The Evolution of Culture, and Other Essays

by Augustus Henry Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

I have shown in the second place, that all the weapons of the Australians which I have described, are traceable by variation to the same common form, or to forms equally as primitive as those of the stone age of Europe; that it is perfectly consistent with the phenomena observed, that these variations may have resulted, or at least may have in a great measure been promoted by accidental causes, such as the grain of the wood influencing the shape of the weapon; that they were not invented or designed for especial purposes, but that their application to such purposes may have resulted from a selection of the implements already in hand; and that by this process, the natives of Australia, during countless ages, may have crept on, almost unconsciously, from the condition of brutes, to the condition of incipient culture in which they are now found.

I have compared these weapons of the Australians with others of the same form in various parts of the world, showing grounds for believing that whenever we shall be able to collect a sufficient variety of specimens to represent the continuous progression of each locality, the modus operandi will be found to have been everywhere the same.

Lastly, I have alluded cursorily to the analogy which exists between the development of the arts and the development of species. It may be better to postpone any comprehensive generalization on this subject until a much larger mass of evidence has been collected and arranged. Sir Charles Lyell has devoted a chapter in his work on the Antiquity of Man to a comparison of the development of languages and the development of species. ‘We may compare,’ he says, 'the persistency of languages, or the tendency of each generation to adopt without change the vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its parents. The inventive power which coins new words or modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and conditions as often as they arise, answers to the variety-making power in the animal creation.’ He also compares the selection of words and their incorporation into the language of a people, with the selection of species, resulting in both cases in the survival of the fittest (4th ed., 1873, p. 503).

Whilst, however, we dwell upon the analogy which exists between the phenomena of the organic world and the phenomena of human culture, we must not omit to notice the points of difference. The force of inheritance may resemble in its effects the principle of conservatism in the arts and culture of mankind, but they are totally dissimilar causes.

The variety-making power may resemble the inventive power of man; nothing, however, can be more dissimilar, except as regards results.

When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike.

It might be premature to speculate upon the course of reasoning which this class of study is likely to introduce; this much, however, we may, I think, safely predict as the result of our investigation, that we shall meet with no encouragement to deify secondary causes.

Another subject to which we must necessarily be led by these investigations, although, as I before said, it does not fall actually within the scope of my paper, is the question of the unity or plurality of the human race.

The ethnologist and the anthropologist who has not studied the prehistoric archaeology of his own country compares the present condition of savages with that of the Europeans with whom they are brought in contact. He notices the vast disparity of intellect between them. He finds the savage incapable of education and of civilization, and evidently destined to fall away before the white man whenever the races meet, and he jumps at the conclusion that races so different in mental and physical characteristics, must have had a distinct origin, and be the offspring of separate creations. But the archaeologist traces back the arts and institutions of his own people and country until he finds that they once existed in a condition as low or lower than that of existing savages, having the same arts, and using precisely the same implements and weapons; and he arrives at the conclusion that the difference observable between existing races is one of divergence, and not of origin; that owing to causes worthy of being carefully studied and investigated, one race has improved, while another has progressed slowly or remained stationary.