The Project Gutenberg eBook of Anthropology: an introduction to the study of man and civilization
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: Anthropology: an introduction to the study of man and civilization
Author: Edward B. Tylor
Release date: July 20, 2023 [eBook #71233]
Language: English
Original publication: United Kingdom: Macmillan and co, 1881
Credits: Tim Lindell, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF MAN AND CIVILIZATION ***
ANTHROPOLOGY.
[Illustration]
ANTHROPOLOGY
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF
MAN AND CIVILIZATION.
BY
EDWARD B. TYLOR, D.C.L., F.R.S.
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS._
London:
MACMILLAN AND CO.
1881.
_The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved._
London:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C.
PREFACE.
In times when subjects of education have multiplied, it may seem at first
sight a hardship to lay on the already heavily-pressed student a new
science. But it will be found that the real effect of Anthropology is
rather to lighten than increase the strain of learning. In the mountains
we see the bearers of heavy burdens contentedly shoulder a carrying-frame
besides, because they find its weight more than compensated by the
convenience of holding together and balancing their load. So it is
with the science of Man and Civilization, which connects into a more
manageable whole the scattered subjects of an ordinary education. Much
of the difficulty of learning and teaching lies in the scholar’s not
seeing clearly what each science or art is for, what its place is among
the purposes of life. If he knows something of its early history, and how
it arose from the simpler wants and circumstances of mankind, he finds
himself better able to lay hold of it than when, as too often happens,
he is called on to take up an abstruse subject not at the beginning but
in the middle. When he has learnt something of man’s rudest means of
conversing by gestures and cries, and thence has been led to see how
the higher devices of articulate speech are improvements on such lower
methods, he makes a fairer start in the science of language than if he
had fallen unprepared among the subtleties of grammar, which unexplained
look like arbitrary rules framed to perplex rather than to inform. The
dislike of so many beginners to geometry as expounded by Euklid, the
fact that not one out of three ever really understands what he is doing,
is of all things due to the scholar not being shown first the practical
common-sense starting point, where the old carpenters and builders began
to make out the relations of distances and spaces in their work. So the
law-student plunges at once into the intricacies of legal systems which
have grown up through the struggles, the reforms, and even the blunders
of thousands of years; yet he might have made his way clearer by seeing
how laws begin in their simplest forms, framed to meet the needs of
savage and barbaric tribes. It is needless to make a list of all the
branches of education in knowledge and art; there is not one which may
not be the easier and better learnt for knowing its history and place in
the general science of Man.
With this aim in view, the present volume is an introduction to
Anthropology, rather than a summary of all it teaches. It does not deal
with strictly technical matter, out of the reach of readers who have
received, or are receiving, the ordinary higher English education. Thus,
except to students trained in anatomy, the minute modern researches as to
distinction of races by skull measurements and the like would be useless.
Much care has been taken to make the chapters on the various branches of
the science sound as far as they go, but the more advanced work must be
left to special students.
While the various departments of the science of Man are extremely
multifarious, ranging from body to mind, from language to music,
from fire-making to morals, they are all matters to whose nature and
history every well-informed person ought to give some thought. It is
much, however, for any single writer to venture to deal even in the
most elementary way with so immense a variety of subjects. In such a
task I have the right to ask that errors and imperfections should be
lightly judged. I could not have attempted it at all but for the help
of friends eminent in various branches of the science, whom I have been
able to consult on doubtful and difficult points. My acknowledgments
are especially due to Professor Huxley and Dr. E. A. Freeman, Sir
Henry Maine, Dr. Birch, Mr. Franks, Professor Flower, Major-General
Pitt-Rivers, Professor Sayce, Dr. Beddoe, Dr. D. H. Tuke, Professor W.
K. Douglas, Mr. Russell Martineau, Mr. R. Garnett, Mr. Henry Sweet,
Mr. Rudler, and many other friends whom I can only thank unnamed. The
illustrations of races are engraved from photographic portraits, many
of them taken by the permission of Messrs. Dammann of Huddersfield from
their valuable Albums of Ethnological Photographs.
F. B. T.
_February, 1881._
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
MAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN 1
Antiquity of Man, 1—Time required for Development of Races,
1—of Languages, 7—of Civilization, 13—Traces of Man in
the Stone Age, 25—Later Period, 26—Earlier Quaternary or
Drift-Period, 29.
CHAPTER II.
MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS 35
Vertebrate Animals, 35—Succession and Descent of Species,
37—Apes and Man, comparison of Structure, 38—Hands and Feet,
42—Hair, 44—Features, 44—Brain, 45—Mind in Lower Animals and
Man, 47.
CHAPTER III.
RACES OF MANKIND 56
Differences of Race, 56—Stature and Proportions, 56—Skull,
60—Features, 62—Colour, 66—Hair, 71—Constitution,
73—Temperament, 74—Types of Races, 75—Permanence, 80—Mixture,
80—Variation, 84—Races of Mankind classified, 87.
CHAPTER IV.
LANGUAGE 114
Sign-making, 114—Gesture-language, 114—Sound-gestures,
120—Natural Language, 122—Utterances of Animals, 122—Emotional
and Imitative Sounds in Language, 124—Change of Sound and
Sense, 127—Other expression of Sense by Sound, 128—Children’s
Words, 128—Articulate Language, its relation to Natural
Language, 129—Origin of Language, 130.
CHAPTER V.
LANGUAGE (_continued_) 132
Articulate Speech, 132—Growth of Meanings, 133—Abstract
Words, 135—Real and Grammatical Words, 136—Parts of Speech,
138—Sentences, 139—Analytic Language, 139—Word Combination,
140—Synthetic Language, 141—Affixes, 142—Sound-change,
143—Roots, 144—Syntax, 146—Government and Concord, 147—Gender,
149—Development of Language, 150.
CHAPTER VI.
LANGUAGE AND RACE 152
Adoption and loss of Language, 152—Ancestral Language,
153—Families of Language, 155—Aryan, 156—Semitic, 159—Egyptian,
Berber, &c., 160—Tatar or Turanian, 161—South-East Asian,
162—Malayo-Polynesian, 163—Dravidian, 164—African, Bantu,
Hottentot, 164—American, 165—Early Languages and Races, 165.
CHAPTER VII.
WRITING 167
Picture-writing, 168—Sound-pictures, 169—Chinese Writing,
170—Cuneiform Writing, 172—Egyptian Writing, 173—Alphabetic
Writing, 175—Spelling, 178—Printing, 180.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARTS OF LIFE 182
Development of Instruments, 183—Club, Hammer, 184—Stone-flake,
185—Hatchet, 188—Sabre, Knife, 189—Spear, Dagger, Sword,
190—Carpenter’s Tools, 192—Missiles, Javelin, 193—Sling,
Spear-thrower, 194—Pew and Arrow, 195—Blow tube, Gun,
196—Mechanical Power, 197—Wheel-Carriage, 198—Hand-mill,
200—Drill, Lathe, 202—Screw, 203—Water-mill, Wind-mill, 204.
CHAPTER IX.
ARTS OF LIFE (_continued_) 206
Quest of wild food, 206—Hunting, 207—Trapping, 211—Fishing,
212—Agriculture, 214—Implements, 216—Fields, 218—Cattle,
pasturage, 219—War, 221—Weapons, 221—Armour, 222—Warfare of
lower tribes, 223—of higher nations, 225.
CHAPTER X.
ARTS OF LIFE (_continued_) 229
Dwellings:—Caves, 229—Huts, 230—Tents, 231—Houses, 231—Stone
and Brick Building, 232—Arch, 235—Development of Architecture,
235—Dress:—Painting skin, 236—Tattooing, 237—Deformation of
Skull, &c., 240—Ornaments, 241—Clothing of Bark, Skin, &c.,
244—Mats, 246—Spinning, Weaving, 246—Sewing 249—Garments,
249—Navigation:—Floats, 252—Boats, 253—Rafts, 255—Outriggers,
255—Paddles and Oars, 256—Sails, 256—Galleys and Ships, 257.
CHAPTER XI.
ARTS OF LIFE (_concluded_) 260
Fire, 260—Cookery, 264—Bread, &c., 266—Liquors, 268—Fuel,
270—Lighting, 272—Vessels, 274—Pottery, 274—Glass, 276—Metals,
277—Bronze and Iron Ages, 278—Barter, 281—Money, 282—Commerce,
285.
CHAPTER XII.
ARTS OF PLEASURE 287
Poetry, 287—Verse and Metre, 288—Alliteration and Rhyme,
289—Poetic Metaphor, 289—Speech, Melody, Harmony, 290—Musical
Instruments, 293—Dancing, 296—Drama, 298—Sculpture and
Painting, 300—Ancient and Modern Art, 301—Games, 305.
CHAPTER XIII.
SCIENCE 309
Science, 309—Counting and Arithmetic, 310—Measuring
and Weighing, 316—Geometry, 318—Algebra, 322—Physics,
323—Chemistry, 328—Biology, 329—Astronomy, 332—Geography and
Geology, 335—Methods of Reasoning, 336—Magic, 338.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIRIT-WORLD 342
Religion of Lower Races, 342—Souls, 343—Burial, 347—Future
Life, 349—Transmigration, 350—Divine Ancestors, 351—Demons,
352—Nature Spirits, 357—Gods, 358—Worship, 364—Moral
Influence, 368.
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY 373
Tradition, 373—Poetry, 375—Fact in Fiction, 377—Earliest Poems
and Writings, 381—Ancient Chronicle and History, 383—Myths,
387—Interpretation of Myths, 396—Diffusion of Myths, 397.
CHAPTER XVI.
SOCIETY 401
Social Stages, 401—Family, 402—Morals of Lower Races,
405—Public Opinion and Custom, 408—Moral Progress,
410—Vengeance and Justice, 414—War, 418—Property,
419—Legal Ceremonies, 423—Family Power and Responsibility,
426—Patriarchal and Military Chiefs, 428—Nations, 432—Social
Ranks, 434—Government, 436.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
FIG. PAGE
1. Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements 27
2. Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or hatchets 29
3. Sketch of mammoth from cave of La Madeleine (Lartet and
Christy) 31
4. Sketch of man and horse from cave (Lartet and Christy) 32
5. Skeletons of apes and man (after Huxley) 39
6. Hand and foot of chimpanzee and of man 42
7. Brain of chimpanzee and of man 46
8. Patagonian and Bushman 58
9. Top view of skulls 61
10. Side view of skulls 62
11. _a_, Swaheli; _b_, Persian 63
12. Female portraits 64
13. African negro 65
14. Section of negro skin, much magnified (after Kölliker) 66
15. Sections of hair, highly magnified (after Pruner) 73
16. Race or Population arranged by Stature (Galton’s method) 76
17. Race or Population arranged by Stature (Quetelet’s method) 77
18. Caribs 78
19. (_a_) Head of Rameses II., Ancient Egypt, (_b_) Sheikh’s son,
Modern Egypt (after Hartmann) 79
20. Malay Mother and Half-caste Daughters 81
21. Cafusa Woman 82
22. Cairene 84
23. Andaman Islanders 88
24. Aheta (Negrito) Philippine Islands 90
25. Melanesians 91
26. South Australian (man) 92
27. South Australian (woman) 92
28. Australian (Queensland) women 93
29. Dravidian hill-man (after Fryer) 94
30. Kalmuk (after Goldsmid) 95
31. Goldi (Amur) 96
32. Siamese actresses 97
33. Cochin-Chinese 98
34. Coreans 99
35. Finn (man) 100
36. Finn (woman) 100
37. Malays 101
38. Malays 101
39. Dayaks 103
40. Kingsmill Islander 104
41. Colorado Indian (North America) 106
42. Colorado Indian (North America) 107
43. Cauixana Indians (South America) 108
44. Georgians 110
45. Swedes 111
46. Gypsy 112
47. Picture-writing, rock near Lake Superior (after Schoolcraft) 168
48. _Pater noster_ in Mexican picture-writing (after Aubin) 169
49. Chinese ancient pictures and later cursive forms (after
Endlicher) 170
50. Chinese compound characters, pictures and sounds 171
51. Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic characters compared with
letters of Phœnician and later alphabets (after De Rougé) 176
52. Gunflint-maker’s core and flakes (after Evans) 185
53. Stone Flakes 186
54. Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements 187
55. Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or hatchets 187
56. Stone Axes, &c. 188
57. _a_, Egyptian battle-axe; _b_, Egyptian falchion; _c_,
Asiatic sabre; _d_, European sheath-knife; _e_, Roman
culter; _f_, Hindu bill-hook 189
58. _a_, Stone spear-head (Admiralty Is.); _b_, stone spear-head
or dagger-blade (England); _c_, bronze spear-head (Denmark);
_d_, bronze dagger; _e_, bronze leaf-shaped sword 191
59. Australian spear thrown with spear-thrower (after Brough
Smyth) 194
60. Bows 196
61. Ancient bullock-waggon, from the Antonine Column 199
62. Corn-crusher, Anglesey (after W. O. Stanley) 201
63. Hebrides women grinding with the quern or hand-mill (after
Pennant) 202
64. _a_, Australian digging-stick; _b_, Swedish wooden hack 216
65. Ancient Egyptian hoe and plough 217
66. Natives of Lepers’ Island (New Hebrides) 239
67. Hand of Chinese ascetic 241
68. Botocudo woman with lip- and ear-ornaments 242
69. _a_, Australian winder for hand-twisted cord; _b_, Egyptian
woman spinning with the spindle 247
70. Girl weaving. From an Aztec picture 248
71. Ancient Nile-boat, from wall-painting, Thebes 258
72. Bushman drilling fire (after Chapman) 262
73. Ancient Egyptian Potter’s Wheel (Beni Hassan) 275
74. Ancient Egyptian Glass-blowing (Beni Hassan) 277
75. Development of the Harp 295
76. Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian numeration 313
77. Mode of calculation by counters and by figures on Abacus 315
78. Rudimentary practical Geometry 318
ANTHROPOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
MAN, ANCIENT AND MODERN.
Antiquity of Man, 1—Time required for Development of Races,
1—of Languages, 7—of Civilization, 13—Traces of Man in
the Stone Age, 25—Later Period, 26—Earlier Quaternary or
Drift-Period, 29.
The student who seeks to understand how mankind came to be as they are,
and to live as they do, ought first to know clearly whether men are
new-comers on the earth, or old inhabitants. Did they appear with their
various races and ways of life ready-made, or were these shaped by the
long, slow growth of ages? In order to answer this question, our first
business will be to take a rapid survey of the varieties of men, their
languages, their civilization, and their ancient relics, to see what
proofs may thus be had of man’s age in the world. The outline sketch thus
drawn will also be useful as an introduction to the fuller examination of
man and his ways of life in the chapters which follow.
First, as to the varieties of mankind. Let us suppose ourselves standing
at the docks in Liverpool or London, looking at groups of men of races
most different from our own. There is the familiar figure of the African
negro, with skin so dark-brown as to be popularly called black, and
black hair so naturally frizzed as to be called woolly. Nor are these
the only points in which he is unlike us. Indeed, the white men who
blacken their faces and friz their hair to look like negros make a very
poor imitation, for the negro features are quite distinct; we well know
the flat nose, wide nostrils, thick protruding lips, and, when the face
is seen in profile, the remarkable projecting jaws. A hatter would at
once notice that the negro’s head is narrower in proportion than the
usual oval of the hats made for Englishmen. It would be possible to
tell a negro from a white man even in the dark by the peculiar satiny
feel of his skin, and the yet more peculiar smell which no one who has
noticed it is ever likely to mistake. In the same docks, among the
crews of Eastern steamers, we observe other well-marked types of man.
The Coolie of South India (who is not of Hindu race, but belongs to the
so-called hill-tribes,) is dark-brown of skin, with black, silky, wavy
hair, and a face wide-nosed, heavy-jawed, fleshy-lipped. More familiar
is the Chinese, whom the observer marks down by his less than European
stature, his jaundice-yellow skin, and coarse, straight black hair;
the special character of his features is neatly touched off on his
native china-plates and paper-screens which show the snub nose, high
cheek-bones, and that curious slanting set of the eyes which we can
imitate by putting a finger near the outer corners of our own eyes and
pushing upward. By comparing such a set of races with our own countrymen,
we are able to make out the utmost differences of complexion and feature
among mankind. While doing so, it is plain that white men, as we agree
to call ourselves, show at least two main race-types. Going on board a
merchant-ship from Copenhagen, we find the crew mostly blue-eyed men of
fair complexion and hair, a remarkable contrast to the Genoese vessel
moored alongside, whose sailors show almost to a man swarthy complexions
and lustrous black eyes and hair. These two types of man have been well
described as the fair-whites and the dark-whites.
It is only within modern times that the distinctions among races have
been worked out by scientific methods. Yet since early ages, race has
attracted notice from its connexion with the political questions of
countryman or foreigner, conqueror or conquered, freeman or slave, and
in consequence its marks have been watched with jealous accuracy. In the
Southern United States, till slavery was done away a few years ago, the
traces of negro descent were noted with the utmost nicety. Not only were
the mixed breeds regularly classed as mulattos, quadroons, and down to
octaroons, but even where the mixture was so slight that the untrained
eye noticed nothing beyond a brunette complexion, the intruder who had
ventured to sit down at a public dinner-table was called upon to show his
hands, and the African taint detected by the dark tinge at the root of
the finger-nails.
Seeing how striking the broad distinctions of race are, it was to be
expected that ancient inscriptions and figures should give some view of
the races of man as they were at the beginning of historical times. It
is so in Egypt, where the oldest writings of the world appear. More than
4,000 years ago we begin to find figures of the Egyptians themselves, in
features much the same as in later times. In the sixth dynasty, about
2,000 B.C., the celebrated inscription of Prince Una makes mention of
the _Nahsi_, or negroes, who were levied and drilled by ten thousands
for the Egyptian army. Under the twelfth dynasty, on the walls of the
tomb of Knumhetp, there is represented a procession of _Amu_, who are
seen by their features to be of the race to which Syrians and Hebrews
belonged. Especially the wall-paintings of the tombs of the kings at
Thebes, of the nineteenth dynasty, have preserved coloured portraits
of the four great races distinguished by the Egyptians. These are the
red-brown Egyptians themselves, the people of Palestine with their
aquiline profile and brownish complexion, the flat-nosed, thick-lipped
African negroes, and the fair-skinned Libyans. Thus mankind was already
divided into well-marked races, distinguished by colour and features. It
is surprising to notice how these old-world types of man are still to be
recognised. The Ethiopian of the ancient monuments can at this day be
closely matched. Notwithstanding the many foreign invasions of Egypt,
the mass of the village population is true-bred enough for men to be
easily picked out as representatives of the times of the Pharaohs. Their
portraits have only to be drawn in the stiff style of the monuments,
with the eye conventionally shown full-front in the profile face, and
we have before us the very Egyptians as they depicted themselves in the
old days when they held the Israelites in bondage. In the same way, the
ancient Egyptian portraits of captives from Palestine, whether Syrians,
Phœnicians, or Hebrews, show the strongly-marked Israelite type of
features to be seen at this day in every city of Europe. Altogether, the
evidence of ancient monuments, geography and history, goes to prove that
the great race-divisions of mankind are of no recent growth, but were
already settled before the beginning of the historical period. Since
then their changes seem to have been comparatively slight, except in the
forming of mixed races by intermarriage.
Hence it follows that the historic ages are to be looked on as but the
modern period of man’s life on earth. Behind them lies the præhistoric
period, when the chief work was done of forming and spreading over the
world the races of mankind. Though there is no scale to measure the
length of this period by, there are substantial reasons for taking it
as a long stretch of time. Looking at an ethnological map, coloured to
show what race of men inhabits each region, it is plain at a glance
that the world was not peopled by mere chance scattering of nations, a
white tribe here and a brown tribe there, with perhaps a black tribe
in between. Far from this, whole races are spread over vast regions as
though they grew there, and the peculiar type of the race seems more
or less connected with the climate it lives in. Especially it is seen
that the mass of black races belong to the equatorial regions in Africa
and the Eastern Archipelago, the yellow race to Central and Southern
Asia, the white race to temperate Asia and Europe. Some guess may even
be made from the map which district was the primitive centre where each
of these races took shape, and whence it spread far and wide. Now if,
as some have thought, the Negros, Mongolians, Whites, and other races,
were distinct species, each sprung from a separate origin in its own
region, then the peopling of the globe might require only a moderate
time, the races having only to spread each from its own birthplace. But
the opinion of modern zoologists, whose study of the species and breeds
of animals makes them the best judges, is against this view of several
origins of man, for two principal reasons. First, that all tribes of
men, from the blackest to the whitest, the most savage to the most
cultured, have such general likeness in the structure of their bodies
and the working of their minds, as is easiest and best accounted for by
their being descended from a common ancestry, however distant. Second,
that all the human races, notwithstanding their form and colour, appear
capable of freely intermarrying and forming crossed races of every
combination, such as the millions of mulattos and mestizos sprung in the
New World from the mixture of Europeans, Africans, and native Americans;
this again points to a common ancestry of all the races of man. We may
accept the theory of the unity of mankind as best agreeing with ordinary
experience and scientific research. As yet, however, the means are very
imperfect of judging what man’s progenitors were like in body and mind,
in times before the forefathers of the present Negros, and Tatars, and
Australians, had become separated into distinct stocks. Nor is it yet
clear by what causes these stocks or races passed into their different
types of skull and limbs, of complexion and hair. It cannot be at present
made out how far the peculiarities of single ancestors were inherited by
their descendants and became stronger by in-breeding; how far, when the
weak and dull-witted tribes failed in the struggle for land and life, the
stronger, braver, and abler tribes survived to leave their types stamped
on the nations sprung from them; how far whole migrating tribes underwent
bodily alteration through change of climate, food, and habits, so that
the peopling of the earth went on together with the growth of fresh races
fitted for life in its various regions. Whatever share these causes and
others yet more obscure may have had in varying the races of man, it must
not be supposed that such differences as between an Englishman and a
Gold Coast negro are due to slight variations of breed. On the contrary,
they are of such zoological importance as to have been compared with the
differences between animals which naturalists reckon distinct species,
as between the brown bear with its rounded forehead, and the polar bear
with its whitish fur and long flattened skull. If then we are to go back
in thought to a time when the ancestors of the African, the Australian,
the Mongol, and the Scandinavian, were as yet one undivided stock, the
theory of their common descent must be so framed as to allow causes
strong enough and time long enough to bring about changes far beyond any
known to have taken place during historical ages. Looked at in this way,
the black, brown, yellow, and white men whom we have supposed ourselves
examining on the quays, are living records of the remote past, every
Chinese and Negro bearing in his face evidence of the antiquity of man.
Next, what has language to tell of man’s age on the earth? It appears
that the distinct languages known number about a thousand. It is clear,
however, at the first glance that these did not all spring up separately.
There are groups of languages which show such close likeness in their
grammars and dictionaries as proves each group to be descended from one
ancestral tongue. Such a group is called a family of languages, and one
of the best known of such families may be taken as an example of their
way of growth. In ancient times Latin (using the word in a rather wide
sense) was the language of Rome and other Italian districts, and with the
spread of the Roman empire it was carried far and wide, so as to oust the
early languages of whole provinces. Undergoing in each land a different
course of change, Latin gave rise to the Romance family of languages,
of which Italian, Spanish, and French are well-known members. How these
languages have come to differ after ages of separate life, we judge by
seeing that sailors from Dieppe cannot make themselves understood in
Malagà, nor does a knowledge of French enable us to read Dante. Yet
the Romance languages keep the traces of their Roman origin plainly
enough for Italian, Spanish, and French sentences to be taken and every
word referred to something near it in classical Latin, which may be
roughly treated as the original form. Familiar proverbs are here given
as illustrations, with the warning to the reader that, for convenience’
sake, the comparisons are not all carried out in precise grammatical form.
ITALIAN.
E meglio un uovo oggi che una gallina domani.
_est melius unum ovum hodie quid una gallina de mane._
_i.e._ Better is an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow.
Chi va piano va sano, chi va sano va lontano.
_qui vadit planum vadit sanum, qui vadit sanum vadit longum._
_i.e._ He who goes gently goes safe, he who goes safe goes far.
SPANISH.
Quien canta sus males espanta.
_quem cantat suos malos expav(ere)._
_i.e._ He who sings frightens away his ills.
Por la calle de despues se va á la casa de nunca.
_per illam callem de de-ex-post se vadit ad illam casam de nunquam._
_i.e._ By the street of by and by one goes to the house of never.
FRENCH.
Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l’auras.
_unum tene valet melius quod duos tu illum habere-habes._
_i.e._ One take-it is worth more than two thou-shalt-have-its.
Parler de la corde dans la maison d’un pendu.
_parabola de illam chordam de intus illam mansionem de unum pend(o)._
_i.e._ (Never to) talk of a rope in the house of a hanged man.
It is plain on the face of such sentences as these, that Italian,
Spanish, and French are in fact transformed Latin, their words having
been gradually altered as they descended, generation after generation,
from the parent tongue. Now even if Latin were lost, philologists would
still be able, by comparing the set of Romance languages, to infer that
such a language must have existed to give rise to them all, though no
doubt such a reconstruction of Latin would give but a meagre notion,
either of its stock of words or its grammatical inflexions. This kind of
argument by which a lost parent-language is discovered from the likeness
among its descendants, may be well seen in another set of European
tongues. Let us suppose ourselves listening to a group of Dutch sailors;
at first their talk may seem unintelligible, but after a while a sharp
ear will catch the sound of well known words, and perhaps at last whole
sentences like these:—_Kom hier!_ _Wat zegt gij?_ _Hoe is het weder?_
_Het is een hevige storm, ik ben zeer koud._ _Is de maan op?_ _Ik weet
niet._ The spelling of these words, different from our mode, disguises
their resemblance, but as spoken they come very near corresponding
sentences in English, somewhat old-fashioned or provincial, thus:—_Come
here!_ _What say ye?_ _How is the weather?_ _It is a heavy storm, I
be sore cold._ _Is the moon up?_ _I wit not._ Now it stands to reason
that no two languages could have come to be so like, unless both were
descended from one parent tongue. The argument is really much like that
as to the origin of the people themselves. As we say, these Dutch and
English are beings so nearly alike that they must have descended from a
common stock, so we say, these languages are so like that they must have
been derived from a common language. Dutch and English are accordingly
said to be closely related to one another, and the language of Friesland
proves on examination to be another near relative. Thence it is inferred
that a parent language or group of dialects, which may be called the
original Low-Dutch, or Low-German, must once have been spoken, though it
is not actually to be found, not happening to have been written down and
so preserved.
Now it is easy to see that as ages go on, and the languages of a family
each take their separate course of change, it must become less and
less possible to show their relationship by comparing whole sentences.
Philologists have to depend on less perfect resemblances, but such
are sufficient when not only words from the dictionary correspond in
the two languages, but also these are worked up into actual speech
by corresponding forms of grammar. Thus when Sanskrit, the ancient
language of the Brahmans in India, is compared with Greek and Latin,
it appears that the Sanskrit verb _dâ_ expresses the idea to give, and
makes its present tense by reduplicating and adding a person-affix, so
becoming _dadâmi_, nearly as Greek makes _didōmi_: from the same root
Sanskrit makes a future participle _dâsyamânas_, corresponding to Greek
_dōsomenos_, while Sanskrit _dâtâr_ matches Greek _dotēr_ = giver. So
where Latin has _vox_, _vocis_, _vocem_, _voces_, _vocum_, _vocibus_,
Sanskrit has _vâk_, _vâćas_, _vâćam_, _vâćas_, _vâćâm_, _vâgbhyas_.
When such thoroughgoing analogy as this is found to run through several
languages, as Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, no other explanation is
possible but that an ancient parent language gave rise to them all, they
having only varied off from it in different directions. In this way it is
shown that not only are these particular languages related by descent,
but that groups of ancient and modern languages in Asia and Europe, the
Indian group, the Persian group, the Hellenic or Greek group, the Italic
or Latin group, the Slavonic group to which Russian belongs, the Teutonic
group which English is a member of, the Keltic group which Welsh is a
member of, are all descendants of one common ancestral language, which is
now theoretically called the Aryan, though practically its nature can
only be made out in a vague way by comparing its descendant languages.
Some of these have come down to us in forms which are extremely ancient,
as antiquity goes in our limited chronology. The sacred books of India
and Persia have preserved the Sanskrit and Zend languages, which by their
structure show to the eye of the philologist an antiquity beyond that of
the earliest Greek and Latin inscriptions and the old Persian cuneiform
rock-writing of Darius. But the Aryan languages even in their oldest
known states had already become so different that it was the greatest
feat of modern philology to demonstrate that they had a common origin at
all. The faint likeness by which Welsh still shows its relationship to
Greek and German may give some idea of the time that may have elapsed
since all three were developed off from the original Aryan tongue, which
itself probably ceased to exist long before the historical period began.
Among the languages of ancient nations, another great group holds a
high place in the world’s history. This is the Semitic family which
includes the Hebrew and Phœnician, and the Assyrian deciphered from the
wedge-characters of Nineveh. Arabic, the language of the _Koran_, is
the great modern representative of the family, and the closeness with
which it matches Hebrew may be shown in familiar phrases. The Arab still
salutes the stranger with _salâm alaikum_, “peace upon you,” nearly as
the ancient Hebrew would have said _shâlôm lâchem_, that is, “peace to
you,” and the often-heard Arabic exclamation _bismillah_ may be turned
into Hebrew, as _be-shêm hâ-Elohim_, “in the name of God.” So the Hebrew
names of persons mentioned in the Bible give the interpretation of many
Arabic proper names, as where _Ebed-melech_, “servant of the king,” who
took Jeremiah out of the dungeon, bore a name nearly like that of the
khalif _Abd-el-Melik_, in Mohammedan history. But no one of these Semitic
languages has any claim to be the original of the family, standing to
the others as Latin does to Italian and French. All of them, Assyrian,
Phœnician, Hebrew, Arabic, are sister-languages, pointing back to an
earlier parent language which has long disappeared. The ancient Egyptian
language of the hieroglyphics cannot be classed as a member of the
Semitic family, though it shows points of resemblance which may indicate
some remote connexion. There are also known to have existed before 2000
B.C. two important languages not belonging to either the Aryan or Semitic
family; these were the ancient Babylonian and the ancient Chinese. As for
the languages of more outlying regions of the world, such as America,
when they come into view they are found likewise to consist of many
separate groups or families.
This slight glimpse of the earliest known state of language in the
world is enough to teach the interesting lesson that the main work of
language-making was done in the ages before history. Going back as
far as philology can take us, we find already existing a number of
language-groups, differing in words and structure, and if they ever had
any relationship with one another no longer showing it by signs clear
enough for our skill to make out. Of an original primitive language of
mankind, the most patient research has found no traces. The oldest types
of language we can reach by working back from known languages show no
signs of being primitive tongues of mankind. Indeed, it may be positively
asserted that they are not such, but that ages of growth and decay have
mostly obliterated the traces how each particular sound came to express
its particular sense. Man, since the historical period, has done little
in the way of absolute new creation of language, for the good reason that
his wants were already supplied by the words he learnt from his fathers,
and all he had to do when a new idea came to him was to work up old words
into some new shape. Thus the study of languages gives much the same
view of man’s antiquity as has been already gained from the study of
races. The philologist, asked how long he thinks mankind to have existed,
answers that it must have been long enough for human speech to have grown
from its earliest beginnings into elaborate languages, and for these in
their turn to have developed into families spread far and wide over the
world. This immense work had been already accomplished in ages before
the earliest inscriptions of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Phœnicia, Persia,
Greece, for these show the great families of human speech already in full
existence.
Next, we have to look at culture or civilization, to see whether this
also shows signs of man having lived and laboured in ages earlier than
the earliest which historical records can tell of. For this purpose
it is needful to understand what has been the general course of arts,
knowledge, and institutions. It is a good old rule to work from the known
to the unknown, and all intelligent people have much to tell from their
own experience as to how civilization develops. The account which an old
man can give of England as he remembers it in his schoolboy days, and of
the inventions and improvements he has seen come in since, is in itself
a valuable lesson. Thus, when starting from London by express train to
reach Edinburgh by dinner-time, he thinks of when it used to be fair
coach-travelling to get through in two days and nights. Catching sight
of a signal-post on the line, he remembers how such semaphores (that
is, sign-bearers) were then the best means of telegraphing, and stood
waving their arms on the hills between London and Plymouth, signalling
the Admiralty messages. Thinking of the electric telegraph which has
superseded them, reminds him that this invention arose out of a discovery
made in his youth as to the connexion between electricity and magnetism.
This again suggests other modern scientific discoveries that have opened
to us the secrets of the universe, such as the spectrum-analysis which
now makes out with such precision the materials of the stars, which is
just what our fathers were quite certain no man on earth ever could know.
Our informant can tell us, too, how knowledge has not only increased,
but is far more widely spread than formerly, when the thriving farmer’s
son could hardly get schooling practically so good as the labourer’s
son is now entitled to of right. He may then go on to explain to his
hearers how, since his time, the laws of the land have been improved and
better carried out, so that men are no longer hanged for stealing, that
more is done to reform the criminal classes instead of merely punishing
them, that life and property are safer than in old times. Last, but not
least, he can show from his own recollection that people are morally
a shade better than they were, that public opinion demands a somewhat
higher standard of conduct than in past generations, as may be seen in
the sharper disapproval that now falls on cheats and drunkards. From
such examples of the progress in civilization that has come in a single
country and a single lifetime, it is clear that the world has not been
standing still with us, but new arts, new thoughts, new institutions, new
rules of life, have arisen or been developed out of the older state of
things.
Now this growth or development in civilization, so rapid in our own time,
appears to have been going on more or less actively since the early ages
of man. Proof of this comes to us in several different ways. History, so
far as it reaches back, shows arts, sciences, and political institutions
beginning in ruder states, and becoming in the course of ages more
intelligent, more systematic, more perfectly arranged or organized, to
answer their purposes. Not to give many instances of a fact so familiar,
the history of parliamentary government begins with the old-world
councils of the chiefs and tumultuous assemblies of the whole people. The
history of medicine goes back to the times when _epilepsy_ or “seizure”
(Greek, _epilēpsis_) was thought to be really the act of a demon seizing
and convulsing the patient. But our object here is to get beyond such
ordinary information of the history books, and to judge what stages
civilization passed through in times yet earlier. Here one valuable aid
is archæology, which for instance shows us the stone hatchets and other
rude instruments which belonged to early tribes of men, thus proving
how low their state of arts was; of this more will be said presently.
Another useful guide is to be had from survivals in culture. Looking
closely into the thoughts, arts, and habits of any nation, the student
finds everywhere the remains of older states of things out of which they
arose. To take a trivial example, if we want to know why so quaintly cut
a garment as the evening dress-coat is worn, the explanation may be found
thus. The cutting away at the waist had once the reasonable purpose of
preventing the coat skirts from getting in the way in riding, while the
pair of useless buttons behind the waist are also relics from the times
when such buttons really served the purpose of fastening these skirts
behind; the curiously cut collar keeps the now misplaced notches made to
allow of its being worn turned up or down, the smart facings represent
the old ordinary lining, and the sham cuffs now made with a seam round
the wrist are survivals from real cuffs when the sleeve used to be turned
back. Thus it is seen that the present ceremonial dress-coat owes its
peculiarities to being descended from the old-fashioned practical coat
in which a man rode and worked. Or again, if one looks in modern English
life for proof of the Norman Conquest eight centuries ago, one may find
it in the “_Oh yes! Oh yes!_” of the town-crier, who all unknowingly
keeps up the old French form of proclamation, “_Oyez! Oyez!_” that is,
“Hear ye! Hear ye!” To what yet more distant periods of civilization such
survivals may reach back, is well seen in an example from India. There,
though people have for ages kindled fire for practical use with the
flint and steel, yet the Brahmans, to make the sacred fire for the daily
sacrifice, still use the barbaric art of violently boring a pointed stick
into another piece of wood till a spark comes. Asked why they thus waste
their labour when they know better, they answer that they do it to get
pure and holy fire. But to us it is plain that they are really keeping
up by unchanging custom a remnant of the ruder life once led by their
remote ancestors. On the whole, these various ways of examining arts and
sciences all prove that they never spring forth perfect, like Athene out
of the split head of Zeus. They come on by successive steps, and where
other information fails, the observer may often trust himself to judge
from the mere look of an invention how it probably arose. Thus no one can
look at a cross-bow and a common long-bow without being convinced that
the long-bow was the earlier, and that the cross-bow was made afterwards
by fitting a common bow on a stock, and arranging a trigger to let go the
string after taking aim. Though history fails to tell us who did this and
when, we feel almost as sure of it as of the known historical facts that
the cross-bow led up to the match-lock, and that again to the flint-lock
musket, and that again to the percussion musket, and that again to the
breech-loading rifle.
Putting these various means of information together, it often becomes
possible to picture the whole course of an art or an institution, tracing
it back from its highest state in the civilized world till we reach its
beginnings in the life of the rudest tribes of men. For instance, let
us look at a course of modern mathematics, as represented in the books
taken in for university honours. A student living in Queen Elizabeth’s
time would have had no infinitesimal calculus to study, hardly even
algebraic geometry, for what is now called the higher mathematics was
invented since then. Going back into the Middle Ages, we come to the
time when algebra had been just brought in, a novelty due to the Hindu
mathematicians and their scholars, the Arabs; and next we find the
numeral ciphers, 0, 1, 2, 3, &c., beginning to be known as an improvement
on the old calculating board and the Roman I., II., III. In the classic
ages yet earlier, we reach the time when the methods of Euklid and the
other Greek geometers first appeared. So we get back to what was known
to the mathematicians of the earliest historical period in Babylonia and
Egypt, an arithmetic clumsily doing what children in the lower standards
are taught with us to do far more neatly, and a rough geometry consisting
of a few rules of practical mensuration. This is as far as history can
go toward the beginnings of mathematics, but there are other means of
discovering through what lower stages the science arose. The very names
still used to denote lengths, such as cubit, hand, foot, span, nail,
show how the art of mensuration had its origin in times when standard
measures had not yet been invented, but men put their hands and feet
alongside objects of which they wished to estimate the size. So there is
abundant evidence that arithmetic came up from counting on the fingers
and toes, such as may still be seen among savages. Words still used for
numbers in many languages were evidently made during the period when such
reckoning on the hands and feet was usual, and they have lasted on ever
since. Thus a Malay expresses five by the word _lima_, which (though he
does not know it) once meant “hand,” so that it is seen to be a survival
from ages when his ancestors, wanting a word for five, held up one hand
and said “hand.” Indeed, the reason of our own decimal notation, why we
reckon by tens instead of the more convenient twelves, appears to be that
our forefathers got from their own fingers the habit of counting by tens
which has been since kept up, an unchanged relic of primitive man. The
following chapters contain many other cases of such growth of arts from
the simplest origins. Thus, in examining tools, it will be seen how the
rudely chipped stone grasped in the hand to hack with, led up to the more
artificially shaped stone chisel fitted as a hatchet in a wooden handle,
how afterwards when metal came in there was substituted for the stone a
bronze or iron blade, till at last was reached the most perfect modern
foresters’ axe, with its steel blade socketed to take the well-balanced
handle. Specimens such as those in Chapter VIII. show these great moves
in the development of the axe, which began before chronology and history,
and has been from the first one of man’s chief aids in civilizing himself.
It does not follow from such arguments as these that civilization is
always on the move, or that its movement is always progress. On the
contrary, history teaches that it remains stationary for long periods,
and often falls back. To understand such decline of culture, it must be
borne in mind that the highest arts and the most elaborate arrangements
of society do not always prevail, in fact they may be too perfect to hold
their ground, for people must have what fits with their circumstances.
There is an instructive lesson to be learnt from a remark made by an
Englishman at Singapore, who noticed with surprise two curious trades
flourishing there. One was to buy old English-built ships, cut them down
and rig them as junks; the other was to buy English percussion muskets
and turn them into old-fashioned flintlocks. At first sight this looks
like mere stupidity, but on consideration it is seen to be reasonable
enough. It was so difficult to get Eastern sailors to work ships of
European rig, that it answered better to provide them with the clumsier
craft they were used to; and as for the guns, the hunters far away in
the hot, damp forests were better off with gunflints than if they had
to carry and keep dry a stock of caps. In both cases, what they wanted
was not the highest product of civilization, but something suited to
the situation and easiest to be had. Now the same rule applies both to
taking in new civilization and keeping up old. When the life of a people
is altered by emigration into a new country, or by war and distress at
home, or mixture with a lower race, the culture of their forefathers may
be no longer needed or possible, and so dwindles away. Such degeneration
is to be seen among the descendants of Portuguese in the East Indies,
who have intermarried with the natives and fallen out of the march of
civilization, so that newly-arrived Europeans go to look at them lounging
about their mean hovels in the midst of luxuriant tropical fruits and
flowers, as if they had been set there to teach by example how man falls
in culture where the need of effort is wanting. Another frequent cause
of loss of civilization is when people once more prosperous are ruined
or driven from their homes, like those Shoshonee Indians who have taken
refuge from their enemies, the Blackfeet, in the wilds of the Rocky
Mountains, where they now roam, called Digger Indians from the wild
roots they dig for as part of their miserable subsistence. Not only the
degraded state of such outcasts, but the loss of particular arts by other
peoples, may often be explained by loss of culture under unfavourable
conditions. For instance, the South Sea Islanders, though not a very rude
people when visited by Captain Cook, used only stone hatchets and knives,
being indeed so ignorant of metal that they planted the first iron nails
they got from the English sailors, in the hope of raising a new crop.
Possibly their ancestors never had metals, but it seems as likely that
these ancestors were an Asiatic people to whom metal was known, but who,
through emigration to ocean islands and separation from their kinsfolk,
lost the use of it and fell back into the stone age. It is necessary for
the student to be alive to the importance of decline in civilization,
but it is here more particularly mentioned in order to point out that it
in no way contradicts the theory that civilization itself is developed
from low to high stages. One cannot lose a thing without having had it
first, and wherever tribes are fallen from the higher civilization of
their ancestors, this only leaves it to be accounted for how that higher
civilization grew up.
On the whole it appears that wherever there are found elaborate arts,
abstruse knowledge, complex institutions, these are results of gradual
development from an earlier, simpler, and ruder state of life. No stage
of civilization comes into existence spontaneously, but grows or is
developed out of the stage before it. This is the great principle which
every scholar must lay firm hold of, if he intends to understand either
the world he lives in or the history of the past. Let us now see how this
bears on the antiquity and early condition of mankind. The monuments
of Egypt and Babylonia show that toward 5,000 years ago certain nations
had already come to an advanced state of culture. No doubt the greater
part of the earth was then peopled by barbarians and savages, as it
remained afterwards. But in the regions of the Nile and the Euphrates
there was civilization. The ancient Egyptians had that greatest mark
of a civilized nation, the art of writing; indeed the hieroglyphic
characters of their inscriptions appear to have been the origin of our
alphabet. They were a nation skilled in agriculture, raising from their
fields fertilized by the yearly inundation those rich crops of grain
that provided subsistence for the dense population. How numerous and how
skilled in constructive art the ancient Egyptians were, is seen by every
traveller who looks on the pyramids which have made their name famous
through all history. The great pyramid of Gizeh still ranks among the
wonders of the world, a mountain of hewn limestone and syenite, whose
size Londoners describe by saying that it stands on a square the size
of Lincoln’s-Inn Fields, and rises above the height of St. Paul’s. The
perfection of its huge blocks and the beautiful masonry of the inner
chambers and passages show the skill not only of the stonecutter but of
the practical geometer. The setting of the sides to the cardinal points
is so exact as to prove that the Egyptians were excellent observers
of the elementary facts of astronomy; the day of the equinox can be
taken by observing the sunset across the face of the pyramid, and the
neighbouring Arabs still adjust their astronomical dates by its shadow.
As far back as anything is known of them, the Egyptians appear to have
worked in bronze and iron, as well as gold and silver. So their arts and
habits, their sculpture and carpentry, their reckoning and measuring,
their system of official life with its governors and scribes, their
religion with its orders of priesthood and its continual ceremonies,
all appear the results of long and gradual growth. What, perhaps, gives
the highest idea of antiquity, is to look at very early monuments, such
as the tomb of prince Teta of the 4th dynasty in the British Museum,
and notice how Egyptian culture had even then begun to grow stiff and
traditional. Art was already reaching the stage when it seemed to men
that no more progress was possible, for their ancestors had laid down
the perfect rule of life, which it was sin to alter by way of reform. Of
the early Babylonians or Chaldæans less is known, yet their monuments
and inscriptions show how ancient and how high was their civilization.
Their writing was in cuneiform or wedge-shaped characters, of which
they seem to have been the inventors, and which their successors, the
Assyrians, learnt from them. They were great builders of cities, and
the bricks inscribed with their kings’ names remain as records of their
great temples, such, for instance, as that dedicated to the god of Ur,
at the city known to Biblical history as Ur of the Chaldees. Written
copies of their laws exist, so advanced as to have provisions as to the
property of married women, the imprisonment of a father or mother for
denying their son, the daily fine of a half-measure of corn levied on the
master who killed or ill-used his slaves. Their astrology, which made
the names of Chaldæan and Babylonian famous ever since, led them to make
those regular observations of the heavenly bodies which gave rise to
the science of astronomy. The nation which wrote its name thus largely
in the book of civilization, dates back into the same period of high
antiquity as the Egyptian. These then are the two nations whose culture
is earliest vouched for by inscriptions done at the very time of their
ancient grandeur, and therefore it is safer to appeal to them than to
other nations which can only show as proofs of their antiquity writings
drawn up in far later ages. Looking at their ancient civilization, it
seems to have been formed by men whose minds worked much like our own.
No super-human powers were required for the work, but just human nature
groping on by roundabout ways, reaching great results, yet not half
knowing how to profit by them when reached; solving the great problem
of writing, yet not seeing how to simplify the clumsy hieroglyphics
into letters; devoting earnest thought to religion and yet keeping up a
dog and cat worship which was a jest even to the ancients; cultivating
astronomy and yet remaining mazed in the follies of astrology. In the
midst of their most striking efforts of civilization, the traces may be
discerned of the barbaric condition which prevailed before; the Egyptian
pyramids are burial-mounds like those of præhistoric England, but huge in
size and built of hewn stone or brick; the Egyptian hieroglyphics, with
their pictures of men and beasts and miscellaneous things, tell the story
of their own invention, how they began as a mere picture-writing like
that of the rude hunters of America. Thus it appears that civilization,
at the earliest dates where history brings it into view, had already
reached a level which can only be accounted for by growth during a long
præhistoric period. This result agrees with the conclusions already
arrived at by the study of races and language.
