This is also to be taken into consideration: that those men, whose traces we find, could possibly have been the descendants of more noble predecessors, driven
off and degenerated, just as well as they could have been representatives of the whole former condition of culture of mankind. In England, where the questions of the first condition of culture of mankind are very warmly discussed, the Duke of Argyll particularly, in his "Primeval Man," advocates these views, and very forcibly calls attention to the fact that thus far the places of the discovery of the earliest traces of man undoubtedly lie very far from the original home of the human race; while Sir John Lubbock, in his "Origin of Civilization" and in his "Prehistoric Times," and also Tylor in his "Beginning of Culture" and in his "Early History of Mankind," take the opposite view of a progress of mankind from the most uncultivated beginnings.
Archæology, as a whole, seems to do no more than admit that its results can be incorporated into the theory of an origin of the human race through gradual development, if this theory can be shown to be correct in some other way, and that its results can just as well be brought into harmony with a contradictory theory.
Comparative ethnology gives us quite a similar result. It is true, there are races of mankind in the lowest grades of human existence. It is well known how Darwin, in his voyage on board the "Beagle," got one of his first vivid impressions of the possibility of an evolution of man from the animal world, by seeing the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego; and it is remarkable that the arms, tools, and furniture, used by the lowest savages, are very similar to the earliest remains of civilized races found on earth. The conclusion lies extremely near, that the savages simply remained in earlier stages of human culture; and an ethnographic picture of mankind
at present would in a similar way give an approximately correct view of its former development, as the natural zoölogical and botanical system of the present fauna and flora must give us at the same time the key to their pedigree; supposing the Darwinian theory to be correct.
If it were so, ethnology would be an altogether inestimable help for the exploration of the descent and development of the human race. For the extremely few and rare fossil remains of man—which, moreover, do not give us any answer to the most important questions in regard to the mental and moral quality of the primitive man—would be rendered complete by living examples of the kind, which remained at the old stages of development.
But much is still wanting, before the followers of an evolution theory dare to use ethnology directly as a primitive history of the development of mankind, prepared and preserved for them. Especially the before-mentioned objection of the Duke of Argyll—that the lowest savages of our time can just as well be depraved as be men who remained stationary in the process of development—has here increased weight. Moreover, even with the savages of to-day, a rude state of their tools and a low condition of their mental and moral life are not so nearly parallel as to allow unrestricted conclusions to be drawn. Finally, we still know too little about the state of culture of the savages; and the deeper and higher the intellectual and ethical possessions of mankind are, the presence of which among the savages is in question, the more uncertain is our knowledge.
This is especially true of the most important question in this connection—the question as to the existence
or absence of an idea of God, and the different stages of development of religious ideas. While some assume as an established fact, that there are savage tribes without any idea of God or any religion, and even give the names of these tribes, especially of some from the interior of South America; while Sir John Lubbock systematically enumerates seven stages of religious development, from atheism to the connection of religious with moral conceptions, and lets each single race run through these stages in an identical series until it either remains on one of the seven stages or arrives at the highest: yet, on the contrary, other equally trustworthy scientists assert that there is not a single human race without some idea of religion and of a God—indeed, not a single race without a monotheistic presentiment—and that all heathenism, down to its most degenerate stages, consists not so much in a non-recognition of a God as in ignoring him. They call especial attention to the difficulty of getting acquainted with the ideas of a savage tribe without living with it through many years and being intimate with its language and customs, and especially without enjoying the unrestricted confidence of the tribe. Mutual misunderstandings, a suspicious reserve, evasive and untrue answers to questions, are entirely unavoidable without those conditions. At any rate, the fact deserves attention, that those who have been longest and most active among savages, and who enjoyed their confidence to the fullest extent, all reached this result: they found them not only not without religion, but also not without a presentiment of the monotheistic idea of God. Livingstone, for instance, expressed this idea decidedly of all the African tribes
with which he became acquainted; and Jellinghaus gives the same evidence in regard to the Kols in South Asia.