Comparative Literature and Folklore also show among peoples of a low culture to-day childish modes of viewing nature, and childish ways of expressing the relations of man to nature, such as clearly survive from a remote ancestry; noteworthy among these are the beliefs in witches and fairies, and multitudes of popular and poetic expressions in the most civilized nations.
So, too, Comparative Ethnography, the basis of Ethnology, shows in contemporary barbarians and savages a childish love of playthings and games, of which we have many survivals.
All these facts, which were at first unobserved or observed as matters of no significance, have been brought into connection with a fact in biology acknowledged alike by all important schools; by Agassiz on one hand and by Darwin on the other—namely, as stated by Agassiz, that "the young states of each species and group resemble older forms of the same group," or, as stated by Darwin, that "in two or more groups of animals, however much they may at first differ from each other in structure and habits, if they pass through closely similar embryonic stages, we may feel almost assured that they have descended from the same parent form, and are therefore closely related."(194)
(194) For the stone forms given to early bronze axes, etc., see
Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandanavia, London, 1868, Lubbock's
Introduction, p. 31; and for plates, see Lubbock's Prehistoric Man,
chap. ii; also Cartailhac, Les Ages Prehistoriques de l'Espagne et du
Portugal, p. 227. Also Keller, Lake Dwellings; also Troyon, Habitations
Lacustres; also Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Great Britain, p. 191; also
Lubbock, p. 6; also Lyell, Antiquity of Man,chap. ii. For the cranogs,
etc., in the north of Europe, see Munro, Ancient Scottish Lake
Dwellings, Edinburgh, 1882. For mounds and greater stone constructions
in the extreme south of Europe, see Cartailhac's work on Spain and
Portugal above cited, part iii, chap. iii. For the source of Mr.
Southall's contention, see Brugsch, Egypt of the Pharoahs. For the two
sides of the question whether in the lower grades of savagery there is
really any recognition of a superior power, or anything which can
be called, in any accepted sense, religion, compare Quatrefages with
Lubbock, in works already cited. For a striking but rather ad captandum
effort to show that there is a moral and religious sense in the very
lowest of Australian tribes, see one of the discourses of Archbishop
Vaughn on Science and Religion, Baltimore, 1879. For one out of
multitiudes of striking and instructive resemblances in ancient
stone implements and those now in use among sundry savage tribes,
see comparison between old Scandanavian arrowheads and those recently
brought from Tierra del Fuego, in Nilsson, as above, especially in Plate
V. For a brief and admirable statement of the arguments on both sides,
see Sir J. Lubbock's Dundee paper, given in the appendix to the American
edition of his Origin of Civilization, etc. For the general argument
referred to between Whately and the Duke of Argyll on one side, and
Lubbock on the other, see Lubbock's Dundee paper as above cited; Tylor,
Early History of Mankind, especially p. 193; and the Duke of Argyll,
Primeval Man, part iv. For difficulties of savages in arithmetic, see
Lubbock, as above, pp. 459 et seq. For a very temperate and judicial
view of the whole question, see Tylor as above, chaps. vii and xiii. For
a brief summary of the scientific position regarding the stagnation
and deterioration of races, resulting in the statement that such
deterioration "in no way contradicts the theory that civilization itself
is developed from low to high stages," see Tylor, Anthropology, chap. i.
For striking examples of the testimony of language to upward progress,
see Tylor, chap. xii.
CHAPTER X. THE "FALL OF MAN" AND HISTORY.
The history of art, especially as shown by architecture, in the noblest monuments of the most enlightened nations of antiquity; gives abundant proofs of the upward tendency of man from the rudest and simplest beginnings. Many columns of early Egyptian temples or tombs are but bundles of Nile reeds slightly conventionalized in stone; the temples of Greece, including not only the earliest forms, but the Parthenon itself, while in parts showing an evolution out of Egyptian and Assyrian architecture, exhibit frequent reminiscences and even imitations of earlier constructions in wood; the medieval cathedrals, while evolved out of Roman and Byzantine structures, constantly show unmistakable survivals of prehistoric construction. (195)
(195) As to evolution in architecture, and especially of Greek forms
and ornaments out of Egyptian and Assyrian, with survivals in stone
architecture of forms obtained in Egypt when reeds were used, and in
Greece when wood construction prevailed, see Fergusson's Handbook of
Architecture, vol. i, pp. 100, 228, 233, and elsewhere; also Otfried
Muller, Ancient Art and its Remains, English translation, London,
1852, pp. 219, passim. For a very brief but thorough statement, see A.
Magnard's paper in the Proceedings of the American Oriental Society,
October, 1889, entitled Reminiscences of Egypt in Doric Architecture.
On the general subject, see Hommel, Babylonien, ch. i, and Meyer,
Alterthum, i, S 199.
So, too, general history has come in, illustrating the unknown from the known: the development of man in the prehistoric period from his development within historic times. Nothing is more evident from history than the fact that weaker bodies of men driven out by stronger do not necessarily relapse into barbarism, but frequently rise, even under the most unfavourable circumstances, to a civilization equal or superior to that from which they have been banished. Out of very many examples showing this law of upward development, a few may be taken as typical. The Slavs, who sank so low under the pressure of stronger races that they gave the modern world a new word to express the most hopeless servitude, have developed powerful civilizations peculiar to themselves; the barbarian tribes who ages ago took refuge amid the sand-banks and morasses of Holland, have developed one of the world's leading centres of civilization; the wretched peasants who about the fifth century took refuge from invading hordes among the lagoons and mud banks of Venetia, developed a power in art, arms, and politics which is among the wonders of human history; the Puritans, driven from the civilization of Great Britain to the unfavourable climate, soil, and circumstances of early New England,—the Huguenots, driven from France, a country admirably fitted for the highest growth of civilization, to various countries far less fitted for such growth,—the Irish peasantry, driven in vast numbers from their own island to other parts of the world on the whole less fitted to them—all are proofs that, as a rule, bodies of men once enlightened, when driven to unfavourable climates and brought under the most depressing circumstances, not only retain what enlightenment they have, but go on increasing it. Besides these, we have such cases as those of criminals banished to various penal colonies, from whose descendants has been developed a better morality; and of pirates, like those of the Bounty, whose descendants, in a remote Pacific island, became sober, steady citizens. Thousands of examples show the prevalence of this same rule—that men in masses do not forget the main gains of their civilization, and that, in spite of deteriorations, their tendency is upward.
Another class of historic facts also testifies in the most striking manner to this same upward tendency: the decline and destruction of various civilizations brilliant but hopelessly vitiated. These catastrophes are seen more and more to be but steps in, this development. The crumbling away of the great ancient civilizations based upon despotism, whether the despotism of monarch, priest, or mob—the decline and fall of Roman civilization, for example, which, in his most remarkable generalization, Guizot has shown to have been necessary to the development of the richer civilization of modern Europe; the terrible struggle and loss of the Crusades, which once appeared to be a mere catastrophe, but are now seen to have brought in, with the downfall of feudalism, the beginnings of the centralizing, civilizing monarchical period; the French Revolution, once thought a mere outburst of diabolic passion, but now seen to be an unduly delayed transition from the monarchical to the constitutional epoch: all show that even widespread deterioration and decline—often, indeed, the greatest political and moral catastrophes—so far from leading to a fall of mankind, tend in the long run to raise humanity to higher planes.