Without attempting here to draw a picture of life as it may have been
among men at their first appearance on the earth, it is important to
go back as far as such evidence of the progress of civilization may
fairly lead us. In judging how mankind may have once lived, it is also
a great help to observe how they are actually found living. Human
life may be roughly classed into three great stages, Savage, Barbaric,
Civilized, which may be defined as follows. The lowest or _savage_
state is that in which man subsists on wild plants and animals, neither
tilling the soil nor domesticating creatures for his food. Savages may
dwell in tropical forests where the abundant fruit and game may allow
small clans to live in one spot and find a living all the year round,
while in barer and colder regions they have to lead a wandering life in
quest of the wild food which they soon exhaust in any place. In making
their rude implements, the materials used by savages are what they find
ready to hand, such as wood, stone, and bone, but they cannot extract
metal from the ore, and therefore belong to the Stone Age. Men may be
considered to have risen into the next or _barbaric_ state when they
take to agriculture. With the certain supply of food which can be stored
till next harvest, settled village and town life is established, with
immense results in the improvement of arts, knowledge, manners, and
government. Pastoral tribes are to be reckoned in the barbaric stage, for
though their life of shifting camp from pasture to pasture may prevent
settled habitation and agriculture, they have from their herds a constant
supply of milk and meat. Some barbaric nations have not come beyond
using stone implements, but most have risen into the Metal Age. Lastly,
_civilized_ life may be taken as beginning with the art of writing,
which by recording history, law, knowledge, and religion for the service
of ages to come, binds together the past and the future in an unbroken
chain of intellectual and moral progress. This classification of three
great stages of culture is practically convenient, and has the advantage
of not describing imaginary states of society, but such as are actually
known to exist. So far as the evidence goes, it seems that civilization
has actually grown up in the world through these three stages, so that
to look at a savage of the Brazilian forests, a barbarous New Zealander
or Dahoman, and a civilized European, may be the student’s best guide to
understanding the progress of civilization, only he must be cautioned
that the comparison is but a guide, not a full explanation.
In this way it is reasonably inferred that even in countries now
civilized, savage and low barbaric tribes must have once lived.
Fortunately it is not left altogether to the imagination to picture the
lives of these rude and ancient men, for many relics of them are found
which may be seen and handled in museums. It has now to be considered
what sort of evidence of man’s age is thus to be had from archæology and
geology, and what it proves.
When an antiquary examines the objects dug up in any place, he can
generally judge in what state of civilization its inhabitants have
been. Thus if there are found weapons of bronze or iron, bits of fine
pottery, bones of domestic cattle, charred corn and scraps of cloth,
this would be proof that people lived there in a civilized, or at least
a high barbaric condition. If there are only rude implements of stone
and bone, but no metal, no earthenware, no remains to show that the land
was tilled or cattle kept, this would be evidence that the country had
been inhabited by some savage tribe. One of the chief questions to be
asked about the condition of any people is, whether they have metal in
use for their tools and weapons. If so, they may be said to be in the
metal age. If they have no copper or iron, but make their hatchets,
knives, spear-heads, and other cutting and piercing instruments of stone,
they are said to be in the stone age. Wherever such stone implements
are picked up, as they often are in our own ploughed fields, they prove
that stone-age men have once dwelt in the land. It is an important fact
that in every region of the inhabited world ancient stone implements are
thus found in the ground, showing that at some time the inhabitants were
in this respect like the modern savages. In countries where the people
have long been metal-workers, they have often lost all memory of what
these stone things are, and tell fanciful stories to account for their
being met with in ploughing or digging. One favourite notion, in England
and elsewhere, is that the stone hatchets are “thunderbolts” fallen
from the sky with the lightning flash. It has been imagined that in the
East, the seat of the most ancient civilizations, some district might be
found without any traces of man having lived there in a state of early
rudeness, so that in this part of the world he might have been civilized
from the first. But it is not so. In Assyria, Palestine, Egypt, as in
other lands, one may find sharp-chipped flints which show that here also
tribes in the stone age once lived, before the use of metal brought in
higher civilization.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.—Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements. _a_, stone
celt or hatchet; _b_, flint spear-head; _c_, scraper; _d_, arrow-heads;
_e_, flint flake-knives; _f_, core from which flint-flakes taken off;
_g_, flint-awl; _h_, flint saw; _i_, stone hammer-head.]
Whether it may be considered or not that Europe was a quarter of the
globe inhabited by the earliest tribes of men, it so happens that remains
found in Europe furnish at present the best proofs of man’s antiquity.
To understand these, it must be explained that the stone age had an
earlier and a later period, as may be plainly seen in looking at a good
collection of stone implements. Fig. 1 is intended to give some idea of
those in use in the later stone age. The hatchet is neatly shaped and
edged by rubbing on a grinding-stone, as is also the hammer-head. The
spear and arrows, scraper, and flake-knife it would have been waste of
labour to grind, but they are chipped out with much skill. On the whole,
these stone implements are much like those which the North American
Indians have been using to our own day. The question is, how long ago
tribes who made such stone implements were living in Europe. As to
this, we may fairly judge from the position in which they are found in
Denmark. The forests of that country are mainly of beeches, but in the
peat-mosses lie innumerable trunks of oaks, which show that at an earlier
period oak-forests prevailed, and deeper still there lie trunks of pine
trees, which show that there were pine-forests still older than the
oak-forests. Thus there have been three successive forest-periods, the
beech, the oak, and the pine, and the depth of the peat-mosses, which
in places is as much as thirty feet, shows that the period of the pine
trees was thousands of years ago. While the forests have been changing,
the condition of the people living among them has changed also. The
modern woodman cuts down the beech-trees with his iron axe, but among the
oak-trunks in the peat are found bronze swords and shield-bosses, which
show that the inhabitants of the country were then in the bronze age, and
lastly, a flint hatchet taken out from where it lay still lower in the
peat beneath the pine-trunks, proves that stone-age men in Denmark lived
in the pine-forest period, which carries them back to high antiquity.
In England, the tribes who have left such stone implements were in the
land before the invasion of that Keltic race whom we call the ancient
Britons, and who no doubt came armed with weapons of metal. The stone
hatchet-blades and arrow-heads of the older population lie scattered over
our country, hill and dale, moor and fen, near the surface of the ground,
or deeper underground in peat-mosses, or beds of mud and silt. Such bogs
or mud-flats began at a date which chronologists would call ancient.
But they are what geologists, accustomed to vaster periods of time,
consider modern. They belong to the newer alluvial deposits, that is,
they were formed within the times when the lie of the land and the flow
of the streams were much as they are now. To get an idea of this, one has
only to look down from a hill-side into a wide valley below, and notice
how its flat flooring of mud and sand, stretching right across, must
have been laid down by flood-waters following very much their present
course along the main stream and down the side slopes. The people of the
newer stone age, whose implements are seen in Fig. 1, lived within this
historically ancient, but geologically modern period, and relics of them
are found only in places where man or nature could then have placed them.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.—Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or
hatchets.]
But there had been a still earlier period of the stone age, when yet
ruder tribes of men lived in our parts of the world, when the climate
and the face of the country were strangely different from the present
state of things. On the slopes of river valleys such as that of the Ouse,
in England, and the Somme, in France, 50 or 100 feet above the present
river-banks, and thus altogether out of the reach of any flood now, there
are beds of so-called drift gravel. Out of these beds have been dug
numerous rude implements of flint, chipped into shape by the hands of
men who had gained no mean dexterity in the art, as any one will find who
will try his hand at making one, with any tools he thinks fit. The most
remarkable implements of this earlier stone age are the picks or hatchets
shown in Fig. 2. The coarseness of their finish, and the absence of any
signs of grinding even at the edges of hacking or cutting instruments,
show that the makers had not come nearly to the skill of the later
stone age. It is usual to distinguish the two kinds of implements, and
the periods they belong to, by the terms introduced by Sir J. Lubbock,
palæolithic and neolithic, that is “old-stone” and “new-stone.” Looking
now at the high gravel-beds in which palæolithic implements such as those
shown in Fig. 2 occur, it is evident from their position that they had
nothing to do with the water-action which is now laying down and shifting
sand-banks and mud-flats at the bottom of the valleys, nor with the
present rain-wash which scours the surface of the hill-sides. They must
have been deposited in a former period when the condition of land and
water was different from what it is now. How far this state of things was
due to the valleys not being yet cut out to near their present depth, to
the whole country lying lower above the sea-level, or to the rivers being
vastly larger than at present from the heavier rainfall of a pluvial
period, it would be raising too intricate geological questions to discuss
here. Geology shows the old drift-gravels to belong to times when the
glacial or icy period with its arctic climate was passing, or had passed
away, in Europe. From the bones and teeth found with the flint implements
in the gravel-beds, it is known what animals inhabited the land at the
same time with the men of the old stone age. The mammoth, or huge woolly
elephant, and several kinds of rhinoceros, also extinct, browsed on the
branches of the forest trees, and a species of hippopotamus much like
that at present living frequented the rivers. The musk-ox and the grizzly
bear, which England harboured in this remote period, may still be hunted
in the Rocky Mountains, but the ancient cave-bear, which was one of the
dangerous wild beasts of our land, is no longer on the face of the earth.
The British lion was of a larger breed than those now in Asia and Africa,
and perhaps than those which Herodotus mentions as prowling in Macedonia
in the fifth century B.C., and falling on the camels of Xerxes’ army.
To judge by such signs as the presence of the reindeer, and the mammoth
with its hairy coat, the climate of Europe was severer than now, perhaps
like that of Siberia. How long man had been in the land there is no clear
evidence. For all we know, he may have lasted on from an earlier and more
genial period, or he may have only lately migrated into Europe from some
warmer region. Implements like his are not unknown in Asia, as where in
Southern India, above Madras, there lies at the foot of the Eastern
Gháts a terrace of irony clay or laterite, containing stone implements of
very similar make to those of the drift-men in Europe.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.—Sketch of mammoth from cave of La Madeleine
(Lartet and Christy).]
These European savages of the mammoth-period resorted much to shelter
at the foot of overhanging cliffs, and to caverns such as Kent’s Hole
near Torquay, where the implements of the men and the bones of the
beasts are found together in abundance. In Central France especially,
the examination of such bone-caves has brought to light evidence of
the whole way of life of a group of ancient tribes. The reindeer which
have now retreated to high northern latitudes, were then plentiful in
France, as appears from their bones and antlers imbedded with remains of
the mammoth under the stalagmite floors of the caves of Perigord. With
them are found rude stone hatchets and scrapers, pounding-stones, bone
spear-heads, awls, arrow-straighteners, and other objects belonging to
a life like that of the modern Esquimaux who hunt the reindeer on the
coasts of Hudson’s Bay. Like the Esquimaux also, these early French and
Swiss savages spent their leisure time in carving figures of animals.
Among many such figures found in the French caves is a mammoth, Fig.
3, scratched on a piece of its own ivory, so as to touch off neatly
the shaggy hair and huge curved tusks which distinguish the mammoth
from other species of elephant. There has been also found a rude
representation of a man, Fig. 4, grouped with two horses’ heads and
a snake or eel; this is interesting as being the most ancient human
portrait known.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.—Sketch of man and horses from cave (Lartet and
Christy).]
Thus it appears that man of the older stone age was already living when
the floods went as high above our present valley-flats as the tops of
the high trees growing there now reach, and when the climate was of that
Lapland kind suited to the woolly mammoth and the reindeer, and the rest
of the un-English looking group of animals now perished out of this
region, or extinct altogether. From all that is known of the slowness
with which such alterations take place anywhere in the lie of the land,
the climate, and the wild animals, we cannot suppose changes so vast
to have happened without a long lapse of time before the newer stone
age came in, when the streams had settled down to near their present
levels, and the climate and the wild creatures had become much as they
were within the historical period. It is also plain from the actual
remains found, that these most ancient known tribes were wild hunters and
fishers, such as we should now class as savages. It is best, however,
not to apply to them the term primitive men, as this might be understood
to mean that they were the first men who appeared on earth, or at least
like them. The life the men of the mammoth-period must have led at
Abbeville or Torquay, shows on the face of it reasons against its being
man’s primitive life. These old stone-age men are more likely to have
been tribes whose ancestors while living under a milder climate gained
some rude skill in the arts of procuring food and defending themselves,
so that afterwards they were able by a hard struggle to hold their own
against the harsh weather and fierce beasts of the quaternary period.
How long ago this period was, no certain knowledge is yet to be had.
Some geologists have suggested twenty thousand years, while others say a
hundred thousand or more, but these are guesses made where there is no
scale to reckon time by. It is safest to be content at present to regard
it as a geological period lying back out of the range of chronology.
It is thought by several eminent geologists that stones shaped by man,
and therefore proving his presence, occur in England and France in beds
deposited before the last glacial period, when much of the continent
lay submerged under an icy sea, where drifting icebergs dropped on what
is now dry land their huge boulders of rock transported from distant
mountains. This cannot be taken as proved, but if true it would immensely
increase our estimate of man’s age. At any rate the conclusive proofs of
man’s existence during the quaternary or mammoth period do not even bring
us into view of the remoter time when human life first began on earth.
Thus geology establishes a principle which lies at the very foundation of
the science of anthropology. Until of late, while it used to be reckoned
by chronologists that the earth and man were less than 6,000 years old,
the science of geology could hardly exist, there being no room for its
long processes of building up the strata containing the remains of its
vast successions of plants and animals. These are now accounted for on
the theory that geological time extends over millions of years. It is
true that man reaches back comparatively little way into this immense
lapse of time. Yet his first appearance on earth goes back to an age
compared with which the ancients, as we call them, are but moderns. The
few thousand years of recorded history only take us back to a præhistoric
period of untold length, during which took place the primary distribution
of mankind over the earth and the development of the great races, the
formation of speech and the settlement of the great families of language,
and the growth of culture up to the levels of the old world nations of
the East, the forerunners and founders of modern civilized life.
Having now sketched what history, archæology, and geology teach as to
man’s age and course on the earth, we shall proceed in the following
chapters to describe more fully Man and his varieties as they appear in
natural history, next examining the nature and growth of Language, and
afterwards the development of the knowledge, arts, and institutions,
which make up Civilization.
CHAPTER II.
MAN AND OTHER ANIMALS.
Vertebrate Animals, 35—Succession and Descent of Species,
37—Apes and Man, comparison of structure, 38—Hands and Feet,
42—Hair, 44—Features, 44—Brain, 45—Mind in Lower Animals and
Man, 47.
To understand rightly the construction of the human body, and to compare
our own limbs and organs with those of other animals, requires a thorough
knowledge of anatomy and physiology. It will not be attempted here to
draw up an abstract of these sciences, for which such handbooks should
be studied as Huxley’s _Elementary Physiology_ and Mivart’s _Elementary
Anatomy_. But it will be useful to give a slight outline of the evidence
as to man’s place in the animal world, which may be done without
requiring special knowledge in the reader.
That the bodies of other animals more or less correspond in structure
to our own is one of the lessons we begin to learn in the nursery. Boys
playing at horses, one on all-fours and the other astride on his back,
have already some notion how the imagined horse matches a real one as to
head, eyes, and ears, mouth and teeth, back and legs. If one questions a
country lad sitting on a stile watching the hunters go by, he knows well
enough that the huntsman and his horse, the hounds and the hare they are
chasing, are all creatures built up on the same kind of bony scaffolding
or skeleton, that their life is carried on by means of similar organs,
lungs to breathe with, a stomach to digest the food taken in by the
mouth and gullet, a heart to drive the blood through the vessels, while
the eyes, ears, and nostrils receive in them all in like manner the
impressions of sight, hearing, and smell. Very likely the peasant has
taken all this as a matter of course without ever reflecting on it, and
even more educated people are apt to do the same. Had it come as a new
discovery, it would have set any intelligent mind thinking what must be
the tie or connexion between creatures thus formed as it were on one
original pattern, only varied in different modes for different ends. The
scientific comparison of animals, even when made in the most elementary
way, does at once bring this great problem before our minds. In some
cases, more exact knowledge shows that the first rough comparison of man
and beast may want correction. For instance, when a man’s skeleton and
a horse’s are set side by side, it becomes plain that the horse’s knee
and hock do not answer, as is popularly supposed, to our elbow and knee,
but to our wrist and ankle. The examination of the man’s limb and the
horse’s leads to a further and remarkable conclusion, that the horse’s
fore- and hind-leg really correspond to a man’s arm and leg in which
all the fingers and toes should have become useless and shrunk away,
except one finger and one toe, which are left to be walked upon, with
the nail become a hoof. The general law to be learnt from the series of
skeletons in a natural history museum, is that through order after order
of fishes, reptiles, birds, beasts, up to man himself, a common type or
pattern may be traced, belonging to all animals which are vertebrate,
that is, which have a backbone. Limbs may still be recognised though
their shape and service have changed, and though they may even have
dwindled into remnants, as if left not for use, but to keep up the old
model. Thus, although a perch’s skeleton differs so much from a man’s,
its pectoral and ventral fins still correspond to arms and legs. Snakes
are mostly limbless, yet there are forms which connect them with the
quadrupeds, as for instance, the boa-constrictor’s skeleton shows a pair
of rudimentary hind-legs. The Greenland whale has no visible hind-limbs,
and its fore-limbs are paddles or flippers, yet when dissected, the
skeleton shows not only remnants of what in man would be the leg-bones,
but the flipper actually has within it the set of bones which belong to
the human arm and hand. It is popularly considered that man is especially
distinguished from the lower animals by not having a tail; yet the tail
is plainly to be seen in the human skeleton, represented by the last
tapering vertebræ of the spine.
All these are animals now living. But geology shows that in long-past
ages the earth has been inhabited by species different from those at
present existing, and yet evidently related to them. In the tertiary
period, Australia was distinguished as now by its marsupial or pouched
animals, but these were not of any present species, and mostly far
larger; even the tallest kangaroo now to be seen is a puny creature in
comparison with the enormous extinct diprotodon, whose skull was three
feet long. So in South America there lived huge edentate animals, now
poorly represented by the sloths, anteaters and armadillos, to be seen
in our Zoological Gardens. Elephants are found fossil in the miocene
deposits, but the species were all different from those in Africa and
India now. These are common examples of the great principle now received
by all zoologists, that from remote geological antiquity there have from
time to time appeared on earth new species of animals, so far similar
to those which came before them as to look as if the old types had been
altered to fit new conditions of life, the earlier forms then tending
to die out and disappear. This relation between the older species of
vertebrate animals and the newer species which have supplanted them, is
a matter of actual observation, and beyond dispute. Many zoologists, now
perhaps the majority, go a step farther than this, not only acknowledging
that there is a relation between the new species and the old, but seeking
to explain it by the hypothesis of descent or development, now often
called, from its great modern expounder, the Darwinian theory. The
formation of breeds or varieties of animals being an admitted fact, it
is argued that natural variation under changed conditions of life can go
far enough to produce new species, which by better adaptation to climate
and circumstances may supplant the old. On this theory, the present
kangaroos of Australia, sloths of South America, and elephants of India,
are not only the successors but the actual descendants of extinct ones,
and the fossil bones of tertiary horse-like animals with three-toed and
four-toed feet show what the remote ancestors of our horses were like, in
ages before the unused toes dwindled to the splint-bones which represent
them in the horse’s leg now. According to the doctrine of descent, when
several species of animals living at the same time show close resemblance
in structure, it is inferred that this resemblance must have been
inherited by all from one ancestral species. Now of all the mammalia,
or animals which suckle their young, those whose structure brings them
closest to man are the apes or monkeys, and among these the catarhine or
near-nostrilled apes of the Old World, and among these the group called
anthropoid or manlike, which inhabit tropical forests from Africa to the
Eastern Archipelago. By now comparing their skeletons, it will be seen
that in any scale of nature or scheme of creation these animals must be
placed in somewhat close relation to man. No competent anatomist who has
examined the bodily structure of these apes considers it possible that
man can be descended from any of them, but according to the doctrine
of descent they appear as the nearest existing offshoots from the same
primitive stock whence man also came.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.—Skeletons of apes and man. _a_, gibbon; _b_,
orang; _c_, chimpanzee; _d_, gorilla; _e_, man (after Huxley).]
Professor Huxley’s _Man’s Place in Nature_, in which this anatomical
comparison is made, contains a celebrated drawing which is copied in Fig.
5 as the readiest means of showing how the anthropoid apes correspond
bone for bone with ourselves. At the same time it illustrates some main
points in which their bodily actions are unlike ours. It has been said
that the child first takes on him the dignity of man when he leaves off
going on all-fours. But in fact, standing and walking upright is not a
mere matter of training; it belongs to the arrangement of the human body
being different from that of quadrupeds. The limbs of the dog or cow are
so proportioned as to bring them down on all-fours, and this is to a less
degree the case with the apes, while the head and trunk of the growing
child are lifted toward the erect attitude by the disproportionate growth
of the lower limbs. Though man’s standing upright requires continued
muscular effort, he is so built as to keep his balance more readily
than other animals in this position. It may be noticed from the figure
how in man the opening at the base of the skull (occipital foramen)
through which the spinal cord passes up into the brain, is farther to the
front than in the apes, so that his skull, instead of pitching forward,
is balanced on the top of the atlas vertebra (so called from Atlas
supporting the globe). The figure shows also the S-like curvature of
man’s spine, and how the bony pelvis or basin forms a broad support for
his intestines as he stands upright, in which attitude the feet serve as
bases enabling the legs to carry the trunk. Thus the erect posture, only
imitated with difficult effort by the showman’s performing animals, is to
man easy and unconstrained. Not through great differences of structure,
but by adjustments of bones and muscles, the fore- and hind-limbs of
quadrupeds work in accord, while in man, whose muscular adaptation is
for going on his legs, there is no such reciprocal action between the
legs and arms. Of the monkey tribes, many walk fairly on all-fours as
quadrupeds, with legs bent, arms straightened forward, soles and palms
touching the ground. But the higher manlike apes are adapted by their
structure for a climbing life among the trees, whose branches they grasp
with feet and hands. When the orang-utan takes to the ground he shambles
clumsily along, generally putting down the outer edge of the feet and
the bent knuckles of the hands. The orang and gorilla have the curious
habit of resting on their bent fists, so as to draw their bodies forward
between their long arms, like a cripple between his crutches. The nearest
approach that apes naturally make to the erect attitude, is where the
gibbon will go along on its feet, touching the ground with its knuckles
first on one side and then on the other, or will run some distance with
its arms thrown back above its head to keep the balance, or when the
gorilla will rise on its legs and rush forward to attack. All these modes
of locomotion may be understood from the skeletons in the figure. The
apes thus present interesting intermediate stages between quadruped and
biped. But only man is so formed that, using his feet to carry him, he
has his hands free for their special work.
[Illustration: FIG. 6.—_a_, hand, _b_, foot, of chimpanzee (after Vogt);
_c_, hand, _d_, foot, of man.]
In comparing man with the lower animals, it is wrong to set down his
pre-eminence entirely to his mind, without noticing the superiority
of his limbs as instruments for practical arts. If one looks at the
illustrations to “Reynard the Fox,” where the artist does his best to
represent the lion holding a sceptre, the she-wolf flirting a fan, or
the fox writing a letter; what he really shows is, how ill adapted the
limbs of quadrupeds are to such actions. Man’s being the “tool-using
animal” is due to his having hands to use the tool as well as mind to
invent it; and only the apes, as most nearly approaching man in their
limbs, can fairly imitate the use of such instruments as a spoon or a
knife. In Fig. 6 the hand and foot of the chimpanzee may be compared with
those of man. Here the ape’s foot _b_, looks so like a hand, that many
naturalists have classed the higher apes under the name of four-handed
animals, or _quadrumana_. In anatomical structure it is a foot, but it is
a prehensile or grasping foot, able to clip or pinch an object by setting
the great toe thumb-wise against the others, which the human foot _d_,
cannot do. It is true that among people who go barefoot the great toe is
not quite so helpless as that of a boot-wearing European. With the naked
foot the savage Australian picks up his spear, and the Hindu tailor holds
his cloth as he squats sewing. The above drawing is purposely taken, not
from the free foot of the savage, but from the European foot cramped
by the stiff leather boot, because this shows in the utmost way the
contrast between ape and man. In the ape, it is seen that both the hands
and feet gain their suitability for a tree-climbing life at the loss of
their suitability for walking on the ground. But man’s upper and lower
extremities have become differentiated or specialised in two opposite
ways, the human foot becoming a stepping-machine with less grasping-power
than the ape-foot, while the human hand comes to excel the ape-hand
as a special organ for feeling, holding, and handling. The figure _c_
shows the longer and freely-acting thumb and the wider flexible palm in
man, the sensitive cushions at our finger-ends also giving us greater
delicacy of touch. It is most instructive to visit the monkey-house at
the Zoological Gardens for the purpose of comparing hands of high and low
kinds. The hand of the marmoset with its five claw-nailed digits, is a
mere grasping instrument hardly capable of handling. Other low monkeys
have the thumbs small and not opposable, that is, their ends do not meet
those of the other fingers, whereas the thumbs of the higher apes are
(as the figure shows) opposable like ours. How far the value of the hand
as a mechanical instrument depends on this opposability, any one may
satisfy himself by using his hand with the thumb stiff. It is plain that
man’s hand, enabling him to shape and wield weapons and tools to subdue
nature to his own ends, is one cause of his standing first among animals.
It is not so obvious, but it is true, that his intellectual development
must have been in no small degree gained by the use of his hands. From
handling objects, putting them in different positions, and setting
them side by side, he was led to those simplest kinds of comparing and
measuring which are the first elements of exact knowledge, or science.
Outwardly, the shaggy hair of the apes contrasts with the comparative
nakedness of the human skin. In man as in lower animals, the thatch of
hair indeed forms an effective shelter to the head. The hairy fringe
round the human mouth in the adult male has in some races a strong
growth, as in the European or the native of Australia. But in others, as
the African negro and the so-called American Indian, the scanty face-hair
looks as though it had dwindled to the mere remnant of a fuller growth.
Looked at in this way, the hairy patches on the Englishman’s breast and
limbs, though practically of no importance, are an object of curious
interest to the naturalists who consider them relics from the remote
period when man’s ancestral stock had a fuller hairy covering, whose want
is now supplied by artificial shelter suited to season and climate. It
is interesting to notice that there are some few human beings to be met
with, whose faces and bodies are largely covered with long shaggy hair.
Such a face-covering hides the play of feature—that expressive means of
intercourse between mind and mind. Had the skeletons of apes and man in
our figure been clothed with flesh, we should have seen plainly the signs
of man’s higher organisation in the flexible versatile features, in whose
movements and folds are symbolised the pleasures and pains, the loves
and hates, of every phase of human life. How coarse and clumsy are the
corresponding changes of face in the monkey-tribes, such as the drawing
back of the corners of the mouth and wrinkling of the lower eyelid which
constitute an ape’s smile, or the rise and fall of the baboon’s eyebrow’s
and forehead in anger. The visitor from some other planet, so often
imagined as coming to our earth and forming his judgments by what he
sees, might well discern in the difference between man’s face and the
gorilla’s muzzle some measure of the discrepancy within.
The brain being the instrument or organ of mind, anatomists comparing the
brains of animals have looked for well-marked distinctions between the
less and the more intelligent. In the natural order of Primates, to which
man belongs with the monkeys and lemurs, the series of brains shows a
remarkable rise or development from lower to higher forms. The lemur has
a small and comparatively smooth brain, whereas the high anthropoid apes
have brains which strikingly approach man’s. In fact the lemur has very
little mind in comparison with the sagacious and teachable chimpanzee
or orang-utan. But man’s reason so vastly surpasses that of the highest
apes, that naturalists have wondered at the likeness of their brain to
ours, which is illustrated in the accompanying Fig. 7, representing the
brain of the chimpanzee _a_, and of man _b_, whole on the left to show
the convolutions, and cut across on the right to expose the interior.
To compare their structure the two brains are drawn of the same size,
but in fact the chimpanzee brain is much smaller than the human. It
is one great difference between man and the anthropoid apes, that his
brain exceeds theirs in quantity; in a rough way he has three pounds
of brain to their one. It is seen also that in the ape-brain the lobes
or hemispheres have fewer and simpler windings than the more complex
convolutions of the human brain, which in general outline they resemble.
Now both size and complexity mean mind-power. The lobes of the brain
consist within of the “white matter” with its innumerable fibres carrying
nerve-currents, while the outer coating is formed of the “grey matter,”
containing the brain-corpuscles or cells from which the fibres issue,
and which are centres through which the combinations are made which we
are conscious of as thoughts. As the coating of grey matter follows the
foldings of the brain down into the fissures, it is evident that the
increased complexity of the convolutions, combined with greater actual
size of brain, furnishes man with a vastly more extensive and intricate
thinking-apparatus than the animals nearest below him in the order of
nature.
[Illustration: FIG. 7.—Brain of chimpanzee (_a_) and of man (_b_), seen
from above, showing the cerebral hemispheres, whole on left, in section
on right (after Huxley).]
Having looked at some of the important differences between the bodies of
man and lower animals, we may venture to ask the still harder question,
How far do their minds work like ours? No full answer can be given, yet
there are some well ascertained points to judge by. To begin, it is clear
that the simple processes of sense, will, and action, are carried on in
man by the same bodily machinery as in other high vertebrate animals.
How like their organs of sense are, is well illustrated by the anatomist
who dissects a bullock’s eye as a substitute for a man’s, to show how
the picture of the outer world is thrown by the lenses on the retina
or screen, into which spread the end-fibres of the optic nerve leading
into the brain. Not but what the touch, sight, and other senses in the
various orders of animals have their special differences, as where the
eagle’s eyes are focussed to see small objects far beyond man’s range,
while the horse’s eyes are so set in his head that they do not converge
like ours, and he must practically have two pictures of the two sides
of the road to deal with. Such special differences, however, make the
general resemblance all the more striking. Next, the nervous system in
beast and man shows the same common plan, the brain and spinal cord
forming a central nervous organ, to which the sensory nerves convey
the messages of the senses, and from which the motor nerves carry the
currents causing muscular contraction and movement. The involuntary
acts of animals are like our own, as when the sleeping dog draws his
leg back if it is touched, much as his master would do, and when awake,
both man and beast wink when a finger pretends to strike at their eyes.
If we go on to voluntary actions, done with conscious will and thought,
the lower creatures can for some distance keep company with mankind. At
the Zoological Gardens one may sometimes see a handful of nuts divided
between the monkeys inside the bars and the children outside, and it
is instructive to notice how nearly both go through the same set of
movements, looking, approaching, elbowing, grasping, cracking, munching,
swallowing, holding out their hands for more. Up to this level, the
monkeys show all the mental likeness to man that their bodily likeness
would lead us to expect. Now we know that in the scramble, there passes
in the children’s minds a great deal besides the mere sight and feel
of the nuts, and the will to take and eat them. Between the sensation
and action there takes place thought. To describe it simply, the boy
knows a nut by sight, wishes to renew the pleasant taste of former nuts,
and directs his hands and mouth to grasp, crack, and eat. But here are
complicated mental processes. Knowing a nut by sight, or having an idea
of a nut, means that there are grouped together in the child’s mind
memories of a number of past sensations, which have so become connected
by experience that a particular form and colour, feel and weight, lead to
the expectation of a particular flavour. Of what here takes place in the
boy’s mind we can judge, though by no means clearly, from what we know
about our own thoughts and what others have told us about theirs. What
takes place in the monkeys’ minds we can only guess by watching their
actions, but these are so like the human as to be most readily explained
by considering their brain-work also to be like the human, though less
clear and perfect. It seems as though a beast’s idea or thought of an
object may be, as our own, a group of remembered sensations compacted
into a whole. What makes this the more likely is that when part of the
sensations present themselves, the animal seems to judge that the rest
must be there also, much as we ourselves are so apt to do. Thus a dog
will jump upon a scum-covered stream which it takes for dry land, or
when offered a sham biscuit will come for it, turning away when smell
and taste prove that the rest of the idea does not agree with what sight
suggested.
In much the same way, all people who attend to the proceedings of
animals, account for them by faculties more or less like their own. Not
only do creatures of all high orders give unmistakable signs of pleasure
and pain, but our dealings with the brutes go on the ground of their
sharing with us such more complex emotions as fear, affection, anger,
nay, even curiosity, jealousy, and revenge. Some of these show themselves
in bodily symptoms which are quite human, as every one must admit who
has felt the trembling limbs and throbbing heart of a frightened puppy,
or looked at the picture in Darwin’s _Expression of the Emotions_ of
the chimpanzee who has had his fruit taken from him, and displays his
sulkiness by a pout which is a caricature of a child’s. Again, the lower
animals show a well-marked will, which like man’s is not simply wish,
but the resultant or balance of wishes, so that it is possible for two
people calling a dog different ways, or both offering him bones, to
distract his will in a way that reminds us of the philosopher’s imaginary
ass that died of starvation between its hay and its water. As to the
power of memory in brutes, we have all had opportunities of noticing
how lasting and exact it is. Some things which the animals remember may
be explained simply by their ideas becoming associated through habit,
as when the horse betrays its former owner’s ways by stopping at every
public-house; this may only mean that the familiar door suggests to the
beast the memory of rest, and he stops. But to watch a dog dreaming makes
us think that whole trains of ideas from the storehouse of memory are
passing before his consciousness, as in our dreams. A memory in which
such a revival of the past is possible, is a source of experience whence
to extract understanding of the present, and foresight of the future. To
make the memory of what has been, the means of controlling what shall be,
is the great intellectual faculty in man, and in simple and elementary
forms it comes into view among lower creatures. To tell but one of the
innumerable animal stories which show expectation and design founded
on experience. A certain Mr. Cops, who had a young orang-utan, one day
gave it half an orange, put the other half away out of its sight on a
high press, and lay down himself on the sofa, but the ape’s movements
attracting his attention, he only pretended to go to sleep; the creature
came cautiously and satisfied himself of his master being asleep, then
climbed up the press, ate the rest of the orange, carefully hid the peel
among some shavings in the grate, examined the pretended sleeper again,
and then went to lie down on his own bed. Such behaviour is only to be
explained by a train of thought involving something of what in ourselves
we call reason.
To measure the differences between beast and man is really more
difficult than tracing their resemblances. One plain mark of the higher
intellectual rank of man is that he is less dependent on instinct than
the animals which migrate at a fixed season, or build nests of a fixed
and complicated pattern peculiar to their kind. Man has some instincts
plainly agreeing with those of inferior animals, such as the child’s
untaught movements to ward off danger, and the parental affection which
preserves the offspring during the first defenceless period of life.
But if man were possessed by a resistless longing to set off wandering
southward before winter, or to build a shelter of boughs laid in a
particular way, this would be less beneficial to his species than the
use of intelligent judgment adapting his actions to climate, supply of
food, danger from enemies, and a multitude of circumstances differing
from district to district, and changing from year to year. If man’s
remote progenitors had instincts like the beavers’ implanted in the
very structure of their brain, these instincts have long ago fallen
away, displaced by freer and higher reason. Man’s power of accommodating
himself to the world he lives in, and even of controlling it, is
largely due to his faculty of gaining new knowledge. Yet it must not be
overlooked that this faculty is in a less measure possessed by other
animals. We may catch them in the act of learning by experience, which
is indeed one of the most curious sights in natural history, as when
telegraph-wires are set up in a new district, and after the second year
partridges no longer kill themselves by flying against them, or where
in Canada the wily marten baffles the trapper’s ingenuity, finding out
how to get the bait away, even from a new kind of trap, without letting
it fall. The faculty of learning by imitation comes out in the apes
in an almost human way. The anthropoid ape Mafuka, kept lately in the
Zoological Gardens at Dresden, saw how the door of her cage was unlocked,
and not only did it herself, but even stole the key and hid it under her
arm for future use; after watching the carpenter she seized his bradawl
and bored holes with it through the little table she had her meals on; at
her meals she not only filled her own cup from the jug, but, what is more
remarkable, she carefully stopped pouring before it ran over. The death
of this ape had an almost human pathos; when her friend the director of
the gardens came to her, she put her arms round his neck, kissed him
three times, and then lay down on her bed and giving him her hand fell
into her last sleep. One cannot but think that creatures so sagacious
must learn in their wild state. Indeed less clever animals seem to some
extent to teach their young, birds to sing, wolves to hunt, although it
is most difficult for naturalists in such cases to judge what comes by
instinct and what is consciously learnt.
Philosophers have tried to draw a hard and fast line between the animal
and human mind. The most celebrated of these attempts is Locke’s, where
in his _Essay concerning Human Understanding_ he lays it down that beasts
indeed have ideas, but are without man’s faculty of forming abstract
or general ideas. Now it is true that we have learnt to reason with
abstract ideas, such as solidity and fluidity, quantity and quality,
vegetable and animal, courage and cowardice; and that there is not the
least reason to suppose that such abstractions are formed by dogs or
apes. But though the faculty of thus abstracting and generalising is
one which rises to the highest flights of philosophic thought, it must
be borne in mind that it begins in easy mental acts which seem quite
possible to animals. Abstraction is noticing what several thoughts have
in common, and neglecting their differences; thus a general idea is
obtained by not attending too closely to particulars. The simplest form
of this is when only one sense at a time is attended to, as in Locke’s
example of the idea of whiteness, as being that which chalk, snow, and
milk, agree in. But, to judge by animals’ actions, they also will attend
to one sense at a time, as where a bull is excited by anything red. And
it is most interesting to watch animals comparing a new object with
their recollections or ideas of previous ones, practically recognising
in it what is already familiar, and expecting it to behave like other
individuals of its class. Cats or monkeys do not require to be shown the
use of a fresh rug or cushion, when it is at all like the old one it is
put in place of, and the “dog of the regiment” will accept any man in the
uniform as a master, whether he has seen him before or not. Thus, the
very simplicity of animal thought foreshadows the results of man’s higher
abstraction and generalisation. Let us now read a few lines farther in
Locke, and we shall see why he concludes that animals have not the power
of forming abstract ideas. It is, he says, because they have no use of
words or other general signs. But this itself is an easier point and far
more worth arguing, than the hard question whether brutes have abstract
ideas. In fact the power of speech gives about the clearest distinction
that can be drawn between the action of mind in beast and man. It is far
more satisfactory than another division attempted by philosophers who
lay it down that while other animals have consciousness, man alone has
self-consciousness, that is, he not only feels and thinks, but is aware
of himself as feeling and thinking. Man, we know, is capable of this
self-consciousness, which is cultivated by his being able to talk about
himself as he does about other persons; but it has never been proved that
animals, who we know are not apt to mistake their own bodies for anything
outside, have no consciousness of themselves. When we study the rules of
sign-making and language, we really have some means of contrasting the
animals with ourselves. Evidently it is by means of language that the
human mind has been able to work out and mark the high abstract ideas we
deal with so easily; without words, how could we have reached results of
combined and compared thought such as momentum, plurality, righteousness?
The great mental gap between us and the animals we study is well measured
by the difference between their feeble beginnings in calling one another
and knowing when they are called, and man’s capacity for perfect speech.
It is not merely that the highest anthropoid apes have no speech; they
have not the brain-organisation enabling them to acquire even its
rudiments. Man’s power of using a word, or even a gesture, as the symbol
of a thought and the means of conversing about it, is one of the points
where we most plainly see him parting company with all lower species, and
starting on his career of conquest through higher intellectual regions.
In the comparison of man with other animals the standard should naturally
be the lowest man, or savage. Put the savage is possessed of human
reason and speech, while his brain-power, though it has not of itself
raised him to civilization, enables him to receive more or less of
the education which transforms him into a civilized man. To show how
man may have advanced from savagery to civilization is a reasonable
task, worked out to some extent in the later chapters of this volume.
But there is no such evidence available for crossing the mental gulf
that divides the lowest savage from the highest ape. On the whole, the
safest conclusion warranted by facts is that the mental machinery of the
lower animals is roughly similar to our own, up to a limit. Beyond this
limit the human mind opens out into wide ranges of thought and feeling
which the beast-mind shows no sign of approaching. If we consider man’s
course of life from birth to death, we see that it is, so to speak,
founded on functions which he has in common with lower beings. Man,
endowed with instinct and capable of learning by experience, drawn by
pleasure and driven by pain, must like a beast maintain his life by food
and sleep, must save himself by flight, or fight it out with his foes,
must propagate his species and care for the next generation. Upon this
lower framework of animal life is raised the wondrous edifice of human
language, science, art, and law.
CHAPTER III.
RACES OF MANKIND.
Differences of Race, 56—Stature and Proportions, 56—Skull,
60—Features, 62—Colour, 66—Hair, 71—Constitution,
73—Temperature, 74—Types of Races, 75—Permanence, 80—Mixture,
80—Variation, 84—Races of Mankind classified, 87.
In the first chapter something has been already said as to the striking
distinctions between the various races of man, seen in looking closely
at the African negro, the Coolie of India, and the Chinese. Even among
Europeans, the broad contrast between the fair Dane and the dark Genoese
is recognised by all. Some further comparison has now to be made of
the special differences between race and race, though the reader must
understand that, without proper anatomical examination, such comparison
can only be slight and imperfect. Anthropology finds race-differences
most clearly in stature and proportions of limbs, conformation of the
skull and the brain within, characters of features, skin, eyes, and hair,
peculiarities of constitution, and mental and moral temperament.
In comparing races as to their stature, we concern ourselves not with
the tallest or shortest men of each tribe, but with the ordinary or
average-sized men who may be taken as fair representatives of their whole
tribe. The difference of general stature is well shown where a tall
and a short people come together in one district. Thus in Australia the
average English colonist of 5 ft. 8 in. looks clear over the heads of the
5 ft. 4 in. Chinese labourers. Still more in Sweden does the Swede of 5
ft. 7 in. tower over the stunted Lapps, whose average measure is not much
over 5 ft. Among the tallest of mankind are the Patagonians, who seemed
a race of giants to the Europeans who first watched them striding along
their cliffs draped in their skin cloaks; it was even declared that the
heads of Magalhaens’ men hardly reached the waist of the first Patagonian
they met. Modern travellers find, on measuring them, that they really
often reach 6 ft. 4 in., their mean height being about 5 ft. 11 in.—three
or four inches taller than average Englishmen. The shortest of mankind
are the Bushmen and related tribes in South Africa, with an average
height not far exceeding 4 ft. 6 in. A fair contrast between the tallest
and shortest races of mankind may be seen in Fig. 8, where a Patagonian
is drawn side by side with a Bushman, whose head only reaches to his
breast. Thus the tallest race of man is less than one-fourth higher
than the shortest, a fact which seems surprising to those not used to
measurements. Struck by the effect of such difference of stature one is
apt to form an exaggerated notion of its amount, which is really small
compared with the disproportion in size between various breeds of other
species of animals, as the toy pug and the mastiff, or the Shetland pony
and the dray-horse. In general, the stature of the women of any race
may be taken as about one-sixteenth less than that of the men. Thus in
England a man of 5 ft. 8 in. and a woman of 5 ft. 4 in. look an ordinary
well-matched couple.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.—Patagonian and Bushman.]
Not only the stature, but the proportions of the body differ in men of
various races. Care must be taken not to confuse real race-differences
with the alterations made by the individual’s early training or habit of
life, such as the bow-legs of grooms, and the still more crooked legs of
the Indians of British Columbia, who get them misshaped by continually
sitting cramped up in their canoes. A man’s measure round the chest
depends a good deal on his way of life, as do also the lengths of arm
and leg, which are not even the same in soldiers and sailors. But there
are certain distinctions which are inherited, and mark different races.
Thus there are long-limbed and short-limbed tribes of mankind. The
African negro is remarkable for length of arm and leg, the Aymara Indian
of Peru for shortness. Supposing an ordinary Englishman to be altered
to the build of a negro, he would want 2 in. more in the arm and 1 in.
more in the leg, while to bring him to the proportions of an Aymara
his arm would have to be shortened ½ in. and his leg 1 in. from their
present lengths. An instructive way of noticing these differences is
to look back to the skeletons of apes and man (Fig. 5). In an upright
position and reaching down with the middle finger, the gibbon can touch
its foot, the orang its ankle, the chimpanzee its knee, while man only
reaches partly down his thigh. Here, however, there seems to be a real
distinction among the races of man. Negro soldiers standing at drill
bring the middle finger-tip an inch or two nearer the knee than white
men can do, and some have been even known to touch the knee-pan. Such
differences, however, are less remarkable than the general correspondence
in bodily proportions of a model of strength and beauty, to whatever race
he may belong. Even good judges have been led to forget the niceties of
race-type and to treat the form of the athlete as everywhere one and the
same. Thus Benjamin West, the American painter, when he came to Rome and
saw the Belvedere Apollo, exclaimed, “It is a young Mohawk warrior!”
Much the same has been said of the proportions of Zulu athletes. Yet if
fairly-chosen photographs of Kafirs be compared with a classic model such
as the Apollo, it will be noticed that the trunk of the African has a
somewhat wall-sided straightness, wanting in the inward slope which gives
fineness to the waist, and in the expansion below which gives breadth
across the hips, these being two of the most noticeable points in the
classic model which our painters recognise as an ideal of manly beauty.
By this kind of comparison much may be done in distinguishing standard
types of races. Yet, while acknowledging the reality of such varieties in
the build of men of different race, we have again to remark how slight
they are compared with the variation in the limbs of different breeds of
lower animals.
In comparing races, one of the first questions that occurs is whether
people who differ so much intellectually as savage tribes and civilized
nations, show any corresponding difference in their brain. There is, in
fact, a considerable difference. The most usual way of ascertaining the
quantity of brain is to measure the capacity of the brain-case by filling
skulls with shot or seed. Professor Flower gives as a mean estimate
of the contents of skulls in cubic inches, Australian, seventy-nine;
African, eighty-five; European, ninety-one. Eminent anatomists also
think that the brain of the European is somewhat more complex in its
convolutions than the brain of a Negro or Hottentot. Thus, though these
observations are far from perfect, they show a connexion between a
more full and intricate system of brain-cells and fibres, and a higher
intellectual power, in the races which have risen in the scale of
civilization.
The form of the skull itself, so important in its relation to the brain
within and the expressive features without, has been to the anatomist
one of the best means of distinguishing races. It is often possible to
tell by inspection of a skull what race it belongs to. The narrow cranium
of the negro (Fig. 9 _a_) would not be mistaken for the broad cranium of
the Samoyed (Fig. 9 _c_.) On taking down from a museum shelf a certain
narrow, wall-sided, roof-topped, forward-jawed skull with unusually
strong brow-ridges (Fig. 10 _d_), there is no difficulty in recognising it
as Australian. In comparing skulls, some of the most easily noticeable
distinctions are the following.
