The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

We shall thus be brought to the consideration of the great problem of our day, viz. the origin of mankind, or rather the origin of the human arts; for the question of man’s origin, whether he was himself created or developed from some prior form, whether since the period of his first appearance he has by variation separated into distinct races, or whether the several races of mankind were separately created, are questions which, however closely allied, do not of necessity form part of our present subject. It has to deal solely with the origin of the arts, and more particularly with the art of war, which in the infancy of society belonged to a condition of life so constant and universal as to embrace within its sphere all other arts, or at least to be so intimately connected with them as to require the same treatment; the tool and the weapon being, as I shall presently show, often identical in the hands of the primaeval savage.

These prefatory remarks are necessary because it will be seen that the general observations I am about to offer on the subject are fully as applicable to the whole range of the industrial arts of mankind as to the art of war. My illustrations, however, will be taken exclusively from weapons of war.

Is not the world at the present time, and has it not always been, the scene of a continuous progress? Have not the arts grown up from an obscure origin, and is not this growth continuing to the present day?

This is the question which lies at the very threshold of our subject, and we must endeavour to treat it by the light of evidence alone, apart from all considerations of a traditional or poetic character.

I do not propose here to enter into a disquisition upon the functions of the human mind. But it must I think be admitted, that if man possessed from the first the same nature that belongs to him at the present time, he must at the commencement of his career in this world have been destitute of all creative power. The mind has never been endowed with any creative faculty. The only powers we possess are those of digesting, adapting, and applying, by the intellectual faculties, the experience acquired through the medium of the senses. We come into the world helpless and speechless, possessing only in common with the brutes such instincts as are necessary for the bare sustenance of life under the most facile conditions; all that follows afterwards is dependent purely on experience.

Whether we afterwards become barbarous or civilized, whether we follow a hunting, nomadic, or agricultural life, whether we embrace this religion or that, or attain proficiency in any of the arts, all this is dependent purely on the accident of our birth, which places us in a position to build upon the experience of our ancestors, adding to it the experience acquired by ourselves. For although it is doubtless true that the breeds of mankind, like the breeds of our domestic animals, by continual cultivation during many generations, have improved, and that by this means races have been produced capable of being educated to a higher degree than those which have remained uncivilized, this does not alter the fact that it is by experience alone, conscious or unconscious, self-imposed or compulsory, and by a process of slow and laborious induction, that we arrive at the degree of perfection to which, according to our opportunities and our relative endowments, we ultimately attain.

The amount, therefore, which any one individual or any one generation is capable of adding to the civilization of their age must be immeasurably small, in comparison with what they derive from it.

I could not perhaps appeal to an audience more capable of appreciating the truth of these remarks than to the members of an Institution, the object of which is to examine into the improvements and so-called inventions which are from time to time effected in the machinery and implements of war.

How often does any proposal or improvement come before this Institution which after investigating its antecedents is found to possess originality of design? Is it not a fact that even the most ingenious and successful inventions turn out on inquiry to be mere adaptations of contrivances already existing, or that they are produced by applying to one branch of industry the principles or the contrivances which have been evolved in another. I think that no one can have constantly attended the lectures of this or any similar Institution, without becoming impressed, above all things, with the want of originality observable amongst men, and with the great calls which, even in this age of cultivated intellects and abundant materials to work upon, all inventors are obliged to make upon those who have preceded them.

Since, then, we ourselves are so entirely creatures of education, and derive so little from our own unaided resources, it follows that the first created man, if similarly constituted, having no antecedents from which to derive instruction, could not, without external aid, have made any material or rapid advance towards the initiation of the arts.