Did the breed improve during prehistoric times? I have said that, broadly speaking, nature controls man as regards his physical endowment. Now in theory one must admit that it might be otherwise. If Eugenics were to mature on its purely scientific side, there is no reason why the legislator of the future should not try to make a practical application of its principles; and the chances are that, of many experiments, some would prove successful. But that conscious breeding was practised in prehistoric times is out of the question. The men of those days were one and all what we are ourselves—nature's mongrels, now broken up into varieties by casual isolation, and now by no less casual intermixture recompounded in a host of relatively unstable forms. Whatever progress, therefore, may have occurred in this respect has been unconscious. Man cannot take the credit for it, except in so far as it is indirectly due to that increase and spread of the race which have been promoted by his achievements in the way of culture.
The barest outline of the facts must suffice. For the Early Pleistocene, apart from the Java fossil, Pithecanthropus erectus, a veritable 'missing link', whom we may here disregard as falling altogether outside our world of Europe, there are only two individuals that can with certainty be referred to this distant period. These are the Piltdown and the Heidelberg specimens. The former consists of a fragmentary brain-case, thick-boned and narrow-fronted, but typically human in its general characters, and of the greater part of a lower jaw, which, as regards both its own elongated and curiously flanged structure, and that of the teeth it contained, including an enormous pointed canine, is conversely more appropriate to an ape-like being than to a man. The latter consists only of a lower jaw, of which the teeth, even the canines, are altogether human, whereas the jaw itself is hardly less simian than that of the Sussex skull. If we add the Java example to the list of very primitive forms, it is remarkable to note how, though differing widely from each other, all alike converge on the ape. Nevertheless, even in Pithecanthropus, the brute is passing into the man. We note the erect attitude, to be inferred from his thigh-bone, and the considerably enlarged, though even so hardly human, brain. The Piltdown individual, on the other hand, has crossed the Rubicon. He has a brain-capacity entitling him to rank as a man and an Englishman. Such a brain, too, implies a cunning hand, which doubtless helped him greatly to procure his food, even if his massive jaw enabled him to dispose of the food in question without recourse to the adventitious aids of knife and fork. For the matter of that, if our knowledge made it possible to correlate these rare finds of bones more exactly with the innumerable flint implements ascribable to this period (and, indeed, not without analogies among the spoil from the Piltdown gravels), it might turn out that even the equivalent of knife and fork was not wanting to the Early Pleistocene supper-party, or, at any rate, that the human hand was already advanced from the status of labourer to the more dignified position of superintendent of the tool.
The Middle Pleistocene Epoch belongs to the men of the Neanderthal type. Some thirty specimens, a few of them more or less complete, have come down to us, and we can form a pretty clear notion of the physical appearance of the race. Speaking generally, we may say that it marks a stage of progress as compared with the Piltdown type; though, if the jaw, heavy and relatively chinless as it is, has become less simian, the protruding brow-ridge lends a monstrous look to the face, while the forehead is markedly receding—a feature which turns out, however, to be not incompatible with a weight of brain closely approaching our own average. Whether this type has disappeared altogether from the earth, or survives in certain much modified descendants, is an open question. The fact remains that during the last throes of the Glacial Epoch this rough-hewn kind of man apparently had Northern Europe as his exclusive province; and it is by no means evident what Homo Sapiens, the supposed highly superior counterpart and rival of Homo Neanderthalensis, was doing with himself in the meantime. Moreover, not only in respect of space does the population of that frozen world show remarkable homogeneity; but also in respect of time must we allow it an undisputed sway extending over thousands of years, during which the race bred true. The rate of progress, whether reckoned in physical terms or otherwise, is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. A type suffices for an age. Whereas in the life-history of an individual there is rapid development during youth, and after maturity a steadying down, it is the other way about in the life-history of the race. Man, so to speak, was born old and accommodated to a jog-trot. We moderns are the juveniles, and it is left for us to go the pace.