[Illustration: FIG. 9.—Top view of skulls. _a_, Negro, index 70,
dolichokephalic; _b_, European, index 80, mesokephalic; _c_, Samoyed,
index 85, brachykephalic.]
When looked at from the vertical or top view, the proportion of breadth
to length is seen as in Fig. 9. Taking the diameter from back to front as
100, the cross diameter gives the so-called index of breadth, which is
here about 70 in the Negro (_a_), 80 in the European (_b_), and 85 in the
Samoyed (_c_). Such skulls are classed respectively as _dolichokephalic_,
or “long-headed;” _mesokephalic_, or “middle-headed;” and
_brachykephalic_, or “short-headed.” A model skull of a flexible material
like gutta-percha, if of the middle shape, like that of an ordinary
Englishman, might, by pressure at the sides, be made long like a negro’s,
or by pressure at back and front be brought to the broad Tatar form. In
the above figure it may be noticed that while some skulls, as _b_, have a
somewhat elliptical form, others, as _a_, are ovoid, having the longest
cross diameter considerably behind the centre. Also in some classes of
skulls, as in _a_, the zygomatic arches connecting the skull and face are
fully seen; while in others, as _b_ and _c_, the bulging of the skull
almost hides them. In the front and back view of skulls, the proportion
of width to height is taken in much the same way as the index of breadth
just described. Next, Fig. 10, which represents in profile the skulls of
an Australian (_d_), a negro (_e_), and an Englishman (_f_), shows the
strong difference in the facial angle between the two lower races and our
own. The Australian and African are _prognathous_, or “forward-jawed,”
while the European is _orthognathous_, or “upright-jawed.” At the same
time the Australian and African have more retreating foreheads than the
European, to the disadvantage of the frontal lobes of their brain as
compared with ours. Thus the upper and lower parts of the profile combine
to give the faces of these less-civilized peoples a somewhat ape-like
slope, as distinguished from the more nearly upright European face.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.—Side view of skulls. _d_, Australian,
prognathous; _e_, African, prognathous; _f_, European, orthognathous.]
[Illustration: FIG. 11.—_a_, Swaheli; _b_, Persian.]
[Illustration: FIG. 12.—Female portraits. _a_, Negro (W. Africa); _b_,
Barolong (S. Africa); _c_, Hottentot; _d_, Gilyak (N. Asia); _e_,
Japanese; _f_, Colorado Indian (N. America); _g_, English.]
[Illustration: FIG. 13.—African negro.]
Not to go into nicer distinctions of cranial measurement, let us now
glance at the evident points of the living face. To some extent feature
directly follows the shape of the skull beneath. Thus the contrast
just mentioned, between the forward-sloping negro skull and its more
upright form in the white race, is as plainly seen in the portraits of a
Swaheli negro and a Persian, given in Fig. 11. On looking at the female
portraits in Fig. 12, the Barolong girl (South Africa) may be selected as
an example of the effect of narrowness of skull (_b_), in contrast with
the broader Tatar, and North American faces (_d_, _f_). She also shows
the convex African forehead, while they, as well as the Hottentot (_c_),
show the effect of high cheek-bones. The Tatar and Japanese faces (_d_,
_e_) show the skew-eyelids of the Mongolian race. Much of the character
of the human face depends on the shape of the softer parts—nose, lips,
cheeks, chin, &c., which are often excellent marks to distinguish race.
Contrasts in the form of nose may even exceed that here shown between
the aquiline of the Persian and the snub of the Negro in Figs. 11 and
13. European travellers in Tartary in the middle ages described its
flat-nosed inhabitants as having no noses at all, but breathing through
holes in their faces. By pushing the tips of our own noses upward, we
can in some degree imitate the manner in which various other races,
notably the negro, show the opening of the nostrils in full face. Our
thin, close-fitting lips, differ in the extreme from those of the negro,
well seen in the portrait (Fig. 13) of Jacob Wainwright, Livingstone’s
faithful boy. We cannot imitate the negro lip by mere pouting, but must
push the edges up and down with the fingers to show more of the inner
lip. The expression of the human face, on which intelligence and feeling
write themselves in visible characters, requires an artist’s training to
understand and describe. The mere contour of the features, as taken by
photography in an unchanging attitude, has delicate characters which we
appreciate by long experience in studying faces, but which elude exact
description or measurement. With the purpose of calling attention to
some well-marked peculiarities of the human face in different races, a
small group of female faces (Fig. 12) is here given, all young, and such
as would be considered among their own people as at least moderately
handsome. Setting aside hair and complexion, there is still enough
difference in the actual outline of the features to distinguish the
Negro, Kafir, Hottentot, Tatar, Japanese, and North American faces from
the English face below.
[Illustration: FIG. 14.—Section of negro skin, much magnified (after
Kölliker). _a_, dermis, or true skin; _b_, _c_, rete mucosum; _d_,
epidermis, or scarf-skin.]
The colour of the skin, that important mark of race, may be best
understood by looking at the darkest variety. The dark hue of the
negro does not lie so deep as the innermost or true skin, which is
substantially alike among all races of mankind. The seat of the colouring
is well shown in Fig. 14, a highly magnified section of the skin of a
negro. Here _a_ shows the surface of the true skin with its papillæ; this
is covered by the mucous layer, the innermost cells of which (_b_) are
deeply coloured by small grains of black or brown pigment, the colour
shading down to brownish or yellowish toward the outer surface of this
mucous layer (_c_), while even the outside scarf-skin (_d_) is slightly
tinged. The negro, in spite of his name, is not black, but deep brown,
and even this darkest hue does not appear at the beginning of life, for
the new-born negro child is reddish brown, soon becoming slaty grey, and
then darkening. Nor does the darkest tint ever extend over the negro’s
whole body, but his soles and palms are brown. When Blumenbach, the
anthropologist, saw Kemble play Othello (made up in the usual way, with
blackened face and black gloves, to represent a negro) he complained
that the whole illusion was spoilt for him when the actor opened his
hands. The brown races, such as the native Americans, have the colouring
of the skin in a less degree than the Africans, and with them also it
is not till some time after birth that the full depth of complexion is
reached. The colouring of the dark races appears to be similar in nature
to the temporary freckling and sun-burning of the fair white race. Also,
Europeans have permanent dark colouring in some portions of the skin,
though not exposed to the sun; the areola of the breast, for instance;
while in certain affections, known by the medical name of melanism,
patches closely resembling negro skin appear on the body. On the whole it
seems that the distinction of colour, from the fairest Englishman to the
darkest African, has no hard and fast lines, but varies gradually from
one tint to another. It is instructive to notice that there occur in the
various races certain individuals in whom the colouring matter of the
skin is wanting, the so-called albinos. The contrast between their morbid
whiteness and any ordinary fairness of complexion is most remarkable in
the negro albinos (to call them by this self-contradictory term), who
have the well-known African features, but in dead white, as it were a
cast of a negro in plaster.
The natural hue of skin farthest from that of the negro is the complexion
of the fair race of Northern Europe, of which perfect types are to be
met with in Scandinavia, North Germany, and England. In such fair or
blonde people the almost transparent skin has its pink tinge by showing
the small blood-vessels through it. In the nations of Southern Europe,
such as Italians and Spaniards, the browner complexion to some extent
hides this red, which among darker peoples in other quarters of the
world ceases to be discernible. Thus the difference between light and
dark races is well observed in their blushing, which is caused by the
rush of hot red blood into the vessels near the surface of the body.
Albinos shows this with the utmost intenseness, not only a general glow
appearing, but the patches of colour being clearly marked out. The blush,
vivid through the blonde skin of the Dane, is more obscurely seen in the
Spanish brunette; but in the dark-brown Peruvian, or the yet blacker
African, though a hand or a thermometer put to the cheek will detect
the blush by its heat, the somewhat increased depth of colour is hardly
perceptible to the eye. The contrary effect, paleness, caused by retreat
of blood from the surface, is in like manner masked by dark tints of skin.
As a character of race, the colour of the skin has from ancient times
been reckoned the most distinctive of all. The Egyptian painters, three
or four thousand years ago used regular tints for this purpose, as
may be seen in paintings at the British Museum. These colours do not
pretend to be exact, as is seen by the native Egyptian gentlemen being
painted dark brick-red, but the ladies pale yellow, so as to signify in
an exaggerated way their lighter complexion. It was in this conventional
manner that they coloured the four principal races of mankind known
to them, the Egyptians themselves red-brown, the nations of Palestine
yellow-brown, the Libyans yellow-white, and the Æthiopians coal-black
(see page 4). In the history of the world, colour has often been the sign
by which nations accounting themselves the nobler have marked off their
inferiors. The Sanskrit word for caste is _varna_, that is, “colour;” and
this shows how their distinction of high and low caste arose. India was
inhabited by dark indigenous peoples before the fairer Aryan race invaded
the land, and the descendants of conquerors and conquered are still in
some measure to be traced among the light-complexioned high-caste, and
the dark-complexioned low-caste families. Nor has the distinction of
colour ceased in the midst of modern civilization. The Englishman’s white
skin is to him, as of old, a caste-mark of separation from the yellow,
brown, or black “natives,” as he contemptuously calls them, in other
quarters of the globe.
The range of complexion among mankind, beginning with the tint of the
fair-whites of Northern Europe and the dark-whites of Southern Europe,
passes to the brownish-yellow of the Malays, and the full-brown of
American tribes, the deep-brown of Australians, and the black-brown
of Negros. Until modern times these race-tints have generally been
described with too little care, and named as conventionally as the
Egyptians painted them. Now, however, the traveller by using Broca’s set
of pattern colours, records the colour of any tribe he is observing,
with the accuracy of a mercer matching a piece of silk. The evaporation
from the human skin is accompanied by a smell which differs in different
races. The peculiar rancid scent by which the African negro may be
detected even at a distance is the most marked of these. The odour of the
brown American tribes is again different, while they have been known,
to express dislike at the white man’s smell. This peculiarity, which
not only indicates difference in the secretions of the skin, but seems
connected with liability to certain fevers, &c., is a race-character of
some importance.
The part of the human body which shows the greatest variety of colour
in different individuals, is the iris of the eye. This is the more
noticeable because the adjacent parts vary particularly little among
mankind. The sclerotic coat, which in a healthy European is almost what
it is called, the “white” of the eye, only takes a slightly yellow tinge
among the darkest races, as the African negro. Again, in ordinary eyes
of all races, the pupil in the centre of the iris appears absolutely
black, being in fact transparent, and showing through to the black
pigment lining the choroid coat at the back of the eye. But the iris
itself, if examined in a number of types of men, has most various
colour. In understanding the coloration of the eye, as of the skin, the
peculiarities of albinos are instructive. The pink of their eyes (as of
white rabbits) is caused by absence of the black pigment above-mentioned,
so that light passing out through the iris and pupil is tinged red from
the blood-vessels at the back; thus their eyes may be seen to blush
with the rest of the face. This want of the protecting black pigment
also accounts for the sensitiveness to light which makes albinos avoid
a glare; it was for this reason that the Dutch gave them the name of
_kakkerlaken_, or “cockroaches,” these creatures also shunning the
light. Prof. Broca, in his scale of colours of eyes, arranges shades of
orange, green, blue, and violet-grey. But one has only to look closely
into any eye to see the impossibility of recording its complex pattern
of colours; indeed what is done is to observe it from a distance so that
its tints blend into one uniform hue. It need hardly be said that what
are popularly called black eyes are far from having the iris really black
like the pupil; eyes described as black are commonly of the deepest
shades of brown or violet. These so-called black eyes are by far the
most numerous in the world, belonging not only to brown-black, brown,
and yellow races, but even prevailing among the darker varieties of the
white race, such as Greeks and Spaniards. Aristotle remarks that the
colour of the eyes follows that of the skin. Indeed it is plain that
there is a connection of the colours of the skin, eyes, and hair among
mankind. In races with the darker skin and black hair, the darkest eyes
generally prevail, while a fair complexion is usually accompanied by the
lighter tints of iris, especially blue. A fair Saxon with black eyes, or
a full-grown negro with pale blue eyes, would be looked at with surprise.
Yet we know by our own country-people how difficult it is to lay down
exact rules as to matching colours in complexion. Thus the combination of
black hair with dark blue or grey eyes is frequent in some districts of
Great Britain. Dr. Barnard Davis and Dr. Beddoe think it indicates Keltic
blood.
From ancient times, the colour and form of the hair have been noticed as
distinctive marks of race. Thus Strabo mentions the Æthiopians as black
men with woolly hair, and Tacitus describes the German warriors of his
day with their fierce blue eyes and tawny hair. As to colour of hair, the
most usual is black, or shades so dark as to be taken for black, which
belongs not only to the dark-skinned Africans and Americans, but to the
yellow Chinese and the dark-whites such as Hindus or Jews. Mr. Sorby
remarks that blackness of hair is due to black pigment being present in
such quantity as to overpower whatever red or yellow pigment the hair
may also contain. In the fair-white peoples of Northern Europe, on the
contrary, flaxen or chestnut hair prevails. Thus we see that there is
a connection between fair hair and fair skin, and dark hair and dark
skin. But it is impossible to lay down a rule for intermediate tints,
for the red-brown or auburn hair common in fair-skinned peoples occurs
among darker races, and dark-brown hair has a still wider range. Our
own extremely mixed nation shows every variety from flaxen and golden
to raven black. As to the form of the hair, its well-known differences
may be seen in the female portraits in Fig. 12, where the Africans on
the left show the woolly or frizzy kind, where the hair naturally curls
into little corkscrew-spirals, while the Asiatic and American heads on
the right have straight hair like a horse’s mane. Between these extreme
kinds are the flowing or wavy hair, and the curly hair which winds in
large spirals; the English hair in the figure is rather of the latter
variety. If cross sections of single hairs are examined under the
microscope, their differences of form are seen as in four of the sections
by Pruner-Bey (Fig. 15). The almost circular Mongolian hair (_a_) hangs
straight; the more curly European hair (_b_) has an oval or elliptical
section; the woolly African hair (_c_) is more flattened; while the
frizzy Papuan hair (_d_) is a yet more extreme example of the flattened
ribbon-like kind. Curly and woolly hair has a lop-sided growth from the
root which gives the twist. Not only the colour and form of the hair,
but its quantity, vary in different races. Thus the heads of the Bushmen
are more scantily furnished with hair than ours, while among the Crow
Indians it was common for the warrior’s coarse black hair to sweep on
the ground behind him. The body-hair also is scanty in some races and
plentiful in others. Thus the Ainos, the indigenes of Yeso, are a shaggy
people, while the Japanese possessors of their island are comparatively
hairless. So strong is the contrast, that the Japanese have invented a
legend that in ancient times the Aino mothers suckled young bears, which
gradually developed into men.
[Illustration: FIG. 15.—Sections of hair, highly magnified (after
Pruner). _a_, Japanese; _b_, German; _c_, African negro; _d_, Papuan.]
That certain races are constitutionally fit and others unfit for
certain climates, is a fact which the English have but too good reason
to know, when on the scorching plains of India they themselves become
languid and sickly, while their children have soon to be removed to
some cooler climate that they may not pine and die. It is well-known
also that races are not affected alike by certain diseases. While in
Equatorial Africa or the West Indies the coast-fever and yellow-fever
are so fatal or injurious to the new-come Europeans, the negros and even
mulattos are almost untouched by this scourge of the white nations. On
the other hand, we English look upon measles as a trifling complaint,
and hear with astonishment of its being carried into Fiji, and there,
aggravated no doubt by improper treatment, sweeping away the natives by
thousands. It is plain that nations moving into a new climate, if they
are to flourish, must become adapted in body to the new state of life;
thus in the rarefied air of the high Andes more respiration is required
than in the plains, and in fact tribes living there have the chest and
lungs developed to extraordinary size. Races, though capable of gradual
acclimatization, must not change too suddenly the climate they are
adapted to. With this adaptation to particular climates the complexion
has much to do, fitting the negro for the tropics and the fair-white for
the temperate zone; though, indeed, colour does not always vary with
climate, as where in America the brown race extends through hot and cold
regions alike. Fitness for a special climate, being matter of life or
death to a race, must be reckoned among the chief of race-characters.
Travellers notice striking distinctions in the temper of races. There
seems no difference of condition between the native Indian and the
African negro in Brazil to make the brown man dull and sullen, while
the black is overflowing with eagerness and gaiety. So, in Europe, the
unlikeness between the melancholy Russian peasant and the vivacious
Italian can hardly depend altogether on climate and food and government.
There seems to be in mankind inbred temperament and inbred capacity of
mind. History points the great lesson that some races have marched on in
civilization while others have stood still or fallen back, and we should
partly look for an explanation of this in differences of intellectual and
moral powers between such tribes as the native Americans and Africans,
and the Old World nations who overmatch and subdue them. In measuring the
minds of the lower races, a good test is how far their children are able
to take a civilized education. The account generally given by European
teachers who have had the children of lower races in their schools is
that, though these often learn as well as the white children up to about
twelve years old, they then fall off, and are left behind by the children
of the ruling race. This fits with what anatomy teaches of the less
development of brain in the Australian and African than in the European.
It agrees also with what the history of civilization teaches, that up
to a certain point savages and barbarians are like what our ancestors
were and our peasants still are, but from this common level the superior
intellect of the progressive races has raised their nations to heights of
culture. The white man, though now dominant over the world, must remember
that intellectual progress has been by no means the monopoly of his race.
At the dawn of history, the leaders of culture were the brown Egyptians,
and the Babylonians, whose Akkadian is not connected with the language of
white nations, while the yellow Chinese, whose Tatar affinity is evident
in their hair and features, have been for four thousand years or more a
civilized and literary nation. The dark-whites, Assyrians, Phœnicians,
Persians, Greeks, Romans, did not start but carried on the forward
movement of culture, while since then the fair-whites, as part of the
population of France, Germany, and England, have taken their share not
meanly though latest in the world’s progress.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.—Race or Population arranged by Stature (Galton’s
method).]
After thus noticing some of the chief points of difference among
races, it will be well to examine more closely what a race is. Single
portraits of men and women can only in a general way represent the
nation they belong to, for no two of its individuals are really alike,
not even brothers. What is looked for in such a race-portrait is the
general character belonging to the whole race. It is an often repeated
observation of travellers that a European landing among some people
unlike his own, such as Chinese or Mexican Indians, at first thinks
them all alike. After days of careful observation he makes out their
individual peculiarities, but at first his attention was occupied with
the broad typical characters of the foreign race. It is just this broad
type that the anthropologist desires to sketch and describe, and he
selects as his examples such portraits of men and women as show it best.
It is even possible to measure the type of a people. To give an idea of
the working of this problem, let us suppose ourselves to be examining
Scotchmen, and the first point to be settled how tall they are. Obviously
there are some few as short as Lapps, and some as tall as Patagonians;
these very short and tall men belong to the race, and yet are not its
ordinary members. If, however, the whole population were measured and
made to stand in order of height, there would be a crowd of men about
five feet eight inches, but much fewer of either five feet four inches or
six feet, and so on till the numbers decreased on either side to one or
two giants, and one or two dwarfs. This is seen in Fig. 16, where each
individual is represented by a dot, and the dots representing men of the
mean or typical stature crowd into a mass. After looking at this, the
reader will more easily understand Quetelet’s diagram, Fig. 17, where
the heights or ordinates of the binomial curve show the numbers of men
of each stature, decreasing both ways from the central five feet eight
inches which is the stature of the mean or typical man. Here, in a total
of near 2,600 men, there are 160 of five feet eight inches, but only
about 150 of five feet seven inches or five feet nine inches, and so on,
till not even ten men are found so short as five feet or so tall as six
feet four inches. As the proverb says, “it takes all sorts to make a
world,” so it thus appears that a race is a body of people comprising a
regular set of variations, which centre round one representative type.
In the same way a race or nation is estimated as to other characters, as
where a mean or typical Englishman may be said to measure 36 inches round
the chest, and weigh about 144 pounds. So it is possible to fix on the
typical shade of complexion in a nation, such as the Zulu black-brown.
The result of these plans is to show that the rough-and-ready method of
the traveller is fairly accurate, when he chooses as his representative
of a race the type of man and woman which he finds to exist more
numerously than any other.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.—Race or Population arranged by Stature
(Quetelet’s method).]
[Illustration: FIG. 18.—Caribs.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.—(_a_) Head of Rameses II., Ancient Egypt. (_b_)
Sheikh’s son, Modern Egypt. (After Hartmann.)]
The people whom it is easiest to represent by single portraits are
uncivilised tribes, in whose food and way of life there is little to
cause difference between one man and another, and who have lived together
and intermarried for many generations. Thus Fig. 18, taken from a
photograph of a party of Caribs, is remarkable for the close likeness
running through all. In such a nation the race-type is peculiarly easy
to make out. It is by no means always thus easy to represent a whole
population. To see how difficult it may be, one has only to look at an
English crowd, with its endless diversity. But to get a view of the
problem of human varieties, it is best to attend to the simplest cases
first, looking at some uniform and well-marked race, and asking what in
the course of ages may happen to it.
The first thing to be noticed is its power of lasting. Where a people
lives on in its own district, without too much change in habits, or
mixture with other nations, there seems no reason to expect its type to
alter. The Egyptian monuments show good instances of this permanence. In
Fig. 19, _a_ is drawn from the head of a statue of Rameses, evidently a
careful portrait, and dating from about 3,000 years ago, while _b_ is an
Egyptian of the present day, yet the ancient and modern are curiously
alike. Indeed, the ancient Egyptian race, who built the Pyramids, and
whose life of toil is pictured on the walls of the tombs, are with little
change still represented by the fellahs of the villages, who carry on
the old labour under new tax-gatherers. Thus, too, the Æthiopians on
the early Egyptian bas-reliefs may have their counterparts picked out
still among the White Nile tribes, while we recognise in the figures of
Phœnician or Israelite captives the familiar Jewish profile of our own
day. Thus there is proof that a race may keep its special characters
plainly recognizable for over thirty centuries, or a hundred generations.
And this permanence of type may more or less remain when the race
migrates far from its early home, as when African negroes are carried
into America, or Israelites naturalize themselves from Archangel to
Singapore. Where marked change has taken place in the appearance of a
nation, the cause of this change must be sought in intermarriage with
foreigners, or altered conditions of life, or both.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.—Malay Mother and Half-caste Daughters.]
The result of intermarriage or crossing of races is familiar to all
English people in one of its most conspicuous examples, the cross between
white and negro called mulatto (Spanish _mulato_, from _mula_, a mule).
The mulatto complexion and hair are intermediate between those of
the parents, and new intermediate grades of complexion appear in the
children of white and mulatto, called quadroon or quarter-blood (Spanish
_cuarteron_), and so on; on the other hand, the descendants of negro and
mulatto, called sambo (Spanish _zambo_) return towards the full negro
type. This intermediate character is the general nature of crossed races,
but with more or less tendency to revert to one or other of the parent
types. To illustrate this, Fig. 20 gives the portrait of a Malay mother
and her half-caste daughters, the father being a Spaniard; here, while
all the children show their mixed race, it is sometimes the European
and sometimes the Malay cast of features that prevails. The effect of
mixture is also traceable in the hair, as may often be well noticed in a
mulatto’s crimped, curly locks, between the straighter European and the
woolly African kind. The Cafusos of Brazil, a peculiar cross between the
native tribes of the land and the imported negro slaves, are remarkable
for their hair, which rises in a curly mass, forming a natural periwig
which obliges the wearers to stoop low in passing through their hut
doors. This is seen in the portrait of a Cafusa, Fig. 21, and seems
easily accounted for by the long stiff hair of the native American having
acquired in some degree the negro frizziness. The bodily temperament
of mixed races also partakes of the parent-characters, as is seen in
the mulatto who inherits from his negro ancestry the power of bearing a
tropical climate, as well as freedom from yellow fever.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.—Cafusa Woman.]
Not only does a mixed race arise wherever two races inhabit the same
district, but within the last few centuries it is well known that a large
fraction of the world’s population has actually come into existence by
race-crossing. This is nowhere so evident as on the American continent,
where since the Spanish conquest such districts as Mexico are largely
peopled by the mestizo descendants of Spaniards and native Americans,
while the importation of African slaves in the West Indies has given
rise to a mulatto population. By taking into account such intercrossing
of races, anthropologists have a reason to give for the endless shades
of diversity among mankind, without attempting the hopeless task of
classifying every little uncertain group of men into a special race.
The water-carrier from Cairo, in Fig. 22, may serve as an example of
the difficulty of making a systematic arrangement to set each man down
to his precise race. This man speaks Arabic, and is a Moslem, but he
is not an Arab proper, neither is he an Egyptian of the old kingdom,
but the child of a land where the Nubian, Copt, Syrian, Bedouin, and
many other peoples have mingled for ages, and in fact his ancestry may
come out of three quarters of the globe. Among the natives of India, a
variety of complexion and feature is found which cannot be classified
exactly by race. But it must be remembered that several very distinct
varieties of men have contributed to the population of the country,
namely the dark-brown indigenes or hill-tribes, the yellow Mongolians
who have crossed the frontiers from Tibet, and the fairer ancient Aryans
or Indo-Europeans who poured in from the north-west; not to mention
others, the mixture of these nations going on for ages has of course
produced numberless crosses. So in Europe, taking the fair nations of the
Baltic and the dark nations of the Mediterranean as two distinct races
or varieties, their intercrossing may explain the infinite diversity of
brown hair and intermediate complexion to be met with. If then it may
be considered that man was already divided into a few great main races
in remote antiquity, their intermarriage through ages since will go far
to account for the innumerable slighter varieties which shade into one
another.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.—Cairene.]
It is not enough to look at a race of men as a mere body of people
happening to have a common type or likeness. For the reason of their
likeness is plain, and indeed our calling them a race means that we
consider them a breed whose common nature is inherited from common
ancestors. Now experience of the animal world shows that a race or
breed, while capable of carrying on its likeness from generation
to generation, is also capable of varying. In fact, the skilful
cattle-breeder, by carefully choosing and pairing individuals which vary
in a particular direction, can within a few years form a special breed
of cattle or sheep. Without such direct interference of man, special
races or breeds of animals form themselves under new conditions of
climate and food, as in the familiar instances of the Shetland ponies,
or the mustangs of the Mexican plains which have bred from the horses
brought over by the Spaniards. It naturally suggests itself that the
races of man may be thus accounted for as breeds, varied from one
original stock. It may be strongly argued in this direction that not
only do the bodily and mental varieties of mankind blend gradually into
one another, but that even the most dissimilar races can intermarry
in all directions, producing mixed or sub-races which, when left to
themselves, continue their own kind. Advocates of the polygenist theory,
that there are several distinct races of man, sprung from independent
origins, have denied that certain races, such as the English and native
Australians, produce fertile half-breeds. But the evidence tends more
and more to establish crossing as possible between all races, which
goes to prove that all the varieties of mankind are zoologically of one
species. While this principle seems to rest on firm ground, it must be
admitted that our knowledge of the manner and causes of race-variation
among mankind is still very imperfect. The great races, black, brown,
yellow, white, had already settled into their well-known characters
before written record began, so that their formation is hidden far back
in the præhistoric period. Nor are alterations of such amount known to
have taken place in any people within the range of history. It has been
plausibly argued that our rude primitive ancestors, being less able than
their posterity to make themselves independent of climate by shelter and
fire and stores of food, were more exposed to alter in body under the
influence of the new climates they migrated into. Even in modern times,
it seems possible to trace something of race-change going on under new
conditions of life. Thus Dr. Beddoe’s measurements prove that in England
the manufacturing town-life has given rise to a population an inch or
two less in stature than their forefathers when they came in from their
country villages. So in the Rocky Mountains there are clans of Snake
Indians whose stunted forms and low features, due to generations of
needy outcast life, mark them off from their better nourished kinsfolk
in the plains. It is asserted that the pure negro in the United States
has undergone a change in a few generations which has left him a shade
lighter in complexion and altered his features, while the pure white in
the same region has become less rosy, with darker and more glossy hair,
more prominent cheek-bones and massive lower jaw. These are perhaps the
best authenticated cases of race-change. There is great difficulty in
watching a race undergoing variation, which is everywhere masked by the
greater changes caused by new nations coming in to mingle and intermarry
with the old. He who should argue from the Greek sculptures that the
national type has changed since the age of Perikles, would be met with
the answer that the remains of the old stock have long been inextricably
blended with others. The points which have now been brought forward will
suffice to show the uncertainty and difficulty of any attempt to trace
exactly the origin and course of the races of man. Yet at the same time
there is a ground-work to go upon in the fact that these races are not
found spread indiscriminately over the earth’s surface, but certain
races plainly belong to certain regions, seeming each to have taken shape
under the influences of climate and soil in its proper district, where
it flourished, and whence it spread far and wide, modifying itself and
mingling with other races as it went. The following brief sketch may
give an idea how the spreading and mixture of the great races may have
taken place. It embodies well-considered views of eminent anatomists,
especially Professors Huxley and Flower. Though such a scheme cannot be
presented as proved and certain, it is desirable to clear and fix our
ideas by understanding that man’s distribution over the earth did not
take place by promiscuous scattering of tribes, but along great lines
of movement whose regularity can be often discerned, where it cannot be
precisely followed out.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.—Andaman Islanders.]
That there is a real connexion between the colour of races and the
climate they belong to, seems most likely from the so-called black
peoples. Ancient writers were satisfied to account for the colour of the
Æthiopians by saying that the sun had burnt them black, and though modern
anthropologists would not settle the question in this off-hand way, yet
the map of the world shows that this darkest race-type is principally
found in a tropical climate. The main line of black races stretches along
the hot and fertile regions of the equator, from Guinea in West Africa
to that great island of the Eastern Archipelago, which has its name of
New Guinea from its negro-like natives. In a former geological period an
equatorial continent (to which Sclater has given the name of Lemuria) may
even have stretched across from Africa to the far East, uniting these now
separate lands. The attention of anthropologists has been particularly
attracted by a line of islands in the Sea of Bengal, the Andamans, which
might have been part of this former continent, and were found inhabited
by a scanty population of rude and childlike savages. These Mincopis
(Fig. 23) are small in stature (the men under five feet), with skin of
blackness, and hair very flat in section and frizzled, which from their
habit of shaving their heads must be imagined by the reader. But while
in these points resembling the African negro, they are unlike him in
having skulls not narrow, but broad and rounded, nor have they lips so
full, a nose so wide, or jaws so projecting as his. It has occurred to
anatomists, and the opinion has been strengthened by Flower’s study of
their skulls, that the Andaman tribes may be a remnant of a very early
human stock, perhaps the best representatives of the primitive negro
type which has since altered in various points in its spread over its
wide district of the world. The African negro race, with its special
marks of narrow skull, projecting jaws, black-brown skin, woolly hair,
flattened nose, full and out-turned lips, has already been here described
(see pages 61 to 67). Its type perhaps shows itself most perfectly in the
nations near the equator, as in Guinea, but it spreads far and wide over
the continent, shading off by crossing with lighter coloured races on
its borders, such as the Berbers in the north, and the Arabs on the east
coast. As the race spreads southward into Congo and the Kafir regions,
there is noticed a less full negro complexion and feature, looking as
though migration from the central region into new climates had somewhat
modified the type. In this respect the small-grown Hottentot-Bushman
tribes of South Africa (see Figs. 8, 12 _c_) are most remarkable, for
while keeping much negro character in the narrow skull, frizzy hair, and
cast of features, their skin is of a lighter tint of brownish-yellow.
There is nothing to suggest that this came by crossing the negro type
with a fairer race, indeed there is no evidence of such a race to cross
with. If the Bushman is a special modification of the Negro, then this is
an excellent case of the transformation of races when placed under new
conditions. To return now to Southern Asia, there are found in the Malay
Peninsula and the Philippines scanty forest-tribes apparently allied
to the Andamaners and classed under the general term Negritos (_i.e._
“little blacks”), seeming to belong to a race once widely spread over
this part of the world, whose remnants have been driven by stronger new
come races to find refuge in the mountains. Fig. 24, represents one of
them, an Aheta from the island of Luzon. Lastly come the wide-spread
and complicated varieties of the eastern negro race in the region known
as Melanesia, the “black islands,” extending from New Guinea to Fiji.
The group of various islanders (Fig. 25) belonging to Bishop Patteson’s
mission, shows plainly the resemblance to the African negro, though with
some marked points of difference, as in the brows being more strongly
ridged, and the nose being more prominent, even aquiline—a striking
contrast to the African. The Melanesians about New Guinea are called
Papuas from their woolly hair (Malay _papuwah_ = frizzed), which is often
grown into enormous mops. The great variety of colour in Melanesia, from
the full brown-black down to chocolate or nut-brown, shows that there
has been much crossing with lighter populations. Such mixture is evident
in the coast-people of Fiji, where the dark Melanesian race is indeed
predominant, but crossed with the lighter Polynesian race to which much
of the language and civilization of the islands belongs. Lastly, the
Tasmanians were a distant outlying population belonging to the eastern
blacks.
[Illustration: FIG. 24.—Aheta (Negrito), Philippine Islands.]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.—Melanesians.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.—South Australian (man).]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.—South Australian (woman).]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.—Australian (Queensland) women.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.—Dravidian hill-man (after Fryer).]
In Australia, that vast island-continent, whose plants and animals are
not those of Asia, but seem as it were survivors from a long-past period
of the earth’s history, there appears a thin population of roaming
savages, strongly distinct from the blacker races of New Guinea at the
north, and Tasmania at the south. The Australians, with skin of dark
chocolate-colour, may be taken as a special type of the brown races of
man. While their skull is narrow and prognathous like the negro’s, it
differs from it in special points which have been already mentioned
(page 60), and has, indeed, peculiarities which distinguish it very
certainly from that of other races. In the portraits of Australians,
Figs. 26, 27, 28, there may be noticed the heavy brows and projecting
jaws, the wide but not flat nose, the full lips, and the curly but not
woolly black hair. Looking at the map of the world to see where brown
races next appear, good authorities define one on the continent of
India. There the hill-tribes present the type of the old dwellers in
south and central India before the conquest by the Aryan Hindus, and
its purest form appears in tribes hardly tilling the soil, but living a
wild life in the jungle, while the great mass, more mixed in race with
the Hindus, under whose influence they have been for ages, now form the
great Dravidian nations of the south, such as the Tamil and Telugu. Fig.
29 represents one of the ruder Dravidians, from the Travancore forests.
Farther west, it has been thought that a brown race may be distinguished
in Africa, taking in Nubian tribes and less distinctly traceable in the
Berbers of Algiers and Tunis. If so, to this race the ancient Egyptians
would seem mainly to belong, though mixed with Asiatics, who from
remote antiquity came in over the Syrian border. The Egyptian drawings
of themselves (as in Chaps. IX. to XI.) require the eyes to be put in
profile and the body coloured reddish-brown to represent the race to us.
None felt more strongly than the Egyptian of ancient Thebes, that among
the chief distinctions between the races of mankind were the complexion
and feature which separated him from the Æthiopian on the one hand, and
the Assyrian or Israelite on the other.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.—Kalmuk (after Goldsmid).]
[Illustration: FIG. 31.—Goldi (Amur).]
[Illustration: FIG. 32.—Siamese actresses.]
Turning to another district of the world, the Mongoloid type of man has
its best marked representatives on the vast steppes of northern Asia.
Their skin is brownish-yellow, their hair of the head black, coarse, and
long, but face-hair scanty. Their skull is characterized by breadth,
projection of cheek-bones, and forward position of the outer edge of the
orbits, which, as well as the slightness of brow-ridges, the slanting
aperture of the eyes, and the snub-nose, are observable in Figs. 30 and
31, and in Fig. 12 _d_. The Mongoloid race is immense in range and
numbers. The great nations of south-east Asia show their connexion with
it in the familiar complexion and features of the Chinese and Japanese.
Figs. 32, 33, 34 are portraits from Siam, Cochin-China, and Corea. In his
wide migrations over the world, the Mongoloid, through change of climate
and life, and still farther by intermarriage with other races, loses
more and more of his special points. It is so in the South-east, where
in China and Japan the characteristic breadth of skull is lessened. In
Europe, where from remotest antiquity hordes of Tatar race have poured
in, their descendants have often preserved in their languages, such as
Hungarian and Finnish, clearer traces of their Asiatic home than can be
made out in their present types of complexion and feature. Yet the Finns,
Figs. 35 and 36, have not lost the race-differences which mark them off
from the Swedes among whom they dwell, and the stunted Lapps show some
points of likeness to their Siberian kinsfolk, who wander like them with
their reindeer on the limits of the Arctic regions.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Cochin-Chinese.]
[Illustration: FIG. 34.—Coreans.]
[Illustration: FIG. 35.—Finn (man).]
[Illustration: FIG. 36.—Finn (woman).]
[Illustration: FIG. 37.—Malays.]
[Illustration: FIG. 38.—Malays.]
In pursuing beyond this point the examination of the races of the world,
the problem becomes more obscure. On the Malay peninsula, at the extreme
south-east corner of Asia, appear the first members of the Malay race,
seemingly a distant branch of the Mongoloid, which spreads over Sumatra,
Java, and other islands of the Eastern Archipelago. Figs. 37 and 38 give
portraits of the more civilised Malays, while Fig. 39 shows the Dayaks
of Borneo, who represent the race in a wilder and perhaps less mixed
state. From the Malay Archipelago there stretch into the Pacific the
island ranges first of Micronesia and then of Polynesia, till we reach
Easter Island to the east and New Zealand to the south. The Micronesians
and Polynesians show connexion with the Malays in language, and more or
less in bodily make. But they are not Malays proper, and there are seen
among them high faces, narrow noses, and small mouths which remind us
of the European face, as in the Micronesian, Fig. 40, who stands here
to represent this varied group of peoples. The Maoris are still further
from being pure Malays, as is seen by their more curly hair, often
prominent and even aquiline noses. It seems likely that an Asiatic race
closely allied to Malays may have spread over the South Sea Islands,
altering their special type by crossing with the dark Melanesians, so
that now the populations of different island groups often vary much in
appearance. This race of sailors even found their way to Madagascar,
where their descendants have more or less blended with a population from
the continent of Africa.
[Illustration: FIG. 39.—Dayaks.]
[Illustration: FIG. 40.—Kingsmill Islander.]
Turning now to the double continent of America, we find in this New World
a problem of race remarkably different from that of the Old World. The
traveller who should cross the earth from Nova Zemlya to the Cape of Good
Hope or Van Diemen’s Land would find in its various climates various
strongly-marked kinds of men, white, yellow, brown, and black. But if
Columbus had surveyed America from the Arctic to the Antarctic regions,
he would have found no such extreme unlikeness in the inhabitants. Apart
from the Europeans and Africans who have poured in since the fifteenth
century, the native Americans in general might be, as has often been
said, of one race. Not that they are all alike, but their differences in
stature, form of skull, feature, and complexion, though considerable,
seem variations of a secondary kind. It is not as if several races had
formed each its proper type in its proper region, but as if the country
had been peopled by migrating tribes of a ready-made race, who had only
to spread and acclimatise themselves over both tropical and temperate
zones, much as the European horses have done since the time of Columbus,
and less perfectly the white men themselves. The race to which most
anthropologists refer the native Americans is the Mongoloid of East Asia,
who are capable of accommodating themselves to the extremest climates,
and who by the form of skull, the light-brown skin, straight black hair,
and black eyes, show considerable agreement with the American tribes.
Figs. 41 and 42 represent the wild hunting-tribes of North America in one
of the finest forms now existing, the Colorado Indians, while in Fig.
43 the Cauixana Indians may stand as examples of the rude and sluggish
forest-men of Brazil. While tribes of America and Asia may thus be of
one original stock, we must look cautiously at theories as to the ocean
and island routes by which Asiatics may have migrated to people the New
World. It is probable that man had appeared there, as in the Old World,
in an earlier geological period than the present, so that the first
kinship between the Mongols and the North American Indians may go back
to a time when there was no ocean between them. What looks like later
communication between the two continents, is that the stunted Eskimo
with their narrow roof-topped skulls may be a branch of the Japanese
stock, while there are signs of the comparatively civilized Mexicans and
Peruvians having in some way received arts and ideas from Asiatic nations.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.—Colorado Indian (North America).]
[Illustration: FIG. 42.—Colorado Indian (North America).]
[Illustration: FIG. 43.—Cauixana Indians (South America).]
We come last to the white men, whose nations have all through history
been growing more and more dominant intellectually, morally, and
politically on the earth. Though commonly spoken of as one variety
of mankind, it is plain that they are not a single uniform race, but
a varied and mixed population. It is a step toward classing them to
separate them into two great divisions, the dark-whites and fair-whites
(melanochroi, xanthochroi). Ancient portraits have come down to
us of the dark-white nations, as Assyrians, Phœnicians, Persians,
Greeks, Romans; and when beside these are placed moderns such as the
Andalusians, and the dark Welshmen or Bretons, and people from the
Caucasus, it will be evident that the resemblance running through all
these can only be in broad and general characters. They have a dusky or
brownish-white skin, black or deep brown eyes, black hair, mostly wavy
or curly; their skulls vary much in proportions, though seldom extremely
broad or narrow, while the profile is upright, the nose straight or
aquiline, the lips less full than in other races. Rather for form’s
sake than for a real type of the dark-whites, a group of Georgians are
shown in Fig. 44. Opposite them Fig. 45, a group of Swedes, somewhat
better represents the fair-whites, whose transparent skin, flaxen hair,
and blue eyes may be seen as well, though not as often, in England as
in Scandinavia or North Germany. The earliest recorded appearance of
fair-whites may be in the paintings where Egyptian artists represent
with yellowish-white skin and blue eyes certain natives of North Africa,
a district where remnants of blonde tribes are still known. These fair
Libyans, as well as the fair red-haired people who appear about Syria,
and are known to us as forming a type among the Jews, may perhaps be
connected in race with the fair nations who were already settled over
the north of Europe when the classic writers begin to give accounts of
its barbarous inhabitants, from the Goths northward to the dwellers
in Thule. The intermarriage of the dark and fair varieties which has
gone on since these early times, has resulted in numberless varieties
of brown-haired people, between fair and dark in complexion. But as to
the origin and first home of the fair and dark races themselves, it is
hard to form an opinion. Language does much toward tracing the early
history of the white nations, but it does not clear up the difficulty of
separating fair-whites from dark-whites. Both sorts have been living
united by national language, as at this day German is spoken by the fair
Hanoverian and the darker Austrian. Among Keltic people, the Scotch
Highlanders often remind us of the tall red-haired Gauls described in
classical history, but there are also passages which prove that smaller
darker Kelts like the modern Welsh and Bretons existed then as well. As
a help in clearing up this problem, which so affects our own ancestry,
Huxley suggests that the fair-whites were the original stock, and that
these crossing with the brown races of the far south may have given rise
to the various kinds of dark-whites. However this may be, such mixture
of the white and brown races seems indeed to have largely formed the
population of countries where they meet. The Moors of North Africa, and
many so-called Arabs who are darker than white men, may be thus accounted
for. It is thus that in India millions who speak Hindu languages show by
their tint that their race is mixed between that of the Aryan conquerors
of the land and its darker indigenes. An instructive instance of this
very combination is to be seen in the Gypsies, low-caste wanderers who
found their way from India and spread over Europe not many centuries
since. Fig. 46, a Gypsy woman from Wallachia, is a favourable type of
these latest incomers from the East, whose broken-down Hindu dialect
shows that part of their ancestry comes from our Aryan forefathers, while
their complexion, swarthiest in the population of our country, marks also
descent belonging to a darker zone of the human species.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.—Georgians.]
[Illustration: FIG. 45.—Swedes.]
[Illustration: FIG. 46.—Gypsy.]
Thus to map out the nations of the world among a few main varieties
of man, and their combinations, is, in spite of its difficulty and
uncertainty, a profitable task. But to account for the origin of these
great primary varieties or races themselves, and exactly to assign to
them their earliest homes, cannot be usefully attempted in the present
scantiness of evidence. If man’s first appearance was in a geological
period when the distribution of land and sea and the climates of the
earth were not as now, then on both sides of the globe, outside the
present tropical zones, there were regions whose warmth and luxuriant
vegetation would have favoured man’s life with least need of civilized
arts, and whence successive waves of population may have spread over
cooler climates. It may perhaps be reasonable to imagine as latest-formed
the white race of the temperate region, least able to bear extreme heat
or live without the appliances of culture, but gifted with the powers of
knowing and ruling which give them sway over the world.
CHAPTER IV.
LANGUAGE.
Sign-making, 114—Gesture-language, 114—Sound-gestures,
120—Natural Language, 122—Utterances of Animals, 122—Emotional
and Imitative Sounds in Language, 124—Change of Sound and
Sense, 127—Other expression of Sense by Sound, 128—Children’s
Words, 128—Articulate Language, its relation to Natural
Language, 129—Origin of Language, 130.
There are various ways in which men can communicate with one another.
They can make _gestures_, utter _cries_, speak _words_, draw _pictures_,
write _characters_ or _letters_. These are signs of various sorts, and to
understand how they do their work, let us begin by looking at such signs
as are most simple and natural.
When for any reason people cannot talk together by word of mouth,
they take to conversing by gestures, in what is called dumb show or
pantomime. Every reader of this has been able from childhood to carry on
conversation in this way, more or less cleverly. Imagine a simple case.
A boy opens the parlour door, his brother sitting there beckons to him
to be quiet for his father is asleep; the boy now intimates by signs
that he has come for the key of the box, to which his brother answers
by other signs that it is in the pocket of his coat hanging in the
hall, concluding with a significant gesture to be off and shut the door
quietly after him. This is the _gesture-language_ as we all know how to
use it. But to see what a full and exact means of communication it may
be worked up to, it should be watched in use among the deaf-and-dumb,
who have to depend so much upon it. To give an idea how far gestures can
be made to do the work of spoken words, the signs may be described in
which a deaf-and-dumb man once told a child’s story in presence of the
writer of this account. He began by moving his hand, palm down, about a
yard from the ground, as we do to show the height of a child—this meant
that it was a child he was thinking of. Then he tied an imaginary pair
of bonnet-strings under his chin (his usual sign for female), to make it
understood that the child was a little girl. The child’s mother was then
brought on the scene in a similar way. She beckons to the child and gives
her twopence, these being indicated by pretending to drop two coins from
one hand into the other; if there had been any doubt as to whether they
were copper or silver coins, this would have been settled by pointing to
something brown, or even by one’s contemptuous way of handling coppers
which at once distinguishes them from silver. The mother also gives the
child a jar, shown by sketching its shape with the forefingers in the
air, and going through the act of handing it over. Then by imitating the
unmistakeable kind of twist with which one turns a treacle-spoon, it is
made known that it is treacle the child has to buy. Next, a wave of the
hand shows the child being sent off on her errand, the usual sign of
walking being added, which is made by two fingers walking on the table.
