By long experience of the course of human society, the principle of development in culture has become so ingrained in our philosophy that ethnologists, of whatever school, hardly doubt but that, whether by progress or degradation, savagery and civilization are connected as lower and higher stages of one formation. As such, then, two principal theories claim to account for their relation. As to the first hypothesis, which takes savage life as in some sort representing an early human state whence higher states were, in time, developed, it has to be noticed that advocates of this progression-theory are apt to look back toward yet lower original conditions of mankind. It has been truly remarked that the modern naturalist’s doctrine of progressive development has encouraged a train of thought singularly accordant with the Epicurean theory of man’s early existence on earth, in a condition not far removed from that of the lower animals. On such a view, savage life itself would be a far advanced condition. If the advance of culture be regarded as taking place along one general line, then existing savagery stands directly intermediate between animal and civilized life; if along different lines, then savagery and civilization may be considered as at least indirectly connected through their common origin. The method and evidence here employed are not, however, suitable for the discussion of this remoter part of the problem of civilization. Nor is it necessary to enquire how, under this or any other theory, the savage state first came to be on earth. It is enough that, by some means or other, it has actually come into existence; and so far as it may serve as a guide in inferring an early condition of the human race at large, so far the argument takes the very practicable shape of a discussion turning rather on actual than imaginary states of society. The second hypothesis, which regards higher culture as original, and the savage condition as produced from it by a course of degeneration, at once cuts the hard knot of the origin of culture. It takes for granted a supernatural interference, as where Archbishop Whately simply refers to miraculous revelation that condition above the level of barbarism which he considers to have been man’s original state.[[9]] It may be incidentally remarked, however, that the doctrine of original civilization bestowed on man by divine intervention, by no means necessarily involves the view that this original civilization was at a high level. Its advocates are free to choose their starting-point of culture above, at, or below the savage condition, as may on the evidence seem to them most reasonable.
The two theories which thus account for the relation of savage to cultured life may be contrasted according to their main character, as the progression-theory and the degradation-theory. Yet of course the progression-theory recognizes degradation, and the degradation-theory recognizes progression, as powerful influences in the course of culture. Under proper limitations the principles of both theories are conformable to historical knowledge, which shows us, on the one hand, that the state of the higher nations was reached by progression from a lower state, and, on the other hand, that culture gained by progression may be lost by degradation. If in this enquiry we should be obliged to end in the dark, at any rate we need not begin there. History, taken as our guide in explaining the different stages of civilization, offers a theory based on actual experience. This is a development-theory, in which both advance and relapse have their acknowledged places. But so far as history is to be our criterion, progression is primary and degradation secondary; culture must be gained before it can be lost. Moreover, in striking a balance between the effects of forward and backward movement in civilization, it must be borne in mind how powerfully the diffusion of culture acts in preserving the results of progress from the attacks of degeneration. A progressive movement in culture spreads, and becomes independent of the fate of its originators. What is produced in some limited district is diffused over a wider and wider area, where the process of effectual ‘stamping out’ becomes more and more difficult. Thus it is even possible for the habits and inventions of races long extinct to remain as the common property of surviving nations; and the destructive actions which make such havoc with the civilizations of particular districts fail to destroy the civilization of the world.
The enquiry as to the relation of savagery to barbarism and semi-civilization lies almost entirely in præ-historic or extra-historic regions. This is of course an unfavourable condition, and must be frankly accepted. Direct history hardly tells anything of the changes of savage culture, except where in contact with and under the dominant influence of foreign civilization, a state of things which is little to our present purpose. Periodical examinations of low races otherwise left isolated to work out their own destinies, would be interesting evidence to the student of civilization if they could be made; but unfortunately they cannot. The lower races, wanting documentary memorials, loose in preserving tradition, and ever ready to clothe myth in its shape, can seldom be trusted in their stories of long-past ages. History is oral or written record which can be satisfactorily traced into contact with the events it describes; and perhaps no account of the course of culture in its lower stages can satisfy this stringent criterion. Traditions may be urged in support either of the progression-theory or of the degradation-theory. These traditions may be partly true, and must be partly untrue; but whatever truth or untruth they may contain, there is such difficulty in separating man’s recollection of what was from his speculation as to what might have been, that ethnology seems not likely to gain much by attempts to judge of early stages of civilization on a traditional basis. The problem is one which has occupied the philosophic mind even in savage and barbaric life, and has been solved by speculations asserted as facts, and by traditions which are, in great measure, mere realized theories. The Chinese can show, with all due gravity, the records of their ancient dynasties and tell us how in old times their ancestors dwelt in caves, clothed themselves with leaves, and ate raw flesh, till, under such and such rulers, they were taught to build huts, prepare skins for garments, and make fire.[[10]] Lucretius can describe to us, in his famous lines, the large-boned, hardy, lawless, primæval race of man, living the roving life of the wild beasts which they overcame with stones and heavy clubs, devouring berries and acorns, ignorant as yet of fire, and agriculture, and the use of skins for clothing. From this state the Epicurean poet traces up the development of culture, beginning outside but ending inside the range of human memory.[[11]] To the same class belong those legends which, starting from an ancient savage state, describe its elevation by divine civilizers: this, which may be called the supernatural progression-theory, is exemplified in the familiar culture-traditions of Peru and Italy.
