Still more Nemesis
The new Nemesis is really that which I have just put far from me—namely, that ‘modern savages represent everywhere the Eocene stratum of religion.’ They probably represent an early stage in religion, just as, teste. Mr. Max Müller, they represent an early stage in language ‘In savage languages we see what we can no longer expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language, with all its childish pranks.’ [{120c}]
Now, if the tongues spoken by modern savages represent the ‘childhood’ and ‘childish pranks’ of language, why should the beliefs of modern savages not represent the childhood and childish pranks of religion? I am not here averring that they do so, nor even that Mr. Max Müller is right in his remark on language. The Australian blacks have been men as long as the Prussian nobility. Their language has had time to outgrow ‘childish pranks,’ but apparently it has not made use of its opportunities, according to our critic. Does he know why?
One need not reply to the charge that anthropologists, if they are meant, regard modern savages ‘as just evolved from the earth, or the sky,’ or from monkeys (i. 197). ‘Savages have a far-stretching unknown history behind them.’ ‘The past of savages, I say, must have been a long past.’ [{121}] So, once more, the Nemesis of De Brosses fails to touch me—and, of course, to touch more learned anthropologists.
There is yet another Nemesis—the postulate that Aryans and Semites, or rather their ancestors, must have passed through the savage state. Dr. Tylor writes:—‘So far as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and degradation secondary. Culture must be gained before it can be lost.’ Now a person who has not gained what Dr. Tylor calls ‘culture’ (not in Mr. Arnold’s sense) is a man without tools, instruments, or clothes. He is certainly, so far, like a savage; is very much lower in ‘culture’ than any race with which we are acquainted. As a matter of hypothesis, anyone may say that man was born ‘with everything handsome about him.’ He has then to account for the savage elements in Greek myth and rite.