The turning of an imaginary door-handle now takes us into the shop, where
the counter is shown by passing the flat hands as it were over it.
Behind this counter a figure is pointed out; he is shown to be a man by
the usual sign of putting one’s hand to one’s chin and drawing it down
where the beard is or would be; then the sign of tying an apron round
one’s waist adds the information that the man is the shopman. To him the
child gives her jar, dropping the money into his hand, and moving her
forefinger as if taking up treacle, to show what she wants. Then we see
the jar put into an imaginary pair of scales which go up and down; the
great treacle-jar is brought from the shelf and the little one filled,
with the proper twist to take up the last trickling thread; the grocer
puts the two coins in the till, and the little girl sets off with the
jar. The deaf-and-dumb story-teller went on to show in pantomime how the
child, looking down at the jar, saw a drop of treacle on the rim, wiped
it off with her finger and put the finger in her mouth, how she was
tempted to take more, how her mother found her out by the spot of treacle
on her pinafore, and so forth.
The student anxious to master the principles of language will find this
gesture-talk so instructive, that it will be well to explain its working
more closely. The signs used are of two kinds. In the first kind things
actually present are shown. Thus if the deaf-mute wants to mention
“hand” or “shoe,” he touches his own hand or shoe. Where a speaking man
would say “I,” “thou,” “he,” the deaf-mute simply points to himself and
the other persons. To express “red” or “blue” he touches the inside of
his own lip or points to the sky. In the second kind of signs ideas
are conveyed by imitation. Thus pretending to drink may mean “water,”
or “to drink,” or “thirsty.” Laying the cheek on the hand expresses
“sleep” or “bedtime.” A significant jerk of the whip-hand suggests either
“whip” or “coachman,” or “to drive,” as the case may be. A “lucifer”
is indicated by pretending to strike a match, and “candle” by the act
of holding up the forefinger like a candle and pretending to blow it
out. Also in the gesture-language the symptoms of the temper one is in
may be imitated, and so become signs of the same temper in others. Thus
the act of shivering becomes an expressive sign for “cold”; smiles show
“joy,” “approval,” “goodness,” while frowns show “anger,” “disapproval,”
“badness.” It might seem that such various meanings to one sign would be
confusing, but there is a way of correcting this, for when a single sign
does not make the meaning clear, others are brought in to supplement it.
Thus if one wants to express “a pen,” it may not be sufficient to pretend
to write with one, as that might be intended for “writing” or “letter,”
but if one then pretends to wipe and hold up a pen, this will make it
plain that the pen itself is meant.
The signs hitherto described are self-expressive, that is, their meaning
is evident on the face of them, or at any rate may be made out by a
stranger who watches their use. Of such self-expressive or natural
signs, the gesture-language mostly consists. But where deaf-mutes live
together, there come into use among them signs which a stranger can
hardly make out until it is explained to him how they arose. They will,
for instance, mention one another by nickname-signs, as when a boy may
be referred to by the sign of sewing, which on inquiry proves to have
been given him because his father was a tailor. Such signs may be very
far-fetched; for instance, at the Berlin Deaf-and-dumb Institution, the
sign of chopping off a head means a Frenchman, and on inquiry it appears
that the children, struck by reading of the death of Louis XVI. in the
history-book, had fixed on this as a sign-name for the whole nation. But
to any new child who learnt these signs without knowing why they were
chosen, they would seem artificial.
Next to studying the gesture-language among the deaf-and-dumb, the most
perfect way of making out its principles is in its use by people who can
talk but do not understand one another’s language. Thus the celebrated
sign-languages of the American prairies, in which conversation is carried
on between hunting-parties of whites and natives, and even between
Indians of different tribes, are only dialects (so to speak) of the
gesture-language. Thus “water” is expressed by pretending to scoop up
water in one’s hand and drink it, “stag” by putting one’s thumbs to one’s
temples and spreading out the fingers. There is a great deal of variety
in the signs among particular tribes, but such a way of communication
is so natural all the world over, that when outlandish people, such as
Laplanders, have been brought to be exhibited in our great cities, they
have been comforted in their loneliness by meeting with deaf-and-dumb
children, with whom they at once fell to conversing with delight in the
universal language of signs. Signs to be understood in this way must be
of the natural self-expressive sort. Yet here also there are some which
a stranger might suppose to be artificial, till he learnt that they
are old signs which have lost their once plain intention. Thus a North
American sign for “dog” is to draw one’s two first fingers along like
poles being trailed on the ground. This seemingly senseless sign really
belongs to the days when the Indians had few horses, and used to fasten
the tent-poles on the dogs to be dragged from place to place; though the
dogs no longer have to do this, custom keeps up the sign.
It has to be noticed that the gesture-language by no means matches, sign
for word, with our spoken language. One reason is that it has so little
power of expressing abstract ideas. The deaf-mute can show particular
ways of making things, such as building a wall or cutting out a coat, but
it is quite beyond him to make one sign include what is common to all
these, as we use the abstract term to “make.” Even “in” and “out” must
be expressed in some such clumsy way as by pretending to put the thing
talked of in, and take it out. Next let us compare an English sentence
with the signs by which the same meaning would be expressed among the
deaf-and-dumb. It will at once be seen that many words we use have no
signs at all corresponding to them. Thus when we should say in words,
“_The_ hat _which_ I left on _the_ table _is_ black,” this statement can
be practically conveyed in gestures, and there will be signs for what
we may call the “real” words, such as _hat_, _leave_, _black_. But for
what may be called the “grammatical” words, _the_, _which_, _is_, there
will be no signs, for the gesture-language has none. Again, grammars lay
down distinctions between substantives, adjectives, and verbs. But these
distinctions are not to be found in the gesture-language, where pointing
to a grass-plot may mean “grass” or “green,” and pretending to warm one’s
hands may suggest “warm” or “to warm oneself,” or even “fireplace.” Nor
(unless where artificial signs have been brought in by teachers) is there
anything in the gesture-language to correspond with the inflexions of
words, such as distinguish _goest_ from _go_, _him_ from _he_, _domum_
from _domus_. What is done is to call up a picture in the minds of the
spectators by first setting up something to be thought about, and then
adding to or acting on it till the whole story is told. If the signs do
not follow in such order as to carry meaning as they go, the looker-on
will be perplexed. Thus in conveying to a deaf-and-dumb child the thought
of a green box, one must make a sign for “box” first, and then show, as
by pointing to the grass outside, that its colour is “green.” The proper
gesture-syntax is “box green,” and if this order were reversed as it is
in the English language, the child might fail to see what grass had to do
with a box. Such a sentence as English “cats kill mice” does not agree
with the order of the deaf-mute’s signs, which would begin by showing the
tiny mouse running, then the cat with her smooth fur and whiskers, and
lastly the cat’s pouncing on the mouse—as it were “mouse cat kill.”
This account of the gesture-language will have made it clear to the
reader by what easy and reasonable means man can express his thoughts
in visible signs. The next step will be to show the working of another
sort of signs, namely, the sounds of the human voice in language. Sounds
of voice may be spoken as signs to express our feelings and thoughts on
much the same principles as gestures are made, except that they are heard
instead of being seen.
One kind of sounds used by men as signs, consists of emotional cries
or tones. Men show pain by uttering groans as well as by distortion of
face; joy is expressed by shouts as well as by jumping; when we laugh
aloud, the voice and the features go perfectly together. Such sounds are
gestures made with the voice, sound-gestures, and the greater number
of what are called interjections are of this class. By means of such
cries and tones, even the complicated tempers of sympathy, or pity, or
vexation, can be shown with wonderful exactness. Let any one put on a
laughing, sneering, or cross face, and then talk, he may notice how
his tone of voice follows; the attitude of features belonging to each
particular temper acts directly on the voice, especially in affecting the
musical quality of the vowels. Thus the speaker’s tones become signs of
the emotion he feels, or pretends to feel. That this mode of expression
is in fact musical, is shown by its being imitated on the violin, which
by altering its quality of tone can change from pain to joy. The human
voice uses other means of expression belonging to music, such as the
contrast of low and loud, slow and quick, gentle and violent, and the
changes of pitch, now rising in the scale and now falling. A speaker,
by skilfully managing these various means, can carry his hearer’s mind
through moods of mild languor and sudden surprise, the lively movement of
cheerfulness rising to eager joy, the burst of impetuous fury gradually
subsiding to calm. We can all do this, and what is more, we do it without
reference to the meaning of the words used, for emotion can be expressed
and even delicately shaded off in pronouncing mere nonsense-syllables.
For instance, the words of an Italian opera in England are to a great
part of the audience mere nonsense-syllables serving as a means of
musical and emotional expression. Clearly this kind of utterance ought to
be understood by all mankind, whatever be the language they may happen
to speak. It is so, for the most savage and outlandish tribes know how
to make such interjections as _ah!_ _oh!_ express by their tone such
feelings as surprise, pain, entreaty, threatening, disdain, and they
understand as well as we do the growling _ur-r-r!_ of anger, or the
_puh!_ of contempt.
The next class of sounds used as expressive signs are imitative. As
a deaf-and-dumb child expresses the idea of a cat by imitating the
creature’s act of washing its face, so a speaking child will indicate it
by imitating its _miaou_. If the two children wish to show that they are
thinking of a clock, the dumb one will show with his hand the swinging
of the pendulum, while the speaking one will say “_tick-tack_.” Here
again the sounds are gestures made with the voice, or sound-gestures.
In this way an endless variety of objects and actions can be brought to
mind by imitating their proper sounds. Not only do children delight in
such vocal imitations, but they have come into ordinary language, as when
people speak of the _coo_ of the pigeon, the _hee-haw_ of the donkey, the
_ding-dong_ of the bell, and the _rat-tat_ of the knocker. It need hardly
be said that these ways of expression are understood by mankind all the
world over.
Now joining gesture-actions and gesture-sounds, they will form together
what may be called a Natural Language. This natural language really
exists, and in wild regions even has some practical value, as when
a European traveller makes shift to converse in it with a party of
Australians round their camp-fire, or with a Mongol family in their felt
tent. What he has to do is to act his most expressive mimic gestures,
with a running accompaniment of exclamations and imitative noises. Here
then is found a natural means of intercourse, much fuller than mere
pantomime of gestures only. It is a common language of all mankind,
springing so directly from the human mind that it must have belonged to
our race from the most remote ages and most primitive conditions in which
man existed.
Here a very interesting question arises, on which every student has the
means of experimenting for himself. How far are the communications of the
lower animals, by their actions and sounds, like this natural language of
mankind? Every one who attends to the ways of beasts and birds is sure
that many of their movements and cries are not made as messages to one
another, but are merely symptoms of the creature’s own state of mind;
for instance, when lambs frisk in the meadow, or eager horses paw in
the stable, or beasts moan when suffering severe pain. Animals do thus
when not aware that any other creature is present, just as when a man
in a room by himself will clench his fist in anger, or groan in pain, or
laugh aloud. When gestures and cries serve as signals to other creatures,
they come nearer to real signs. The lower animals as well as man do
make gestures and cries which act as communications, being perceived by
others, as when horses will gently bite one another to invite rubbing,
or rabbits stamp on the ground and other rabbits answer, and birds
and beasts plainly call one another, especially males and females at
pairing-time. So distinct are the gestures and cries of animals under
different circumstances, that by experience we know their meaning almost
certainly. Human language does not answer its purpose more perfectly than
the hen’s cluck to call her chickens, or the bellow of rage with which
the bull, tossing his head, warns off a dog near his paddock. As yet,
however, no observer has been able to follow the workings of mind even
in the dog that jumps up for food and barks for the door to be opened.
It is hard to say how far the dog’s mind merely associates jumping up
with being fed, and barking with being let in, or how far it forms a
conception like ours of what it is doing and why it does it. Anyhow, it
is clear that the beasts and birds go so far in the natural language as
to make and perceive gestures and cries as signals. But a dog’s mind
seems not to go beyond this point, that a good imitation of a mew leads
it to look for a cat in the room; whereas a child can soon make out from
the nurse saying _miaou_ that she means something about some cat, which
need not even be near by. That is, a young child can understand what is
not proved to have entered into the mind of the cleverest dog, elephant,
or ape, that a sound may be used as the sign of a thought or idea. Thus,
while the lower animals share with man the beginnings of the natural
language, they hardly get beyond its rudiments, while the human mind
easily goes on to higher stages.
In describing the natural language of gestures and exclamations, we have
as yet only looked at it as used alone where more perfect language is not
to be had. It has now to be noticed that fragments of it are found in the
midst of ordinary language. A people may speak English, or Chinese, or
Choctaw, as their mother-tongue, but nevertheless they will keep up the
use of the expressive gestures and interjections and imitations which
belong to natural language. Mothers and nurses use these in teaching
little children to think and speak. It is needless to print examples
of this nursery talk, for unless our readers’ minds have already been
struck by it, they are not likely to study philology to much purpose. In
the conversation of grown people, the self-expressive or natural sounds
become more scanty, yet they are real and unmistakable, as the following
examples will serve to show.
As for gestures, many in constant use among our own and other nations
must have come down from generation to generation since primitive ages
of mankind, as when the orator bows his head, or holds up a threatening
hand, or thrusts from him an imaginary intruder, or points to the sky,
or counts his friends or enemies on his fingers. Next, as to emotional
sounds, a variety of these is actually used in every language. For
instances, a few may be cited from among the interjections set down in
grammars:
English—_ah!_ _oh!_ _ugh!_ _foh!_ _ha! ha!_ _tut!_ (t-t) _sh!_
Sanskrit—_aho!_ (surprise), _aha!_ (reproach), _um!_ (vexation).
Malay—_eh!_ (triumph), _weh!_ (compassion), _chih!_ (dislike).
Galla—_o!_ _woyo!_ (sorrow), _mê!_ (entreaty).
Australian—_năh!_ (surprise), _pooh!_ (contempt).
As for imitative words, all languages of mankind, ancient and modern,
savage and civilized, contain more or less of them, and any English child
can see how the following set of animals and instruments were named by
appropriate sound:—
ASS = _eō_ (Egyptian).
CROW = _kâka_ (Sanskrit).
CAT = _mau_ (Chinese).
NIGHTINGALE = _bulbul_ (Persian).
HOOPOE = _upupa_ (Latin).
RATTLESNAKE = _shi-shi-gwa_ (Algonquin).
FLY = _bumberoo_ (Australian).
DRUM = _dundu_ (Sanskrit).
FLUTE = _ulule_ (Galla).
WHISTLE = _pipit_ (Malay).
BELL = _kwa-lal-kwa-lal_ (Yakama).
BLOW-TUBE = _pub_ (Quiché).
GUN = _pung_ (Botokudo).
Such words are always springing up afresh in dialect or slang; for
instance English _pop_, meaning ginger-beer; German _gaggele_, an egg,
from the cackle of the hen as she laid it; French “maître _fifi_,” a
scavenger (as it were “master _fie-fie_”). In the same way many actions
are expressed by appropriate sounds. Thus in the Tecuna language of
Brazil the verb to sneeze is _haitschu_, while the Welsh for a sneeze
is _tis_. In the Chinuk jargon, the expressive sound _humm_ means to
stink, and the drover’s _kish-kish_ becomes a verb meaning to drive
horses or cattle. It is even possible to find a whole sentence made
with imitative words, for the Galla of Abyssinia, to express “the smith
blows the bellows,” says, _tumtun bufa bufti_, much as an English child
might say “the _tumtum puffs_ the _puffer_.” Such words being taken
direct from nature, it is to be expected that people of quite different
language should sometimes hit on nearly the same imitations. Thus the
Ibo language of West Africa has the word _okoko_ for the bird we call
a _cock_. The English verbs to _pat_ and to _bang_ seem to come from
imitations of sound, much the same being found elsewhere; as when the
Japanese say _pata-pata_ to express the sound of flapping or clapping,
and the Yoruba negros have the verb _gbang_, to beat.
Students whose attention is once directed to this class of
self-expressive words, will notice them at a glance in each fresh
language they master. It takes more careful observation to trace them
when the sound has been transferred by the process of metaphor (_i.e._
carrying over) to some new meaning not close to the original sense,
but there are plenty of clear cases to choose illustrations from. In
the Chinuk jargon of the West Coast of America, a tavern is called a
“_heehee_-house,” a term which puzzles a foreigner till he understands
that among the people who speak this curious dialect the imitative word
_heehee_ signifies not only laughter but the amusement which causes
it, so that the term in fact means “amusement-house.” It might seem
difficult to hit upon an imitative word to denote a courtier, but the
Basuto of South Africa do this perfectly; they have a word _ntsi-ntsi_,
which means a fly, being, indeed, an imitation of its buzz, and they
simply transfer this word to mean also the flattering parasite who buzzes
round the chief like a fly round meat. These instances from uncivilized
languages are like those which appear among the most polished nations,
as when we English take the imitative verb to _puff_ from its proper
sense of blowing, to express the idea of inflated, hollow praise. Now
if the pronunciation of such words becomes changed, their origin may be
only recognised by old records happening to preserve their first sound.
Thus when English _woe_ is traced back to Anglo-Saxon _wá_, it is found
to be an actual groan turned (like German _weh_) into a substantive
expressing sorrow or distress. So an Englishman would hardly guess from
the present pronunciation and meaning of the word _pipe_, what its
origin was; yet when he compares it with the Low Latin _pipa_, French
_pipe_, pronounced more like our word _peep_, to chirp, and meaning such
a reed-pipe as shepherds played on, he then sees how cleverly the very
sound of the musical pipe has been made into a word for all kinds of
tubes, such as tobacco-pipes and water-pipes. Words like this travel like
Indians on the war-path, wiping out their footmarks as they go. For all
we know, multitudes of our ordinary words may have thus been made from
real sounds, but have now lost beyond recovery the traces of their first
expressiveness.
We have not yet come to the end of the intelligible ways in which sound
can be made to express sense. When people want to show alteration in the
meaning of a word, it is enough to make some change in its pronunciation.
It is not difficult to see how, in the Wolof language of West Africa,
where _dagou_ means to walk, _dâgou_ signifies to walk proudly; _dagana_
means to ask humbly, but _dagâna_ to demand. In the Mpongwe language the
meaning can be actually reversed by changing the pronunciation: as “mi
_tonda_,” I love, but “mi _t_o_nda_,” I love not. The English reader
can manage to do much the same tricks by varying the tones of his own
verbs _walk_, _ask_, _love_. This process of expressing difference of
sense by difference of sound may be carried much farther. An instructive
instance of clear symbolism by sound is to be found in a word coined by
the chemist Guyton de Morveau. In his names for chemical compounds he had
already the term _sulfate_ (made on a Latin pattern like _sulphuratus_),
but afterwards he wanted a word to denote a sulphur-salt of different
proportions, and thereupon, to express the fact that there was an
alteration, he changed a vowel and made the term _sulfite_. He perhaps
did not know that he was here resorting to a device found in many
rude languages. Thus in Manchu, contrast of sound serves to indicate
difference of sex, _chacha_ meaning “male” and _cheche_ “female,” _ama_
“father” and _eme_ “mother.” So distances are often expressed by altering
the vowel, as in Malagasy _ao_ means a little way off, _eo_ still nearer,
_io_ close at hand. In this way it is easy to make sets of expressive
personal pronouns; as in the Tumal language _ngi_ “I,” _ngo_ “thou,”
_ngu_ “he.” Another well-known process is reduplication or doubling,
which serves a number of different purposes. It shows repetition or
strengthening of meaning, as where the Polynesian _aka_ “to laugh,”
becomes _akaaka_ “to laugh much,” while _loa_ “long,” becomes _lololoa_
“very long.” Our words _haw-haw_ and _bonbon_ are like these. It is
also easy to form plurals by reduplication, as Malay _orang_ “man,”
_orang-orang_ “men;” Japanese _fito_ “man,” _fito-bito_ “men.” Among the
kinds of reduplication best known to us is that which marks tenses in
verbs, like _didōmi_ and _tetupha_ in Greek, _momordi_ in Latin.
These clever but intelligible devices for making the sound follow the
sense, show how easily man gets beyond mere imitation. Language is one
branch of the great art of sign-making or sign-choosing, and its business
is to hit upon some sound as a suitable sign or symbol for each thought.
Whenever a sound has been thus chosen there was no doubt a reason for
the choice. But it did not follow that each language should choose the
same sound. This is well shown by the peculiar class of words belonging
to children’s language or baby-language, of which the word _baby_ itself
is one. These words are made up all over the world from the few simple
syllables which children first utter, chosen almost anyhow to express
the nursery ideas of mother, father, nurse, toy, sleep, &c. Thus while
we have our way of using _papa_ and _mama_, the Chilians say _papa_
for “mother,” and the Georgians _mama_ for “father,” while in various
languages _dada_ may mean “father,” “cousin,” “nurse;” _tata_ “father,”
“son,” “good-bye”! Such children’s words often find their way into the
language of grown people, and any slight change makes them look like
ordinary words. Thus in English one might hardly suspect _pope_ and
_abbot_ of having their origin in baby-words, yet this is evident when
they are traced back to Latin _papa_ and Syriac _abba_, both meaning
“father.”
These nursery words have already come beyond the “natural language” of
self-expressive gestures and sounds. From its simple and clear facts we
thus pass to the more difficult and obscure principles of “articulate
language.” On examining English, or any other of the thousand tongues
spoken in the world, it is found that most of the words used show no
such connection between sound and sense as is so plain in the natural
or self-expressive words. To illustrate the difference, when a child
calls a pocket timepiece a _tick-tick_, this is plainly self-expressive.
But when we call it a _watch_, this word does not show why it is used.
It is known that the instrument had its name from telling the hours
like a _watch_-man, whose name denotes his duty to _watch_, Anglo-Saxon
_wœccan_, from _wacan_, to move, _wake_; but here explanation comes to
a stop, for no philologist has succeeded in showing why the syllable
_wac_ came to denote this particular idea. Or if the same child call
a locomotive engine a _puff-puff_, this is self-expressive. Grown
people call it an _engine_, a term which came through French from Latin
_ingenium_, which meant that which is “in-born,” thence natural ability
or genius, thence an effort of genius, invention or contrivance, and
thence a machine. By going farther back and taking the Latin word to
pieces, it is seen that the syllables _in_ and _gen_ convey the ideas
of “in” and “birth”; but here again etymology breaks down, for why
these sounds were chosen for these meanings no one knows. Thus it is
with at least nine-tenths of the words in dictionaries; there is no
apparent reason why the word _go_ should not have signified the idea
of coming, and the word _come_ the idea of going; nor can the closest
examination show cause why in Hebrew _chay_ means live, and _mêth_ dead,
or why in Maori _pai_ means good and _kino_ bad. It is maintained by
some philologists that emotional and imitative sounds such as have been
described in this chapter are the very source of all language, and that
although most words now show no trace of such origin, this is because
they have quite lost it in the long change of pronunciation and meaning
they have gone through, so that they are now become mere symbols, which
children have to learn the meaning of from their teachers. Now all this
certainly has taken place, but it would be unscientific to accept it as
a complete explanation of the origin of language. Besides the emotional
and imitative ways, several other devices have here been shown in which
man chooses sounds to express thoughts, and who knows what other causes
may have helped? All we have a right to say is, that from what is known
of man’s ways of choosing signs, it is likely that there was always
some kind of fitness or connection which led to each particular sound
being taken to express a particular thought. This seems to be the most
reasonable opinion to be held as to the famous problem of the Origin of
Language.
At the same time, what little is known of man’s ways of making new words
out of suitable sounds, is of great importance in the study of human
nature. It proves that so far as language can be traced to its actual
source, that source does not lie in some lost gifts or powers of man, but
in a state of mind still acting, and not above the level of children and
savages. The origin of language was not an event which took place long
ago once for all, and then ceased entirely. On the contrary, man still
possesses, and uses when he wants it, the faculty of making new original
words by choosing fit and proper sounds. But he now seldom puts this
faculty to serious use, for this good reason, that whatever language he
speaks has its stock of words ready to furnish an expression for almost
every fresh thought that crosses his mind.
CHAPTER V.
LANGUAGE—(_continued_).
Articulate Speech, 130—Growth of Meanings, 131—Abstract
Words, 135—Real and Grammatical Words, 136—Parts of Speech,
138—Sentences, 139—Analytic Language, 139—Word Combination,
140—Synthetic Language, 141—Affixes, 142—Sound-change,
143—Roots, 144—Syntax, 146—Government and Concord, 147—Gender,
149—Development of Language, 150.
A sentence being made up of its connected sounds as a limb is made up of
its joints, we call language _articulate_ or “jointed,” to distinguish
it from the _inarticulate_ or “unjointed” sounds uttered by the lower
animals. Such conversation by gestures and exclamations as was shown
in the last chapter to be a natural language common to mankind, is
half-way between the communications of animals and full human speech.
Every people, even the smallest and most savage tribe, has an articulate
language, carried on by a whole system of sounds and meanings, which
serves the speaker as a sort of catalogue of the contents of the world he
lives in, taking in every subject he thinks about, and enabling him to
say what he thinks about it. What a complicated and ingenious apparatus a
language may be, the Greek and Latin grammars sufficiently show. Yet the
more carefully such difficult languages are looked into, the more plainly
it is seen that they grew up out of earlier and simpler kinds of speech.
It is not our business here to make a systematic survey of the structure
of languages, such as will be found in the treatises of Max Müller,
Sayce, Whitney, and Peile. What we have to attend to, is that many of the
processes by which languages have been built up are still to be found at
work among men, and that grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules framed
by grammarians, but the result of man’s efforts to get easier, fuller,
and exacter expression for his thoughts. It may be noticed that our
examples are oftener taken from English than from any other tongue. The
reason of this is not merely the convenience of using the most familiar
words as instances, but that English is of all existing languages perhaps
the best for explaining the development of language in general. While its
words may in great part be traced to high antiquity, its structure has
passed through extreme changes in coming down to modern times, and in its
present state the language at once keeps up relics of ancient formations,
and has the freest growth actually going on. Thus, in one way or another,
English has something to show in illustration of three out of four of the
processes known to have helped in the making of language, at any time and
anywhere.
As in the course of ages man’s knowledge became wider and his
civilization more complex, his language had to keep up with them.
Comparatively few and plain expressions had sufficed for his early
rude condition, but now more and more terms had to be added for the
new notions, implements, arts, offices, and relations of more highly
organized society. Etymology shows how such new words are made by
altering and combining old ones, carrying on old words from the old
state of things to do duty in the new, shifting their meanings, and
finding in any new thought some resemblance to an old one that would
serve to give it a name. English is full of traces of these ways of
word-making and word-shifting. For instance, that spacious stone building
is still called, as its rough predecessors were, a _barrack_ (that is,
hut); in it a _regiment_ (that is, a ruling or command) of _soldiers_
(that is, paid men) of the _infantry_ (that is, lads, who fought on foot)
are being _inspected_ (that is, looked into); each _company_ (that is,
those who have bread together) being under a _captain_ (that is, headman)
and his _lieutenants_ (that is, place-holders). On the front of the
building is a _clock_, a machine which keeps on its old name, meaning
a bell, from the ages when its predecessor was only a bell on which a
watchman struck the hours; in later times were added the _weights_, lumps
of metal so-called from the weights of the balance, the _pendulum_ (or
hanger), and what are metaphorically called the _face_ and _hands_, for
showing on a _scale_ (or ladder) the _hours_ (or times), divided into
_minutes_ (or smalls), and then again into _seconds_ (or followings).
These instances are intentionally not drawn from the depths of etymology,
but are taken to show the ordinary ways in which language finds means
to supply the new terms of advancing society. It will be worth while
to give a few cases showing that the languages of less civilized
races do their duty in much the same ways. The Aztecs called a boat a
“water-house” (_acalli_), and thence the censer in which they burnt copal
as incense came to be called a “little copal-boat” (_copalacaltontli_).
The Vancouver Islanders, when they saw how a screw-steamer went, named
it at once _yetseh-yetsokleh_, that is, the “kick-kicker.” The Hidatsas
of the Missouri till lately had only hard stone for their arrows and
hatchets; so when they became acquainted with iron and copper they made
names for these metals—_uetsasipisa_ and _uetsahisisi_, that is to say,
“stone black” and “stone red,” The horse, when brought by the white men
among peoples who had never seen it, had to be named, and accordingly the
Tahitians called it “pig-carry-man,” while the Sioux Indians said it was
a “magic-dog.”
As a help to understand how words have come to express still more
difficult thoughts, it is well to remember the contrast between the
gesture-language and spoken English (p. 119). It was seen how the
deaf-and-dumb fall short of our power of expressing general and abstract
ideas. Not that they cannot conceive such ideas at all. They use signs
as general terms when they can lay hold of some quality or action as
the mark of a whole class. Thus flapping one’s arms like wings means
any bird, or birds in general, and the sign of legs-four, means beasts,
or quadrupeds in general. The pretence of pouring something out of a
jug expresses the notion of fluid, which they understand, as we do, to
comprise water, tea, quicksilver; and they probably have, though more
dimly than we, such other abstract notions as the whiteness common to
all white things, and the length, breadth, and thickness which all solid
objects have. But while the deaf-mute’s sign must always make us think of
the very thing it imitates, the spoken word can shift its meaning so as
to follow thought wherever it goes. It is instructive to look at words in
this light, to see how, starting from thoughts as plain as those shown by
the signs of the American savage, they can come on to the most difficult
terms of the lawyer, the mathematician, and the philosopher. To us words
have become, as Lord Bacon said, counters for notions. By means of words
we are enabled to deal with abstract ideas, got by comparing a number
of thoughts, but so as only to attend to what they have in common. The
reader of this no doubt uses easily, and perhaps correctly, such words as
_sort_, _kind_, _thing_, _cause_, to _make_, _be_, _do_, _suffer_. If he
will try to get clear to his mind what is actually meant by these words,
that is, what sense they carry with them wherever used, he may teach
himself the best lesson he ever learnt, either in language or philosophy.
To Englishmen who know no language but their own, these words are indeed,
as it were, counters, chosen at random to express thoughts. Having
learnt by practice how and where to apply them, they are seldom even
conscious of their highly abstract nature. The philologist cannot trace
the complete history of them all, but he knows enough to satisfy him that
they came out of words easier to understand. As in the Bornu language of
Africa, _tando_, to “weave,” has become a general verb to “make,” and in
Hebrew _bârâ_, to “cut” or “hew,” has come to be used for the making of
the heavens and earth; so our word to _make_ may have meant originally to
fit, or join. The English word _sort_ comes from Latin _sors_, a “lot,”
through such a set of meanings as allotment, oracle, fate, condition,
chance, portion; _kind_ meant of one kindred or descent; to _be_ may
have meant to grow; to _suffer_ meant to bear as a burden. It belongs to
high metaphysics to talk of the _apprehension_ of _ideas_; but these now
abstruse words originally meant “catching hold” of “sights.” One use of
etymology is that it teaches how men thus contrived, from words which
expressed plain and easy thoughts, to make terms for more complex and
abstruse thoughts. This is the high road along which the human mind has
travelled from ignorance to knowledge.
The next contrivance of language to be noticed is the use of
“grammatical” words, which serve to connect the “real” words and show
what they have to do with one another. This again is well seen by
looking at the gesture-language (p. 119). If a deaf-and-dumb man wants to
convey in gestures “John is come, he has brought the harness of the pony
and put it on a bench,” he can communicate the sense of this well enough,
but he does it by merely giving the real parts, as “John, harness, pony,
carry, bench, put.” But the articles “a” and “the,” the preposition
“of,” the conjunction “and,” the substantive verb “is,” and the pronouns
“he,” “it,” are grammatical devices which have not signs in his natural
system, and which he does not even learn the meaning of till he is taught
to read. Nevertheless, the deaf-mute, if obliged to be very exact in
his account, can actually give us a good idea of the way in which we
speaking-people have come to use grammatical words. Though he cannot
intimate that it is _a_ bench, he can hold up one finger to show that it
is _one_ bench; though he has no sign for _the_ pony, he can as it were
point it out so as to show it is _that_ pony; instead of expressing _of_
the pony as we do, he can go farther by pretending to take the harness
_off_ the pony. Now English etymology often shows that our grammatical
words were made in very much this way out of real words; _an_ or _a_ was
originally the numeral “one,” still Scotch _ane_; _the_ is of the same
family of words with _that_ and _there_; _of_ is derived from the same
source with _off_; the conjunction _and_ may be traced back to the more
real meaning of “further” or “thereto”; the verb to _have_ has become a
mere auxiliary in “I _have_ come,” yet it keeps its old full sense of to
hold or grasp, when one man seizing another cries “I _have_ him!” When
an Englishman says he “_stands_ corrected,” this does not mean that he
is on his legs, but the verb has sunk into a grammatical auxiliary, now
conveying little more than the passive sense he “is corrected.” It is
curious to notice pronouns being thus formed from more real words. As
the deaf-mute simply points with his finger to express “I” and “thou,”
so the Greenlander’s _uvanga_ = “I,” _ivdlit_ = “thou,” are plainly
derived from _uv_ = “here,” _iv_ = “there.” Quite a different device
appears in Malay, where _âmba_ = “slave” is used as a pronoun “I,” and
_tuwan_ = “lord” as a pronoun “thou.” How this came to pass is plainly
shown by Hebrew, in such phrases as are translated in the English Bible,
“_thy servant_ saith,” “_my lord_ knoweth;” these terms are on the road
to become mere personal pronouns meaning “I” and “thou,” as in the Malay
they actually have done. An exact line cannot be drawn between real and
grammatical words in English or any other language, for the good reason
that words pass so gradually from the real into the grammatical stage,
that the same word may be used in both ways. But though the distinction
is not an exact one, it should be noticed attentively. Any one who will
try to tell an intelligible story in English real words only, without
the help of the grammatical particles which are the links and hinges of
the sentence, will see how the use of grammatical words was one of the
greatest moves made by man in the formation of articulate speech.
Philology goes still further in explaining how the complicated devices
of grammar arose from simple beginnings. The distinction of “parts of
speech,” familiar to us in a highly-developed state from the Greek and
Latin grammars, is a useful means of showing the relations among the
several thoughts talked of in the sentence. But it is possible to do
without parts of speech, and it is not to be supposed that they existed
in the earliest forms of language. In the gesture language it has been
already noticed that there is no such distinction even between noun and
verb. In classical Chinese, _thwan_ means round, a ball, to make round,
to sit round, and so on; _ngan_ means quiet, quietly, to quiet, to
be quiet, &c. We English can quite enter into this, for our language
has so far dropped the ancient inflexions as to break up distinctions
between parts of speech in almost Chinese fashion, using a word either
as substantive, adjective, or verb, as the people’s _quiet_, a _quiet_
people, to _quiet_ the people, and without scruple turning a verb into
a substantive, as a workmen’s _strike_, or a substantive into a verb,
as to _horse_ a coach. The very formation of new parts of speech may be
seen going on, as where Chinese shows how prepositions may be made out
of nouns or verbs. Thus “kuo _chung_,” that is “kingdom _middle_,” is
used to mean “in the kingdom,” and “sha jin _i_ thing,” that is, “kill
man _use_ stick,” expresses “to kill a man _with_ a stick.” So an African
language, the Mandingo, may be caught in the act of making prepositions
out of the nouns _kang_, “neck,” and _kono_, “_belly_,” when they say
“put table _neck_” for “_on_ the table,” and “house _belly_” for “_in_
the house.”
We have next to look at the way in which language grows by combining its
words to form new ones. To see this, words have to be noticed not as
they stand by themselves, but as they come together in actual speaking.
Language consists of sentences, and a sentence is made up of words,
each word being a distinct spoken sound carrying a distinct meaning.
The simplest notion of a sentence may be had from such a language as
Chinese, where it can be taken apart into words which are each a single
syllable. Thus _kou chi shi jin sse_, that is “dog sow eat man food”
means that dogs and sows eat the food of men. The class of languages
which can be taken to pieces in this perfect way are called _analytic_
or isolating. In most languages of the world, however, which are more
or less _synthetic_ or compounding, the tendency is not so strong to
keep words separate, and they are apt to attach themselves together. To
bring clearly before our minds how the joining or compounding of words
takes place, let us notice rather more closely than usual one of our
English sentences. On listening, it will appear that the spoken words
have not really breaks between them as in writing, but the syllables run
on continuously till the speaker pauses, and what marks a word is, not
its being really separated, but its having an emphasis, or stress (as
it is called by Mr. Sweet). Now, from time to time, certain words may
be noticed becoming actually fixed together. How this joining gradually
takes place we sometimes try to show by writing them differently, as
_hard ware_, _hard-ware_, _hardware_; or _steam ship_, _steam-ship_,
_steamship_. On listening to such joined words, it is found that one
of the two has lost its stress, the whole compound having now but one
stress. This is how in talking English our minds give a sign by our
voices that two words have become one. The next step is when the sound
of one of the part-words becomes slurred or broken down, as in the
end-words of _waterman_, _wrongful_. Or both the simple words may have
broken down, as in _boatswain_ and _coxswain_, where writing keeps up the
original meaning of the _swain_ in charge of the _boat_ or _cock_-boat,
but in actual speaking the words have shrunk to what may be spelt
_bōsun_, _coxun_. Now this process of forming a new word by (so to speak)
welding together two or more old ones, is one of the chief acts by which
word-makers, ancient and modern, have furnished themselves with more
manageable terms, which again as the meanings of the separate parts were
less cared for, were cut shorter in speaking. When this has not gone too
far, philologists can still get back to the original elements of such
words, discerning the _fourteen night_ in _fortnight_; the _unus_ and
_decem_ in _undecim_, shrunk still farther in French _onze_; the _jus_,
_dico_, in Latin _judex_, which in English comes down to _judge_.
As examples how word-compounding goes on in unfamiliar tongues,
may be taken the Malay term for “arrow,” which is _anak-panah_, or
“child-(of-the)-bow;” and the native Australian term for “unanimous,”
which is _gurdugynyul_, or “heart-one-come.” To show how such
compound words become shortened, take the Mandingo word for “sister,”
_inbadingmuso_, which is made up of _mi bado dingo muso_, meaning
“my-mother-child-female.” The natives of Vancouver’s Island gave to
a certain long-bearded Englishman the name _Yakpus_; this appears
to have come from _yakhpekukselkous_, made up of words signifying
“long-face-hair-man,” which in speaking had been cut down to _yakpus_.
No one who did not happen to be told the history of this word could ever
have guessed it. This is an important lesson in the science of language,
for it is likely that tens of thousands of words in the languages of
the world may have come into the state in which we find them by the
shortening of long compound words, and when this has been done recklessly
as in the last example, and the history lost, all reasonable hope is gone
of ever getting back to the original form and meaning. Nor does this
process of contraction affect only compound words, but it may act on a
whole sentence, fusing it as it were into one word. Here the synthetic or
compounding principle reaches its height. As a contrast to the analytic
Chinese sentence given at page 139, to show the perfect distinctness
of their words, we may take a sentence of an African language to show
how utterly that distinctness may be lost. When a Grebo negro wishes to
express that he is very angry, he says in his metaphorical way “it has
raised a bone in my breast.” His full words for expressing this would be
_e ya mu kra wudi_, but in speaking he runs them together so that what
he actually utters is _yamukroure_. Where such breaking down has gone on
unchecked, it is easy to see how the language of a barbaric tribe may
alter so much in a few generations as hardly to be recognised. Indeed,
any one who will attend to how English words run together in talking
may satisfy himself that his own language would undergo rapid changes
like those of barbaric tongues, were it not for the schoolmaster and the
printer, who insist on keeping our words fixed and separate.
The few examples here given of new words made by compounding old ones
may serve to illustrate the great principle that such combination, far
from being a mere source of confusion, has been one of the great means
of building up language. Especially, one of the great discoveries in
modern philology is how grammatical formation and inflexion has partly
come about by a kind of word-compounding. It must have seemed to the
old scholars a mysterious and arbitrary proceeding that Latin should
have fixed upon a set of meaningless affixes to inflect and make into
different parts of speech _ago_, _agis_, _agit_, _agere_, _agens_,
_actum_, _actor_, _actio_, _activus_, _activè_, &c. But the mystery to
some extent disappeared when it was noticed how in modern languages the
running together of words produced something of the kind. Thus the _hood_
of _womanhood_, _priesthood_, which is now a mere grammatical suffix,
was in old English a word of itself, _hâd_, meaning form, order, state;
and the suffix -_ly_ was once the distinct word “like,” as is seen by
Anglo-Saxon saying cwên-_lic_, “queen-_like_,” where modern English says
queen_ly_. In Chaucer’s English it is seen how the pronoun _thou_ had
dwindled into a mere verb-ending,
“He pokyd Johan, and seyde, Slepist_ow_?
Herdist_ow_ ever slik a sang er now?”
In English the future tense of the verb to give is “I will give,” or,
colloquially, “I’ll give.” Here writing separates what speaking joins,
but the modern French future tense _donnerai_, _donneras_, is the verb
_donner_ with the auxiliary verb _ai_, _as_, both spoken and written
on to it, so that “je donnerai” is a phrase like “I have to give.” The
plural _donnerons_, _donnerez_, can no longer be thus taken to pieces,
for the remains of the auxiliary verb have passed into meaningless
grammatical affixes _ons_, _ez_. There is reason to suppose that many
of the affixes of Greek and Latin grammar arose in this way by distinct
words combining together and then shrinking. Not that it would be safe
to assert that all affixes came into existence in this particular way.
As was pointed out in the last chapter, men wanting to utter a thought
are clever enough to catch up in very far-fetched ways a sound to express
it. Thus the prefix _ge_, which German uses to make past participles
with, seems to have originally signified “with” or “together,” which
sense it still retains in such words as _gespiele_, “playfellow;” but
by a curious shifting of purpose it came to serve as a means of forming
participles, as _spielen_, to play, _gespielt_, played. It was so used
also in Anglo-Saxon, as _clypian_, to call, _geclypod_, called, which
word in its later form _yclept_ still keeps up among us a trace of
the old grammatical device. Philologists have to keep their eyes open
to this power which language-makers have of using sounds for some new
purpose they were not intended for. Thus, in English, the change of
vowels in _foot_, _feet_, and in _find_, _found_, now serves as a means
of declining the noun and conjugating the verb. But history happens to
show that the vowel change was not originally made with this intention
at all. The Anglo-Saxon declension proves that the vowel was not then a
sign of number in the noun; it was singular _fôt_, _fôtes_, _fêt_, plural
_fêt_, _fôta_, _fôtum_. Nor was it a sign of tense in the Anglo-Saxon
verb, where the perfect of _findan_, to find, had different vowels in its
singular, _ic fand_, I found, and its plural, _we fundon_, we found. It
was the later Englishmen who, knowing nothing of the real reasons which
brought about the variation of the vowels, took to using them to mark
singular from plural, and present from perfect.
It is the work of grammarians in examining any language to take all its
combined words to pieces as far as possible. Greek and Latin grammars
now teach how to analyze words by stripping off their affixes, so as to
get down to the real part or root, which is generally a simple sound
expressing a simple notion. A root is best understood by considering it
to have been once a separate word, as it would be in such a language as
English. Even in languages where the roots seldom appear without some
affix attached, they may stand by themselves as imperative, like Latin
_dic!_ say! Turkish _sev!_ love! But in many languages roots can only
be found as imaginary forms, by comparing a group of words and getting
at the common part belonging to them all. Thus in Latin it appears
from _gnosco_, _gnotus_, &c., that there must be a root _gno_ which
carries the thought of knowing. Going on to Greek, there is found in
_gignōskō_, _gnōsis_, _gnōmē_, &c., the same root _gno_ with the same
meaning. Turning next to Sanskrit, a similar sound, _jnâ_, appears as
the root-form for knowing. In this way, by comparing the whole set of
Aryan or Indo-European languages, it appears that there must have been
in ancient times a word something like _gna_, meaning to know, which is
to be traced not only in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, but in many other
languages of the family, as Russian _znat_, English _know_. A few more
such Aryan roots, which the reader recognises at once in well-known
languages, are _sta_, to stand, _sad_, to sit, _ga_, to go, _i_, to go,
_ma_, to measure, _da_, to give, _vid_, to see, _rag_, to rule, _mar_
to die. These simple sounds seem to have already become fixed to carry
their meanings in the remote ages when the ancestors of the Aryan peoples
wandered with their herds on the highlands of Central Asia. It is not
needful to tell the student of anthropology how interesting it is to
arrive thus at the earliest known root-words of any family. But it should
at the same time be noticed that even in the earliest of these sets of
roots, we seldom come to anything like an actual origin or beginning.
Some few may indeed have been taken direct from the natural language,
for instance _ru_, to roar, and if this was so here is a real origin.
But most roots, to whatever languages of the world they may belong, are
like the group given above, where it is impossible to say confidently how
their sound came to express their meaning. Unless this can be done, it is
safest not to take such roots as really primitive formations, for they
may have a long lost history of the utmost change. How this may happen,
our own language has a useful lesson to teach. Imagine one who knows
no language but English trying to get at its roots. To him the verb to
_roll_ might seem a root-word, a primitive element of language; indeed it
actually has been fancied a natural sound imitating the act of rolling.
Yet any philologist would tell him that English _roll_ is a comparatively
modern form, which came through a long series of earlier stages; it
was borrowed from French _rolle_, _roller_, now _rôle_, _rouler_, all
from Latin _rotulus_, diminutive of _rota_, a wheel, even this coming
from a more ancient verb and signifying a runner or goer. Still more
adventurous is the history of another English word which has now all the
parts of a verb, to _check_, _checking_, _checked_, besides such forms
as a _check_ in one’s course, the _check_-string to stop the coachman,
the _check_-valve to stop the water in a pipe. This word _check_ has
all the simplicity of sound and sense which might belong to an original
root-word. Yet strange to say, it is really the Persian word _shah_,
meaning “king,” which came to Europe with the game of chess as the word
of challenge to the king, and thence by a curious metaphor passed into
a general word for stopping anybody or anything. For all that is known,
many root-words among the Greeks or Jews, or even the simple-looking
monosyllables of the Chinese, may during præhistoric ages have travelled
as far from their real origin as these English verbs. Thus the roots from
which language grows may often be themselves sprung as it were from yet
earlier seeds or cuttings, grown at home or imported from abroad, and
though in our time words mostly come from the ancient roots, the power of
striking new roots is not yet dead.