Yet Late Pleistocene Period introduces us to more diversity in the way of human types. Only one race, however, that named after the rock-shelter of Crô-Magnon in the Dordogne, is represented by a fair number of specimens, namely, about a dozen. At this point we come suddenly and without previous warning on as pretty a kind of man as ever walked this earth. In his leading characters he is remarkably uniform. Six feet high and long-legged, he likewise possessed a head well stocked with brains and a face that, if rather broad and short, was furnished by way of compensation with a long and narrow nose. If the present world can show nothing quite like him, it at least cannot produce anything more shapely in the way of the 'human form divine'. Apart from the Crô-Magnons, the remains of an old woman and a youth found at the lowest level of the Grotte des Enfants at Mentone are usually held to belong to a distinct stock known as the Grimaldi. The physical characters of the pair are regarded as negroid, verging on the Pygmy; but if we could study an adult male of the same stock, it might possibly turn out not to be so very divergent from the Crô-Magnon. Again, a single specimen does duty for the so-called Chancelade race. The skeleton is of comparatively low stature, and is deemed to show close affinities to the type of the modern Eskimo. Without being unduly sceptical, one may once more wonder if the Crô-Magnon stock may not have produced this somewhat aberrant form. Even on such a theory, however—and it is hardly orthodox—diversity of physical structure would seem to be on the increase. On the other hand, there are reasons of considerable cogency for referring to the end of this period skeletons of what Huxley termed the 'River-bed type', the peculiarity of which consists in the fact that they are more or less indistinguishable from the later Neolithic men and indeed from any of those slight-built, shortish, long-headed folk who form the majority in the crowded cities of to-day. Some authorities would ascribe a far greater antiquity to this type, but, I venture to think, on the strength of doubtful evidence. The notorious Galley Hill skeleton, for instance, found more or less intact in an Early Pleistocene bed in which the truly contemporary animals are represented by the merest battered remnants, to my mind reeks of modernity. Be these things as they may, however, when we come to Neolithic times a race of similar physical characters has Europe to itself, though it would seem to display minor variations in a way that suggests that the reign of the mongrel has at length begun. And here we may close our enumeration of the earliest known branches of our family tree, since the coming of the broad-heads pertains to the history of the Bronze Age, and hence falls outside the scope of the present survey.
Now what is the bearing of these somewhat scanty data on the question of progress? It is not easy to extract from them more than the general impression that, as time went on, the breed made persistent headway as regards both the complexity of its organization and the profusion of its forms. After all, we must not expect too much from this department of the subject. For one thing, beyond the limits of North-western Europe the record is almost blank; and yet we can scarcely hope to discover the central breeding-place of man in what is, geographically, little more than a blind alley. In the next place, Physical Anthropology, not only in respect to human palaeontology, but in general, is as barren of explanations as it is fertile in detailed observations. The systematic study of heredity as it bears on the history of the human organism has hardly begun. Hence, it would not befit one who is no expert in relation to such matters to anticipate the verdict of a science that needs only public encouragement in order to come into its own. Suffice it to suggest here that nature as she presides over organic evolution, that is, the unfolding of the germinal powers, may be conceived as a kindly but slow-going and cautious liberator. One by one new powers, hitherto latent, are set free as an appropriate field of exercise is afforded them by the environment. At first divergency is rarely tolerated. A given type is extremely uniform. On the other hand, when divergency is permitted, it counts for a great deal. The wider variations occur nearest the beginning, each for a long time breeding true to itself. Later on, such uncompromising plurality gives way to a more diffused multiplicity begotten of intermixture. Mongrelization has set in. Not but what there may spring up many true-breeding varieties among the mongrels; and these, given suitable conditions, will be allowed to constitute lesser types possessed of fairly uniform characters. Such at least is in barest outline the picture presented by the known facts concerning the physical evolution of man, if one observe it from outside without attempting to explore the hidden causes of the process. Some day, when these causes are better understood, man may take a hand in the game, and become, in regard to the infinite possibilities still sleeping in the transmitted germ, a self-liberator. Nature is but a figurative expression for the chances of life, and the wise man faces no more chances than he needs must. Scientific breeding is no mere application of the multiplication table to a system of items. We must make resolutely for the types that seem healthy and capable, suppressing the defectives in a no less thorough, if decidedly more considerate, way than nature has been left to do in the past. Here, then, along physical lines is one possible path of human progress, none the less real because hitherto pursued, not by the aid of eyes that can look and choose, but merely in response to painful proddings at the tail-end.
