowledge, and consequently with ruder habits. It would be out of place to enter into the details of this evidence. The fact that Sir Charles Lyell has yielded to the pressure of it, after a long resistance, is the best proof of its force.

have been maintaining. That most ancient | We may glance, however, at the facts in one literature is in many respects wonderfully district disclosed by cave-excavation. Humodern,* and no one can study it without man remains have been found along with feeling that the years that separate us from those of the elephant and rhinoceros in the the poets are few compared with those that south of France; and there is proof that the separated the poets from barbarism, concurrence in the same district of such remains with those of the reindeer at least is not accidental,-that the two were inhabitants of the country contemporaneously. The bones of the reindeer were broken open for the marrow, and many of them bear the marks of knives. At Les Eyzies a vertebra of this animal was found that had been pierced by a stone weapon when it was fresh. The stone instruments found are suited for a variety of uses; for aid in eating, in killing, and in manufactures; the "finds" comprising scrapers, cores, awls, lance-heads, cutters, hammers, and mortarstones. "In the archaic bone-caves," says Sir John Lubbock, "many very fair pictures have been found, scratched on bone or stone with a sharp point, probably of a flint implement. In some cases there is even an attempt at shading. . . . In the lower station at Laugerie several of these drawings have been found; one represents a large herbivorous animal, but unfortunately without the head or forelegs; a second also is apparently intended for some species of ox; a third represents a smaller animal, with vertical horns; another is evidently intended for a horse; and a fifth is very interesting, because, from the shape of the antlers and head, it was evidently intended for a reindeer. Several similar drawings have been obtained by M. de Lastic in a cave at Bruniquel. But perhaps the most remarkable example of the cave-man's art is a poniard, cut out of a reindeer's horn. The artist has ingeniously adapted the position of the animal to the necessities of the case. The horns are thrown back on the neck, the forelegs are doubled up under the belly, and the hind-legs are stretched out along the blade. arva Vedas, in the Proceedings of the Royal Asiatic Unfortunately the poniard seems to have Society. Mr. Muir says of it, "It is distinguished been thrown away before the carving was by a vein of naïve observation not unmingled with quite finished, but several of the details insatire." It might have been written yesterday indicate that the animal intended to be repreLondon by a quiet cynic of the Thackeray type, sented was a reindeer.' The cave-men, who, looking to the balance and movement of the piece, would scarcely have said more in it of the though they were such good artists, were aims and pursuits of the men of to-day than is here ignorant of metals, of the art of polishing recorded of those which engaged men of our race their stone implements, of pottery and agri4000 years ago. It is instructive to reflect that this culture. They had no domestic animalsis a part of that Vedic literature which the ortho- not even the dog. Similar evidence demonstrates a like antiquity and condition of men in different parts of the world.

* As an illustration take Rig-Veda ix. 112, which has been closely translated as follows?—

"How multifarious are the views which different men
inspire!

How various are the ends which men of various crafts
The leech a patient seeks; the smith looks out for some

desire!

thing cracked;

The priest seeks devotees from whom he may his fee

extract.

With feathers, metals, and the like, and sticks decayed
The workman manufactures wares to win the rich man's

and old,

gold.

A poet I, my sire a leech, and corn my mother grinds:
On gain intent, we each pursue our trades of different

kinds.

The draught-horse seeks an easy car; of gallants girls are
fond;
The merry dearly love a joke; and frogs desire a pond."

There is a prose rendering of this lyric in Mr. John
Muir's Miscellaneous Hymns from the Rig and Ath-

dox Hindoo believes existed in the mind of God from all eternity!

+ It illustrates the nature of the struggle between the old and new views of the age of man that there are some who regard the stone implements, which often are the only witnesses of man's existence long ago, as being "inventions of the devil " intended to mislead the human intellect. Fossils were thus long regarded!