Having now, in such a broad way as suits the present purpose, looked
at the formation of words, something may be said as to how language
contrives to show the relations among the words of a sentence. This
is done by what grammarians call syntax, concord, and government. It
has been seen (p. 119) that the gesture-language, though wanting in
grammatical forms, has a strongly marked syntax. The deaf-mute’s signs
must follow one another in proper order, otherwise they may convey a
wrong meaning or seem nonsense. So, in spoken languages which do not
inflect their words, such as the Chinese, syntax is the main part of
grammar; thus _li ping_ = sharp weapons, _ping li_ = weapons (are)
sharp; _chi kuo_ = to govern the kingdom, but _kuo chi_ = the kingdom is
governed. This seems quite natural to us, for modern English has come
far towards the Chinese plan of making the sense of the sentence depend
on the order of the words, thus marking the difference between _rank
of families_ and _families of rank_, or between _men kill lions_ and
_lions kill men_. In Latin it is very different, where words can be put
about with such freedom, that the English reader may be hardly able to
make sense of one of Tacitus’ sentences without fresh sorting the words
into some order he can think them in. Especially in Latin verses there
is often hardly more syntax than if the words were nonsense-syllables
arranged only to scan. The sense has to be made out from the grammatical
inflections, as where it is seen that in “vile potabis modicis Sabinum
cantharis,” the cheapness has to do with the wine and the smallness with
the mugs. It is because so many of the inflections have disappeared
from English, that the English translation has to obtain a proper
understanding by stricter order of words. Where the meaning of sentences
depends on order or syntax, that order must be followed, but it must
be borne in mind that this order differs in different languages. For
a single instance, in Malay, where _orang_ = man and _utan_ = forest,
savages and apes are called _orang utan_, which is just opposite to the
English construction “forest man.”
Every one who can construe Greek and Latin sees what real service is done
by government and agreement in showing how the words of a sentence hang
together, what quality is stated of what thing, or who is asserted to act
on what. But even Greek and Latin have changed so much from their earlier
state, that they often fail to show the scholar clearly what they mean
to do, and why. It is useful to make acquaintance with the languages of
ruder nations, which show government and agreement in earlier and plainer
stages of growth. One great object of grammatical construction is to
make it quite clear which of two nouns concerned is subject and which
object, for instance, whether it was a chief who killed a bear, or a bear
who killed a chief. A particle properly attached will do this, as when
the Algonquin Indians put on the syllable _un_ both to noun and verb, in
a way which we may try to translate by the pronoun _him_, thus:—
Ogimau ogi nissa_un_ mukw_un_.
chief he-did kill-_him_ bear-_him_.
Mukwah ogi nissa_un_ ogima_un_.
bear he-did kill-_him_ chief-_him_.
This gives a notion of the natural manner in which grammatical government
may have come into use to mark the parts of the sentence. At the same
time, it shows that different languages may go different ways to work,
for here the verb and object agree together, and the subject (so to
speak) governs both, which is quite unlike our familiar rule of the verb
agreeing with the nominative or subject. To see the working of concord
or agreement in a far clearer and completer form than Latin can show it,
we may look at the Hottentot language, where a sentence may run somewhat
thus, “That woman-_she_, our tribe’s-_she_, rich-being-_she_, another
village-in-dwelling-_she_, praise-we-do cattle-of-_she_, _she_-does
present-us two calves-of-_she_-from.” Here the pronoun running through
the whole sentence makes it clear to the dullest hearer that it is
the woman who is rich, who dwells in another village, whose cattle
are praised, and who gives two of her calves. The terminations in a
Greek or Latin sentence, which show the agreement of substantive and
adjective with their proper verb, are remains of affixes which may have
once carried their signification as plainly as they still do in the
language of the Hottentots. A different plan of concord, but even more
instructive to the classical scholar, appears in the Zulu language,
which divides things into classes, and then carries the marking syllable
of the class right through the sentence, so as to connect all the words
it is attached to. Thus “u-_bu_-kosi _b_-etu o-_bu_-kulu _bu_-ya-bonakala
si-_bu_-tanda,” means “our great kingdom appears, we love it.” Here _bu_,
the mark of the class to which kingdom belongs, is repeated through
every word referring to it. To give an idea how this acts in holding the
sentence together, Dr. Bleek translates it by repeating the _dom_ of
king_dom_ in a similar way; “the king-_dom_, our _dom_, which _dom_ is
the great _dom_, the _dom_ appears, we love the _dom_.” This is clumsy,
but it answers the great purpose of speech, that of making one’s meaning
certain beyond mistake. So, by using different class-syllables for
singular and plural, and carrying them on through the whole sentence, the
Zulu shows the agreement in number more plainly than Greek or Latin can
do. But the Zulu language does not recognise by its class-syllables what
we call gender. It is in fact one of the puzzles of philology, what can
have led the speaker of Aryan languages like Greek, or Semitic languages
like Hebrew, to classify things and thoughts by sex so unreasonably as
they do. For Latin examples, take the following groups: _pes_ (masc.),
_manus_ (fem.), _brachium_ (neut.); _amor_ (masc.), _virtus_ (fem.),
_delictum_ (neut.). German shows gender in as practically absurd a
state, as witness _der_ Hund, _die_ Ratte; _das_ Thier, _die_ Pflanze.
In Anglo-Saxon, _wîf_ (English _wife_), was neuter, while _wîf-man_
(_i.e._ “wife-man,” English _woman_) was masculine. Modern English, in
discarding an old system of grammatical gender that had come to be worse
than useless, has set an example which French and German might do well
to follow. Yet it must be borne in mind that the devices of language,
though they may decay into absurdity, were never originally absurd. No
doubt the gender-system of the classic languages is the remains of an
older and more consistent plan. There are languages outside our classical
education which show that _gender_ (that is _genus_, kind, class,) is by
no means necessarily according to sex. Thus in the Algonquin languages
of North America, and the Dravidian languages of South India, things
are divided not as male or female, but as alive or dead, rational or
irrational, and put accordingly in the animate or major gender, or in the
inanimate or minor gender. Having noticed how the Zulu concord does its
work by regularly repeating the class-sign, we seem to understand how in
the Aryan languages the signs of number and gender may have come to be
used as a similar means of carrying through the sentence the information
that this substantive belongs to that adjective and that verb. Yet even
in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic, such concord falls short of the
fulness and clearness it has among the barbarians of Africa, while
in the languages of modern Europe, especially our own, it has mostly
disappeared, probably because with the advance of intelligence it was no
longer found necessary.
The facts in this chapter will have given the reader some idea how
man has been and still is at work building up language. Any one who
began by studying the grammars of such languages as Greek or Arabic,
or even of such barbarous tongues as Zulu or Eskimo, would think them
wonderfully artificial systems. Indeed, had one of these languages
suddenly come into existence among a tribe of men, this would have been
an event mysterious and unaccountable in the highest degree. But when
one begins at the other end, by noticing the steps by which word-making
and composition, declension and conjugation, concord and syntax, arise
from the simplest and rudest beginnings, then the formation of language
is seen to be reasonable, purposeful, and intelligible. It was shown in
the last chapter that man still possesses the faculty of bringing into
use fresh sounds to express thoughts, and now it may be added that he
still possesses the faculty of framing these sounds into full articulate
speech. Thus every human tribe has the capabilities which, had they not
inherited a language ready-made from their parents, would have enabled
them to make a new language of their own.
CHAPTER VI.
LANGUAGE AND RACE.
Adoption and loss of Language, 152—Ancestral Language,
153—Families of Language, 155—Aryan, 156—Semitic, 159—Egyptian,
Berber, &c. 160—Tatar or Turanian, 161—South-East Asian,
162—Malayo-Polynesian, 163—Dravidian, 164—African, Bantu,
Hottentot, 164—American, 165—Early Languages and Races, 165.
The next question is, What can be learnt from languages as to the history
of the nations speaking them, and the races these nations belong to?
In former chapters, in dividing mankind into stocks or races according
to their skulls, complexions, and other bodily characters, language was
not taken into account as a mark of race. In fact, a man’s language is no
full and certain proof of his parentage. There are even cases in which
it is totally misleading, as when some of us have seen persons whose
language is English, but their faces Chinese or African, and who, on
inquiry, are found to have been brought away in infancy from their native
countries. It is within every one’s experience how one parent language
disappears in intermarriage, as where persons called Boileau or Muller
may be now absolutely English as to language, in spite of their French
or German ancestry. Now not only individuals but whole populations may
have their native languages thus lost or absorbed. The negroes shipped
as slaves to America were taken from many tribes and had no native tongue
in common, so that they came to talk to one another in the language of
their white masters, and there is now to be seen the curious spectacle
of black woolly-haired families talking broken-down dialects of English,
French, or Spanish. In our own country the Keltic language of the Ancient
Britons has not long since fallen out of use in Cornwall, as in time it
will in Wales. But whether the Keltic language is spoken or not, the
Keltic blood remains in the mixed population of Cornwall, and to class
the modern Cornishmen as of pure English race because they speak English,
would be to misuse the evidence of language. Much bad anthropology has
been made by thus carelessly taking language and race as though they went
always and exactly together. Yet they do go together to a great extent.
Although what a man’s language really proves is not his parentage but
his bringing-up, yet most children are in fact brought up by their own
parents, and inherit their language as well as their features. So long as
people of one race and speech live together in their own nation, their
language will remain a race-mark common to all. And although migration
and intermarriage, conquest and slavery interfere, from time to time,
so that the native tongue of a nation can never tell the whole story of
their ancestry, still it tells a part of it, and that a most important
part. Thus in Cornwall the English tongue is a real record of the
settlement of the English there, though it fails to tell of the Keltic
race who were in the land before them, and with whom they mixed. In a
word, the information which the language of a nation gives as to its race
is something like what a man’s surname tells as to his family, by no
means the whole history, but one great line of it.
It has next to be seen what the languages of the world can show as
to the early history of nations. Great care has to be taken with the
proofs of connexion between languages. It is of little use to compare
two languages as old-fashioned philologists were too apt to do when, if
they found half-a-dozen words at all similar, they took these without
more ado to be remnants of one primitive tongue, the origin of both.
In the more careful philological comparisons of the present day many
similarities of words have to be thrown aside as not proving connexion
at all. In any two languages a few words are sure to be similar by mere
accident, as where, in the Society Islands, _tiputa_ means a cloak,
like _tippet_ with us. Words must only be compared when there is a real
correspondence of meaning as well as sound, or the way would be opened
for fancies like that of a writer who connects the well known Polynesian
word _tabu_, sacred, with _tabut_, the Arabic name of the ark of the
covenant, apparently because that was a very sacred object. Also, words
imitated from nature prove nothing in this way, as where the Hindus and
the savages of Vancouver’s Island both call a crow _kaka_, this being not
because their languages are connected, but because it is the bird’s cry.
What is most important of all is to make sure that the words compared
really belong to the old stock of the language they are found in. Before
now a writer has proved to his own satisfaction that Turkish, Arabic,
and Persian are all branches of one primitive language, his argument
being that the Turks call a man _adam_, as the Arabs call the first man,
and a father _pader_, which is like the Persian word. The fact is true
enough, but what the argument omits to notice is that the Turks have
been for ages enriching their own barbaric language by taking words from
the cultured Arabic and Persian, and _adam_ and _pader_ are such lately
borrowed words, not philologically Turkish at all. Borrowed words like
these are indeed valuable evidence, but what they prove is not the common
origin of languages, it is intercourse between the nations speaking them.
They often give the clue to the country from which some new produce was
obtained, or some new instrument, or idea, or institution, was learnt.
Thus in English it is seen by the very words how Italy furnished us
with _opera_, _sonata_, _chiaroscuro_, while Spain gave _gallina_ and
_mulatto_, how from the Hebrews we have _sabbath_ and _jubilee_, from the
Arabs _zero_ and _magazine_, while Mexico has supplied _chocolate_ and
_tomato_, Haiti _hammock_ and _hurricane_, Peru _guano_ and _quinine_,
and even the languages of the South Sea Islands are represented by
_taboo_ and _tatoo_. But in all this there is not one particle of
evidence that any one of these languages is sprung from the same family
with any other.
When two languages have such a common descent, the philologist is not
content to ascertain it by merely looking for a few words of similar
sound. Indeed he expects to find that the words of the ancestral language
will not only have changed in its descendant languages, but that they
will often have changed according to different rules. Thus he knows that
according to the rule called Grimm’s law, the English _ten_, _tame_,
should appear in German with a different initial, _zehn_, _zahm_, while
again these should be represented in Latin by _decem_, _domare_. With
the same regularity of change, the sound which in some of the Polynesian
languages is _k_, in others has become _t_; thus the word man, in the
Sandwich Islands _kanaka_ (whence our sailors call any South Sea Islander
a _kanaker_), appears in New Zealand under the form of _tangata_.
Going beyond the sound of words into their structure, the comparative
philologist reckons that when two languages are allied, they ought to
show such similarity in the roots and in the putting together, that
neither chance nor borrowing can account for the resemblance. In the
first chapter, for another purpose, examples were given of languages
continuing to show their intimate connexion while diverging from their
parent tongues. The reader may find it worth while to look back to these
illustrations (p. 8) before going on to the following sketch of the
families of language belonging to the various races of man.
The languages of white men mostly belong to two great families, the Aryan
and Semitic. First as to the Aryan family, called also Indo-European,
which takes in the languages of part of South and West Asia, and
almost the whole of Europe. The original tongue whence these are all
descended may be called the Primitive Aryan. What the roots of this
ancient language were like, and how they were put together into words,
the student may gain an idea from Greek and Latin, but a still better
from Sanskrit, where both roots and inflexions have been kept up in
a more perfect and regular state. As a rough illustration of the way
in which words of our familiar European languages may be discerned in
Sanskrit, one line of the first hymn of the Veda is here given, where the
worshippers entreat Agni, the divine Fire, that he will be approachable
to us as a father to a son, and will be near for our happiness:
Sa nah pitâ-iva sûnave Agne su-upâyanah bhava: sachasva nah
svastaye.
Here may be more or less clearly made out words connected with Latin,
Greek, and English _nos_, _pater_, _son_, _ignis_, _up_, _be_, _sequi_,
_cuestō_, and others. Though the original Aryan is a lost language,
philologists try to reconstruct it by comparing its oldest and most
perfect descendants, Sanskrit, Old Persian, Greek, Latin, Old Russian,
Gothic, Old Irish, &c. Granting that a primitive Aryan tongue once
existed, there must once have been a nation who spoke it, and whose
descendants carried it down to later ages. It is hard to draw any certain
bodily picture of the primitive Aryans themselves (see page 109), for
in their course of migration and conquest they so mingled with other
races, that now the nations united by Aryan speech range through the
utmost varieties of white men, from the Icelander to the Hindu. The early
home of the Aryans is supposed to have been in Inner Asia, perhaps in
the present Turkestan, in the region of the Oxus and Yaxartes, for here
the practicable way of migration for nomads with flocks and herds lies
open down into Persia on the one side, and India on the other. As India
and Persia have preserved in their sacred languages the Aryan tongue
less changed than elsewhere, it may be judged that the land whence the
invading Aryans came was not far off. But it may have been further
east in Central Asia, or further west on the Russian plains. In this
home-land, wherever it may have been, the Aryans lived in barbaric but
not savage clans, tilling the soil and grazing their flocks and herds,
workers in metal and skilled in many arts of life, a warlike folk who
went forth to fight in chariots, a people able to govern and obey, to
make laws and abide by them, a religious people earnest in the worship
of the sun, and sky, and fire, and waters, and with pious faith in the
divine spirits of their ancestors. Carrying with them their language,
laws, and religion, these nation-founders spread in radiating tracks of
migration over South-West Asia and all Europe. Where they went they found
the land peopled by Dravidians, Tatars, and doubtless many other stocks
once spread far and wide, like the Basques, whose language still lingers
in the Pyrenees. Where the old languages have vanished, the record of
the early populations of Europe is only to be had from their tombs, and
seen in the features of the present nations, which may be often more
those of the original people than of the Aryan invaders. The earliest
Aryan hordes who started on their westward migration may have been the
ancestors of the Keltic nations, for their language has undergone most
change, and they are found in the far west of Europe, as though they had
been pressed on by the Teuton-Scandinavian tribes who followed them,
distant kinsfolk but not friends. The ancestors of the Græco-Italian
nations migrated westward till they reached the Mediterranean, and last
came the Slavonic peoples who now occupy Eastern Europe. Thus much of the
beginnings of the Aryan nations may be learnt from their languages and
their places on the map. It is not in the earliest ages of history that
they appear on the world-stage where Egyptians and Babylonians had long
played the great parts. The Aryans become prominent within a thousand
years before the Christian era, when in India there arises among them
the religion of Buddha, now reckoned the most numerous in the world;
when the Medes and Persians come into power, and Cyrus appears with his
conquering host; when the Greeks bring their wondrous intellect to bear
on art, science, and philosophy; and the Romans set up the military and
legal system which gave them their empire. In later ages our Teutonic
nations, who made their first appearance as the ravagers of culture,
come to be its promoters. The Aryan nations have kept up in the modern
world the career of conquest and the union with other peoples which they
began in præhistoric ages. Outside the world known to the ancients, Aryan
languages are now spoken on far continents and islands, whether the men
who speak them are white colonists from Europe, who have slain or driven
out the old dwellers on the soil, or whether they have become blended
with the native nations as in Mexico and Peru.
To proceed now to the languages of the next family, the Semitic, an idea
of these can be most easily gained from Hebrew. Any student seriously
bent on the science of language should learn at least enough Hebrew
to spell out a few chapters of Genesis, for all the other languages
commonly taught in England being of the Aryan family, this will serve
to bring his mind out of that groove, by familiarizing him with speech
of a different material. A very moderate number of roots, mostly of
three consonants, by altering their internal vowels and changing their
affixes, are made to form the greater part of the language so regularly
that Hebrew dictionaries are arranged throughout by the roots. Thus from
the root _m-l-ch_ are derived verb and noun forms with the sense of
reigning, as _mâlach_ = he reigned, _mâlchû_ = they reigned, _yimloch_ =
he shall reign, _timloch_ = thou shalt reign, _melech_ = king (familiar
in the name of _Melchi-zedek_, “king of righteousness”), _melâchim_ =
kings, _malchenû_ = our king, _malchâh_ = queen; _mamlâchâh_ = kingdom,
and so on. The principal languages belonging to the Semitic family are
the Assyrian, Hebrew and Phœnician, Syrian, Arabic and Ethiopic. The
Assyrian of the Nineveh inscriptions and the Arabic spoken by the desert
Beduins between them best represent the original language they are all
descended from. The ancient or modern peoples speaking Semitic tongues
belong mainly to the dark-white race, the type in which they agree being
now most plainly seen in the Jewish countenance, with its aquiline nose,
full lips, and curly black hair. Yet by features alone it would not have
been possible to distinguish the Jews, Assyrians, and Arabs, among the
mass of dark-white nations. Here is seen the value of language, which
comes in to show that a certain group of nations are connected by common
ancestry from an ancient people, who spoke the lost tongue whence Arabic
and Hebrew are offshoots, and who in the ages when history begins were
dwelling in South-West Asia, and sending forth their migrating tribes to
found new nations, whose acts in the world form one of the great chapters
of history. The conquering Assyrians took up and carried on the older
Chaldæan civilisation. The Phœnicians became the great merchants of the
old world, with trading colonies along the Mediterranean and commerce
in the far East, nor was it only stuffs and spices that they carried,
but they spread arts and thoughts into new regions, and in their hands
the clumsy hieroglyphic writing became the alphabet. The Israelites,
though as a nation they never reached such power or culture, made their
conquests in the world of religion, and while the crowd of deities
worshipped in Assyrian and Phœnician temples vanished away, the worship
of Jehovah passed on into Christianity, and overspread the world. Latest,
the warrior-tribes of Arabia carried the banner of their prophet among
the nations around, and founded the faith of Islam, a civilizing power in
the middle ages, and even in these days of its decay an influence across
the world from Western Africa to the islands of the far East.
The language of the ancient Egyptians, though it cannot be classed in
the Semitic family with Hebrew, has important points of correspondence,
whether due to the long intercourse between the two races in Egypt, or to
some deeper ancestral connection; and such analogies also appear in the
Berber languages of North Africa. These difficult questions can merely
be mentioned here. Attempts have been made, though with little result,
to prove the Aryan and Semitic languages themselves to be descended from
a single parent tongue. If it is so, then ages of change have so wiped
away the traces of common origin that philological comparison fails to
substantiate them. While speaking of the Aryan and Semitic families of
language, it should be noticed that many philologists connect them as
belonging to one class, as being “inflecting” languages, or such as can
blend their roots and affixes, and alter the roots themselves internally
so that, as the beginner in Greek grammar well knows, it is often no
easy matter to see where the root ends and the termination begins. The
inflecting families have certainly a power of compact word-formation
which has done much to give expressiveness and accuracy to such poetical
and philosophical languages as Greek and Arabic. But the distinction is
by no means clear between the structure of such inflecting languages and
the agglutinating languages of other nations, as the Tatars. Could the
Aryan and Semitic families be both traced back to the same family, this
would not prove the whole white race to have had one original language,
for the Georgian of the Caucasus, the Basque of the Pyrenees, and several
more would still lie outside, apparently unconnected with either of the
great families, or with one another.
In the middle and north of Asia, on the steppes or among the swamps and
forests of the bleak north, wandering hordes of hunters or herdsmen show
the squat-built brown-yellow Tatar or Mongolian type, and speak languages
of one family, such as Manchu and Mongol. Although principally belonging
to Asia, these Tatar or Turanian languages have established themselves in
Europe. At a remote period, rude Tatar tribes had spread over northern
Europe, but they were followed up and encroached on by the invading
Aryans, till now only much-mixed outlying remnants of them, Esths, Finns,
Lapps, are found speaking Tatar languages. In later ages, history
records how armies of Tatar race, Huns and Turks, poured into Europe
in their turn, subduing the Aryan peoples, so that now the Hungarian
and Turkish languages remain records of these last waves of invasion
from Central Asia. The Tatar hordes are first heard of in history as
barbarians, as many tribes are still, but their chief nations becoming
Buddhists, Mohammedans, or Christians, have adopted the civilisation
belonging to these religions. The Tatar languages are of the kind called
agglutinative, forming words by putting first the root, which carries
the sense and is followed by suffixes strung on to modify it. Thus in
Turkish the root _sev_, to love, makes _sevishdirilmediler_, they were
not to be brought to love one another. In some languages of this class, a
remarkable law of vowel-harmony compels the suffix to conform its vowel
to that of the root it is attached to, as if to make clear to the hearer
that it belongs to it; thus in Hungarian _ház_ = house, forms _házam_ =
my house, but _szék_ = chair, forms _székem_ = my chair.
The dense population of South-East Asia, comprising the Burmese, the
Siamese, and especially the Chinese, shows a type of complexion and
feature plainly related to the Tatar or Mongolian, but the general
character of their language is different. The Chinese language is made
up of monosyllables, each a word with its own real or grammatical sense,
so that our infant-school books in one syllable give some notion of
Chinese sentences. Other neighbouring languages share this habit of
using monosyllables, and as this limits them to an inconveniently small
number of words, they have taken to the expedient of making the musical
pitch or intonation alter the meaning, as in Siamese, where the syllable
_ha_, according to the notes it is intoned on, means a pestilence,
or the number five, or the verb to seek. Thus the intoning which in
England serves to express emotion or distinguish question from answer is
turned to account in the far East for making actually different words,
an example how language catches at any available device when a means
of expression is wanted. Looking on the map of Asia at this south-east
group of nations, it is plainly not by accident that the people of
such neighbouring districts should have come to talk in words of one
syllable, but the habit seems to have come from a common ancestral
source, and gives the whole set of languages a family character. These
monosyllable languages are often used to illustrate what the simple
childlike constructions of man’s primitive speech may have been like.
But it is well to mention that Chinese or Siamese, simple as they are,
must not be relied on as primitive languages. The childlike Chinese
phrases may be not primitive at all, but may come of the falling away of
older complicated grammar, much as our own English tends to cut short
the long words and drop the inflexions used by our ancestors. Chinese
simplicity of grammar by no means goes with simplicity of thought and
life. The Chinese nation, like the Egyptian and the Babylonian, had been
raised to a highly artificial civilisation in ages before the Phœnicians
and Greeks came out of barbarism. It is not yet clear to what race the
old Babylonians belonged who spoke the Akkadian tongue, but this shows
analogies which may connect it with the Tatar or Mongolian languages.
It has been already seen (p. 102) how the Malays, Micronesians,
Polynesians, and Malagasy, a varied and mixed population of partly
Mongoloid race, are united over their immense ocean-district half round
the globe by languages of one family, the Malayo-Polynesian. The parent
language of this family may have belonged to Asia, for in the Malay
region the grammar is more complex, and words are found like _tasik_ =
sea and _langit_ = sky, while in the distant islands of New Zealand and
Hawaii these have come down to _tai_ and _lai_, as though the language
became shrunk and formless as the race migrated further from home, and
sank into the barbaric life of ocean islanders.
The continent of India has not lost the languages of the tribes who were
in the land before the Aryan invasion gave rise to the Hindu population.
Especially in the south whole nations, though they have taken to Hindu
civilisation, speak languages belonging to the Dravidian family, such as
Tamil, Telugu, and Canarese. The importance of this element of Indian
population may be seen by these non-Aryan tongues still extending over
most of the great triangle of India south of the Nerbudda, besides
remnants in districts to the north. Yet Aryan dialects are spoken in
India by many mixed tribes who may have little of Aryan blood. In the
forests of Ceylon are found the only people in the world leading a savage
life who speak an Aryan language akin to ours. These are the Veddas
or “hunters,” shy wild men who build bough huts, and live on game and
wild honey, the children, as it seems, of forest-natives mingled with
Singhalese outcasts whose language in a broken-down state they speak.
Among the black races, whether or not the eastern negros of Melanesia
are connected by race with the African negros, the Melanesian languages
stand apart. Nor do all African negros speak languages of one family, but
some, such as the Mandingo, seem separate from the great language-family
of Central and South Africa, named the Bantu from tribes calling
themselves simply “men” (_ba-ntu_). One of the chief peculiarities of
the Bantu languages is their working (just unlike the Tatar languages)
by putting prefixes in front. Thus the African magician is called
_mganga_, the plural of which is _waganga_, magicians. The Kafirs of
a certain district bear the well-known name of the _basuto_, which
is a plural form, a single native being called _mosuto_, while his
country is _lesuto_, his language _sesuto_, and his character or quality
_bosuto_. In South Africa lies a very different language-family, the
Hottentot-Bushman, remarkable for the way in which “clicks,” much like
what among us nurses make to children and coachmen to horses, do duty as
consonants in words. Lastly, turning to America, the native languages
fall into a variety of families. Some of these are known to English
readers by a word or two, as the Eskimo of the Arctic coasts by the name
of the _kayak_ or single boat on which our sport canoes are modelled; the
Algonquin which prevailed from New England to Virginia at the time of the
early colonists, and whence we have _mocassin_ and _tomahawk_; the Aztec
of Mexico known by the _ocelot_ and the _cacao_-bean; the Tupi-Carib of
the West Indies and the Brazilian forests, the home of the _toucan_ and
_jaguar_; lastly the Quichua or Peruvian, the language of the _inca_.
In concluding this account of the chief families of language, it is to be
noticed that there are many more, some only consisting of a few dialects
or a single one. Altogether a list of fifty or a hundred might perhaps be
made, of which no one has been satisfactorily shown to be related to any
other. It may, indeed, be expected that often two or three which now seem
separate may prove on closer examination to be branches of one family,
but there seems no prospect of the families all coming together in this
way as offshoots of one original language. The question whether there
was one primitive speech, or many, has been in past times most useful in
encouraging the scientific comparison of languages. Both theories claim
to account for the actual state of language in the world. On the one
hand it may be argued that the languages descended from the primitive
tongue have branched off so far apart as often no longer to show their
connection; on the other hand, if there were many primitive languages, of
which those that survived have given rise to families, this would come
to much the same state of things. But if, as seems likely, the original
formation of language did not take place all at once, but was a gradual
process extending through ages, and not absolutely stopped even now,
then it is not a hopeful task to search for primitive languages at all
(see page 131). In the present improved state of philology it answers
better to work back from known languages to the lost ancestral languages
whence they must have come down. It has been seen that this study leads
to excellent results as to the history, not only of the languages
themselves, but of the nations speaking them, as when it gives the clue
to the peopling of the South Sea Islands, or proves some remote ancestral
connexion between the ancient Britons, and the English and Danes who came
after them to our land. Yet though language is so valuable a help and
guide in national history, it must not be trusted as if it could give the
whole origin of a race, or go back to its beginning. All negroes do not
speak languages of one family, nor all yellow, or brown, or white men.
In exploring the early life of nations, their languages may lead us far
back, often much farther than historical records, but they seem hardly to
reach anywhere near the origins of the great human races, still less to
the general origin of mankind.
CHAPTER VII.
WRITING.
Picture-writing, 168—Sound-pictures, 169—Chinese Writing,
170—Cuneiform Writing, 172—Egyptian Writing, 173—Alphabetic
Writing, 175—Spelling, 178—Printing, 180.
Taught as we are to read and write in early childhood, we hardly realize
the place this wondrous double art fills in civilized life, till we
see how it strikes the barbarian who has not even a notion that such
a thing can be. John Williams, the South Sea Island missionary, tells
how once being busy carpentering, and having forgotten his square, he
wrote a message for it with a bit of charcoal on a chip, and sent this
to his wife by a native chief, who, amazed to find that the chip could
talk without a mouth, for long afterwards carried it hung by a string
round his neck, and told his wondering countrymen what he saw it do. So
in South Africa a black messenger carrying a letter has been known to
hide it under a stone while he loitered by the way, lest it should tell
tales of him, as it did of whatever was going on. Yet the art of writing,
mysterious as it seemed to these rude men, was itself developed by a few
steps of invention, which if not easy to make, are at any rate easy to
understand when made. Even uncivilized races have made the first step,
that of picture-writing. Had the missionary merely made a sketch of his
L-square on the chip, it would have carried his message, and the native
would have understood the whole business as a matter of course. Beginning
at this primitive stage, it will be possible to follow thence through its
whole course the history of writing and printing.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.—Picture-writing, rock near Lake Superior (after
Schoolcraft.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.—_Pater noster_ in Mexican picture-writing (after
Aubin).]
Fig. 47 shows a specimen of picture-writing as used by the hunting
tribes of North America. It records an expedition across Lake Superior,
led by a chief who is shown on horseback with his magical drumstick in
his hand. There were in all fifty-one men in five canoes, the first of
them being led by the chief’s ally, whose name, Kishkemunazee, that is,
Kingfisher, is shown by the drawing of this bird. Their reaching the
other side seems to be shown by the land-tortoise, the well-known emblem
of land, while by the picture of three suns under the sky it is recorded
that the crossing took three days. Now most of this, childlike in its
simplicity, consists in making pictures of the very objects meant to be
talked of. But there are devices which go beyond this mere imitation.
Thus when the tortoise is put to represent land, it is no longer a mere
imitation, but has become an emblem or symbol. And where the bird is
drawn to mean not a real kingfisher, but a man of that name, we see the
first step toward phonetic writing or sound writing, the principle of
which is to make a picture stand for the sound of a spoken word. How men
may have made the next move toward writing may be learnt from the common
child’s game of _rebus_, that is, writing words “by things.” Like many
other games, this one keeps up in child’s sport what in earlier ages was
man’s earnest. Thus if one writes the word “waterman” by a picture of a
water-jug and a man, this is drawing the meaning of the word in a way
hardly beyond the American Indian’s picture of the kingfisher. But it is
very different when in a child’s book of puzzles one finds the drawing
of a water-can, a man being shot, and a date-fruit, this representing
in rebus the word “can-di-date.” For now what the pictures have come to
stand for is no longer their meaning, but their mere sound. This is true
phonetic writing, though of a rude kind, and shows how the practical art
of writing really came to be invented. This invention seems to have been
made more than once, and in somewhat different ways. The old Mexicans,
before the arrival of the Spaniards, had got so far as to spell their
names of persons and places by pictures, rebus fashion. Even when they
began to be Christianized, they contrived to use their picture-writing
for the Latin words of their new religion. Thus they painted a flag
(_pan_), a stone (_te_), a prickly-pear (_noch_) (Fig. 48), which were
together pronounced _pa-te-noch-te_, and served to spell _pater noster_,
in a way that was tolerably exact for Mexicans who had no _r_ in their
language. In the same way they ended the prayer with the picture of water
(_a_), and aloe (_me_), to express _amen_.
This leads on to a more important system of writing. Looking at the
ordinary Chinese characters on tea chests or vases, one would hardly
think they ever had to do with pictures of things. But there are
fortunately preserved certain early Chinese characters, known as the
“ancient pictures,” which show how what were at first distinctly formed
sketches of objects came to be dashed off in a few strokes of the
rabbit’s-hair pencil, till they passed into the meaningless-looking
cursive forms now in use, as is seen in Fig. 49.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.—Chinese ancient pictures and later cursive forms
(after Endlicher).]
[Illustration: FIG. 50.—Chinese compound characters, pictures and sounds.]
The Chinese did not stop short at making such mere pictures of objects,
which goes but little way toward writing. The inventors of the present
mode of Chinese writing wanted to represent the spoken sounds, but
here they were put in a difficulty by their language consisting of
monosyllables, so that one word has many different meanings. To meet
this they devised an ingenious plan of making compound characters, or
“pictures and sounds,” in which one part gives the sound, while the other
gives the sense. To give an idea of this, suppose it were agreed that
a picture of a box should stand for the sound _box_. As, however, this
sound has several meanings, some sign must be added to show which is
intended. Thus a key might be drawn beside it to show it is a _box_ to
put things in, or a leaf if it is to mean the plant called _box_, or a
hand if it is intended for a _box_ on the ear, or a whip would show that
it was to signify the _box_ of a coach. This would be for us a clumsy
proceeding, but it would be a great advance beyond mere picture-writing,
as it would make sure at once of the sound and the meaning. Thus
in Chinese, the sound _chow_ has various meanings, as ship, fluff,
flickering, basin, loquacity. Therefore the character which represents a
ship, _chow_, which is placed first in Fig. 50, is repeated afterwards
with additional characters to show which particular meaning of _chow_ is
intended. A recognisable pair of feathers is placed by it to mean _chow_
= fluff; next, the sign of fire makes it _chow_ = flickering; next, the
sign of water makes it _chow_ = basin; and lastly, the character for
speech is joined to it to make _chow_ = loquacity. These examples, though
far from explaining the whole mystery of Chinese writing, give some idea
of the principles of its sound-characters and keys or determinative
signs, and show why a Chinese has to master such an immensely complicated
set of characters in order to write his own language. To have introduced
such a method of writing was an effort of inventive genius in the
ancient Chinese, which their modern descendants show their respect for
by refusing to improve upon it. At the same time it is not entirely
through conservatism that they have not taken to phonetic writing like
that of the western nations, for this would for instance confuse the
various kinds of _chow_ which their present characters enable them to
keep separate. But the Japanese, whose language was better suited than
the Chinese for being written phonetically, actually made themselves
a phonetic system out of the Chinese characters. Selecting certain of
these, they cut them down into signs to express sounds, one to stand for
_i_, another for _ro_, another for _fa_, &c. Thus a set of forty-seven
such characters (which they call accordingly the _irofa_), serve as the
foundation of a system with which they write Japanese by sound more
accurately than our writing conveys it.
Next, as to the cuneiform writing, such as is to be seen at the British
Museum on the huge man-headed bulls of Nineveh, or on the flat baked
bricks which were pages of books in the library of Sennacherib. The
marks like wedges or arrow-heads arranged in groups and rows do not look
much like pictures of objects. Yet there is evidence that they came at
first from picture-writing; for instance, the sun was represented by a
rude figure of it made by four strokes arranged round. Of the groups of
characters in an inscription, some serve directly to represent objects,
as man, woman, river, house, while other groups are read phonetically
as standing for syllables. The inventors of this ancient system appear
to have belonged to the Akkadian group of nations, the founders of
early Babylonian civilization. In later ages the Assyrians and Persians
learned to write their languages by cuneiform characters, in inscriptions
which remain to this day as their oldest records. But the cuneiform
writing was cumbrous in the extreme, and had to give way when it came
into competition with the alphabet. To understand the origin of that
invention, it is necessary to go back to a plan of writing which dates
from antiquity probably even higher than the cuneiform of Babylonia,
namely, the hieroglyphics of Egypt.
[Illustration]
The earliest known hieroglyphic inscriptions of Egypt belong to a period
approaching 3,000 B.C. Even at this ancient time the plan of writing was
so far developed that the scribes had the means of spelling any word
phonetically, when they chose. But though the Egyptians had thus come
to writing by sound, they only trusted to it in part, combining it with
signs which are evidently remains of earlier picture-writing. Thus the
mere pictures of an ox, a star, a pair of sandals, may stand for ox,
star, sandals. Even where they spelt words by their sounds, they had
a remarkable way of adding what are called determinatives, which are
pictures to confirm or explain the meaning of the spelt word. One short
sentence given as an example from Renouf’s _Egyptian Grammar_, shows all
these devices. The meaning is: “I (am) the Sun-god coming forth from the
horizon against his enemies.” Here part of the pictures of animals and
things are letters to be read into Egyptian words, as shown underneath.
But others are still real pictures, intended to stand for what they
represent. The sun is shown by his picture, with a one-mark below, and
followed by the battle-axe which is the symbol of divinity, while further
on comes a picture of the horizon with the sun on it. Beside these, some
of the figures are determinative pictures to explain the words, the verb
to walk being followed by an explanatory pair of legs, and the word enemy
having the picture of an enemy after it, and then three strokes, the sign
of plurality. It seems that the Egyptians began with mere picture-writing
like that of the barbarous tribes of America, and though in after ages
they came to use some figures as phonetic characters or letters, they
never had the strength of mind to rely on them entirely, but went on
using the old pictures as well. How they were led to make a picture stand
for a sound is not hard to see. In the figure a character may be noticed
which is read R. This is an outline of an open mouth, and indeed is often
used to represent a mouth; but the Egyptian word for mouth being RO, the
sign came to be used as a character or letter to spell the sound RO or R
wherever it was wanted. So much of the history of the art of writing may
thus be read in a single hieroglyphic sentence.
These carefully drawn hieroglyphic or “sacred-sculpture” pictures, used
as they were for the solemn records of church and state, were kept up
for sacred purposes into the time of the Greek dynasty, and even the
Roman empire in Egypt. Indeed after the secret of deciphering them had
been lost for many ages, the names of Ptolemy and Cleopatra were among
the first identified by Dr. Thomas Young. But from very ancient times
the Egyptian scribes, finding the elaborate pictures too troublesome
for business writing on papyrus, brought them down (much as the
Chinese did theirs) to a few quick strokes. These were the “hieratic”
characters, a few of which are seen in the second column of Fig. 51
following their hieroglyphic originals. Yet even when they used these,
the Egyptian scribes never freed themselves from the trammels of their
early picture-writing, so as to do away with the unnecessary multitude
of phonetic signs, and drop the determinative pictures as useless. This
great move was made by foreigners.
Tacitus, in a passage of his _Annals_ describing the origin of letters,
says that the Egyptians first depicted thoughts of the mind by figures of
animals, which oldest monuments of human memory are to be seen stamped
on the rocks, so that they (the Egyptians) appear as the inventors
of letters, which the Phœnician navigators brought thence to Greece,
obtaining the glory as if they had discovered what they really borrowed.
This account may be substantially true, but it does not give the
Phœnicians credit for their practical good sense, which they were able to
follow, being strangers and not bound by the sacred traditions of Egypt.
No doubt the Phœnicians (or some other Semitic nation), when they learnt
the Egyptian hieroglyphics, saw that the picture-signs mixed with the
spelt words had become mere surplusage, and that all they really wanted
was a small number of signs to write the sound of their words with.
Thus was invented the earliest so-called Phœnician alphabet. Some of
its letters may have been actually copied from the Egyptian characters,
as is seen by Fig. 51, which shows a selection from the compared set
drawn up by De Rougé, so arranged as to pass from the original Egyptian
hieroglyphic to its hieratic form in the current writing, and thence to
the corresponding letter of the Phœnician alphabet, with its value in our
letters and examples of similar letters in other well known forms of the
alphabet.
[Illustration: FIG. 51.—Egyptian hieroglyphic and hieratic characters
compared with letters of Phœnician and later alphabets (after De Rougé).]
It seems to have been about the tenth century B.C., that the original
alphabet was made, forms of which were used by the Moabites, Phœnicians,
Israelites, and other nations of the Semitic family to write their
languages. A curious proof that it was among these Semitic nations that
the _alphabet_ was first shaped, has come down to us in its name. To
understand this, it has to be noticed that the letters were named, each
by a word beginning with it. The Hebrew forms of these names are familiar
to English readers from Psalm cxix., where they stand in their order
_aleph_ or “ox” for _a_, _beth_ or “house” for _b_, _gimel_ or “camel”
for _g_, and so on. This is a natural way of naming letters; indeed our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors had another such set of names belonging to the
rune-letters they used in old times, calling their letter _b_, _beorc_ or
“birch,” their letter _m_, _man_, their letter _th_, _thorn_. Now what
confirms the history that the Phœnicians had the alphabet first and the
Greeks learnt the art of writing from them, is that the Greeks actually
borrowed the Phœnician names for the letters, which were like the Hebrew
ones just given, and which in Greek passed into the well-known forms
_alpha_, _beta_, _gamma_, &c. Thence comes the word _alphabet_, which
thus preserves the traces of the letters having been made and named by
the Phœnicians, having passed from them to the Greeks and Latins, and
at last came down to us. It is interesting to look through a book of
alphabets, where not only may be traced the history of the Greek and
Latin letters, and others plainly related to them, such as the Gothic
and Slavonic, but it may even be made out that others at first sight so
unlike as the Northmen’s runes and the Sanskrit characters, must all
be descendants of the primitive alphabet. Thus the Brahman writes his
Veda, the Moslem his Koran, the Jew his Old and the Christian his New
Testament, in signs which had their origin in the pictures on temple
walls in ancient Egypt.
Such changes, however, have taken place in writing, that it often
requires most careful comparison to trace them. If one showed a Chinese
an English note scribbled in modern handwriting, it would not be quite
easy to prove to him that the characters were derived from old Phœnician
ones such as those in Fig. 51. Our running-hand must be traced back
through copybook-hand, and from small letters to Roman capitals, and so
further back. Readers will find this worth doing as an exercise. They may
also be recommended to look at old-fashioned English writing, such as a
Parish Register of the 16th century, which will show how much more the
writing of that period was like the crabbed hand in which it is still
thought proper to write German. We English fortunately learnt a simpler
and better style from the Italian writing-masters, who taught us the
“Roman hand” which Malvolio recognizes in _Twelfth Night_. Alterations
in letters were not only made for convenience, but also for decoration.
Thus among the scribes of the middle ages there arose fanciful varieties
such as what we call Old English and Black Letter, and still use for
ornamental purposes. This style of manuscript being in fashion when
printing was introduced in Europe, English books were at first printed
in it, as many German books are still. One has only to read a page of a
German book so printed to satisfy oneself how great a gain of clearness
it was to discard these letters with forms broken by unmeaning lines, and
return to the more distinct Latin letters we now use.
Beside these general changes of alphabet, the history of writing shows
how from time to time alterations have been made as to particular
letters. The original Phœnician alphabet was weak in vowels, in a way
which the learner of Hebrew can understand when he tries to read it
without the vowel points, which are more modern marks put on for the
benefit of those who do not know the language well enough to tell how
each word should be pronounced. The Phœnician alphabet did not altogether
suit the writers of Greek and Latin, who altered some letters and made
new ones in order to write their languages more perfectly, and thus
other nations have made free in adding, dropping, and altering letters
and their sounds, to get the means required for each to express its own
tongue. To such causes may be traced letters not known to the primitive
alphabet, such as Greek Ω and English W, which are explained by their
names of Omega or “great-O,” and “double-U.” The digamma or Ϝ fell out
of use in Greek, and the two valuable Anglo-Saxon _th_-letters, ð and Þ,
are lost to modern English. The letters Η and Χ are examples of letters
which in Greek served purposes other than those English uses them for.
By arranging their alphabets to suit the sounds of their languages,
nations contrive with more or fewer letters to spell with some accuracy,
Italian managing this fairly with twenty-two letters, while Russian uses
thirty-six. English has an alphabet of twenty-six letters, but works them
without regular system, so that our spelling and pronunciation disagree
at every turn. One cause of this state of things has been the attempt
to keep up side by side two different spellings, English and French, as
where _g_ is used to spell both the English word _get_ and the French
word _gentle_. Another cause has been the attempt to keep up ancient
sounds in writing, although they have been dropped in speaking; thus in
_throuGH_, _casTle_, _sCene_, the now silent letters are relics of sounds
which used to be really heard in Anglo-Saxon _thurH_, Latin _casTellum_,
Greek _sKēnē_. What makes this the more perplexing is, that in many words
English writing does simply try to spell what is actually spoken; English
_tail_ does not keep up the lost guttural of Anglo-Saxon _tæ̂gel_, nor
does English _palsy_ retain letters for the sounds that have vanished
in its derivation from French _paralysie_. Our wrong spelling is the
result not of rule but of want of rule, and among its most curious cases
are those where the grammarians have managed to put both sound and
etymology wrong at once, writing _island_, _rhyme_, _scythe_, where their
forefathers rationally wrote _iland_, _rime_, _sithe_. It is reckoned
that on an average, a year of an English child’s education is wasted in
overcoming the defects of the present mode of spelling.
The invention of writing was the great movement by which mankind rose
from barbarism to civilization. How vast its effect was, may be best
measured by looking at the low condition of tribes still living without
it, dependent on memory for their traditions and rules of life, and
unable to amass knowledge as we do by keeping records of events, and
storing up new observations for the use of future generations. Thus it
is no doubt right to draw the line between barbarian and civilized
where the art of writing comes in, for this gives permanence to history,
law, and science. Such knowledge so goes with writing, that when a man
is spoken of as learned, we at once take it to mean that he has read
many books, which are the main source men learn from. Already in ancient
times, as compositions of value came to be written, there sprang up a
class of copyists or transcribers, whose business was to multiply books.