Our remaining task is to take stock of that improvement in the arts of life whereby man has come gradually to master an environment that formerly mastered him. For the Early Palaeolithic Period our evidence in respect of its variety, if not of its gross quantity, is wofully disappointing. Not to speak of man's first and rudest experiments in the utilization of stone, which are doubtless scattered about the world in goodly numbers if only we could recognize them clearly for what they are, the Chellean industry by its wide distribution leads one to suppose that mankind in those far-off days was only capable of one idea at a time—a time, too, that lasted a whole age. Yet the succeeding Acheulean style of workmanship in flint testifies to the occurrence of progress in one of its typical forms, namely, in the form of what may be termed 'intensive' progress. The other typical form I might call 'intrusive' progress, as happens when a stimulating influence is introduced from without. Now it may be that the Acheulean culture came into being as a result of contact between an immigrant stock and a previous population practising the Chellean method of stone-work. We are at present far too ill-informed to rule out such a guess. But, on the face of it, the greater refinement of the Acheulean handiwork looks as if it had been literally hammered out by steadfastly following up the Chellean pattern into its further possibilities. Explain it as we will, this evolution of the so-called coup-de-poing affords almost the sole proof that the human world of that remote epoch was moving at all. If we could see their work in wood, we might discern a more diversified skill or we might not. As it is, we can but conclude in the light of our very imperfect knowledge that in mind no less than in body mankind of Early Palaeolithic times displayed a fixity of type almost amounting to that of one of the other animal species.
During Middle Palaeolithic times the Mousterian culture rules without a rival. The cave-period has begun; and, thanks to the preservation of sundry dwelling-places together with a goodly assortment of their less perishable contents, we can frame a fairly adequate notion of the home-life of Neanderthal man. I have already alluded to my excavations in Jersey, and need not enter into fuller details here. But I should like to put on record the opinion borne in upon me by such first-hand experience as I have had that cultural advance in Mousterian days was almost as portentously slow as ever it had been before. The human deposits in the Jersey cave are in some places about ten feet thick, and the fact that they fall into two strata separated by a sterile layer that appears to consist of the dust of centuries points to a very long process of accumulation. Yet though there is one kind of elephant occurring amid the bone refuse at the bottom of the bed, and another and, it would seem, later kind at the top, one and the same type of flint instrument is found at every level alike; and the only development one can detect is a certain gain in elegance as regards the Mousterian 'point', the reigning substitute for the former coup-de-poing. Once more there is intensive progress only, so far at least as most of the Jersey evidence goes. One coup-de-poing, however, and that hardly Acheulean in conception but exactly what a hand accustomed to the fashioning of the Mousterian 'point' would be likely to make by way of an imitation of the once fashionable pattern, lay at lowest floor-level; as if to remind one that during periods of transition the old is likely to survive by the side of the new, and may even survive in it as a modifying element. As a matter of fact, the coup-de-poing is frequent in the earliest Mousterian sites; so that we cannot but ask ourselves how it came to be in the end superseded. Whether the Mousterians were of a different race from the Acheuleans is not known. Certain it is, on the other hand, that the industry that makes its first appearance in their train represents a labour-saving device. The Mousterian had learned how to break up his flint-nodule into flakes, which simply needed to be trimmed on one face to yield a cutting edge. The Acheulean had been content to attain this result more laboriously by pecking a pebble on both faces until what remained was sharp enough for his purpose. Here, then, we are confronted with that supreme condition of progress, the inventor's happy thought. One of those big-brained Neanderthal men, we may suppose, had genius; nature, the liberator, having released some latent power in the racial constitution. Given such a culture-hero, the common herd was capable of carrying on more or less mechanically for an aeon or so. And so it must ever be. The world had better make the most of its geniuses; for they amount to no more than perhaps a single one in a million. Anyway, Neanderthal man never produced a second genius, so far as we can tell; and that is why, perhaps, his peculiar type of brow-ridge no longer adorns the children of men.