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We have now transcended the period of

*Prehistoric Times, by Sir John Lubbock, Bart. (1865), pp. 254-5,

historical records. In reaching a time indefinitely more remote, we have come on a condition of man indefinitely lower. Yet we find ourselves still far from the fountainhead-assuming for the moment that there has been from the first a progress; we find man still distinctively human, a tool-user, an artist, a thinker, an ingenious craftsman. Rude as the instruments were with which the cave-man worked, they yet required much thought to devise them, and great dextertiy of hand to frame and to employ them. What man then wanted most was a knowledge of workable materials, and of methods of working-a knowledge which no one, we imagine, will maintain came to him otherwise than gradually, through the exercise from time to time of his wits, in new circumstances and on novel occasions; through happy accidents, or as the result of some of the infinitely varied suggestions springing up in the mind, often, as we call it, casually. The cave-dweller was a hunter, and probably ate his prey raw. He broke the bones of animals to get at the marrow. But he was a social creature, and had time for, and cultivated, the arts of amusement. What more he may have been we shall never ascertain from the record that discloses these facts. What were his relations to his females, to his children, to his fellows; under what rules the groups in a district associated in the chase and divided its produce; whether there was any division of labour, any political system, this record, from the nature of it, can never inform us. It here occurs, that in referring to an epoch so remote as 20,000 years ago, we may appear to be assuming, without evidence, that the earth itself then existed. The popular chronology declares it did not then exist as emphatically as it declares that distinct nations could not appear in different parts of the world earlier than 2224 B.C., the date assigned to the dispersion of mankind. Perhaps any remarks on this point are by this time superfluous; one or two may, however, be submitted with confidence for consideration. It is familiar that the defenders of this chronology which is as purely a human invention as is the bicycle velocipede-have been obliged to stretch the days of creation, as given in Genesis, into periods of time of indefinite duration-millions of years, if necessary. It is also familiar that they are being obliged to regard the Mosaic account as comprising a history of the white races of men only-the others having nothing, on that view, to do with Adam.* Our first re

* Primeval Man, 1. c. p. 104.

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mark is that these concessions prove that the evidence of the antiquity of man has been felt to be irresistible, considering the weight of the prepossessions it has been able to overcome. Our next remark is that astronomy sets the existence of the world more than 20,000 years ago beyond doubt, by showing that there are stars now visible to us whose light takes at least 50,000 years to cross the space that separates us from them. Lastly, we observe that in the latest assault made on geological time by Sir William Thomson, the conclusion arrived at, on physical considerations, is, that geologists must contrive to confine "all geological history showing continuity of life," within "some such period of past time as ONE HUNDRED MILLION YEARS!" * The student of human history, regarding man as the latest and highest of organized beings, is disposed to be content with such a slice off the 100,000,000 years as may reasonably be thought to belong to him, and feels that he is nowise greedy when he claims a little more than 20,000 years out of the 100,000,000 as necessary for an explanation of the progress of mankind.

II. THE PRIMITIVE STATE.-Within the historical period the progress of man has been effected from point to point by his powers exerted to meet his occasions. All we know of man in prehistoric times shows that he was then less advanced than at the dawn of history. Was the gulf between the cave-dwellers and the ancient nations crossed through such exertions as have improved the condition of men within the historical period; and was the stage of advancement the cavedwellers were in reached by similar exertions put forth by men advancing from a still lower condition? The forces that have effected such a mighty progress in the sciences and arts, and in the domestic and political grouping of men, within the period of history, will, if we assume them to have been at work from the first, afford an ample explanation of a progress from the rudest beginnings. They will do so even on the assumption that they were at first less, and their action less intense. On the other hand, the question above put cannot be answered in the negative unless we assume a commencement of the action of these forces, and that the progress we see could never have been carried on by them had it not been set agoing by supernatural means on a basis of communicated ideas. Such an assumption would be unscientific, and the inquiry is

*On Geological Time, by Sir William Thomson, LL.D., Trans. Geolog. Soc. of Glasgow, vol. iii. Part I.p. 1.

scientific. That the ancient nations had a long history that is unrecorded is certain. The stage of advancement at which records can begin is necessarily high, and on the theory of development the greater part of a nation's life is probably passed before reaching it. That the unrecorded part was, like the recorded, a progress, can generally be shown; that it was effected by other forces than those we still see at work there is no evidence.