But other minds, following a different ideal track from the present to the past, have seen in a far different shape the early stages of human life. Those men whose eyes are always turned to look back on the wisdom of the ancients, those who by a common confusion of thought ascribe to men of old the wisdom of old men, those who hold fast to some once-honoured scheme of life which new schemes are superseding before their eyes, are apt to carry back their thought of present degeneration into far-gone ages, till they reach a period of primæval glory. The Parsi looks back to the happy rule of King Yima, when men and cattle were immortal, when water and trees never dried up and food was inexhaustible, when there was no cold nor heat, no envy nor old age.[[12]] The Buddhist looks back to the age of glorious soaring beings who had no sin, no sex, no want of food, till the unhappy hour when, tasting a delicious scum that formed upon the surface of the earth, they fell into evil, and in time became degraded to eat rice, to bear children, to build houses, to divide property, and to establish caste. In after ages, record preserves details of the continuing course of degeneration. It was King Chetiya who told the first lie, and the citizens who heard of it, not knowing what a lie was, asked if it were white, black or blue. Men’s lives grew shorter and shorter, and it was King Maha Sâgara who, after a brief reign of 252,000 years, made the dismal discovery of the first grey hair.[[13]]
Admitting the imperfection of the historical record as regards the lowest stages of culture, we must bear in mind that it tells both ways. Niebuhr, attacking the progressionists of the 18th century, remarks that they have overlooked the fact ‘that no single example can be brought forward of an actually savage people having independently become civilized.’[[14]] Whately appropriated this remark, which indeed forms the kernel of his well-known Lecture on the Origin of Civilisation: ‘Facts are stubborn things,’ he says, ‘and that no authenticated instance can be produced of savages that ever did emerge, unaided, from that state is no theory, but a statement, hitherto never disproved, of a matter of fact.’ He uses this as an argument in support of his general conclusion, that man could not have risen independently from a savage to a civilized state, and that savages are degenerate descendants of civilized men.[[15]] But he omits to ask the counter-question, whether we find one recorded instance of a civilized people falling independently into a savage state? Any such record, direct and well vouched, would be of high interest to ethnologists, though, of course, it would not contradict the development-theory, for proving loss is not disproving previous gain. But where is such a record to be found? The defect of historical evidence as to the transition between savagery and higher culture is a two-sided fact, only half taken into Archbishop Whately’s one-sided argument. Fortunately the defect is by no means fatal. Though history may not account directly for the existence and explain the position of savages, it at least gives evidence which bears closely on the matter. Moreover, we are in various ways enabled to study the lower course of culture on evidence which cannot have been tampered with to support a theory. Old traditional lore, however untrustworthy as direct record of events, contains most faithful incidental descriptions of manners and customs; archæology displays old structures and buried relics of the remote past; philology brings out the undesigned history in language, which generation after generation have handed down without a thought of its having such significance; the ethnological survey of the races of the world tells much; the ethnographical comparison of their condition tells more.
Arrest and decline in civilization are to be recognised as among the more frequent and powerful operations of national life. That knowledge, arts, and institutions should decay in certain districts, that peoples once progressive should lag behind and be passed by advancing neighbours, that sometimes even societies of men should recede into rudeness and misery—all these are phenomena with which modern history is familiar. In judging of the relation of the lower to the higher stages of civilization, it is essential to gain some idea how far it may have been affected by such degeneration. What kind of evidence can direct observation and history give as to the degradation of men from a civilized condition towards that of savagery? In our great cities, the so-called ‘dangerous classes’ are sunk in hideous misery and depravity. If we have to strike a balance between the Papuans of New Caledonia and the communities of European beggars and thieves, we may sadly acknowledge that we have in our midst something worse than savagery. But it is not savagery; it is broken-down civilization. Negatively, the inmates of a Whitechapel casual ward and of a Hottentot kraal agree in their want of the knowledge and virtue of the higher culture. But positively, their mental and moral characteristics are utterly different. Thus, the savage life is essentially devoted to gaining subsistence from nature, which is just what the proletarian life is not. Their relations to civilized life—the one of independence, the other of dependence—are absolutely opposite. To my mind the popular phrases about ‘city savages’ and ‘street Arabs’ seem like comparing a ruined house to a builder’s yard. It is more to the purpose to notice how war and misrule, famine and pestilence, have again and again devastated countries, reduced their population to miserable remnants, and lowered their level of civilization, and how the isolated life of wild country districts seems sometimes tending towards savagery. So far as we know, however, none of these causes have ever really reproduced a savage community. For an ancient account of degeneration under adverse circumstances, Ovid’s mention of the unhappy colony of Tomi on the Black Sea is a case in point, though perhaps not to be taken too literally. Among its mixed Greek and barbaric population, harassed and carried off into slavery by the Sarmatian horsemen, much as the Persians till lately were by the Turkomans, the poet describes the neglect of the gardener’s craft, the decay of textile arts, the barbaric clothing of hides.
‘Nec tamen hæc loca sunt ullo pretiosa metallo:
Hostis ab agricola vix sinit illa fodi.
Purpura sæpe tuos fulgens prætexit amictus:
Sed non Sarmatico tingitur illa mari.