Before we leave the Mousterians, another side of their culture deserves brief mention. Not only did they provide their dead with rude graves, but they likewise furnished them with implements and food for use in a future life. Herein surely we may perceive the dawn of what I do not hesitate to term religion. A distinguished scholar and poet did indeed once ask me whether the Mousterians, when they performed these rites, did not merely show themselves unable to grasp the fact that the dead are dead. But I presume that my friend was jesting. A sympathy stronger than death, overriding its grisly terror, and converting it into the vehicle of a larger hope—that is the work of soul; and to develop soul is progress. A religious animal is no brute, but a real man with the seed of genuine progress in him. If Neanderthal man belonged to another species, as the experts mostly declare and I very humbly beg leave to doubt, we must even so allow that God made him also after his own image, brow-ridges and all.
The presence of soul in man is even more manifest when we pass on to the Late Palaeolithic peoples. They are cave-dwellers; they live by the chase; in a word, they are savages still. But they exhibit a taste and a talent for the fine arts of drawing and carving that, as it were, enlarge human existence by a new dimension. Again a fresh power has been released, and one in which many would seem to have participated; for good artists are as plentiful during this epoch as ever they were in ancient Athens or mediaeval Florence. They must have married-in somewhat closely, one would think, for this special aptitude to have blossomed forth so luxuriantly. I cannot here dwell at length on the triumphs of Aurignacian and Magdalenian artistry. Indeed, what I have seen with my own eyes on the walls of certain French caves is almost too wonderful to be described. The simplicity of the style does not in the least detract from the fullness of the charm. On the contrary, one is tempted to doubt whether the criterion of complexity applies here—whether, in fact, progress has any meaning in relation to fine art—since, whether attained by simple or by complex means, beauty is always beauty, and cannot further be perfected. Shall we say, then, with Plato that beauty was revealed to man from the first in its absolute nature, so that the human soul might be encouraged to seek for the real in its complementary forms of truth and goodness, such as are less immediately manifest? For the rest, the soul of these transcendently endowed savages was in other respects more imperfectly illuminated; as may be gathered from the fact that they carved and drew partly from the love of their art, but partly also, and, perhaps, even primarily, for luck. It seems that these delineations of the animals on which they lived were intended to help them towards good hunting. Such is certainly the object of a like custom on the part of the Australian aborigines; there being this difference, however, that the art of the latter considered as art is wholly inferior. Now we know enough about the soul of the Australian native, thanks largely to the penetrating interpretations of Sir Baldwin Spencer, to greet and honour in him the potential lord of the universe, the harbinger of the scientific control of nature. It is more than half the battle to have willed the victory; and the picture-charm as a piece of moral apparatus is therefore worthy of our deepest respect. The chariot of progress, of which the will of man is the driver, is drawn by two steeds, namely, Imagination and Reason harnessed together. Of the pair, Reason is the more sluggish, though serviceable enough for the heavy work. Imagination, full of fire as it is, must always set the pace. So the soul of the Late Palaeolithic hunter, having already in imagination controlled the useful portion of the animal world, was more than half-way on the road to its domestication. But in so far as he mistook the will for the accomplished deed, he was not getting the value out of his second horse; or, to drop metaphor, the scientific reason as yet lay dormant in his soul. But his dream was to come true presently.
The Neolithic Period marks the first appearance of the 'cibi-cultural' peoples. The food-seekers have become food-raisers. But the change did not come all at once. The earlier Neolithic culture is at best transitional. There may even have been one of those set-backs in culture which we are apt to ignore when we are narrating the proud tale of human advance. Europe had now finally escaped from the last ravages of an Arctic climate; but there was cruel demolition to make good, and in the meantime there would seem, as regards man, to have been little doing. Life among the kitchen-middens of Denmark was sordid; and the Azilians who pushed up from Spain as far as Scotland did not exactly step into a paradise ready-made. Somewhere, however, in the far south-east a higher culture was brewing. By steps that have not yet been accurately traced legions of herdsmen and farmer-folk overspread our world, either absorbing or driving before them the roving hunters of the older dispensation. We term this, the earliest of true civilizations, 'neolithic', as if it mattered in the least whether your stone implement be chipped or polished to an edge. The real source of increased power and prosperity lay in the domestication of food-animals and food-plants. The man certainly had genius and pluck into the bargain who first trusted himself to the back of an unbroken horse. It needed hardly less genius to discover that it is no use singing charms over the seed-bearing grass in order to make it grow, unless some of the seed is saved to be sowed in due season. Society possibly brained the inventor—such is the way of the crowd; but, as it duly pocketed the invention, we have perhaps no special cause to complain.