The question we have above put, and, after a fashion, answered, it is usual to put somewhat differently, as when it is asked whether men were originally savage or civilized. If men were civilized to begin, existing savage races have fallen from the primitive state; if men were savage to begin, the ancient nations advanced in prehistoric times to the civilized state in which they appear. Our proposition is that men were originally savage and not civilized.

er;

gens on consanguinity, real or assumed, between the families composing it; the tribe, according to the common theory, is composed of cognate gentes. The State begins where blood-ties terminate. In the largest tribe a man is simply a tribesman: he is a citizen in the smallest group of tribes politically united under a common government.

This definition fixes attention on three distinct sets of phenomena (1.) The grouping, domestic and political, of men in societies; (2.) The arts and sciences; and (3.) The means of intercommunication and common action. The means of communication is of course language. Religion is a most powerful social bond, facilitating common action by establishing a community of sentiments and aspirations. We propose rapidly to glance at the facts which show that in each and all of these, there has been development.

(1.) Grouping.-Before we can say whether there has been any progress in grouping, it is necessary to see whether we can find a test by which one mode of grouping can be known to be higher and better than another. Such a test we think exists.

Let us here define what we mean by civilization. We have hitherto used the word indefinitely, as it is employed in common parlance, but a precise definition of it is necessary to prevent confusion in the discussions we are entering upon. The word civilization, as its No one will question but that a tribe of etymology indicates, denotes the condition men, ignorant of marriage and blood-relacives, of men, that is, united in societies which tionship, and without permanent attachments are also civitates-States. Of the many of males to females, and of parents to offspring, ideas the word now brings together, this is is as low a group as is conceivable, a simple clearly the primary one, so that strictly we herd, as we should call it, when presented as should not be justified in at all speaking of an aggregate of creatures other than human. the stage of civilization of any people ignorant The rudest permanent arrangement of the of the relations implied in citizenship. The sexes, and the most imperfect system of kincombination of men in civil societies is pos- ship-say, for instance, a system of kinship sible only on certain conditions, namely, those through mothers only,-appearing in a group,, which must be complied with before large would compel us to recognise it as more numbers of men can live permanently togeth- advanced than that first considered. Perand the first of these is ORDER, and the manent arrangements of a sort to permit second is what we may call a COMMISSARIAT. kinship through fathers as well as mothers The order of society turns wholly on the we should recognise as entitling a group to grouping of its members, domestic and politi- rank higher than the second considered. cal while the efficiency of the commissariat Looking at it another way: any regulated depends of course on the stage at which the relation of the sexes is an advance on proarts of subsistence have arrived, and the miscuity; the Tibetan polyandry, in which established facilities for the distribution and the co-husbands are brothers, is an advance interchange of productions. Necessary for on the Nair, in which the co-husbands are both of these main conditions being fullfilled strangers in blood; the Levirate is an im are certain faculties, the means of inter-provement on- —it is at any rate an advance changing ideas and a capacity for common action, which implies a community of ideas and sympathies, as well as interests. Civilization begins with the State, and no earlier; and those who would discriminate between stages ruder than that, must be understood as speaking of preparatory stages leading up to the State from various distances and at varying rates. The idea of the State is elementary, like that of the family. The family rests on the closest blood-relationship; the

from-Tibetan polyandry; monandry, with the agnatic family, repudiating such an obligation as the Levirate implies, is an improvement on the Levirate, and, lastly, we may see that modern marriage-laws, gradually conceding equality of rights to women, are improving a system which still preserves too many features of the husband's absolute supremacy as head of the agnatic family. A similar series of stages from lower to higher might be pointed out in the evolution