In Alexandria or Rome one could go to the bibliopole or bookseller and
buy a manuscript of Demosthenes or Livy, and in later ages the copying
of religious books splendidly illuminated, became a common occupation,
especially in monasteries. But manuscripts were costly, only the few
scholars could read them, and so no doubt it would have remained had not
a new art come in to multiply writing.
This was a process simple enough in itself, and indeed well known from
remote ages. Every Egyptian or Babylonian who smeared some black on his
signet-ring or engraved cylinder, and took off a copy, had made the
first step towards printing. But easy as the further application now
seems to us, no one in the Old World saw it. It appears to have been the
Chinese who invented the plan of engraving a whole page of characters on
a wood-block and printing off many copies. They may have begun as early
as the sixth century, and at any rate in the tenth century they were
busy printing books. The Chinese writing, from its enormous diversity of
characters, is not well suited to printing by movable types, but there is
a record that this plan was early devised among them, having been carried
on with separate terra-cotta types in the eleventh century. Moslem
writers early in the fourteenth century describe Chinese printing, so
that it was probably through them that the art found its way to Europe,
where not long afterwards the so-called “block-books,” printed from
whole page wood-blocks after the Chinese manner, make their appearance,
followed by books printed with movable types. Few questions have been
more debated by antiquaries than the claims of Gutenberg, Faust, and
the others to their share of honour as the inventors of printing. Great
as was the service these worthies did to the world, it is only fair to
remember that what they did was but to improve the practical application
of a Chinese invention. Since their time progress has been made in
cheapening types, making paper by machinery, improving the presses, and
working them by steam-power, but the idea remains the same. Such is, in
few words, the history of the art of printing, to which perhaps, more
than to any other influence, is due the difference of our modern life
from that of the middle ages.
In examining these methods of writing, we began with the rude hunter’s
pictures, passing on to the Egyptian’s use of a picture to represent the
sound of its name, then to the breaking down of the picture into a mere
sound-sign, till in this last stage the connexion between figure and
sound becomes so apparently arbitrary, that the child has to be taught,
this sign stands for A, this for B. In curious contrast with this is the
modern invention of the phonograph, where the actual sound spoken into
the vibrating diaphragm marks indentations in the travelling strip of
tinfoil, by which the diaphragm can be afterwards caused to repeat the
vibrations and re-utter the sound. When one listens to the tones coming
forth from the strip of foil, the South Sea Islander’s fancy of the
talking chip seems hardly unreasonable.
CHAPTER VIII.
ARTS OF LIFE.
Development of Instruments, 183—Club, Hammer, 184—Stone-flake,
185—Hatchet, 188—Sabre, Knife, 189—Spear, Dagger, Sword,
190—Carpenter’s Tools, 192—Missiles, Javelin, 193—Sling,
Spear-thrower, 194—Bow and Arrow, 195—Blow-tube, Gun,
196—Mechanical Power, 197—Wheel-carriage, 198—Hand-mill,
200—Drill, Lathe, 202—Screw, 203—Water-mill, Wind-mill, 204.
The arts by which man defends and maintains himself, and holds rule over
the world he lives in, depend so much on his use of instruments, that it
will be well to begin with some account of tools and weapons, tracing
them from their earliest and rudest forms.
Man is sometimes called, to distinguish him from all lower creatures,
the “tool-using animal.” This distinction holds good in a general way,
marking off man with his spear and hatchet from the bull goring with his
horns, or the beaver carpentering with his teeth. But it is instructive
to see how plainly the ape tribes, coming nearest to ourselves in having
hands, have also rudiments of the implement-using faculty. Untaught by
man, they defend themselves with missiles, as when orangs in the durian
trees furiously pelt passers-by with the thorny fruit. The chimpanzee
in the forests is said to crack nuts with a stone, as in our Zoological
Gardens monkeys are often taught to do by the keepers, where they take
readily to the use of these and more difficult implements, as soon as the
thought has been put into their minds.
The lowest order of implements are those which nature provides
ready-made, or wanting just a finish; such are pebbles for slinging
or hammering, sharp stone splinters to cut or scrape with, branches
for clubs and spears, thorns or teeth to pierce with. These of course
are oftenest found in use among savages, yet they sometimes last on
in the civilized world, as when we catch up any stick to kill a rat
or snake with, or when in the south of France women shell the almonds
with a smooth pebble, much as the apes at Regent’s Park would do. The
higher implements used by mankind are often plainly improvements on
some natural object, but they are adapted by art in ways that beasts
have no notion of, so that it is a better definition of man to call him
the “tool-maker” than the “tool-user.” Looking at the various sorts of
implements, we see that they were not invented all at once by sudden
flashes of genius, but evolved, or one might almost say grown, by small
successive changes. It will be noticed also that the instrument which
at first did roughly several kinds of work, afterwards varied off in
different ways to suit each particular purpose, so as to give rise to
several different instruments. A Zulu seen at work scraping the stick
that is to be the shaft of his assegai, with the very iron head that is
to be fixed on it, may give an idea what early tool-making was like,
before men clearly understood that the pattern of instrument suitable
for a lance-head was not the best for cutting and scraping. We should be
horrified at the thought of the blacksmith pulling out one of our teeth
with his pincers, as our forefathers would have let him do; the forceps
we expect the dentist to use is indeed a variety of the smith’s tool,
but it is a special variety for a special purpose. Thus in the history
of instruments, the tools of the mechanic cannot well be kept separate
from the weapons of the hunter or soldier, for in several cases it will
be seen that both tool and weapon had their origin in some earlier
instrument that served alike to break skulls and cocoa-nuts, or to hack
at the limbs of trees and of men.
Among the simplest of weapons is the thick stick or cudgel, which when
heavier or knobbed passes into the club. Rude champions have delighted
in the ferocious roughness of such a gnarled club as Herkules in the
pictures carries on his shoulder, while others spent their leisure hours
in elegant shaping and carving, like that of the South Sea Island clubs
to be seen in museums. From savage through barbaric times the war-club
lasted on into the middle ages of Europe, when knights still smashed
helmets in with their heavy maces. Mostly used as a weapon, it only now
and then appears in peaceful arts, as in the ribbed clubs with which the
Polynesian women beat out bark cloth. It is curious to see how the rudest
of primitive weapons, after its serious warlike use has ceased, survives
as a symbol of power, when the mace is carried as emblem of the royal
authority, and is laid on the table during the sitting of Parliament or
the Royal Society. While the club has been generally a weapon, the hammer
has been generally an implement. Its history begins with the smooth
heavy pebble held in the hand, such as African blacksmiths to this day
forge their iron with, on another smooth stone as anvil. It was a great
improvement to fasten the stone hammer on a handle; this was done in
very ancient times, as is seen by the stone heads being grooved or bored
on purpose (see Fig. 54 _i_). Though the iron hammer has superseded
these, a trace of the older use of stone remains in our very name
_hammer_, which is the old Scandinavian _hamarr_, meaning both rock and
hammer.
[Illustration: FIG. 52.—Gunflint-maker’s core and flakes (Evans).]
From beating we come to hacking and cutting. At the earliest times known
of man’s life on the earth, his pointed and edged instruments of sharp
stone are among his chief relics. Even in the mammoth-period he had
already learnt not to be content with accidental chips of flint, but knew
how to knock off two-edged flakes. This art of flaking flint or other
suitable stones is the foundation of stone-implement making. Perhaps the
best idea of it may be gained from the Suffolk gunflint makers who at
this day carry on the primæval craft, though with better tools and for
so different a purpose. Fig. 52 shows a gunflint-maker’s core of flint,
with the flakes replaced where he has knocked them off, and the mark of
the blow is seen which brought away each flake. The flakes made by Stone
Age men for instruments may be three-sided like the Australian flake in
Fig. 53 _b_. But the more convenient flat-backed shape _a_, _c_, has been
used from the earliest known times. The flint core, Fig. 54 _f_, with
the flakes _e_ taken from it, shows how by previous flaking or trimming
it was prepared for the new flake to come off with a suitable back. The
finest flakes are those not struck off, but forced off by pressure with
a flaking-tool of wood or horn. The neat Danish flake, Fig. 53 _c_, was
no doubt made so, and the still more beautiful sharp flakes of obsidian
with which the native barbers of Mexico, to the astonishment of Cortes’
soldiers, used to shave. A stone flake just as struck off may be fit
for use as a knife, or as a spear head like that in Fig. 58 _a_; or by
further chipping it may be made into a scraper, arrowhead, or awl, like
those in Fig. 54.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.—Stone Flakes:—_a_, Palæolithic; _b_, Modern
Australia; _c_, Ancient Denmark.]
[Illustration: FIG. 54.—Later Stone Age (neolithic) implements. _a_,
stone celt or hatchet; _b_, flint spear-head; _c_, scraper; _d_,
arrow-heads; _e_, flint flake-knives; _f_, core from which flint-flakes
taken off; _g_, flint-awl; _h_, flint saw; _i_, stone hammer-head.]
[Illustration: FIG. 55.—Earlier Stone Age (palæolithic) flint picks or
hatchets.]
[Illustration: FIG. 56.—Stone Axes, &c. _a_, polished stone celt
(England); _b_, pebble ground to edge and mounted in twig handle (modern
Botocudo, Brazil); _c_, celt fixed in wooden club (Ireland); _d_, stone
axe bored for handle (England); _e_, stone adze (modern Polynesia).]
The oldest known tribes of men have left in the drift gravels of the
quaternary or mammoth-period not only rough flakes like Fig. 53 _a_, but
the stone implements already mentioned in the first chapter, of which
the drawing is here repeated in Fig. 55. Chipped to an edge all round,
they may have served with the pointed end as picks and the broad end as
hatchets. It is not clear whether any of them were fixed in handles, but
there are specimens found which have only one end chipped to a point,
but the other end of the flint left smooth, so that they were evidently
grasped in the hand to hack with. There is nothing to show that these
men of the old drift-period ever ground a stone implement to an edge.
Thus their stone implements were far inferior to the neatly-shaped
and sharp-edged ground celts of the later Stone Age, Fig. 54 _a_, Fig.
56 _a_. The word celt used for the various chisel-like instruments of rude
and ancient tribes is a convenient term, taken from Latin _celtis_, a
chisel, in the Vulgate translation of Job xix. 24, “celte sculpantur in
silice;” but it has been thought that “graven with a chisel (_celte_) in
the rock” is only a copyist’s blunder for “graven surely (_certe_) in the
rock;” and if so, then _celtis_ and _celt_ are curious fictitious words.
It may be worth while to mention that the name of the implements called
_celts_ has nothing to do with the name of the people called _Celts_ or
_Kelts_. A stone celt only requires a handle to make it into a hatchet.
This was done very simply by the forest Indians of Brazil, who would
pick up a suitable water-worn pebble, rub one end down to an edge, and
bind it in a twig, Fig. 56 _b_. Another rude way of mounting a celt was
to stick it into a club, so as to form a woodman’s or warrior’s axe such
as _c_, which shows one dug out of a bog in Ireland. The most advanced
method was to drill a hole through the stone blade to take the handle
as in _d_. When the stone blade is fixed with the edge across, the tool
becomes a carpenter’s adze, as _e_, which is the instrument used by the
canoe-building Polynesians.
[Illustration: FIG. 57.—_a_, Egyptian battle-axe; _b_, Egyptian falchion;
_c_, Asiatic sabre; _d_, European sheath-knife; _e_, Roman culter; _f_,
Hindu bill-hook.]
When metal came into use, the forms of the stone implements were imitated
in copper, bronze, or iron, and though the patterns were of course
lightened and otherwise improved to suit the new material, it may be
plainly seen that the stone hatchets and spear-heads in museums are the
ancestors (so to speak) of the metal ones made ever since. But also
the use of metal brought in new and useful forms which stone was not
suited to. An idea of these important changes may be gained by careful
looking at the series of metal cutting-instruments in Fig. 57. We begin
with _a_, which is an Egyptian bronze battle-axe, not very far changed
from the stone hatchet. But _b_, the bronze falchion carried also by
Egyptian warriors, is a sort of axe-blade with the handle not at the
back, but shifted down; this convenient alteration could not have been
made in the stone hatchet, which would have broken in the shank at the
first blow, while in metal it answers perfectly. It may very well have
been such transformed hatchets that led to the making of several most
important classes of weapons and tools, in which a blade with stout back
and front edge is fixed to a handle below it for chopping, slashing,
or cutting. Among these are all the various forms of the sabre or
scimitar, represented by _c_, all our ordinary knives, represented here
by the European sheath-knife _d_, and all cleavers, represented by the
Roman culter _e_. Nor does the development stop here, for the group of
instruments to which our bill-hook belongs is made with a concave edge,
as in the Indian form, _f_, and this again leads on to the still more
curved forms of the sickle and the scythe, which are not drawn here. Thus
there is some reason to suppose that all these instruments, whether tools
or weapons, or such as, like the bill-hooks of the early English and the
modern Malays, served alike for peace and war, may have all originated
from the early metal hatchet, which itself is derived from the still
earlier hatchet of stone.
[Illustration: FIG. 58.—_a_, Stone spear-head (Admiralty Is.); _b_, stone
spear-head or dagger-blade (England); _c_, bronze spear-head (Denmark);
_d_, bronze dagger; _e_, bronze leaf-shaped sword.]
From the early stone spear-heads another set of weapons seem to have
gradually arisen, as may be seen in Fig. 58. Looking at the spear from
the Admiralty Islands, _a_, the head of which is a large flake of
obsidian, it is plain that such a spear, when the shaft is broken off
short, becomes a dagger. In fact one often cannot tell whether the flint
blades of shapes like _b_, which are dug up in Europe, were intended
for mounting as spears or as daggers. Now the brittleness of stone was
against the use of stone blades more than a few inches long, but when
metal came in, the blades could be made long, taper, and sharp, thus
developing into two-edged daggers of deadly effect. In old Egyptian
pictures warriors are seen armed with spear and dagger, these two weapons
having blades of similar shape, so that the dagger may be described as
a large spear-head with a hilt to grasp in the hand. It seems as though
the metal dagger, by further lengthening, passed into the two-edged
sword, a weapon impossible in stone. To give an idea how this may have
come about, Fig. 58 shows three specimens from the bronze-period of
Northern Europe, where it is seen how the spear-head _c_ may have been
lengthened into the dagger _d_, and that again into the leaf-like sword
_e_. Straight two-edged swords may of course be used for cut or thrust,
or both. But on placing side by side a one-edged sabre and a two-edged
broadsword or rapier, it will now be seen that though both are called
swords, and are fitted up with similar hilts, hand-guards, and sheaths,
they are nevertheless two weapons of separate nature and origin, the
sabre being a transformed hatchet, while the rapier is a transformed
spear. This last spear-type, of which one modern development is the
bayonet, has mostly served for warlike purposes. Yet it is not unknown as
a peaceful implement, as may be seen in African two-edged knives, which
are evidently derived from spear heads; and also in the instrument which
our surgeons, conscious of its original model, call the little spear or
_lancet_.
To proceed to other kinds of tools. Thorns, pointed splinters of bone,
or flint flakes worked to a point (Fig. 54 _g_), served early tribes
of men as borers. The saw probably invented itself from a jagged flint
flake, which afterwards became the more artificial flint saw, Fig. 54
_h_. Thus the men of the Stone Age had in rude and early forms some of
the principal tools, which were improved upon in the ages of metal.
It is interesting to look in Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_ at the
contents of the Egyptian carpenter’s tool-basket, where the bronze adze,
saw, chisels, &c. show traces of likeness to the old stone implements.
On the other hand, this Egyptian set of tools, and still more those of
the ancient Greek and Roman carpenters, come remarkably near those we
are using at this day. One difference which kept the ancient carpenters
below ours was that they had not got beyond nails, never having seized
the idea of the screws which are so essential to modern construction,
nor of such tools as the screw-auger and gimlet, which depend on the
screw for their action. Among the ancient cultured nations of Egypt and
Assyria, handicrafts had already come to a stage which could only have
been reached by thousands of years of progress. In museums may still be
examined the work of their joiners, stonecutters, goldsmiths, wonderful
in skill and finish, and often putting to shame the modern artificer. Of
course these results were obtained by the ancient craftsman with what
we should consider a wasteful expenditure of labour. The use of steel
and other improvements have given the modern workman great advantages,
and what is more, the modern world has utterly outstripped the ancient
in the use of machines, as will be more fully seen presently when the
examination of the simpler instruments has been gone through.
To continue the survey of weapons. The cudgel or club is hurled by the
hunter or warrior, as when the Zulu will bring down an antelope at a
surprising distance with a throw of his round-headed club or knob-kerry,
and the Turk till modern times used to throw his mace in battle. The
sporting use outlasts the warlike, and even in England the fowler’s
throwing-cudgel is not unknown in country parts, where it is called a
_squoyle_. A flat thin club made curved or crooked by following the
branch it is cut out of has been liked by sportsmen of various nations
for its destructive whirling flight, as where the old Egyptian fowler
may be seen in the pictures flinging his flat curved throw-stick into
the midst of a flight of wild-duck. The Australians not only throw
wooden clubs and blades as weapons in this ordinary way, but make and
throw with surprising skill a peculiar light curved blade which has been
called the “come-back” boomerang, which veers in its course and returns
to the thrower, in ways which may be seen by cutting boomerangs out of a
visiting-card and flipping them. Again, it is evident that stones flung
by hand must have been among man’s first weapons. A simple instrument
for lengthening the arm and accumulating momentum is the sling, which
is so generally known even among the lowest tribes of man, that it is
probably of great antiquity.
[Illustration: FIG. 59.—Australian spear thrown with spear-thrower (after
Brough Smyth).]
The rudest spear, which is a mere pointed stick, is known everywhere in
the savage world, the point being often hardened by thrusting it into
the fire. Of spears, whether such clumsy sticks or more artificially
pointed weapons, the heavier kinds serve for thrusting and the lighter
for throwing, while intermediate sizes are fit for both purposes. It
is obvious how, to prevent the spear from coming out of the wound, it
came to be barbed. Another device, known widely among rude hunters and
fishers, is to put the point loosely on to the shaft, attaching it by a
cord of some length which uncoils when the point sticks in the animal
and the shaft drops off, so that the struck beast cannot break away the
shaft but drags it trailing, or the fish is held and marked down by the
floating wood. The distance to which the spear can be hurled by hand
is much increased by using a spear-thrower, acting like a sling. In
Captain Cook’s time the New Caledonians slung their spears with a short
cord with an eye for the finger, while the Roman soldiers had a thong
(_amentum_) made fast to their javelins near the middle of the shaft
for the same purpose. But wooden spear-throwers from one to three feet
long, grasped at one end and with a peg or notch at the other to take
the butt of the spear, have been more favourite with savage and barbaric
races. Thus Fig. 59 shows the Australian spear-thrower. This looks a
more primitive instrument than the bow, which indeed was not known to
these rude savages. It seems as though with the progress of weapons the
spear-thrower was discarded, for it is not found among any nation higher
than the old Mexicans, and even among them it seems to have been kept
up ceremonially from old times, rather than seriously used. The bow and
arrow (as General Pitt-Rivers suggests) may very likely have grown out
of a simpler contrivance, the spring-trap set in the woods by fitting a
dart to an elastic branch, so fastened back as to be let go by a passing
animal, in whose track it discharges the weapon. However invented, the
bow came into use in ages before history. Its arrow is a miniature of the
full-sized javelin, and the old stone arrow-heads found in most regions
of the world (see Fig. 54 _d_) show the existence of the bow-and-arrow
in the Stone Age, though hardly back to the drift-period. The art of
feathering the arrow goes back as far as history, and we know not how
much further. The simplest kind of long-bow is like that we still use
in the sport of archery, made of one piece of tough wood. Fig. 60_a_
shows a long-bow of the forest-tribes of South America, unstrung, with
its string hanging loose. What may be called the Tatar or Scythian bow is
formed of several pieces of wood or horn, united with glue and sinews.
Shorter than the long-bow, it gets its spring by being bent outside-in to
string it; thus the concave side of the ancient Scythian-bow _b_ would
become the convex side when strung. Bows of this class belong especially
to northern regions where there is a scarcity of tough wood suited to
making long-bows in one piece. As a warlike weapon, the bow lasted on in
Europe through the middle ages, and as late as 1814 the world looked on
with wonder to see the Cossack cavalry ride armed with bows-and-arrows
through the streets of Paris. A further step in the history of the bow
was to mount it on a stock, so as to take aim at leisure and touch a
trigger to let go the string. Thus it became the cross-bow, which seems
to have been invented in the East, and was known in Roman Europe about
the sixth century. In the figure, _c_ represents it in its perfected
form with a winch to draw the bow, as soldiers used it in the sixteenth
century. Cross-bows are still made in Italy for shooting birds with a
bolt or pellet.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.—Bows. _a_, South American long-bow (unstrung);
_b_, Tatar or Scythian bow; _c_, European cross-bow.]
To understand the next great move in missile weapons, it is necessary
to look back to savage life. The blow-tube, through which the forest
Indian of South America (Fig. 43) blows his tiny poisoned plug-darts,
or the similar Malay weapon called the sumpitan, may have been easily
invented wherever long large reeds grew. With simple darts or pellets
the blow-tube served for shooting birds, and it is often kept up as a
toy, as in our boys’ peashooters. When, however, gunpowder was applied
in warfare, its use was soon adapted to make the blow-tube an instrument
of tremendous power, when instead of the puff of breath in a reed, the
explosion of powder in an iron barrel drove out the missile. In the early
guns of the middle ages, the powder was fired by putting a coal or match
to the touchhole, as continued to be done till lately with cannon. For
hand-guns, this early match-lock was followed by the wheel-lock. This led
up to the flint-lock, which it is curious to compare with the cross-bow,
for the bent bow released by the trigger, which in the cross-bow did the
actual work of shooting out the missile, has now come down, in the form
of a spring and trigger, to the subordinate use of striking the light to
ignite the powder which actually propels the ball. In more modern guns,
the trigger and spring still remain, the improvement lying in the use of
fulminating silver in the cap, ignited by the blow of the hammer. The
rifling of the bullet by means of grooves in the barrel is the modern
representative of the ancient plan of slightly twisting the spear-head
or feathering the arrow to cause it to rotate, this giving increased
steadiness of flight. The modern conical shot shows a partial return
from the spherical bullet towards the ancient bolt or arrow, and at last
breech-loading goes back to the old plan of putting the arrows in at the
butt-end of the savage blow-tube.
As thus plainly appears, the ingenuity of man has been eminent in the
art of destroying his fellow-men. In surveying the last group of deadly
weapons, from the stone hurled by hand to the rifled cannon, there
comes well into view one of the great advances of culture. This is the
progress from the simple tool or implement, such as the club or knife,
which enables man to strike or cut more effectively than with hands or
teeth, to the machine which, when supplied with force, only needs to be
set and directed by man to do his work. Man often himself provides the
power which the machine distributes more conveniently, as when the potter
turns the wheel with his own foot, using his hands to mould the whirling
clay. The highest class of machines are those which are driven by the
stored-up forces of nature, like the saw-mill where the running stream
does the hard labour, and the sawyer has only to provide the timber and
direct the cutting.
As to how simple mechanical powers were first learnt, it is of no use
to guess in what rude and early age men found that stones or blocks too
weighty to lift by hand could be prized up and moved along with a stout
stick, or rolled on two or three round poles, or got up a long gentle
slope more easily than up a short steep rise. Thus such discoveries
as those of the lever, roller, and inclined plane, are quite out of
historical reach. The ancient Egyptians used wedges to split off their
huge blocks of stone, and one wonders that, knowing the pulley as they
did, it never appears in the rigging of their ships (see Fig. 71). A
draw-well with a pulley is to be seen in the Assyrian sculptures, where
also a huge winged bull is being heaved along with levers, and dragged on
a sledge with rollers laid underneath.
[Illustration: FIG. 61.—Ancient bullock-waggon, from the Antonine Column.]
The wheel-carriage, which is among the most important machines ever
contrived by man, must have been invented in ages before history. To
see what constructive skill the leading nations had already attained
to in times we reckon as of high antiquity, it is worth while to
examine closely the Egyptian war-chariots, with their neatly-fitted and
firmly-tired spoke-wheels turning on their axles secured by linchpins
while the body, pole, and double harness show equal technical skill. In
looking for some hint as to how wheel-carriages came to be invented, it
is of little use to judge from such high skilled work as was turned out
by these Egyptian chariot-builders, or by the Roman _carpentarii_ or
carriage-builders from whom our _carpenters_ inherit their name. But as
often happens, rude contrivances may be found which look as though they
belonged to the early stages of the invention. The plaustrum or farm-cart
of the ancient world in its rudest form had for wheels two solid wooden
drums near a foot thick, and made from a tree-trunk cut across, which
drums or wheels did not turn on the axle but were fixed to it; the
axle was kept in place by wooden stops, or passed through rings at the
bottom of the cart, and went round together with its pair of wheels,
as children’s toy carts are made. It is curious to notice how, under
changed conditions, the builders of railway-carriages have returned to
this early construction. In the ancient cart, Fig. 61, the squared end of
the axle shows that it must turn with the wheels. In such countries as
Portugal the old classic bullock-cart on this principle is still to be
seen, and it has been reasonably guessed that such carts tell the story
how wheel-carriages came to be invented. Rollers were early used, on
which a block of stone or other heavy weight was trundled. Suppose such a
roller made of a smoothed tree-trunk to be improved by cutting the middle
part smaller, so that it became an axle and pair of broad wheels in one
piece, then by making this axle work underneath the rudest framework, the
simplest imaginable wheel-carriage is made. If the first notion of a cart
were thus suggested, the wheels might afterwards be made separately and
pinned on to the square axle, and provided with tires. Then, for light
wheels and smooth ground, the wheels would at last be made to turn on
fixed axles. This is only conjecture, but at any rate it puts clearly
before our minds what the nature of a carriage is.
Another ancient machine is the mill. The rudest tribes of savages had a
simple and effective means ready to hand for powdering charcoal and ochre
to paint themselves with, or for the more useful work of bruising wild
seeds gathered for food. The whole apparatus consists of a roundish stone
held in the hand, and a larger hollowed stone for a bed. It is curious to
notice how closely our pestle and mortar still keeps to this primitive
type. Now any one using the pestle and mortar may notice that it works
in two ways, the stuff being either pounded by striking, or ground by
rubbing against the side of the mortar. When people took to agriculture,
and grain became a chief part of their food, and mealing it the women’s
heavy work, forms of mealing-stones came into use suited not for pounding
but for grinding only, and doing this more perfectly. An example may be
seen in Fig. 62, a rude ancient corn-crusher dug up in Anglesey, the
stone muller or roller having its sides hollowed for the hands of the
grinder, who worked it back and forward on the bed-stone. The perfection
of such a corn-crusher may be seen in the “metate” with its neatly shaped
bed and rolling-pin of lava, with which the Mexican women crush the maize
for their corn-cakes or tortillas. But it is by one stone revolving upon
the other that grain is best ground, and here we have the principle of
the mill. The quern or hand-mill of the ancient world in its simple form
consisted of two circular flat mill stones, the upper being turned by a
handle, while the grain was poured in through the hole in the centre,
and came out as meal all round the edge. This early hand-mill has lasted
on into the modern world, and Fig. 63 shows “two women grinding at the
mill,” as they might be seen in the Hebrides in the last century; the
long stick, which hangs from a branch above, has its end in a hole in
the upper stone, and a cloth is spread on the ground to catch the meal.
The quern is still used in north Scotland and the islands. If the reader
will notice the construction of a modern flour-mill, it will be seen that
the neatly faced and grooved millstones are now of great weight, and the
upper one balanced on the pivot which gives it rapid rotation from below
by means of water or steam-power, but notwithstanding these mechanical
improvements, the essential principle of the primitive hand-mill is still
there.
[Illustration: FIG. 62.—Corn-crusher, Anglesey (after W. O. Stanley).]
[Illustration: FIG. 63.—Hebrides women grinding with the quern or
hand-mill (after Pennant).]
Another group of revolving tools and machines begins with the drill.
The simplest mode of twirling the boring-stick between the hands is to
be seen in fire-making (Fig. 72). In this clumsy way rude tribes know
how to bore holes through hard stone by patiently twirling a reed or
stick with sharp sand and water. This primitive tool was improved both
for making fire and boring holes, by winding round the stick a thong
or cord, which by being pulled backward and forward worked the drill,
as the ancient shipwrights boring their timbers are described in the
Odyssey (ix. 384). The ingenious plan of using a bow with its string to
drive the drill, so that one man can manage it, was already known in the
old Egyptian workshops, but the still more perfect Archimedean drill is
modern. The turning-lathe seems to have had its origin in the drill. To
those who have only seen the lathe in its improved modern forms this may
not be clear, but it is seen by looking at the old-fashioned pole-lathe
with which the turner used to shape his wooden bowls and chair-legs,
which were made to revolve by a cord pulled up and down, on somewhat the
same principle as the Homeric drill. The foot-lathe, with its crank and
continuous revolution, superseded this, to be itself encroached upon by
the introduction of steam-power for driving, and even for applying the
tool in the self-acting lathe.
In examining these groups of instruments and machines, the development
of many of them has been traced back till their origins are lost in dim
præhistoric ages, or to where ancient history can show them arising from
a fresh idea or a new turn given to an old one. It is seldom possible
to get at the real author of an ancient invention. Thus no one knows
exactly when and how that wonderful mechanical contrivance, the screw,
appeared. It was familiar to the Greek mathematicians, and the screw
linen-presses and oil-presses of classic times look almost modern in
their construction. In the period of ancient civilization there appear
the beginnings of that immense change which is remodelling modern life,
by inventions which set the forces of nature to do man’s heavy work
for him. This great change seems to have been especially brought on by
contrivances to save the heavy toil of watering the fields. A simple
hand-labour contrivance of this kind is the shadoof of the Nile valley,
where a long pole with a counterpoise at one end is supported on posts,
and carries a bucket hanging to the longer end to dip up water from
below. One need not travel to the East to watch this old contrivance,
for it is to be seen at work in our brickfields. For irrigation, it
was mechanically an improvement on this to set a gang of slaves to
turn a great wheel with buckets or earthen jars at its circumference,
which rose full from the water below, and as they turned over emptied
themselves into a trough at a higher level. But when such a wheel was
built to dip in a running stream, then the current itself would turn
the wheel, and thus would come into existence the noria or irrigating
water-wheel often mentioned in ancient literature, and to be seen still
at work both in the East and in Europe. By these or some similar steps
of invention the water-wheel was made a source of power for doing other
work, such as grinding corn, instead of the women at the quern or the
slaves at the tread-mill, or the mill-horse in his everlasting round. As
the Greek epigram says, “Cease your work, ye maids who laboured at the
mills, sleep and let the birds sing to the returning dawn, for Demeter
has bidden the water nymphs to do your task; obedient to her call, they
throw themselves on the wheel and turn the axle and the heavy mill.”
The classical corn-mill, with the cog-wheels driven by the water-wheel,
may have been a good deal like the water-mills still working on our
country streams. Such machinery was early applied to grinding corn, and
afterwards to other manufactures, so that now the word mill no longer
means a grinding-mill only, but is also used where machinery is driven
by power for other purposes. It was a great movement in civilization for
the water-mill and its companion contrivance the wind-mill to come into
use as force-providers, doing all sorts of labour, from the heaviest work
of the European factory down to turning the Tibetan prayer-wheels, which
go round repeating for ever the sacred Buddhist formula. Within the last
century the civilized world has been drawing an immense supply of power
from a new source, the coal burnt in the furnace of the steam-engine,
which is already used so wastefully that economists are uneasily
calculating how long this stored-up fossil force will last, and what must
be turned to next—tide force or sun’s heat—to labour for us. Thus, in
modern times, man seeks more and more to change the labourer’s part he
played in early ages, for the higher duty of director or controller of
the world’s force.
CHAPTER IX.
ARTS OF LIFE—(_continued_).
Quest of wild food, 206—Hunting, 207—Trapping, 211—Fishing,
212—Agriculture, 214—Implements, 216—Fields, 218—Cattle,
pasturage, 219—War, 221—Weapons, 221—Armour, 222—Warfare of
lower tribes, 223—of higher nations, 225.
Having, in the last chapter, examined the instruments used by man, we
have next to look at the arts by which he maintains and protects himself.
His first need is to get his daily food. In tropical forests, savages
may easily live on what nature provides, like the Andaman Islanders,
who gather fruits and honey, hunt wild pigs in the jungle, and take
turtle and fish on the coast. Many forest tribes of Brazil, though
they cultivate a little, depend mostly on wild food. Of such the rude
man has no lack, for there is game in plenty and the rivers swarm with
fish, while the woods yield him a supply of roots and bulbs, calabashes,
palm-nuts, beans, and many other fruits; he collects wild honey, birds’
eggs, grubs out of rotten wood, nor does he despise insects, even ants.
In less fertile lands savage life goes on well while game and fish
abound, but when these fail it becomes an unceasing quest for food,
as where the Australians roam over their deserts on the look-out for
every eatable root or insect, or the low Rocky Mountain tribes gather
pine-nuts and berries, catch snakes, and drag lizards out of their holes
with a hooked stick. The Fuegians wander along their bleak inhospitable
shores feeding mostly on shellfish, so that in the course of ages their
shells, with fish-bones and other rubbish, have formed long banks above
high-water mark. Such shell-heaps or “kitchen-middens” are found here and
there all round the coasts of the world, marking the old resorts of such
tribes; for instance on the coast of Denmark, where archæologists search
them for relics of rude Europeans, who, in the Stone age, led a life
somewhat like that of Tierra del Fuego. Hunting and fishing go on through
all levels of society, beginning with the savages who have no other means
of subsistence, till at last among civilized nations game and fish hardly
do more than supplement the more regular supplies of grain and meat from
the farm. Looking at the devices of the hunter and fisher, it will be
seen how thoroughly most of them belong to the ruder stages of culture.
The natives of the Brazilian forests, to whom tracking game is the chief
business of life, do it with a skill that fills with wonder the white
men who have watched them. The Botocudo hunter, gliding stealthily
through the underwood, knows every habit and sign of bird and beast;
the remains of berries and pods show him what creature has fed there;
he knows how high up an armadillo displaces the leaves in passing, and
so can distinguish its track from the snake’s or tortoise’s, and follow
it to its burrow by the scratches of its scaly armour on the mud. Even
the sense of smell of this savage hunter is keen enough to help him in
tracking. Hidden behind the trunk of a tree, he can imitate the cries
of birds and beasts to bring them within range of his deadly poisoned
arrow, and he will even entice the alligator by making her rough eggs
grate together where they lie under leaves on the river-bank. If an ape
he has shot high in the boughs of some immense tree remains hanging by
its tail, he will go up after it by a hanging creeper where no white man
would climb. At last, laden with game and useful forest things, such as
palm-fibre to make hammocks, or fruit to brew liquor, he finds his way
back to his hut by the sun and the lie of the ground, and the twigs that
he bent back for way-marks as he crept through the thicket. In Australia,
the native hunter will lie in wait behind a screen of boughs near a
water-hole till the kangaroos come to drink, or will track one in the
open for days, camping by his little fire at night to be ready for the
pursuit again at dawn, keeping unseen and to the leeward till at last
he can creep near enough to hurl his spear, seldom in vain. When the
natives hunt together, they will put up brush-fence in two long wings
converging towards a pit, and so drive the kangaroos into it; or they
will form a great hunting party for a battue, surrounding half a mile of
bush-land, and with shouts and clatter of weapons driving all the game
to the centre where they can close round and despatch them with spears
and waddies. In fowling the Australians show equal expertness. A native
will swim under water breathing through a reed, or will merely cover his
head with water-weed till he gets among a flock of ducks, which one by
one he noiselessly pulls under and tucks into his belt. This shows in a
simple form a kind of duck-hunting which is found in such distant parts
of the world, that travellers have been puzzled to guess whether the idea
spread from one tribe to another, or was invented many times. It may
be seen on the Nile, where a harmless-looking calabash floats in among
the water-fowl, with a swimming Egyptian’s head inside. The Australian
hunter takes the wallaby (a small kangaroo) by fastening to a long rod
like a fishing-rod a hawk’s skin and feathers, making the sham bird
hover with its proper cry till it drives the game into a bush where it
can be speared. Of devices of stalking with an imitated animal, one of
the most perfect is that of the Dogrib Indians, when a pair of hunters
go after reindeer; the foremost carries a reindeer’s head, while in the
other hand he has a bunch of twigs against which he makes the head rub
its horns in a lifelike way, and the two men, walking as the deer’s fore
and hind legs, get among the herd and bring down the finest. In England,
till of late years, fowlers used to hide behind a wooden horse moved
along on wheels, and a relic of this survives in the phrase “to make a
_stalking-horse_ of one,” often now used by people who have no idea what
the word meant.
Hunting with dogs was very ancient, and was found among uncivilized
tribes; thus the Australians seem to have trained the dingo or native
dog for the chase, and most of the North American Indians had their
native hunting-dogs. Still dogs were not so universal among rude tribes
as they have been since European breeds were carried all over the world;
for instance, the natives of Newfoundland seem to have had no dogs.
The largest and fiercest animal whose instinct of prey man has thus
taken advantage of is the hunting-leopard or cheetah, which in India or
Persia is carried in an iron cage to the field and let loose upon the
deer; when it has pounced on the game the huntsman draws it off with
the taste of blood and gives it a leg for its share in the partnership.
Already in classic times there is mention of birds of prey trained to
strike game-birds or drive them into the net, or to pounce on hares.
Hawking or falconry reached its height as a royal sport in mediæval
Tartary, where Marco Polo describes the Great Khan going out, borne
by two elephants in his litter hung with cloth of gold and covered
with lion-skins, to see the sport of his ten thousand falconers flying
their hawks at the pheasants and cranes. From the East hawking spread
over Europe. It was familiar to our early English ancestors, and if one
had to paint a symbolic picture of the middle ages, one could hardly
choose more characteristic figures than the knight and lady riding out
with their hooded hawks on their fists. Since then falconry has all but
died out in Europe, and nowadays the traveller may best see it in the
Asiatic district where it first came up, Persia or the neighbouring
countries. In such sports the quest of food (now often contemptuously
called “pot-hunting”) becomes subordinate to the excitement of the chase.
It was so especially where fleet animals like the deer were hunted on
horseback, till at last the royal stag-hunt became a court ceremony with
its cavalcades and its great officers of state in splendid uniforms. Such
pageantry is, indeed, declining in modern Europe, but the place it used
to hold in English court life is shown by noblemen still occupying in the
Royal household the places of Master of the Buckhounds and Hereditary
Grand Falconer.
The modern hunter has a vastly increased power of killing game, from the
use of fire-arms instead of the bow and spear which came down from savage
times. The effect of bringing in guns is seen among the native American
buffalo-hunters. They were always reckless in destruction when they once
came within reach of the herds, but now with the help of the white man
and the use of his rifles there is such slaughter that travellers have
found the ground and air for miles foul with the carcases of buffalo
killed merely for the hides and tongues. In the civilized world, what
with killing off game, and what with the encroachment of agriculture
on the wild lands, both the supply and the need of game for man’s
subsistence have much lessened. But the hunter’s life has been from the
earliest times man’s school of endurance and courage, where success and
even trial gives pleasure in one of its intensest forms. Thus it has
come to be kept up artificially where its practical use has fallen away.
In civilized countries it is seen at its best where it keeps closest
to barbaric fatigue and danger, like grouse-shooting in Scotland, or
boar-hunting in Austria, but at its meanest, where it has come down to
shooting grain-fed pheasants as tame as barn-door fowls.
Next, as to trapping game. This was seen in a curiously simple form in
Australia, where a native would lie on his back on a rock in the sunshine
with a bit of fish in his hand, pretending to be fast asleep, till some
hawk or crow pounced on the bait, only to be itself pounced on by the
hungry man, who broiled and ate it then and there. A plan of taking game
which must have readily suggested itself to rude hunters was the pitfall,
in its simplest shape a mere hole too deep for a heavy beast to get out
of when it has fallen in. The savage trapper will dig such a pit, and
cover it with brushwood or sods, as in Africa the bushmen take the huge
hippopotamus and elephant, while in fur-countries the hunters arrange
their pitfalls in various ways, the most artificial plan being to cover
them with a wooden floor which upsets when trodden on. The word _trap_,
meaning originally step (like German _treppe_), may have come from its
usually being some contrivance for the game to tread on. It is so not
only with the pitfall, but with other common kinds of trap, which, when
the animal steps on the catch, drop down on it, or pull a noose round it,
or let fly a dart at it, all which are plans known in the uncivilized
world. The art of catching birds and beasts with a noose, held in the
hand or fastened to the end of a stick, is universal. Perhaps the most
skilful noosing is that done on horseback by the herdsmen of Mexico,
though it should be noticed that their _lazo_ is not a native American
invention; it was brought over by the Spaniards with its name, which is
simply Latin _laqueus_, a rope. To use the noose for trapping purposes,
it is only necessary to set it in the track where game pass, for them to
run their heads into, as the North American Indians do. But the noose may
also be attached to a bough bent back so as to spring up when an animal
touches it, and catch him. Or a spear may be arranged as the savages of
the Malay Peninsula do it, with an elastic bamboo so bent back that when
released by the animal it will spear him. The suggestion has been already
mentioned (p. 195) that such a spring-trap first led to the invention
of the bow and arrow. Actual bows and arrows are set as traps in such
countries as Siberia, and the spring-gun is a modern improvement on these.
Lastly, the net is one of the things known to almost all men so far as
history can tell. The native Australians net game like ancient Assyrians
or English poachers, and are not less skilled in netting wild fowl. To
see this art at its height we may look at the pictures of fowling scenes
on the monuments of ancient Egypt, which show the great clap-nets taking
geese by scores; even the souls of the dead are depicted rejoicing in
this favourite sport in the world beyond the tomb.
Among the various arts of the fisherman, one common among rude tribes
was easily hit upon. Every day at the turn of the tide at river-mouths
and on low shores, and inland near streams after a flood, fish are left
behind in the shallow pools. Led by this experience, the savage has wit
enough to assist nature, as where the Fuegians put up stake fences on
the coast at low-water mark, while in South Africa near the rivers large
flats are walled in with loose stones ready for the floods. Thus our
fish-weirs and fish-dams are no novelties in civilization. Nor is the
device of drugging or narcotizing fish a civilized invention, but to be
seen in perfection among the tropical forest-tribes of South America, who
use for the purpose a score or so of different plants. There is nothing
surprising, however, in its being known to men so rude, for it must
often occur by accident, from the branches or fruit of the right kind
of euphorbia or paullinia falling into some forest pool, an experiment
which the observant native would not be slow to try again. Next, a mode
of fishing usual among savages, is spearing, the spear for this being
barbed, and often made more effective by the head spreading into several
barbed prongs. An account of a native Australian fishing describes him
lying athwart his bark canoe, with his spear-point dipping into the
water ready to go down without splashing, and what is more remarkable,
the fisherman keeping his own eyes under water, so that not only the
ripple does not disturb his view, but his aim is not interfered with by
the refraction of light which makes it so difficult for a man out of the
water to hit an object below the surface. The wilder races also know
well how after dark fish come to a light, so that salmon-spearing by
torchlight, now that it is no longer so frequent in Scotland or Norway,
may be seen in all its picturesqueness among the Indians of Vancouver’s
Island. Shooting fish with the bow and arrow, which many low tribes do
with wonderful dexterity, may be counted as a variety of fish-spearing.
The fish-hook is a contrivance not known to all savage tribes, but some
have it, as the Australians who cut their hooks out of shell, and are
even known to fish with a hawk’s claw attached to a line. The ancient
Egyptian would sit like a modern European angler by a canal or pond,
fishing with rod and line; his hook was of bronze. Only fly-fishing seems
not to have been known in ancient times. On the whole it is remarkable
how little modern fishermen have moved from the methods of the rudest and
oldest men. The savage fish-spear, with its three or four barbed prongs,
is curiously like that our sailors still use, and call a fish-gig. Only
we make the head of iron, not of wood and fish-teeth. So it is with the
harpoon used by American whalers, with its loosely fitting point which
comes off when the fish is struck, only remaining attached by a long cord
to the floating shaft; this is copied, but with a steel point, from the
bone-headed harpoon of the Aleutian Islanders. Our fishermen carry on
their business on a large scale, with their steam-trawlers and seines
which sweep a whole bay, but their net-fishing is much of the same kinds
as may be found among the peoples from whom we have here taken our early
examples of spearing and angling.
Thus man, even while he feeds himself as the lower animals do, by
gathering wild fruit and catching game and fish, is led by his higher
intelligence to more artificial means of getting these. Rising to the
next stage, he begins to grow supplies of food for himself. Agriculture
is not to be looked on as a difficult or out-of-the-way invention, for
the rudest savage, skilled as he is in the habits of the food-plants
he gathers, must know well enough that if seeds or roots are put in a
proper place in the ground they will grow. Thus it is hardly through
ignorance, but rather from roving life, bad climate, or sheer idleness,
that so many tribes gather what nature gives, but plant nothing. Even
very rude people, when they live on one spot all the year round, and
the climate and soil are favourable, mostly plant a little, like the
Indians of Brazil, who clear a patch of forest round their huts to grow
a supply of maize, cassava, bananas, and cotton. When we look at the
food-plants of the world, it appears that some few are grown much as in
their wild state, like the coco-nut and bread-fruit, but most are altered
by cultivation. Sometimes it is possible to find the wild plant and show
how man has improved it, as where the wild potato is found growing on
the cliffs of Chile. But the origin of many cultivated plants is lost to
tradition and has become a subject for tale-tellers. This is the case
with those edible grasses which have been raised by cultivation into the
cereals, such as wheat, barley, rye, and by their regular and plentiful
supply have become the mainstay of human life and the great moving power
of civilization. It is clear that the development of these grain-plants
from their wild state was before the earliest ages of history, which
throws back the beginnings of agriculture to times older still. How
ancient was the first tilling of the soil, is shown by ancient Egypt and
Babylonia, with their governments and armies, temples and palaces, for it
could have been only through carrying on agriculture for a long series
of ages that such populations could have grown up so closely packed
together as to form a civilized nation. Plants, when once brought into
cultivation, make their way from people to people across the globe. Thus
the European conquerors of America carried back the maize or Indian corn
which had been cultivated from unknown antiquity over the New World, and
which now furnishes the Italian peasant with his daily meal of polenta
or porridge; it is grown even in Japan, and down to the south of Africa,
where it is the “mealies” of the colonist. An English vegetable garden
is a curious study for the botanist who assigns to each plant its proper
home, and to the philologist who traces its name. Sometimes this tells
its story fairly, as where _damson_ and _peach_ describe these fruits
as brought from Damascus and Persia. But the _potato_, brought over
in Queen Elizabeth’s time, seems to have borrowed the name of another
plant botanically different, the _batata_, or sweet-potato. The luscious
tropical _ananas_ has lost its native Malay name except among botanists,
and has taken the name of the common fir-cone or _pine-apple_, which in
shape it so closely resembles.
[Illustration: FIG. 64.—_a_, Australian digging-stick; _b_, Swedish
wooden hack.]
[Illustration: FIG. 65.—Ancient Egyptian hoe and plough.]
By noticing how rude tribes till the soil, much is to be learnt as to
the invention of agricultural implements. Wandering savages like the
Australians carry a pointed stick to dig up eatable roots with, as in
Fig. 64 _a_. Considering how nearly planting a root is the same work
as digging one up, it is likely that a tribe beginning to till the
soil would use their root-digging sticks for the new purpose; indeed,
a pointed stake has been found as the rude husbandman’s implement both
in the Old and New World. It is an improvement on this to dig with a
flat-bladed tool like a spear, sword, or paddle, and thus we have the
civilized spade. A more important tool, the hoe, is derived from the pick
or hatchet. The wooden picks of the New Caledonians serve both as weapons
and for planting yams, while the African’s hatchet—an iron blade stuck in
a club—only has to have the blade turned across to become his hoe. It
is curious to find in Europe the rudest imaginable hoe, less artificial
than the elk’s shoulder-blade fastened to a stick, with which the North
American squaws hoed their Indian corn. This is the Swedish “hack,” Fig.
64 _b_, a mere stout stake of spruce-fir with a bough sticking out at
the lower end cut short and pointed. With this primitive implement in
old times fields were tilled in Sweden, and it was to be seen in forest
farmhouses within a generation or two. Swedish tradition records the
steps by which agriculture improved. The wooden hack was made heavier
and dragged by men through the ground, thus ploughing a furrow in the
simplest way; then the implement was made in two pieces, with a handle
for the ploughman and a pole for the men to drag by, the share was shod
with an iron point, and at last a pair of cows or mares were yoked on
instead of the men. This seems nearly the way in which, thousands of
years earlier, the hoe first passed into the plough. Fig. 65 is from
a picture of agriculture in ancient Egypt. Here the labourer is seen
following the plough to break up the clods with his peculiar hoe, with
its long, curved, wooden blade roped to the handle. Now looking at the
plough itself, it is seen to be such a hoe, rope and all, only heavier
and provided with a pair of handles for the ploughman to guide and keep
it down, while a yoke of oxen drag it through the ground. The valley of
the Nile was one of the districts where high agriculture earliest arose,
and in the picture here copied we may almost fancy ourselves seeing at
its birth the great invention of the plough. To arm it with a heavy
metal ploughshare, to shape this so that it shall turn the sod over in a
continuous ridge, to fix a coulter or “knife” in front to give the first
cut, and to mount the whole on wheels; all these were improvements known
in Rome in the classical period. In modern times we have the self-acting
plough no longer needing the ploughman to follow at the plough-tail, and
the steam-plough has a more powerful draught than oxen or horses. Yet
those who have looked at the earlier stages can still discern in the most
perfect modern plough the original hoe dragged through the ground.
There survives even now in the world a barbaric mode of bringing land
under cultivation, which seems to show us man much as he was when
he began to subdue the primæval forest, where till then he had only
wandered, gathering wild roots and nuts and berries. This primitive
agriculture was noticed by Columbus, when landing in the West Indies he
found the natives clearing patches of soil by cutting the brushwood and
burning it on the spot. This simple plan, where the wood is not only got
out of the way, but the ashes serve for dressing, may still be seen among
the hill-tribes of India, who till these plots of land for a couple of
years and then move on to a new spot. In Sweden this brand-tillage, as
it may be called, is not only remembered as the old agriculture of the
land, but in outlying districts it has lasted on into modern days, giving
us an idea what the rough agriculture of the early tribes may have been
like when they migrated into Europe. It is not to be supposed, on looking
at an English farm of the present day, that its improvements were made
all at once. The modern farming system has a long and changing history
behind it. One interesting point in its growth is that in long-past ages
much of Europe was brought under cultivation by village-communities. A
clan of settlers would possess themselves of a wide tract of land, and
near their huts they would lay out great common fields, which at first
they perhaps tilled and reaped in common as one family. It became usual
to parcel out this tillage land every few years into family lots, but
the whole village-field was still cultivated by the whole community,
working together in the time and way settled by the village elders.
This early communistic system of husbandry may still be seen not much
changed in the villages of such countries as Russia. Even in England its
traces have out-lasted the feudal system, and remain in the present days
of landlord and tenant. In several English counties there may still be
noticed the boundaries of the great common-fields, divided lengthwise
into three strips, which again were divided crosswise into lots, held by
the villagers; the three divisions were managed on the old three-field
system, one lying fallow while the other two bore two kinds of crops.
Next, as to the history of domesticating animals for food. The taming of
sociable creatures like parrots and monkeys is done by low forest tribes,
who delight in such pets; and very rude tribes keep dogs for guard and
hunting. But it marks a more artificial way of life when men come to
keep and breed animals for food. The move upwards from the life of the
hunter to that of the herdsman is well seen in the far north, the home
of the reindeer. Among the Esquimaux the reindeer was only hunted. But
Siberian tribes not only hunt them wild, but tame them. Thus the Tunguz
live by these herds, which provide them not only with milk and meat, but
with skins for clothing and tents, sinews for cord, bone and horn for
implements, while as they move from place to place the deer even serve
as beasts of draught and burden. Here is seen a specimen of pastoral
life of a simple rude kind, and it is needless to go on describing at
length the well-known life of higher nomade tribes, who shift their
tents from place to place on the steppes of Central Asia or the deserts
of Arabia, seeking pasture for their oxen and sheep, their camels and
horses. There is a strong distinction between the life of the wandering
hunter and the wandering herdsman. Both move from place to place, but
their circumstances are widely different. The hunter leads a life of few
appliances or comforts, and exposed at times to starvation; his place
in civilization is below that of the settled tiller of the soil. But to
the pastoral nomade, the hunting which is the subsistence of the ruder
wanderer, has come to be only an extra means of life. His flocks and
herds provide him for the morrow, he has valuable cattle to exchange with
the dwellers in towns for their weapons and stuffs, there are smiths in
his caravan, and the wool is spun and woven by the women. What best marks
the place in civilization which the higher pastoral life attains to, is
that the patriarchal herdsman may belong to one of the great religions of
the world; thus the Kalmuks of the steppes are Buddhists, the Arabs are
Moslems. A yet higher stage of prosperity and comfort is reached where
the agricultural and pastoral life combine, as they already did among
our forefathers in the village communities of old Europe just described.
Here, while the fields were cultivated near the village, the cattle
pastured in summer on the hills and in the woodlands belonging to the
community, where also the hunter went for game, while nearer home there
were common meadows for pasture and to provide the hay for the winter
weather, when the cattle were brought under shelter in the stalls. In
countries so thickly populated as ours is now, the last traces of the
ancient nomade life disappear when the herds are no longer driven off to
the hills in summer.
After the quest of food, man’s next great need is to defend himself. The
savage has to drive off the wild beasts which attack him, and in turn he
hunts and destroys them. But his most dangerous foes are those of his
own species, and thus in the lowest known levels of civilization war has
already begun, and is carried on against man with the same club, spear,
and bow used against wild beasts. General Pitt-Rivers has shown how
closely man follows in war the devices he learnt from the lower animals;
how his weapons imitate their horns, claws, teeth, and stings, even to
their venom; how man protects himself with armour imitated from animals’
hides and scales; and how his warlike stratagems are copied from those of
the birds and beasts, such as setting ambushes and sentinels, attacking
in bodies under a leader, and rushing on with war-cries to the fight.
We have already in the last chapter examined the principal offensive
weapons. The daubing on of venom to make them more deadly is found among
low tribes far over the world. Thus the Bushman mixes serpent’s poison
with the euphorbia juice, and the South American native poison-maker,
prepared by a long fast for the mysterious act, concocts the paralysing
_urari_ or _curare_ in the secret depths of the forest, where no woman’s
eye may fall on the fearful process. Poisoned arrows were known to the
ancient world, as witness the lines which tell of Odysseus going to
Ephyra for the man-slaying drug to smear his bronze-tipped arrows; but
Ilos would not give it, for he feared the ever-living gods. Thus it seems
that in early ages the moral sense of the higher nations had already
condemned the poisoned weapons of the savage, with something of the
horror Europeans now feel in examining the Italian bravo’s daggers of the
middle ages, with their poison-grooves imitated from the serpent’s tooth.
How the warrior’s armour comes from the natural armour of animals is
plainly to be seen. The beast’s own hide may be used, as where one sees
in museums the armour of bear-skins from Borneo, or breast-plates of
crocodile’s skin from Egypt. The name of the _cuirass_ shows that it
was at first of leather, like the _buff_ jerkin. The Bugis of Sumatra
would make a breastplate by sewing upon bark the cast-off scales of the
ant-eater, overlapping as the animal wore them; and so the natural armour
of animals was imitated by the Sarmatians, with their shoes of horses’
hoofs sewed together in overlapping scales like a fir-cone. Such devices,
when metal came in, would lead to the scale armour of the Greeks,
imitated from fish-scales and serpent-scales, while their chain-mail is
a sort of netted garment made in metal. The armour of the middle ages
continued the ancient kinds, now protecting the whole body with a suit
from head to foot (_cap-à-pée_) of iron scales, or mail (that is, meshes)
or of jointed plates of iron copied from the crab and lobster, such as
the later suits of armour which decorate our manorial halls. With the
introduction of gunpowder, armour began to be cast aside, and except the
helmet, what remains of it in military equipment is more for show than
use. The shield also, once so important a part of the soldier’s panoply,
has been discarded since the days of musketry. Our modern notion of a
shield is that of a large screen behind which the warrior can shelter
himself, but this does not appear to have been the original intention.
The primitive shield was probably the parrying-shield, used like the
narrow Australian parrying-stick, which is only four inches across in
the middle where it is grasped, but with which the natives ward off darts
with wonderful dexterity. The small round Highland target, one of the
varieties of shield which remained latest in civilized Europe, is made to
be thus dexterously handled as a weapon of defence, to ward off javelins,
or parry the thrust of spear or sword. It is easy to see that such
parrying-shields belong to the early kind of warfare where the battle was
a skirmish, and every warrior took care of himself. But when fighting
in close ranks began, then the great screen-shields would come in,
serving as a wall behind which the old Egyptian soldiers could ensconce
themselves, or the Greek or Roman storming-party creep up to the foot of
the wall in spite of stones and darts hurled down on them.
The savage or barbarian is apt to fall on his enemy unawares, seeking to
kill him like a wild beast, especially where there is bitter personal
hatred or blood-vengeance. But even among low tribes we find a strong
distinction drawn between such manslaughter and regular war, which is
waged not so much for mutual destruction as for a victory to settle a
quarrel between two parties. For instance, the natives of Australia have
come far beyond mere murder when one tribe sends another a bunch of
emu-feathers tied to the end of a spear, as a challenge to fight next
day. Then the two sides meet in battle array, their naked bodies terrific
with painted patterns, brandishing their spears and clubs, and clamouring
with taunts and yells. Each warrior is paired with an opponent, so that
the fight is really a set of duels, where spear after spear is hurled
and dodged or parried with wonderful dexterity, till at last perhaps a
man is killed, which generally brings the fray to an end. Among the rude
Botocudos of Brazil, a quarrel arising from one tribe hunting hogs on
another’s ground might be settled by a solemn cudgelling-match, where
pairs of warriors belaboured one another with heavy stakes, while the
women fought by scratching faces and tearing hair, till one side gave
in. But if in such an encounter the beaten party take to their bows and
arrows, the scene may change into a real battle. When it comes to regular
war, the Botocudos will draw up their men fronting the enemy, pouring
in arrows, and then rushing together with war-whoops to fight it out
tooth and nail, killing man, woman, and child. They make expeditions to
plunder the villages of their settled neighbours, and when enemies are
near in the forest they will stick splinters in the ground as caltrops
to lame them, and shoot from ambush behind fallen trunks or shelters of
boughs. The slain in battle they will carry off to cook and devour at the
feast, where with wild drunken dancing their warlike zeal is inflamed
to frenzied rage. Thus to excite courage is the purpose of the frantic
war-songs and war-dances, which are common to mankind, among savages and
even far more cultured nations. Low tribes also keep up the fierce hatred
and pride of battle by trophies of the enemy—his head dried and hung
as an ornament of the hut, or his skull fashioned into a drinking-cup.
The wars of the North American Indians have picturesque incidents often
described in our books, the braves smoking in solemn council of war, the
declaration of war by the bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake’s
skin, or the blood-red war-hatchet struck into the war-post, the
recruiting-feast where the dog was eaten as emblem of fidelity, the
war-party creeping through the woods in single line (which we thence call
“Indian file”) the stealthy attack on the enemy’s camp or village, the
wild scalp-dance of the returning victors, the torturing of the captives
at the stake, where the very children were set to shoot arrows at the
helpless foe, who bore his torments without a groan, boasting of his
own fierce deeds and taunting his conquerors in his death-agony. Indian
war was “to creep like a fox, attack like a panther, and fly like a
bird.” Yet at times the warriors of two tribes would meet in fair battle,
standing to watch duels between pairs of champions, or all rushing
together in a general mêlée.
In the warfare of rude races, it is to be noticed how fighting for
quarrel or vengeance begins to pass into fighting for gain. Among some
tribes the captives, instead of being slain, are brought back for slaves,
and especially set to till the ground. By this agriculture is much
increased, and also a new division of society takes place, to be seen
still arising among such warlike tribes as the Caribs, where the captives
with their children come to form a hereditary lower class. Thus we see
how in old times the original equality of men broke up, a nation dividing
into an aristocracy of warlike freemen, and an inferior labouring caste.
Also forays are made for the warriors to bring home wives, who are the
slaves and property of their captors. With this wife-capture is connected
the law widely prevailing among the ruder peoples of the world, and
lasting on even among the more civilized, that a man may not take a wife
from his own clan or tribe, but from some other. As property increases,
there appears with it warfare carried on as a business, by tribes living
more or less by plunder, glorying in their murderous profession, and
despising the mean-spirited farming villagers whose labour provides them
with corn and cattle. A perfect example of such a robber-tribe were the
Mbayas of South America, whose simple religion it was that their deity,
the Great Eagle, had bidden them live by making war on all other tribes,
slaying the men, taking the women for wives, and carrying off the goods.
War among civilized nations differs from that of savage tribes in
being carried on with better weapons and appliances, and by warriors
being trained to fight in regular order. The superiority of a regular
army to a straggling savage war-party may be well seen by looking at
the pictures in Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_, of troops marching
in rank and step to sound of trumpet, especially noticing the solid
phalanx of heavy infantry with spear and shield. The strength of such
Egyptian solid squares of 10,000 men is described in the Cyropædia
(probably with truth as to military tactics if not to actual history),
how they could not be broken even by the victorious Persians, but amid
the rout of man and horse the survivors still held out, sitting under
their shields, till Cyrus granted them honourable surrender. An Egyptian
army had its various corps divided into companies, and commanded by
officers of regular grades. In battle the heavy immovable phalanx held
the centre, the archers and light infantry in the wings acted in line
or open order, there were bodies of slingers, and the noble warriors
drove their chariots into the thick of the opposing host. This military
efficiency was attained by having a standing army formed by a regular
military class, trained from youth in the art of war, and maintained by
eight acres of land assigned to every soldier. From an early time also
we find the Egyptians employing foreign mercenary troops, whose peculiar
costumes and faces are conspicuous in the battle-pictures. Thus also
the Assyrian war-scenes show that their military system was on a level
with that of Egypt. The rise of the science of war to a higher stage
belongs to Greece, and the whole history of its growth is told in Greek
literature. Beginning with the Iliad, the descriptions there show war and
armies in a state more barbaric than in Egypt, with little discipline and
less generalship, and encounters of Greek and Trojan champions with the
armies looking on as savages would do. But when we come to later ages of
Greek history, it is seen that they had by that time not only learnt what
the older civilization had to teach, but had brought their own genius
to develop it further. Their corps of all arms, archers, charioteers,
cavalry, and the phalanx of spearmen, were disciplined and ranged in
order of battle much after the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian manner. But
whereas in old times a battle had been a trial of mere strength between
two armies drawn up facing one another, the military historian Xenophon
describes the change made in the art of war by the Theban leader,
Epaminondas, when at Leuktra, with forces fewer than the Spartans, he
charged with his men in column fifty deep against their twelve deep right
wing, and by breaking them threw the whole line into disorder, and won
the battle. At Mantineia, carrying out this plan yet more skilfully, he
arranged his troops in a wedge-shaped body with the weaker divisions
slanting off behind so as to come up when the enemy’s front was already
broken. In such ways was developed the science of military tactics,
which made skilful manœuvring as important as actual fighting. The
Romans, a nation drilled to battle and conquest, came at last to rule
the world by the mere force of military discipline. In the middle ages
the introduction of gunpowder increased the killing-power of troops
whose artillery from bows and arrows became muskets and heavy cannon.
The reader’s attention has been already drawn to the military scenes of
Egypt and Assyria. If now, fresh from watching the manœuvres of a modern
army in sham fight, he will look at these pictures to see war as it was
three or four thousand years ago, he will observe how substantially the
new system is founded on the old, with developments due to two new ideas,
namely, tactics and the use of fire-arms.
Somewhat the same lesson may be learnt by comparing the older and ruder
kinds of fortification and siege with those of modern times. Tribes at
the level of the Kamchatkans and the North American Indians knew how to
fortify their villages with embankments and palisades. In ancient Egypt
and Assyria and neighbouring countries, strong and high fortress-walls
and towers were defended by archers and slingers, and attacked by
storming-parties with scaling-ladders. Old sieges were unscientific,
as is so curiously seen in the Homeric poems, where the Greeks encamp
over against Troy, but seem to have no notion of regularly investing it,
much less of attack by sap and trench. The Greeks and Romans came on to
use higher art in fortification and siege, and there appear among them
machines of war such as the ancient battering-ram, heavy and skilfully
engineered, while contrivances of the nature of huge bows like the
catapult led up to the cannon of later ages which superseded them.
Lastly, looking at the army system as it is in our modern world, one
favourable change is to be noticed. The employment of foreign mercenary
troops, which almost through the whole stretch of historical record has
been a national evil alike in war and peace, is at last dying out. It
is not so with the system of standing armies which drain the life and
wealth of the world on a scale more enormous even than in past times, and
stand as the great obstacle to harmony between nations. The student of
politics can but hope that in time the pressure of vast armies kept on a
war-footing may prove unbearable to the European nations which maintain
them, and that the time may come when the standing army may shrink to a
nucleus ready for the exigencies of actual war if it shall arise, while
serving in peace time as a branch of the national police.
CHAPTER X.
ARTS OF LIFE—(_continued_).
Dwellings:—Caves, 229—Huts, 230—Tents, 231—Houses, 231—Stone
and Brick Building, 232—Arch, 235—Development of Architecture,
235. Dress:—Painting skin, 236—Tattooing, 237—Deformation of
Skull, &c., 240—Ornaments, 241—Clothing of Bark, Skin, &c.,
244—Mats, 246—Spinning, Weaving, 246—Sewing, 249—Garments,
249. Navigation:—Floats, 252—Boats, 253—Rafts, 255—Outriggers,
255—Paddles and Oars, 256—Sails, 256—Galleys and Ships, 257.
We have next to examine the dwellings of mankind. Thinking of the nests
of birds, the dams of beavers, the tree-platforms of apes, it can
scarcely be supposed that man at any time was unable to build himself a
shelter. That he does not always do so is mostly because while on the
move from place to place he may be content to sleep in the open, or take
to the natural shelter of a tree or rock. Thus in the Andaman Islands
the roving savages have been noticed to resort to the sea-shore, where,
under some overhanging cliff that kept off the wind, they would scoop
themselves out each a hole in the sand to lie in. Rock-shelters under the
cliffs were in Europe the resort of the ancient savages, as is proved
by the bones and flint flakes and other remains that are found lying
there in the ground. Caves are ready-made houses for beast or man. It
has been already mentioned (p. 31) how in such countries as England and
France, caverns were the abodes of the old tribes of the reindeer and
mammoth period, and the Bushmen of South Africa are a modern example of
rude tribes thus given to dwelling in caves in the rocks. But caverns are
so convenient, that they are now and then still used in the civilized
world, and most of us have seen some cave in a cliff forming the back of
a fisherman’s cottage, or at least a storehouse. It is not so much with
these natural dwellings that we are here concerned as with artificial
structures, however rude, set up by man for his shelter.
In the depths of Brazilian forests, travellers have come upon the
dwellings of the naked Puris, which are not even huts, only sloping
screens made by setting up a row of huge palm-leaves some eight feet
long, leaning against a cross-pole. Being put up to windward, this
shelters the lazy Indian as he lolls in his hammock slung between two
trees, and with the dense foliage overhead life is not comfortless on
fine days, though in bad weather the family and dogs have to crouch
defenceless round the wood fire on the ground. Even in these tropical
forests, what is generally met with is a real hut, though it may be such
a rude one as the Botocudos make with these same great palm-leaves,
sticking a number of them with their stalks in the ground in a circle,
and bringing their points together, so as to form a roof overhead. The
Patachos go to work more artificially, bending together young growing
trees and poles stuck in the ground, so that by binding their tops
together they form a framework which is then thatched over with large
leaves. Much the same lesson in primitive architecture may be learnt
from the natives of Australia, among whom a party camping out will be
content to set up a line of leafy boughs in the ground to form a screen
or breakwind for the night; but when they take the pains to interlace
such boughs overhead, the screen becomes a hut, and where they stay for
a while they will make a regular framework of branches, covering them
in with sheets of bark, or leaves and grass, and even laying on sods or
daubing the outside with clay. The invention of the simple round hut
is thus easily understood. It is plain, too, how a conical hut, when
roving tribes like the American Indians carry from place to place its
poles and skins or sheets of bark, becomes in fact a portable tent, and
this shows how tents came to be invented. The more cultured herdsmen of
the East carry for their tent-coverings sheets of felted hair or wool,
and we ourselves use for temporary shelter tents of canvas. Indeed one
has only to look at the common bell-tent of the soldier to see that it
is a transformed savage hut. Now the circular hut, whether beehive or
conical, is low to creep into and small to lie or crouch in. More room is
often got by digging the earth out some feet deep within, but a greater
improvement in construction is to raise the hut itself on posts or a
wall, so that what was at first the whole house now becomes the roof.
Thus is built the round hut with its side-posts filled in with wattle
and mud, or its solid earthen wall carrying the thatched roof which may
reach beyond in shady eaves. Such were in ancient times common peasants’
dwellings in Europe, as they still are in other quarters of the world,
and indeed we perhaps keep up a memory of them in the round thatched
summer-houses in our gardens, which are curiously like the real huts of
barbarians. Next, as African travellers remark, one great sign of higher
civilization is when people begin to build their houses square-cornered
instead of round. The circular hut to be easily built must be small, and
room is best gained by building the house oblong, with a ridge pole
along the roof where the sloping poles from the sides meet. By being able
to build to any required length, it became possible for many families,
often twenty, to live together in village-houses as rude peoples often
do. In barbaric countries spacious houses are built with the roofs
carried on lofty posts with cross-timbers, or on solid wails of earth or
stones; in fact they are constructed on much the same principles as our
modern houses, though more rudely.
It does not seem difficult to make out how stone and brick architecture
came into use. Where wood is scarce, men readily take to building wails
of stones, turf, or earth. Thus the Australians are known to build
shelters by heaping up loose stones as a wall, and roofing with sticks
laid across. Rough stones, though they make good embankments and low
walls, would be too unsteady for high walls, except slaty and stratified
slabs which form natural building-stones. With mere stones out of the
ground dwellings would hardly be built of a higher kind than the curious
beehive-houses of the Hebrides, whose small rudely vaulted chambers are
formed by the piled stones overlapping inwards till they almost meet
above, and covered in with growing turf, so that they look like grassy
hillocks with passages for the dwellers to creep in. This primitive
building is very ancient, and though such houses are no longer made,
the old ones still serve as shealings in summer. The ancient Scotch
underground dwellings or “weems,” (_i.e._ caves) have chambers of rough
stones, and remind antiquaries of Tacitus’ account of the caves dug by
the ancient Germans and heaped over with dirt, where they stored their
grain and took refuge themselves from the cold, and in time of war from
the enemy. When the craft of the mason is brought in, buildings of a
higher order begin. The stones may at first be merely trimmed to fit
one another like the pieces of a mosaic, as in the so-called Cyclopean
stone-work of old Etruscan and Roman walls. But the world soon adopts a
higher way, not arranging the plan to suit the stones, but shaping the
stones to fit the work, especially using rectangular blocks of stone to
lay down in regular courses of masonry. In ancient Egypt, the masons
hewed and smoothed even granite and porphyry to a finish which is envied
by the architects of our own day, and the pyramids of Gizeh are as
wonderful for the fine masonry of their slopes, chambers, and passages,
as for their prodigious size. Our modern notion of a stone building is
that the blocks of stone are to be fixed together with a layer of mortar
to bind them, but in the old and beautiful architecture of Egypt and
Greece the faced stone blocks lie on one another, having no cement to
hold them, and needing none. Clamps of metal were used when required to
hold the stones together. Cement or mortar (so called from the mortar or
trough in which it was mixed) was also well known in the ancient world.
The Roman builders not only used the common lime-and-sand mortar, which
hardens by absorbing carbonic acid from the air, but they also knew how
by adding volcanic ash or pozzolana to make a water-resisting cement,
whence the name of “Roman cement” given to a composition used by our
masons. Mention has been already made of the practice of coating the
sides of the savage bough-hut with clay. The ancient people who built
their settlements on piles out in the Swiss lakes used to do this, as is
proved by bits of the clay coating which were accidentally baked when the
huts were burnt down, and fell into the water, where they may still be
found, showing the impressions of the long-perished reed cabins on which
the moist clay was plastered. We still have something of the kind in what
cottage-builders call “wattle and daub.” One also sees now and then in
an English country lane a cottage or cowhouse which is a relic of another
sort of primitive architecture, its walls being simply built of “cob”,
that is, clay mixed with straw. Such hut-walls of clay or mud are very
usual in dry climates such as Egypt, where they are cheaper and better
than timber. This being so, there is no difficulty in understanding how
sun-dried bricks came into use, these being simply convenient blocks
of the same mud or loam mixed with straw which was used to build the
cottage walls. These sun-dried bricks were used in the East from high
antiquity. Some of the Egyptian pyramids still standing are built of
them, and the pictures show how the clay was tempered and the large
bricks formed in wooden moulds much as in modern brickfields. With these
the architects of Nineveh built the palace walls ten or fifteen feet
thick, which were panelled with the slabs of sculptured alabaster. For
such sun-dried bricks, clay and water form a sufficient cement. Building
with mud-bricks, which indeed suits the climate well, goes on in these
countries as of old. They were used also in America, and to this day the
traveller in such districts as Mexico will often find himself lodged
in a house built of them. The sun-dried brick is there called _adobe_,
a word which is actually their ancient Egyptian name _tob_, which when
adopted into Arabic became with the article, _at-tob_, and thence was
adopted into Spanish as _adobe_. Baked bricks seem to have been a later
invention, easy enough to nations who baked earthen pots, but only wanted
in more rainy climates. Thus the Romans, whom mere mud-bricks would not
have suited, carried to great perfection the making of kiln-burnt bricks
and tiles.
For ordinary house-building, we now have recourse to the mason or
bricklayer to build the walls, and tiles or slates are an improvement on
the old thatch. But we so far keep to the old wooden architecture, that
the floors and the timbering of the roof are still wood-work. For tombs
and temples, however, built to last for ages, means were early wanted of
roofing over spaces with the bricks or stones themselves without trusting
to wooden beams. There are two modes of doing this, the false arch and
the real arch, which are both ancient. The false arch is an arrangement
which would occur to any builder, in fact it is what children make in
building with wooden bricks, when they set them overlapping more and
more till the top ones come near enough for one brick to cover the gap.
Passages and chambers roofed in like this with projecting blocks of
stone may be seen in the pyramids of Egypt, in ancient tombs of Greece
and Italy, in the ruined palaces of Central America; and thus are built
the domes of the Jain temples in India. It does not follow that the
architects were ignorant of the real arch; they may have objected to it
from its tendency to thrust the walls out. It is not known exactly how
and when the arch was invented, but the idea might present itself even in
roofing over doorways with rough stones. In the tombs of ancient Egypt
real arches are to be seen, constructed in mud-bricks, or later in stone,
by architects who quite understood the principle. Yet though the arch
was known in what we call ancient times, it was not at once accepted by
the world. It is remarkable that the Greek architects of the classic
period never took to it. It was left to the Romans, who applied it with
admirable skill, and from whose vaulted roofs, bridges, and domes, those
of the mediæval and modern world are derived.
In thus looking over the architecture of the world, we see that its
origins lie too far back for history to record its beginning and earliest
progress. Still there is reason to believe that, in architecture as in
other arts, man began with the simple and easy before he came on to the
complex and difficult. There are many signs of stone architecture having
grown out of an earlier wooden architecture. Thus on looking at the
Lykian tombs in the entrance-hall of the British Museum, it will be seen
that though they are of hewn stone, their forms are copied from wooden
beams and joists, so that the mason shows by his very patterns that he
has taken the place of an earlier carpenter. Even in the early stone-work
of Egypt, traces of wooden forms are to be seen. In India there are stone
buildings whose columns and architraves are not less plainly copied from
wooden posts, and horizontal beams resting on them. It is possible that
when men first took to setting up stone columns and supporting stone
blocks upon them, this idea may have come into their minds from the
wooden posts and beams they had been used to. But when it is said, as it
often has been, that the porticos of Greek temples are copies in stone of
older wooden structures, practical architects object that the Parthenon
is not really like carpenter’s work. Indeed it is known that the Greeks
did not invent their own column-architecture, but taking the idea of it
from what they saw in Egypt and other countries, carried it out according
to their own genius.
After dwellings, we come to examine clothing. It has first to be noticed
that some low tribes, especially in the tropical forests of South
America, have been found by travellers living quite naked. But even
among the rudest of our race, and in hot districts where clothing is
of least practical use, something is generally worn, either from ideas
of decency or for ornament. Where little or no clothing is worn, it is
common to paint the body. The Andaman islanders, who plaster themselves
with a mixture of lard and coloured earth, have a practical reason
for so doing, this coat of paint protecting their skin from heat and
mosquitos; but they go off into love of display when they proceed to draw
lines on the paint with their fingers, or when a dandy will colour one
side of his face red, and the other olive-green, and make an ornamental
border-line where the two colours meet down his chest and stomach. Among
the relics of the ancient cave-men of Europe are hollowed stones, which
were their primitive mortars for grinding the ochre and other colours for
painting themselves. Indeed, few habits mark the lower stages of human
life so well as the delight in body-patterns of bold spots and stripes
in striking colours, familiar to us in pictures of Australians dancing
at a corroboree, or Americans working themselves up to frenzy in the
scalp-dance. The primitive sign of mourning also makes its appearance
where savage mourners blacken (or whiten) themselves over. In the higher
civilization, faded beauties may still make a poor attempt to revive
youthful bloom with touches of red and white. But the ancient war-paint
is now looked down on as a sign of utter barbarism; so much so that the
ancient Britons, though a nation of considerable civilization, have been
treated by many historians as mere savages because they kept up this
rude practice, as Cæsar says, staining themselves blue with woad, and so
being of horrider aspect in war. Among ourselves the guise which was so
terrific in the Red Indian warrior has come down to make the circus-clown
a pattern of folly. It is very likely that his paint-striped face may
represent a fashion come down from the ancient times when paint was
worn by the barbarians of Europe, much as in Japan actors paint their
faces with bright streaks of red, doubtless keeping up what was once an
ordinary decoration. When the skin is tattooed, the chief purpose of
this is no doubt beauty, as where the New Zealander had himself covered
with patterns of curved lines such as he would adorn his club or his
canoe with; it was considered shameful for a woman not to have her mouth
tattooed, for people would say with disgust “she has red lips.” Tattooing
prevails as widely among the lower races of the world as painting, and
the fashionable designs range from a few blue lines on the face or
arms, up to the flower-patterns with which the skins of the Formosans
are covered like damask. Where the art is carried to perfection as in
Polynesia, the skin is punctured, and the charcoal-colour introduced,
by tapping rows of little prickers. But a rougher mode is common, as in
Australia or Africa, where gashes are made and wood-ashes rubbed in so
that the wound heals in a knob or a ridge. Marks on the skin often serve
other purposes than ornament, as in Africa, where a long scar on a man’s
thigh may mean that he has done valiantly in battle, or the tribe or
nation a negro belongs to may be indicated by his mark, for instance, a
pair of long cuts down both cheeks, or a row of raised pimples down his
forehead to the tip of his nose. Higher up in civilization, tattooing
still lasts on, as where Arab women will slightly touch up their faces,
arms, or ankles with the needle, and our sailors amuse themselves with
having an anchor or a ship in full sail done with gunpowder on their
arms, but in this last case the original purpose is lost, for the picture
is hidden under the sleeve. Naturally, as clothing comes more and more to
cover the body, the primitive skin-decorations cease, for what is the use
of adorning oneself out of sight?
The head is frequently cropped or shaved close as a sign of mourning.
Some tribes thus go bald always, like the Andaman islanders; or let the
hair grow in tonsure-fashion in a ring round the shaved crown, like the
Coroado (that is, “crowned”) Indians of Brazil; or wear a shaven head
with a long scalp-lock or pigtail like the North American Indians, or the
Manchus of Tartary, from whom the modern Chinese have adopted this habit.
A curious mode of twisting the hair with strips of bark into hundreds of
long thin ringlets is seen in the portraits of natives of Lepers’ Island,
Fig. 66.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.—Natives of Lepers’ Island (New Hebrides.)]
Various tribes grind their front teeth to points, or cut them away in
angular patterns, so that in Africa and elsewhere a man’s tribe is often
known by the cut of his teeth. Long finger-nails are noticed even among
ourselves as showing that the owner does no manual labour, and in China
and neighbouring countries they are allowed to grow to a monstrous length
as a symbol of nobility, ladies wearing silver cases to protect them, or
at least as a pretence that they are there (see the portraits of Siamese
actresses in royal dress, Fig. 32). Or the nails may be let to grow as a
sign that the wearer leads a religious life, and does no worldly work, as
in the accompanying figure of the hand of a Chinese ascetic, Fig. 67.
As any nation’s idea of beauty is apt to be according to the type of
their own race, they like to see their distinctive features exaggerated.
Looking at a Hottentot face, Fig. 12 _c_, one understands why the mothers
would squeeze the babies’ snub noses yet further in, while in ancient
times a little Persian prince would have a bold aquiline nose shaped
for him, to come like Fig. 11 _b_. In all quarters of the globe is
found the custom of compressing infants’ heads by bandages and pads to
make the little plastic skull grow to an approved shape. But as to what
that shape ought to be, tastes differ extremely. In the Columbia River
district, some Flathead tribes will so flatten out the forehead that
their front faces look like a pear with the large end uppermost, while
neighbouring tribes press in the upper part of the skull so that their
faces look like the pear with the small end up. Hippokrates, the ancient
physician, mentions the artificially deformed skulls of the Makrokephali
or “long-heads” of the Black Sea district. The genuine Turkish skull is
of the broad Tatar form, while the nations of Greece and Asia Minor have
oval skulls, which gives the reason why at Constantinople it became the
fashion to mould the babies’ skulls round, so that they grew up with the
broad head of the conquering race. Relics of such barbarism linger on in
the midst of civilization, and not long ago a French physician surprised
the world by the fact that nurses in Normandy were still giving the
children’s heads a sugar-loaf shape by bandages and a tight cap, while in
Brittany they preferred to press it round. No doubt they are doing so to
this day.
[Illustration: FIG. 67.—Hand of Chinese ascetic.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.—Botocudo woman with lip- and ear-ornaments.]
The propensity to beautify the body with ornaments belongs to human
nature as low down as we can follow it. In South America the naked
people were adorned with rings on legs and arms, and one tribe had as
their only apparel a macaw’s feather stuck in a hole at each corner of
their mouths, and strings of shells hanging from their noses, ears, and
under-lips. This latter case is a good example of the ornaments being
fastened into the body, which is pierced or cut to receive them. Various
tribes wear labrets or lip-ornaments, some gradually enlarging the hole
through the under-lip till it will take a wooden plug two or three inches
across, as in the portrait (Fig. 68) of a woman of the Botocudos, a
Brazilian tribe who owe their name to this labret, which the Portuguese
compared to a _botoque_ or bung. Ear-ornaments, as the figure shows,
are put in the same way in the lobe of the ear, which they stretch so
that when the disc of wood is taken out it falls in a loop and even
reaches the shoulder. Thus it is possible that there may be some truth
in the favourite wonder-tale of the old geographers, about the tribes
whose great ears reached down to their shoulders, though the story had
to be stretched a good deal farther when it was declared that they lay
down on one ear and covered themselves with the other for a blanket.
The great interest to us in these savage ornaments is in the tendency
of higher civilization to give them up. In Persia one still finds the
nose-ring through one side of a woman’s nostril, but European taste would
be shocked by this, though it allows the ear to be pierced to carry
an ear-ring. As to ornaments which are merely put on, they are mostly
feathers, flowers, or trinkets worn in the hair, or strung-ornaments or
rings on the neck, arms, and legs. In what remote times man had begun to
take pleasure in such decorations may be seen by the periwinkle-shells
bored for stringing found in the cave of Cro-Magnon, which no doubt made
necklaces and bracelets for the girls of the mammoth-period. In the
modern world necklaces and bracelets remain in unchanged use, though
anklets, such as the bangles of the Hindu dancing-girl, have of course
disappeared from the costume of civilized wearers of shoes and stockings.
It would not suit our customs to keep an affectionate memory of dead
relatives by wearing their finger and toe bones strung as beads, as the
Andaman women do, but our ladies keep in fashion barbaric necklaces of
such things as shells, seeds, tigers’ claws, and especially polished
stones. The wearing of shining stones as ornaments lasts on, whether
they have come to be precious pearls or rubies, or glass beads which
are imitation stones. Where metal becomes known it at once comes into
use for ornament, and this reaches its height where amused travellers
describe some Dayak girl with her arms sheathed in a coil of stout
brass wire, or some African belle whose great copper rings on her limbs
get so hot in the sun that an attendant carries a water-pot to sluice
them down now and then. To see gold jewelry of the highest order, the
student should examine that of the ancients, such as the Egyptian,
Greek, and Etruscan in the British Museum, and that of mediæval Europe.
The art seems now to have passed its prime, and become a manufacture,
of which the best products are imitations from the antique. The cutting
of precious stones such as diamonds into facets is, however, a modern
art. As to finger-rings, if their use arose out of the signet-rings of
Egypt and Babylon, then the few which are still engraved as seals keep up
the original idea, while those which only carry pearls or diamonds have
turned into mere ornaments.
To come now to clothing proper. The man who wants a garment gets it in
the simplest way when he takes the covering off a tree or a beast, and
puts it on himself. The bark of trees provides clothes for rude races
in many districts, as for instance in the curious use which natives
of the Brazilian forests have long made of the so-called “shirt-tree”
(lecythis). A man cuts a four or five feet length of the trunk, or a
large branch, and gets the bark off in an entire tube, which he has
then only to soak and beat soft and to cut slits for armholes, to be
able to slip it on as a ready-made shirt; or a short length will make a
woman’s skirt. The wearing of bark has sometimes been kept up as a sign
of primitive simplicity. Thus in India it is written in the laws of Manu
that when the grey-haired Brahman retires into the forest to end his days
in religious meditation, he shall wear a skin or a garment of bark. A
ruder people, the Kayans of Borneo, while in common life they like the
smart foreign stuffs of the trader, when they go into mourning throw them
off and return to the rude native garment of bark-cloth. In Polynesia the
manufacture of _tapa_ from the bark of the paper-mulberry was carried to
great perfection, the women beating it out with grooved clubs into a sort
of vegetable felt, and ornamenting it with coloured patterns stamped
on. The people were delighted with the white paper of the Europeans,
and dressed themselves in it as a fine variety of tapa, till they found
that the first shower of rain spoilt it. Leaves, also, are made into
aprons or skirts which clothe various rude tribes. Not only are there
“leaf-wearers” in India, but at a yearly festival in Madras the whole
low-caste population cast off their ordinary clothing, and put on aprons
of leafy twigs.
The skin garments worn by the savages of the ancient world have rotted
away these many thousand years, but we may see how generally they used to
be worn, by the vast numbers of skin-dressing implements of sharp stone
(see Fig. 54, _c_), found in the ground. Till lately the Patagonians,
when they came on their journeys to a place where suitable flint or
obsidian was to be found, would load themselves with a supply of lumps
to chip into these primitive currier’s scrapers. Savages, that their fur
robes or deer-skin shirts should not dry stiff, know how to dress the
leather skilfully by such processes as rubbing in fat or marrow, and
suppling with the hands; they also smoke it, to keep. Thus the North
Americans know how to prepare deer-skin for garments into something like
what we call chamois leather. But it hardly seems as though the lower
races had taught themselves the process of actual tanning with bark or
galls, where the tannic acid forms in the substance of the skin insoluble
compounds which resist change for ages, so that the beautiful cut and
embossed work in tanned leather from ancient Egypt may still be seen
perfectly preserved in our museums. In such riding countries as Mexico,
suits of leather are still worn, while in Europe the buff jerkin and
the huntsman’s buckskins are disappearing; but it is still everywhere
acknowledged that there is nothing like leather for covering the feet. In
wearing furs, our height of luxury keeps curiously close to the savage
fashion of the primitive world.
Plaiting and matting are arts of such simplicity that they are known to
savages. In hot countries matting is convenient for dress, as when South
Sea Islanders make gowns of plaited grass, and the old art still provides
the civilized world with hats and bonnets of straw or chip. Next, if we
pull a scrap of woven cloth to pieces, we see that it is in fact a piece
of matting done with thread. Therefore, to understand weaving, we have to
begin with the making of string or thread. All mankind can twist string,
but some tribes do it in a far lower way than we are accustomed to. They
take vegetable fibre, wool or hair, and twist it by rolling between their
flat palms, or with one hand on the thigh. It is quite worth the reader’s
while to try to imitate this process, by twisting two strands of tow,
and then rolling these into one with the reverse movement. At any rate
he will find how much practice he would take to do it as cleverly as
the Australians when they have the women’s hair cut to furnish a supply
of fishing-lines, or the New Zealanders when they run out a handful
of native flax by inches into a neat and perfect cord. But the higher
nations use a mechanical contrivance, the spindle, for thread-making,
and the question is how this came to be invented. Fig. 69 shows what may
have happened. At _a_ is figured a cross-stick, forming a simple reel or
winder, on which the Australians wind their hair-string just mentioned.
Now if it had occurred to one of these savages to secure his thread by
drawing it into a split at the end of the stick, he might have seen that
by giving the hanging reel a twirl he could make it twist a new strand
for him much faster than he could do between his hands. The Australian
never saw how to do this. But looking at _b_ in the figure, which
represents an ancient Egyptian woman spinning, it is evident that such a
spindle as she is working with may have been invented by turning a mere
reel to this new use. Such spindles were known over the ancient civilized
world, and among the commonest objects dug up near old dwellings are the
spindle-whorls of stone or terra-cotta, like great buttons, which with
a stick through the middle formed the whole simple implement. Spindles
may still be seen in the hands of peasant women in Italy or Switzerland.
The spinning-wheel of the middle ages was a little machine to drive a
spindle, and the spinning-frames in factories show the ancient instrument
worked with still more modern improvements, a hundred spindles in a row
being driven rapidly by steam-power, and all tended by a single operative.
[Illustration: FIG. 69.—_a_, Australian winder for hand-twisted cord;
_b_, Egyptian woman spinning with the spindle.]
[Illustration: FIG. 70.—Girl weaving. (From an Aztec picture.)]
The next point is how people provided with thread or yarn taught
themselves to weave it into cloth. As has just been said, cloth is a sort
of matting made with threads, but as these cannot be held stiff like
rushes, a number of them may be stretched in a frame to form a warp,
and then the cross-thread or woof worked in and out with the fingers,
or on a stick, as the Mexican girl is doing in Fig. 70. This toilsome
method still suits the difficult patterns of the tapestry-weaver. But
time-saving contrivances were invented very early. The ancient Egyptian
pictures already show the alternate threads of the warp being lifted by
cross-bars, so as to allow the woof-thread carried by a shuttle to be
sent right across the piece of cloth at one throw. The looms of classic
Greece and Rome were much the same, and little improvement was made in
the machine during the middle ages. Indeed in out-of-the-way places such
as the Hebrides, the tourist may still see the old cottage-loom which,
except in being horizontal so that the weaver sits to it instead of
standing, hardly differs from the loom at which Penelope may be imagined
weaving the famous shroud that she undid at night. Only about a century
ago improvement began again, when the “flying shuttle” was invented,
which instead of being thrown by hand, was driven swiftly across by a
pair of levers or artificial arms. Of late years this improved loom has
passed into the power-loom, the steam-engine now doing the hard labour
instead of the weaver’s hands and feet. The ingenious device of the
Jacquard loom with its perforated cards arranging the threads, has made
it possible to weave even landscapes and portraits.
The primitive _tailor_ or “cutter” (_tailleur_) had not only to cut his
skin or bark into shape, but to join pieces by means of sinew or thread.
This art of sewing makes its appearance among savages, and is seen in
its rudest form among the Fuegians who pierce their guanaco-skins with
a pointed bone, push the thread through, and make a tie at each hole.
Among tribes who have only such bone awls, or stiff thorns, to work
with, sewing cannot get beyond the shoemaker’s fashion of first making a
row of holes and then pushing and pulling the thread through. But bone
needles with eyes are found in the reindeer-caves of France, so that
possibly the seamstresses of the mammoth-period may already have known
how to stitch and embroider their soft skins. When the metal-period
began, bronze needles came into use such as are to be seen in museums,
and in modern times the fine steel needles have become an example how
finish and cheapness may be gained by division of labour, one set of
workpeople being entirely occupied in grinding the points, another in
drilling the eyes, and so on. But the sewing-needle is still in principle
that of the ancient world, and hand-sewing, after holding its place for
thousands of years, has suddenly had to compete with the work of the
new sewing-machine, which runs its more rapid seams in a mechanically
different way.