of rights of property and laws of succession-rights and laws intimately connected with domestic grouping. As regards political grouping, it is not so easy to effect a classification. This is not to be wondered at, considering that no respectable arrangements have as yet anywhere been established for the reasonable government of large communities. Progress in political organization is in its infancy. Yet there are stages in the past history of even political grouping which, as manifestly connected with and determined by the domestic grouping, might pretty safely be classified. We shall not here, however, affect to offer a classification, as there does not exist such a body of settled opinion as could confidently be appealed to in justification of a schenre. Enough has been said to show how a classification of stages of progress in grouping generally may be effected, and that suffices for our purpose at this point. Now, we have numerous examples of all the stages of domestic grouping we have enumerated occurring among the most diverse races of men. We have numerous instances of the family as a group, with the mother at its head-the marriage system polyandrous, and the husbands living not with the wife but in their mothers' houses. We have numerous instances, again, of a polyandrous arrangement, by which a woman becomes the wife of all the brothers of a family, passing into permanent residence with them in their house. We have cases transitional between these two, and also between the last mentioned and the agnatic family, and can show how the one grew into the other. Sometimes we can exhibit the transition in progress in adjoining districts of the same country. In some cases, again, it can be shown that they actually succeeded one another as stages of evolution in the progress of particular nations. Take the case of kinship, for example (which depends on the form of the family), and the history of the Greeks as illustrating the growth of systems of kinships. The Homeric poems exhibit the ties of kinship through both father and mother as being recognised, and furnish hints that at an earlier time only the ties through the mother were acknowledged. These hints, when combined with the ancient traditions of the people, read in the light of facts elsewhere disclosed, prove that at an earlier time there was kinship through mothers only. In the post- -Homeric times we reach a stage at which there was kinship through fathers only, that is, when agnation was established. Orestes was esteemed no relation of his mother Clytemnestra. Later still, agnation broke down, and there was again kinship acknowledged through mothers as well as N-19

VOL. L.

fathers. These stages of evolution are not only well vouched, but the causes can be assigned which determined them-causes connected mainly with changes in the marriage-laws and the laws of inheritance, of which changes, again, the causes can generally be assigned. Such an evolution as is in this case presented can be shown to have taken place in numerous unconnected cases: we find tribes of men now existing occupying one or other of the stages precedent or transitional to that in which the Homeric Greeks appear; again, we find nations more ahcient than the Greeks, either exhibting traces of having, in the prehistoric times, come through such precedent stages, or occupying one or other of them, or one or other of the stages later than, and advancing from, that the Homeric Greeks occupied; lastly, we cannot find a nation that offers no traces of such stages. These facts being sufficiently attested, we are obliged to conclude that there was a law of progress in the evolution of forms of domestic grouping, which may be enunciated as a law of human progress; and the only explanation that can be offered of such a progress is, that men have advanced from the savage state.

Not only can every conceivable stage of domestic grouping be discovered in the history of the ancient nations, but the moral sentiments of men can be seen improving with the domestic institutions. It is a favourite idea with some that man's progress has been material merely; that as a moral being he has not made progress. It may be a question whether he is readier now than formerly to observe the standards of propriety established in the society of which he is a member. We incline to think he has improved even in this respect. Public opinion, which applies the severest sanctions of right conduct, is more searching and powerful now, and, other things being the same, the disposition to obey the dictates of conscience may be assumed stronger the sharper the penalties of disobedience are. Of the improvement of the standards of propriety there is no doubt.

Look to the rules related to domestic grouping which constitute the standard of purity-the laws regulating the relations of the sexes generally. Sister marriages were common in ancient Egypt, where acts of prostitution in the temples were prescribed to the women. In ancient Persia there seems to have been no law of incest at all. Brothers and sisters married, and even mothers and sons. Unions of mothers and sons were required for the production of persons eligible to certain religious offices. Marriages were allowed both in Athens and

Sparta between brothers and sisters of the half-blood. They were permissible also among the Jews. Amnon and Tamar were marriageable" speak to the king, and he will not withhold me from thee."* Abraham married his sister, his father's daughter; Nahor married his niece, his brother's daughter. Amram, the father of Moses, married his father's sister. Such marriages we declare incestuous, and to be capital crimes. Anciently they were all right-agreeable to the moral standard; it is the standard of propriety that has changed with the nature of domestic grouping.

Where, again, is the ancient nation that was monogamous? The Jews certainly were not. They recognised concubinage as well as polygyny. Jacob had two sisters to wife at one time-a thing subsequently forbidden, polygyny being recognised in the prohibition, A Jew might marry his brother's widow, although he had wives of his own; indeed, at one time she became his wife without any form of marriage; † afterwards he was enabled to get quit of her; arrangements that go to show that polyandry had anciently been a Jewish institution. Well, if not among the Jews, where else shall we look for monogamy? No Semitic people had it. Shall we find it among the Vedic races? The Rig-Veda contains traces of both polygyny and concubinage. The term sapatri occurs, for example, which means having the same husband. The Hymns, x. 145, 159, contain charms by which a wife tries to get rid of her rivals. For the kings, concubinage became an institution.§ In the Sătăpăthǎ Brāhmănă, ix. 4. 1. 6, we have the order of sacrifice regulated on the principle of men being entitled to have many wives:-" He gives pre-eminence to the man in consequence of his vigour. He sacrifices to the man as if to one, and to the woman as if to many. Wherefore also one man has many wives." And so on. Here, again, as in the Jewish case, we can see that polyandry preceded polygyny as the marriage system. We find in the Rig-Veda that the Asvin brothers had one wife between them-Surya. It is familiar that in the great epic, the Mahâbhârata, the heroes the five Pandava Princes—had one wife between them, Draupadi. The authorities hold that there is proof that the Brahmans who compiled the epic from old materials, found this tradition too strong for them, otherwise they would

* 2 Samuel xiii. 13, and see verse 16. Lewis's Hebrew Republic (1725), vol. iii. p. 268. Ruth iv. 6; Deut. xxv. 5–10.

§ Rig-Veda, xx. 1. 12, and 1. 72; and see, for traces of polygyny, 1. 112. 19, v. 42. 12.

have suppressed it; and that, since the mar riage was repugnant on the whole to Vedic, and altogether to post-Vedic ideas, the story belongs to the pre-Vedic history of the people.

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The father of Draupadi is represented by the compilers as shocked at the proposal of the Princes to marry his daughter. "You who know the law," he is made to say," must not commit an unlawful act which is contrary to usage and the Vedas." The reply is, " The law, O king, is subtle; we do not know its way. We follow the path which has been trodden by our ancestors in succession." One of the Princes then pleads precedent: "In an old tradition it is recorded that Jatila, of the family of Gotama, that most excellent of moral women, dwelt with seven saints; and that Vârkshi, the daughter of a Muni, cohabited with ten brothers, all of them called Prachetas, whose souls had been purified by penance. The tradition being too stubborn for the Brahmans they thus tried as much as they could to palliate it. It is a tradition of that stage of the family group which prevails now in Thibet, and no one could study Manu and doubt that such a stage had anciently existed among the Hindoos. That it was pre-Vedic may be considered certain. At any rate, monogamy was not the Vedic idea of marriage, and we cannot doubt but there had been a progress in the pre-Vedic as well as in the postVedic times. In the latter, caste has arisen, -the laws of inheritance and marriage shifting from ruder to more civilized types. In the discussion between the Pandavas and their father-in-law we have simply a case of collision between moral standards belonging to two stages of the progress.

The Homeric Greeks were after a fashion monogamous; but they also had only just left polyandry in the rear. Their marriage system was clearly only a few generations old at the Troica, for none of them had a pedigree with more than one or two known fathers. It consisted moreover with their having any number of captive wives. Let us observe also of the Greeks, that while they were developing a proper law of incest and marriage they were gathering a literature round the practice of nadegaoría. The relation between a man and his divas they constituted by one of the ancient forms of marriage. It is disagreeable to recall such facts; but they are necessary for our argu ment. To clearly understand what moral standards have been derelinquished by men within the historical period, a wide survey

* On the Mahâbhârata. Reprinted from the Westminster Review for April 1868. + Grote's Greece, vol. ii. p. 500.

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