Next, as to the shape of garments. If we knew of no costume but what we
commonly wear now, we might think it more a product of mere fancy than it
really is. But on looking carefully at the dresses of various nations,
it is seen that most garments are variations of a few principal kinds,
each made for a particular purpose in clothing the body. The simplest
and no doubt earliest garments are wraps wound or hung on the body, and
by noticing how these are worn it may be guessed how they led to the
later use of garments fitted to the wearer’s shape. To begin with the
simplest mantles, a skin or blanket with a hole through the middle forms
a ready-made garment of the poncho kind. When one throws a rug or blanket
over one’s shoulders, it becomes a garment which requires fastening in
front, or on one shoulder, to leave the arm free. This fastening may be
done with a thorn or bone pin, the primitive _brooch_, that is, “skewer”
(French _broche_); we now use the word brooch to mean the more civilized
metal pin with a safety-clasp, the Latin _fibula_ or “fixer.” Now if
one stands thus draped in a blanket or sheet, one has only to raise the
arms to show how naturally sleeves came to be made by sewing together
under the arms. Next, putting the blanket over the head and holding it
under the chin, it is seen how the part over the head will make a hood,
which can be thrown back when not wanted. When it was found convenient
to make the hood separate, there arose various kinds of head-covering,
whose baggy shape often shows their origin, for instance the pointed
“fool’s-cap.” When the mantle thrown over the shoulders is short, it
forms the _cape_ or _cope_; when long, it becomes the _cloak_, which owes
its name to its likeness to a bell (French _cloche_). For convenience,
many varieties of the mantle are cut into shape, as for instance the toga
in which the ancient Roman draped himself was rounded off. But ever since
the invention of weaving, certain garments have been worn just as they
came from the loom, such as the Scotch plaid, and that ancient Eastern
wrapper which we still know by its Persian name of _shawl_ (_shâl_). Such
woven garments are apt to keep a mark of their origin in the fringe,
which in its original form is the ends of the warp-threads left on by
the weaver, and when these threads are tied together in bundles they give
rise to tassels. Another great group of garments are tunics, seen in a
simple form in the chiton of ancient Greek female dress, which has been
compared to a linen sack open at both ends, and was held up by a brooch
on each shoulder, leaving openings for the arms. The tunic, closed at
the shoulders and generally provided with sleeves, is the most universal
of civilized garments, whether worn hanging loose like a shirt, or drawn
in at the waist by a girdle or belt. In its various forms it is seen as
the tunic of the Roman legionary and the “red shirt” of the Garibaldian
volunteer, the coat of the mediæval noble, the smock-frock of the English
peasant, the blouse of the French workman, and lastly, it led to our
modern coats and waistcoats, which are tunics made to open in front and
close with buttons. One of the great steps in personal cleanliness and
therefore in culture made by our forefathers, was the adoption of a linen
tunic next the skin, the “short” garment, or _shirt_. Again, a piece of
cloth wrapped round the body and held up by a girdle forms the skirt or
kilt, and the way in which Eastern women fasten their skirts together
between the feet for convenience of walking, shows how trousers were
invented. Many ancient nations wore trousers, as the Sarmatians, whose
modern-looking costume may be seen on Trajan’s column, and the Gauls and
Britons, so that it is a mistake to call the present Highland costume the
“garb of old Gaul.” The classic Greeks and Romans looked on the _braccæ_
or _breeches_ as belonging to barbarism, but their opinion has not been
accepted by the civilized world.
These remarks may lead readers to look attentively into books of costume,
which indeed are full of curious illustrations of the way in which
things are not invented outright by mere fancy, but come by gradual
alterations of what was already there. To account for our present absurd
“chimney-pot” hat, we must see how it came by successive changes from the
conical Puritan hat and the slouched Stuart hat, and these again from
earlier forms. The sense of the hat-band must be found in its once having
been a real cord to draw in the mere round piece of felt which was the
primitive hat; and to understand why our hat is covered with silk nap, it
must be remembered that this is an imitation of the earlier beaver-fur
hat, which would stand rain. Even the now useless seams and buttons on
modern clothes (see page 15) are bits of past history.
This chapter may be concluded with an account of boats and ships. He who
first, laying hold of a floating bough, found it would bear him up in the
water, had made a beginning in navigation. Naturally, history has kept
no record of the origin of such an art. Yet the rudest forms of floats,
rafts, and boats, may still be seen in use among savages, and even the
civilized traveller coming to a stream or lake may be glad to make shift
with a log or a bundle of bulrushes to help him across, and carry his
gun and clothes over dry. Comparing these rough-and-ready means with the
contrivances made with skill and care for permanent use, a fair idea may
be had of the stages through which the shipwrights’ art grew up.
The mere float comes lowest, as where a South Sea Island child goes
into the water with an unhusked coco-nut to hold on by; or a Hottentot
will swim his goats across the river, supporting his body by sprawling
on one end of a drift-log of willow, which he calls his “wooden-horse.”
Australians have been known to come out to our ships sitting astride
logs pointed at the ends, and paddling with their hands, while native
fishermen of California will sit on a bundle of rushes tied up in the
shape of a sailor’s hammock. Rude as these are, they at any rate show
that the makers have noticed the advantage which the craft with a sharp
bow has over the blunt-ended log in getting through the water. In all
quarters of the globe, men improve on the float by making it hollow for
buoyancy; it thus becomes a boat. One way of doing this is to scoop out
a log. Any one who happens to have been up country in America may have
paddled himself in such a “dug-out” across a pond or river; and after
experience of the care required to keep a cylinder from rolling over in
the water, he will know how great an improvement it was in boat-building
when a keel was put on to steady the craft. To savages with their stone
hatchets, the hollowing out of a log is a laborious business when the
wood is of a hard kind, and they are apt to use fire to help them,
setting the tree-trunk alight along the proper line and hacking away
the burning wood. Columbus was struck with the size of such vessels
made by the natives of the West Indies, mentioning in his letters many
canoes of solid wood, “multas scaphas solidi ligni,” some so large as
to hold seventy to eighty rowers. The Spaniards adopted their Haitian
name _canoa_, whence our _canoe_. Yet this _dug-out_, or _monoxyle_
(“one-tree”), to use its Greek name, was well known in other barbaric
countries, and had been common in Europe in ages before history, as may
be seen by the specimens in museums, preserved by the peat or sand in
which they were found imbedded. Even the Latin word _scapha_, used above,
carries the record of this early boat-building; it is Greek _skaphē_,
which corresponds so exactly in meaning to the term “dug-out,” as to be
an evident relic of the time when boats were really scooped out of solid
trunks; related to these words are English _skiff_ and _ship_, so that
the line of connexion in names runs through from first to last. Another
very simple way of making a boat is that seen among the Australians,
where a man will strip a sheet of bark off the stringy-bark tree, tie
it together at the ends, and paddle off in this improvised bark-canoe.
If, however, it is to be used more than once, he sews the ends together,
and puts in stretchers or cross-pieces of wood to keep it in shape. Thus
appears the bark-canoe, not unknown in Asia and Africa, and attaining
in North America its greatest perfection, with its framework of cedar
and sheathing of sheets of birch-bark sewed together with fibrous
cedar-roots. Such canoes are still in full use in districts like the
Hudson’s Bay territory, being well suited to a broken navigation where
rapids make it needful to carry boat and cargo overland, or a “portage”
has to be made from one river to another. The principle of skin-canoes
is much the same, using hide for bark. North American Indians crossing
rivers have been known to turn the skins of their tents into vessels by
means of a few twigs to keep them stretched. Scarcely above this are
the round skin-covered boats of boughs of Mesopotamia, and the portable
coracles of the ancient Britons; on the Severn and the Shannon fishermen
still go down to the river carrying on their backs their coracles, now
made of tarred canvas on a frame, but modelled on the ancient type. The
Esquimaux kayak has its framework of bone or drift-wood on which are
stretched the seal-skins which convert it into a water-tight life-buoy,
in which the skin-clad paddler can even turn over sideways and bring
his boat up right on the other side. Our modern so-called canoes are
imitations of this in wood.
Next, when the barbaric shipwright comes to improving a dug-out canoe
by sewing or lacing on a strip of thin board as a gunwale, or making
his whole boat by sewing thin boards together over the ribs, instead
of skins or sheets of bark, he brings his vessel a stage nearer to our
boats. From Africa across to the Malay Archipelago, such sewn ships used
to be, and often still are, the ordinary native craft. The South Sea
Island canoes, thus laced together with sinnet or coco-nut fibre braid so
neatly that the joints hardly show, are marvels of barbaric carpentry.
In the gulf of Oman, men used to go across to the coco-nut islands with
their tools, cut down a few palms, make the wood into planks, sew these
together with cord made from the bark, make sails of the leaves, load the
new-made ships with the nuts, and set sail.
Before coming to the ships of civilized nations, let us look back for a
moment to the ruder floats. Two or three logs fastened together form a
raft, which though clumsy to move has the advantage of not upsetting,
and carrying a heavy load. At the time of the discovery of Peru, the
Spaniards were amazed to meet with a native raft out in the ocean, and
with a sail set. The rafts which bring goods down the Euphrates and
Tigris are buoyed with blown sheepskins; at the end of the voyage the
raft is broken up and the wood sold, so that only the empty skins have
to go back to serve another time. With still more perfect economy, the
rafts down the Nile are buoyed with earthen pots for sale in the bazar,
so that nothing goes back. Timber-rafts, like those on the Rhine, are
well arranged for merely floating down stream. But when a raft has to be
driven through the water by oars or sails, its resistance is excessive,
and it has occurred to the Fijians and other islanders that a raft
formed by two parallel logs united by cross-poles and carrying a raised
platform, would go more easily. Looking at this simple contrivance,
it has been reasonably thought that it led up to the invention of the
outrigger canoe, known in ancient Europe, and now prevailing in the
Pacific and as far as Ceylon. One of the two logs is now represented by
the canoe, the second remaining as the outrigger log, fastened to the
ends of the two projecting poles, so as to steady the whole in rough
weather. Or indeed the two logs may both become canoes, and the platform
be retained; thus we have the Polynesian double-canoe, whose principle
has been lately turned to account in the double-steamboat to smooth the
passage between Dover and Calais.
Next, as to the ways by which boats are propelled through the water.
The origin of rowing is plainly shown by the Australian straddling his
pointed log and paddling with his hands, or by the fisherman of the Upper
Nile propelling with his feet the bundle of stalks he sits astride on.
The primitive wooden paddle, imitating the form and doing the work of the
flat hand or foot, is well known to savages, who mostly use the single
paddle with a blade or shovel end; the double-ended paddle, such as our
canoeists have borrowed from the Esquimaux, is a peculiar improved form.
The paddle used free-handed to dig or sweep at the water, is best suited
to the narrow bark-canoe or hollowed trunk, but for larger craft it is
a rude contrivance as compared with the civilized oar, which is a lever
pulled against a fulcrum so as to use more of the rower’s force, and in
a steadier pull. The difference between barbaric and civilized knowledge
of mechanical principles, is well seen by comparing a large South Sea
Island canoe with twenty paddlers shovelling the water, to one of our
eight-oared launches. Of sails, perhaps the simplest idea is to be seen
in Catlin’s sketch of North American Indians standing up each in his
canoe, holding up his blanket with outstretched arms with its lower end
tied to his leg, and so going before the wind. The rudest regular sail
used anywhere is a mat or cloth held up by two sticks as stays at the
upper corners and made fast below, or supported by an upright pole and
cross-piece, the primitive mast and yard. It is so common for the lower
tribes of men never to sail their boats, that it is difficult to imagine
that their ancestors ever knew how. Surely they would have kept it up,
for the art of saving so much labour with so little pains would not
easily have fallen out of mind. It seems more likely that the invention
of the sailing vessel belongs to a period when civilization was far
advanced. Yet this period was very ancient.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.—Ancient Nile-boat, from wall-painting, Thebes.]
Up to this point, in making out how the simpler kinds of boats came into
existence, history gives no help. Not only does their origin mostly
lie beyond record, but by the time we come fairly into history we find
the ancient nations knowing how to build vessels of more advanced
order, framed with keel and ribs, and sheathed with nailed planks, in
fact the direct predecessors of our own ships. Egypt, or somewhere
else in that Old World region of ancient culture, may have been the
original centre whence the higher shipwrights’ craft spread over the
world. It is instructive to study the ancient Egyptian vessel (Fig. 71)
depicted on the wall of a Theban tomb, and to see how far it already
has in a rudimentary state the parts which we recognise as belonging
to the fully-developed ship. As was common, it was a combination of
rowing-galley and sailing-ship. The rowers sit on cross benches, pulling
at the oars which pass through loops, while at the stern is worked the
great steering-oar which is the ancestor of our _rudder_ (this used to be
merely an oar, which its name originally meant, like _ruder_ in German).
There is a mast held up by stays and carrying yards, with ropes rigged
to hoist them and to furl the sail. The forecastle and poop are already
represented by raised structures on the deck. In the Egyptian pictures of
war-ships it is seen how these served as stations for the archers, while
the fighting-men were also protected behind a bulwark, and there is even
the “crow’s nest” on the top of the mast serving as a place for slingers
to hurl stones from at the enemy, from which comes our “mast-head.”
Comparing with the Egyptian vessels the ancient galleys and ships of the
Mediterranean, whether Phœnician, Greek, or Roman, it is impossible to
think these can have come into existence by separate lines of invention;
the family likeness among them is too strong. Even farther off, the
likeness of the craft still used in the Ganges to the ancient Nile-boats
is surprising, and the eye of Osiris painted on the Egyptian funeral
bark that carried the dead across the lake to the western burial-place,
may perhaps have first suggested the painting of eyes as ornaments on
the bows of boats, from the barks in Valetta harbour in the west to the
junks of Canton in the east. In following the course of development
from the ancient to the modern ship, we notice that from time to time
new appliances come in, as metal sheathing to protect the planks from
the boring teredo, the iron fluked anchor instead of a great stone,
the capstan for hauling, &c. More masts and spars now served to carry
more sails, and tier above tier of rowers impelled the classic bireme
and trireme. The war-galley lasted on into our own time in the Venetian
navy, kept in use in spite of its bad sea-going quality, for its power
of dashing upon sailing-vessels helpless in a calm. The galley-slaves
who laboured at the huge oars were captives or criminals, and though
the French galleys no longer remain for penal servitude, the term
_galérien_ or galley-slave still means a convict. The vast improvement of
European sailing-vessels in the middle ages is in great measure due to
an invention learnt from the far east—the mariner’s compass. Ships, now
able to steer their courses on long voyages out of sight of land, were
improved in build and rigging, while the men-of-war with several decks
armed with tiers of cannon became floating castles. Lastly, during the
present century, steam-power has been applied to propel the ship from
within, the paddle-wheel or screw in fact taking the place of the old
banks of oars, and the changeable wind-power being now only turned to
account as an occasional aid and means of saving fuel. It is needless to
describe the changes which modern armour-plating and huge guns have made
in the construction of ships of war, but even these still show plainly
enough how they were formed by successive alterations from the primitive
canoe.
CHAPTER XI.
ARTS OF LIFE—(_concluded_).
Fire, 260—Cookery, 264—Bread, &c., 266—Liquors, 268—Fuel,
270—Lighting, 272—Vessels, 274—Pottery, 274—Glass, 276—Metals,
277—Bronze and Iron Ages, 278—Barter, 281—Money, 282—Commerce,
285.
The subject next to be considered is Fire and its uses. Man understands
fire and deals with it in ways quite beyond the intelligence of the
lower animals. There is an old story how, in the forests of equatorial
Africa, when travellers had gone away in the morning and left their fires
burning, the huge manlike apes called pongos (probably our gorillas)
would come and sit round the burning logs till they went out, not having
the sagacity to lay more wood on. This story is often repeated to
contrast human intelligence with the dulness of even the highest apes.
Of course there had been forest-fires in ages before man, as when the
trees had been set in flames by lightning or by a lava stream. But of all
creatures man alone has known how to manage fire, to carry it from place
to place with burning brands, and when it went out to produce it afresh.
No savage tribe seems really to have been found so low as to be without
fire. In the limestone caverns, among the relics of the mammoth period,
morsels of charcoal and burnt bones are found imbedded, which show that
even in that remote antiquity the rude cave-men made fires to cook their
food and warm themselves by.
As to the art of producing fire, the savage way was mostly by the
friction of two pieces of wood, and to this day travellers may now and
then see the simple apparatus at work. The hand fire-drill consists of
a stick like an arrow-shaft cut to a blunt point, which is twirled like
a chocolate-muller between the hands (shifted up when they get too far
down) with such speed and pressure as to bore a hole into an under-piece
of wood, till the charred dust made by the boring takes fire. Fig. 72
shows a Bushman thus drilling fire while his companion attends to the
tinder. The Polynesian way is different, pushing the pointed stick along
a groove of its own making in the under-piece of wood. Either method
will make fire in a few minutes, but knack and proper choice of wood
are needed, and one of us will hardly succeed. For easier working, some
nations have long had a mechanical improvement on the simple savage
fire-drill, by driving it with a thong wound a couple of turns round the
stick, and pulled to and fro; also, working it with a bow like the common
bow-drill of our tool-shops is not unknown. In either case a top-piece is
required to keep the drill down (not too hard) on its bearing.
Among civilized nations, the old fire-drill had already in ancient times
been superseded in common use by better contrivances, especially the
flint and steel. But although discarded from practical life, it has been
kept up for ceremonial purposes. As has been already mentioned, (p. 16)
the Brahmans may be still seen “churning” with a fire-drill driven by a
hair-cord the pure divine fire for their sacrifices, thus religiously
keeping to the old-fashioned instrument used in daily life by the early
Aryans. The ancient Romans had such a survival of their past state of
arts in the law that if the vestal virgins let out the sacred fire, it
was to be made afresh by drilling into a wooden board. The old art has
even lasted on in Europe to our own day as the orthodox means of kindling
the “need-fire” with which, when there was a murrain, the peasants in
many parts used to light bonfires to drive the horses and cattle through,
to save them from the pestilence. This rite, inherited from the religion
of præ-Christian times, requires new wild-fire made by friction, not the
tame fire of the hearth. The last need-fire on record in Great Britain is
perhaps one that was made in Perth in 1826, but they may still be seen
in Sweden and elsewhere when there is cholera or other pestilence about.
In the last century there was a law passed forbidding the superstitious
friction-fire in Jönköping, the very district now famous for its cheap
_tandstickor_ or tinder-sticks, that is, lucifer-matches. So curiously do
the extremes of civilization come together in the world.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.—Bushman drilling fire (after Chapman).]
The fire-drill is a means of converting mechanical force into heat till
the burning-point of wood is reached. But all that is really wanted
is a glowing hot particle or spark, and this can be far more easily
got in other ways. Breaking a nodule of iron pyrites picked up on the
sea-shore, and with a bit of flint striking sparks from it on tinder, is
a way of fire-making quite superior to the use of the wooden drill. It
was known to some modern savages, even the miserable natives of Tierra
del Fuego; to the præhistoric men of Europe, as appears from the bits
of pyrites found in their caves; and of course to the old civilized
world, as witness the Greek name of the mineral, _puritēs_ or “fiery.”
Substitute for this a piece of iron, and we have the flint-and-steel,
the ordinary apparatus of nations from their entry into the iron age
till modern times. Yet even this has now been so discarded that the
old-fashioned kitchen tinder-box with its flint and U-shaped steel, and
damper for preparing the tinder from scraps of burnt linen to light
the brimstone-match with, has become a curiosity worth securing when
found by chance in some farmhouse. Mention need hardly be made here
of the burning-lens and the concave mirror known in ancient Greece,
nor of the wooden condensing syringe (much like that described in
our books on physics) known in the Chinese region; these are rather
curious than practically important. Quite otherwise with the invention
of the lucifer-match, dating from about 1840. Its action depends on
phosphorus igniting by being rubbed, the head of an ordinary lucifer
being of an inflammable composition, containing chlorate or nitrate of
potash, which is fired by particles of phosphorus mixed in with it; for
the safety-match, these particles of phosphorus are put, not in the
match-head, but on the rubber instead.
In the low levels of civilization the hut is often so small that the
fire has to be made outside. But when it becomes spacious enough,
the fire of logs burns on the hard-trodden earth in the middle of the
hut, the smoke finding its way out as it can by door and cracks. Those
who have chanced to spend a night lying on the ground with their feet
to the fire in such a dwelling, know both what place the fire has in
barbaric comfort, and how that comfort was increased when builders took
the trouble to make a smoke-hole in the roof, and afterwards came to a
real chimney. The history of artificial warming from this point lies so
plainly before us as not to need a long description. From the fire of a
few sticks on the cottage hearth, we come to the wide fire-places in the
halls of country houses, with their fire-dogs, after the fashion of the
middle ages. Then come the coal fires in open grates, the closed stoves,
and the arrangements for warming the house with currents of hot air, or
circulating pipes of hot water.
From house-warming we come to cookery. The heat applied in cooking
food, bursting the cells and softening the tissues so as to make it
easier to chew, is an important aid to digestion, saving energy which
would be wasted on assimilating raw flesh or vegetables. It would not
indeed be impossible for man to live on uncooked food, and perhaps the
nearest approach to this is found on some coral islands of the Pacific,
where raw fish and coco-nuts form a great part of the native diet. Low
tribes, especially half-starved wanderers of the deserts, such as the
Australians, eat insects, grubs, shellfish, and small reptiles, raw as
they find them; and Brazilian forest-men have been seen to imitate the
ant-bear by poking a stick into an ant-hill, and letting the ants run up
it into their mouths. These practices shock Europeans, who themselves
however have no scruples as to oysters and cheese-mites, to which they
happen to be accustomed. But these rude tribes know how to cook, as
indeed all mankind do, the familiar definition of man as the “cooking
animal” having no proved exception, ancient or modern. Civilized nations
have come so thoroughly to this way of assisting nature, that they cook
almost everything they eat, only keeping up primitive habits in eating
nuts, berries, and other fruit raw as more pleasing to the taste. It has
long been looked on as a sign of low culture to eat raw meat, like the
Eurytanes of the interior of Greece whom Thukydides mentions as “most
ignorant in their speech, and said to be raw-eaters (_ömophagoi_).” Even
the native tribes of New England were struck with this habit among the
roving race of the far north, whom they called accordingly _Eskimantsic_
or “raw-flesh-eaters,” a name they still bear in its French form
_Esquimaux_.
The roughest ways of cooking are to be seen among savages, who broil
their meat on the burning logs, or roast it stuck on the primitive spit,
a pointed stake planted sloping over the fire, or bury it in the hot
embers as boys do chestnuts or potatoes. From this latter mode comes the
invention of the oven, which in its simplest form may be a hollow tree
set on fire and smouldering inside, or a pit dug in the ground and heated
by a wood-fire, often with red-hot stones put in to help the baking.
Brazilian tribes set up four posts with a grating of branches across, on
which they laid their game and fish with a slow fire underneath. Meat
prepared on such a _boucan_ will keep a long while; the pirates of the
West Indies used thus to prepare their stores of meat, whence comes the
word _bucaneer_. To the buffalo-hunting tribes of North America belongs
the invention of _pemmican_, meat dried and pounded for keeping, while
in many parts of the world people know how to dry sheets or strips of
meat in the hot sun; this is called _jerked_ meat, and will keep. The
use of hot stones in baking has just been mentioned. From this the
important art of boiling food may have been derived. In many parts of
the world, among tribes who do not know how to make an earthen pot,
there is found the curious art of stone-boiling, which is a sort of
wet baking. The Assinaboins of North America have their name, which
means “stone-boilers,” from their old practice of digging a hole in the
ground, lining it with a piece of the slaughtered animal’s hide, and then
putting in the meat with water, and hot stones to boil it. Tribes of
the far West actually managed by means of red-hot stones to boil salmon
and acorn-porridge in their baskets made of close-plaited roots of the
spruce fir. The process of stone-boiling has lasted on even in Europe
where found convenient for heating water in wooden tubs. Linnæus on his
northern tour found the Bothland people brewing beer in this way, and to
this day the “rude Carinthian boor” drinks such “stone-beer,” as it is
called. As soon as the cooks anywhere are provided with earthen pots or
metal kettles, boiling over the fire becomes easy. Yet it is curious to
notice the absence of boiled meats from the feasts of the Homeric heroes,
where there is so much about the joints stuck on spits to roast, and the
vengeful Odysseus rolling to and fro on his bed is compared to an eager
roaster turning a stuffed paunch before the blazing fire. Among the old
Northmen it was otherwise, for it is told in the Edda how the warriors
feast every night in Walhalla on the sodden flesh of the boar Sæhrimnir,
who is daily boiled in the huge kettle, and comes to life again ready for
the morrow’s hunt.
The simplest ways of making bread, such as seem to have come in with the
earliest cultivation of grain, answer so well for some purposes that they
may still be seen almost unchanged. Thus in a north country cottage the
housewife moistens the oatmeal and kneads it into dough, which spread
out thin is baked into oatcakes on the hot iron girdle (it used to be a
hot stone); and the damper of the Australian colonist is as simply made
with flour and water in thick cakes, baked in the embers. These take
us back near the primitive stages of an art which almost more than any
other has civilized mankind. Such unleavened bread being first in use,
the invention of leavened bread would follow as a matter of course, by
the sour dough on the uncleaned vessel fermenting into _leaven_ (French
_levain_, lightening), which starts fermentation through the fresh dough,
disengaging bubbles of carbonic acid within it which expand it into a
spongy mass. In later times the yeast from brewing was found to be a
better means than leaven; and there are modern processes of introducing
the gas by means of baking-powder (such as sal-aëratus or aërated salt,
bicarbonate of soda), or the bread may be aërated by mixing the carbonic
acid gas mechanically. The other great means of preparing farinaceous or
starchy food is by boiling, which lets the starch out to mix with the
water by bursting the tiny granules in which it is enclosed. Rice boiled
whole furnishes about half the food of mankind, and among other staple
articles of vegetable food are the various kinds of pap or porridge made
with wheat, barley, oats, maize, sago, cassava, &c. Looking over a modern
cookery-book, it is seen what an endless list of dishes and sauces have
been contrived by clever cooks, to please the palate and make one wish
for more. As to progress in cookery in this way, no doubt the moderns
have left the ancients behind. But, after all, the main purpose of
cooking food is to bring it into a proper condition for keeping up and
working the human machine, body and mind. Examining it from this point of
view, it is curious to notice what an old-world business it is. Its main
processes of roasting, baking, and boiling, belong to the barbaric stage
of culture, and had their origin in ages before history.
The liquors drunk by man may next be noticed. Savage tribes such as the
Australians were water-drinkers when discovered by the Europeans, and
even the Hottentots and North American Indians knew no fermented drinks.
It is difficult to suppose that an indulgence so tempting would ever be
forgotten, if once known; so that possibly the ancestors of these peoples
may have from the first been ignorant of the art of fermenting liquor.
But in most countries, especially where grain and fruit were cultivated,
one would think that the process must sooner or later discover itself,
by the accident of some suitable juice or mash being left to stand. In
Mexico the milky juice of the aloe is fermented into pulque; in Asia and
Africa palms are tapped for palm-wine or toddy; cider from apple-juice,
and mead from honey and water, are well known; the Tatars ferment their
mares’ milk into kumiss. Especially liquors of the beer kind prevail
widely; the first mentioned in history is the beer brewed from barley by
the ancient Egyptians, whence may perhaps be traced the ancient ale or
beer of Europe; allied to it are the kvass or rye-beer of Russia, the
pombe or millet-beer of Africa, the so-called rice-wine of the Chinese,
the chicha made with maize or cassava by the natives of America. Wine
seems not less ancient, and the Egyptian paintings show the vineyards,
the wine-presses, the wine-jars; indeed, wine-making is still much what
it was in those early ages of history. In ancient times it is curious
to notice the frank undoubting delight of men in intoxicating drink, as
a divinely given means of drowning care and stimulating dulness into
wild joy. They drank it solemnly in their religious feasts and offered
it to their gods. The ancient bards of the Vedic hymns thought no ill in
singing of Indra the Heaven-god, reeling drunk with the libations of the
sacred soma poured out by his worshippers, and in later ages the Greeks
chanted in bacchanal processions the praises of the beneficent Dionysos,
who made all nations happy with the care-dispelling juice of the grape.
But in early times also there comes into view an opposite doctrine.
The guardians of religion, sensible of the evil of drunkenness, begin
to proclaim not only excess as hateful, but the very tasting of strong
drink a sin. The Brahmans, although the libation of the soma remains
by old tradition among their sacred rites, yet account the drinking of
spirituous liquors one of the five great sins; while in the old rival
religion of Buddha, one of the ten precepts or commandments which the
novice promises to obey, is that forbidding the use of intoxicating
liquor. Though the religion of Mohammed arose in great measure out of
Judaism and Christianity, he cast off their ancient honour for wine
and its use in sacred rites, forbidding it as an abomination. It was
not till the middle ages that distilled spirit, though more ancient in
the East, came into use among the western nations. It was generally
accepted as beneficial, as is well seen in the name of “water of life,”
Latin _aquavitæ_, French _eau-de-vie_, Irish _usquebaugh_ (for shortness
_whisky_). Alcoholic spirit is now produced in immense quantities from
the refuse of wine-making, brewing, sugar-refining, &c. Its employment
as a habitual stimulant is among the greatest evils of the modern world,
bringing about in the low levels of the population a state of degradation
hardly matched in the worst ages of history. On the other hand, modern
civilized life has gained in comfort by taking to the use of warm
slightly stimulant drinks. Tea, at first valued by the Buddhist monks
in Central Asia as a drug to keep the ascetic awake for his nightly
religious duties, seems to have been introduced as a beverage in China at
about the Christian era, and has spread from thence all over the world.
Coffee is at home in Arabia, and the world owes its general use to the
Moslems. Chocolate was brought by the Spaniards from old Mexico, where
it was a favourite drink. With these, mention has to be made of tobacco,
also an importation from America, where at the time of the discovery it
was smoked by natives of both the north and south continent.
In here describing fires and fire-places (p. 264), wood has been taken as
the primitive fuel. Indeed, the fire of fallen boughs made at a picnic in
the woods may take our minds fairly back to præhistoric life. When in the
savage hut the logs are piled on the earthen floor, this simple hearth
already becomes the gathering-place of the family and the type of home.
But in treeless districts the want of fuel is one of the difficulties
of life, as where on the desert plains the buffalo-hunter has to pick
up for the evening fire the droppings which he calls “buffalo-chips” or
“bois de vache.” Even in woodland countries, as soon as people collect in
villages, the firewood near by is apt to run short. When some American
Indians were asked what reason they supposed had brought the white men
to their country, they answered quite simply that no doubt we had burnt
up all our wood at home, and had to move. The guess was so far good,
that something of the kind must really have happened had we depended
on the fuel from our forests and peat-bogs, for the supply in England
was giving out. Thus what was in old times the forest-land of Kent and
Sussex, and has still kept its name of the Weald (_i.e._ wood), is not
now well-timbered, but this is because in Queen Elizabeth’s time it had
been stripped to make charcoal for the iron furnaces. Indeed, there then
seemed danger that as population increased and manufactures throve,
England might become like North China now, where in the cold weather
people huddle at home wrapped in furs, fuel being too scarce except for
the cooking-stove. But instead of this coming to pass, there took place
an industrial change in England, which multiplied the population and
brought on our present prosperity. This was the use of coal, on which
our modern manufacturing system depends. Even for household purposes
the coal-cellar has almost superseded the wood-stack, and the blazing
yule-log has become a picturesque relic of the past. The very word
_coal_, which in the English Bible keeps its original sense of burning
wood, has since been usurped by the mineral. It must not, however, be
supposed that the use of coal was only discovered in modern times. The
Chinese have mined it from time immemorial. In the thirteenth century,
the famous Venetian traveller, Marco Polo, related that in Cathay there
is a kind of black stones, which are dug out of veins in the mountains,
and burn like faggots; and I can tell you (he says) that if you put them
on the fire in the evening so that they catch well, they will burn all
night and even be alight in the morning. That this was told and received
as a wonder in Europe, shows how unfamiliar the use of coal then was.
Though _lithanthrax_ or “stone-coal” was not unknown to the ancients,
its full importance to modern life only came gradually into view. Having
first been brought in for economy to meet the scarcity of wood, it
afterwards became, when applied to the steam-engine, an almost boundless
source of power for all mechanical work. A steam-engine, for every few
shovelfuls of coal its furnace is fed with, will do the day’s work of a
horse. Thus the yearly output of millions of tons of steam-coal in Great
Britain alone, furnishes a supply of force in comparison with which what
was formerly available from wind-mills and water-mills and the labour of
men and beasts was quite small, while the workman’s task becomes more and
more that of directing this brute force to grind and hammer, to spin and
weave, to carry across land and sea. It is like the difference between
driving the waggon and carrying the sacks of corn to market on one’s own
back. It is an interesting problem in political economy to reckon the
means of subsistence in our country during the agricultural and pastoral
period, and to compare them with the resources we now gain from coal, in
doing home-work and manufacturing goods to exchange for foreign produce.
Perhaps the best means of realizing what coal is to us, will be to
consider, that of three Englishmen now, one at least may be reckoned to
live by coal, inasmuch as without it the population would have been so
much less.
The Australian savage would catch up a blazing brand from the camp-fire,
to light him into the dark forest and scare away the demons. Thus there
is as yet no difference between his primitive means of artificial heat
and light. The two begin to separate when resinous pine-splints or the
like are set aside to serve as natural flambeaux, and from this the next
step is to make artificial flambeaux, of which the commonest is the twist
or _torch_ (from Latin _torquere_) of oakum dipped in pitch or wax. Till
this century we used torches much as the ancient Romans did, but they
are now seldom to be seen, and by their disuse the picturesque side
of life loses many striking effects of torchlight glare and shadow on
banquet and procession—the delight of painters and poets. Not half the
passers-by in old-fashioned streets now know that the extinguishers on
the iron railings were to put out the links or torches carried to light
the company to their coaches. The candle looks as though it might have
been invented from the torch. The rushlight, made of the pith of the rush
dipped in melted fat, was in common use in Pliny’s time, as was also
the wax or tallow candle with its yarn wick. The old classic lamp was a
flattish oval vessel with a nozzle (_i.e._, nostril) at one end for the
wick to come out at. Simple as this construction is, it has had a long
unchanged use. Museums have few Greek and Roman objects more plentiful
than such earthenware lamps, nor more exquisite specimens of metal-work
than the bronze ones; and to this day the traveller off the main road
in Spain or Italy is lighted to his bedroom with a brass stand-lamp
much after the manner of the ancients, with its pick-wick hanging to it
by a chain. The lamp only came into its improved modern make about a
century ago, when Argand let the air in from below, and put on the glass
chimney to set up a draught. The gas-lamp is still later, only having
come into practical use during the last sixty years. But it is curious
to notice that natural gas-lighting had long been known in places where
decomposing bituminous beds underground set free carburetted hydrogen.
Thus at the famous fire-temples of Baku (west of the Caspian), a hollow
cane was stuck in the ground near the altar, through which the gas rose
and burnt at its mouth, while the pilgrim fire-worshippers prostrated
themselves and adored the sacred flame. In China, at salt springs where
such a supply of natural gas comes up, the practical-minded people are
content to lay it on through bamboos into the buildings, to boil the
brine-kettles and light up the works.
[Illustration: FIG. 73.—Ancient Egyptian Potter’s Wheel (Beni Hassan).]
The examination here made of the modes of cooking requires some notice
of vessels. For water-vessels men can make shift without the art of the
potter, using joints of bamboo, coco-nut shells, calabash rinds, buckets
scooped out of wood, pails of bark, bottles of skin. The horseman in
desert regions carries his water-gourd at his saddle-bow, and even where
a glass imitation has come in, the French go on calling it a _gourde_,
just as we keep up the name of the old leather _bottle_ for the glass
ones we use now. It was one of the greatest household inventions to make
earthen pots to stand the fire for boiling. When and where pottery was
invented, is too far back to say. On the sites of ancient dwellings,
wherever earthenware was in use, potsherds may be picked up in the
ground. Where they are not to be found, as among the relics of tribes of
the reindeer-period in the caves of France, it may be safely concluded
that these early savages had not come so far in civilization. The same
is true of the Australians, Fuegians, and many other modern savages who
had no pottery, and no broken bits in their soil to show that their
predecessors ever had. One asks, how did men first hit upon the idea of
making an earthen pot? It may not look a great stretch of invention, but
invention moved by slow steps in early culture, and there are some facts
which lead to the guess that even pots were not made all at once. There
are accounts of rude tribes plastering their wooden vessels with clay to
stand the fire, while others, more advanced, moulded clay over gourds, or
inside baskets, which being then burnt away left an earthen vase, and the
marks of the plaiting remained as an ornamental pattern. It may well have
been through such intermediate stages that the earliest potters came to
see that they could shape the clay alone and burn it hard. This shaping
was doubtless at first done by hand, as in America or Africa the native
women may still be seen building up large and shapely jars or kettles
from the bottom, moulding on the clay bit by bit. So in Europe, as any
museum of antiquities shows, the funeral urns and other earthen vessels
of the stone and bronze ages were hand-made; and even now tourists who
visit the Hebrides buy earthen cups and bowls of an old woman who makes
them in ancestral fashion without a potter’s wheel, and ornaments them
with lines drawn with a pointed stick. Yet the potter’s wheel was known
in the world from high antiquity. Fig. 73 represents Egyptian potters at
work, as shown in the wall-paintings of the Tombs of the Kings. It is
seen that they turned the wheel by hand. So the Hindu potter is described
as now going down to the river side when a flood has brought him a
deposit of fine clay, when all he has to do is to knead a batch of it,
stick up his pivot in the ground, balance the heavy wooden table on the
top, give it a spin round, and set to work. It was an improvement on this
simplest wheel to work it from below by the foot, and in our potteries
a labourer drives it with a wheel and band, but the principle remains
unchanged. As we watch with untiring pleasure the potter with this simple
machine so easily bringing shape out of shapelessness, we can well
understand how in the ancient world it seemed the very type of creation,
so that the Egyptians pictured one of their deities as a potter moulding
Man on the wheel. Fine art made some of its earliest and most successful
efforts in shaping the earthen vase, engraving and moulding patterns
or figures on it, and painting it with pictures of gods and heroes, or
scenes from myth or daily life, so that much of our knowledge of such
nations as Etruscans and even Greeks is derived from the paintings on
their vases, art-relics almost everlasting though so fragile. A great
part of the pottery of the world is still of the first and simplest
kind, mere baked clay (Italian _terra cotta_) without glaze like our
flower-pots, and therefore porous. To cure this fault, some people,
as the Peruvians, varnished it, while even the Greeks often burnt in
bitumen. The great improvement of glazing, that is, melting on a glassy
coating in the furnace, was already known in ancient Egypt and Babylonia,
while in later ages glazed earthenware reached high artistic excellence
in the Persian ware and the _majolica_ (from Majorca). In China a more
perfect ware had been made above a thousand years before European potters
got at the secret of imitating it. We call it _china_, or by the curious
name _porcelain_, which originally meant a kind of oriental nacre or
mother-of-pearl. China or porcelain dishes are made of fine white kaolin
or porcelain clay, and fired so intensely that the ware becomes vitrified
not only at the glazed surface but through the substance. The common
principle in all these varieties of earthenware is that silica (which
with alumina is present in all clay) forms fusible glassy silicates,
which in terra cotta bind the mass together, and in glazed earthenware
and china coat it on the surface or through.
Glass itself is a fusible silicate of this kind, the base being potash,
soda, and sometimes lead. There is a fanciful story told by Pliny,
describing its invention as having taken place on a sandy shore of
Phœnicia, where a ship happening to be moored, the merchants finding
no stones to boil their kettle on, brought on shore lumps of nitre with
which the ship happened to be laden, whereupon the fire melted the silica
and alkali into glass. But the fact is that glass-making was an Egyptian
art ages before the rise of Phœnician commerce, and to all appearance
the Phœnicians and other nations learnt it from thence. Fig. 74 shows
an Egyptian glass blower. Among other things he would have made flasks
to be covered with reed, much like our present oil-flasks. The ancient
Egyptians made glass beads, and variegated glass cups, which even the
Venetian glassworks can hardly match. But modern Europe may claim the
clever art of making crown glass for window-panes by twirling the red-hot
blown globe till it opens in a circular sheet, and also the polishing of
sheets of plate-glass, which make possible our great looking-glasses with
their backs of brilliant tin amalgam.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.—Ancient Egyptian Glass-blowing (Beni Hassan).]
Fire is so important a means in extracting metal from the ore and working
it afterwards, that some account of the use of metal may properly come in
this chapter. But in thinking how men were led to the difficult processes
of smelting ores to extract the metal, it has to be remembered that some
metals are found in the metallic state. Thus the native copper near Lake
Superior was used in long-past ages by the tribes then living in the
country, who treated bits of the metal as a kind of malleable stone,
hammering it cold into hatchets, knives, and bracelets. The same is true
of gold, natural nuggets of which can be beaten cold into ornaments. It
is only a guess that metal-working may have begun in this simple way;
still it seems a likely guess. Iron also is found in the metallic state,
especially in the aerolites or meteoric stones which fall on the earth
from time to time. Though in many of these the metal is apt to shiver
to bits under the hammer, there is some meteoric and other native iron
fit to be made into implements when heated white-hot in the forge, and
it can even be to some extent worked cold. Some of the ores of metal are
themselves so metallic-looking that the smith would attempt to work them
in the fire, and this may have led to proper smelting. Thus magnetic iron
ore not only looks like iron, but can be heated in the forge, and then
and there hammered into such things as horse-shoes.
It is a question whether men first worked copper or iron. In classic
times, indeed, people felt certain that bronze was in use before iron.
This bronze is an alloy of copper with about a ninth of tin to harden
it, what an English mechanic would now call “gun-metal.” An often-quoted
line of Hesiod’s tells how the men of old worked in bronze when as yet
black iron was not; and Lucretius, the Epicurean poet, taught that after
the primitive time when men fought with sticks and stones, iron and
bronze were discovered, but bronze was known before iron. However, the
Greeks and Romans did not really remember very ancient times, and in some
countries the use of iron was early. Egyptian and Babylonian inscriptions
make mention of iron as well as copper. A piece of wrought iron taken
out of the masonry of the great pyramid may be seen in the British
Museum, and there are Egyptian pictures even showing the blue steel which
the butcher had hanging at his side to sharpen his knife on. Now what is
to be particularly noticed is that the Egyptians, though they thus had
iron, mostly made their carpenters’ tools of bronze. Among the Homeric
Greeks, the smiths knew of iron, and even of steel or steely iron, if one
may judge so from the famous passage in the Odyssey (ix. 391), about the
hissing of the axe as the smith dips it in the cold water to strengthen
the iron. Yet all the while bronze was the ordinary material not only for
the warrior’s armour and shield, but for his spear and sword. Clearly we
have here a state of arts very unlike our own now, and it is worth while
to try to understand the difference. An instructive remark in Kaempfer’s
account of Japan near two centuries ago, may help to explain it, where
he says that both copper and iron were smelted in the country, and were
about the same price, so that iron tools cost as much as copper or brass
ones. The state of things far back in the ancient world may have been
something like this. Iron, though known, was hard to smelt from the ore,
and Homer’s calling it the “much-wrought iron” shows how difficult the
smiths found it to forge. But copper was plentiful, one well-known source
being the island of Cyprus, whence its name of _æs Cyprium_ (_copper_).
Tin had not to be fetched from the ends of the world; there were mines
in Georgia, Khorassan, and elsewhere in inner Asia, where perhaps the
discovery was made of using it to harden copper into bronze. When once
this had been hit upon, the ease with which bronze could be melted,
and such things as hatchets cast in stone moulds, would make it more
convenient than iron to the ancient artificer. This may have been the
real reason why the “bronze age” set in over a great part of Europe and
Asia, and was only followed by the “iron age” when iron coming to be
better worked, cheaper and more plentiful, and steel especially being
improved, brought out that superiority to bronze for tools and weapons
which to us seems a matter of course. The remains of the lake-dwellings
of Switzerland show how central Europe was once inhabited by rude
tribes using stone implements, how at a later period bronze hatchets
and spears prevailed, and lastly iron came in. Such, too, has been the
history of the stone, bronze, and iron ages, traced by archæologists in
the burial-places of old Scandinavia, whether the use of the new metals
was learnt by the native nations or brought in by conquering invaders.
Nations living in the bronze age are known to history, especially the
Mexicans and Peruvians, whom the Spaniards at the conquest found working
in bronze with some skill, but knowing nothing of iron; their state was
like that of the Massagetæ of central Asia, described by Herodotus some
two thousand years earlier. Most of Africa, on the other hand, seems to
have had no bronze age, but to have passed directly from the stone age
to the iron age. Iron-smelting seems to have come into Africa in the
north, and only spread lately down to the Hottentots, who still remember
in their stories the time when their ancestors used to cut down trees
with stones. The Africans easily dig up their rich iron ore and smelt
it with wood in simple furnaces which may be mere holes in the ground,
the draught being generally by bellows. The primitive pair of bellows
may there be seen, made of whole skins of goats or other animals, of
which the one full of air is pressed or trodden on, while the empty
one is pulled up to fill itself through a slit or valve. This shows
iron-smelting not far from its rudest and probably earliest state. Among
the various improvements which have now made iron more plentiful than in
ancient times are the use of coke instead of charcoal for smelting; the
introduction of cast-iron, which seems old in China, but was not common
in England till the last century; the use of machinery for rolling and
forging. The progress of steel-making has been such as lately to make it
possible for railways to be laid down with steel at a penny a pound.
Other metals and their effect on civilization may be spoken of briefly.
Silver has from ancient times been the companion of gold, as precious
metals. Lead was easily extracted, and served the Romans for roofs and
water-pipes. The alloy of copper and zinc was made by the Romans not
by fusing together the two metals, but by heating copper with the zinc
ore called calamine; the result was brass, an inferior kind of bronze.
Quicksilver was known to the ancients, who distilled it from the red
cinnabar, and understood its use in extracting gold and silver, and for
gilding. Of the many metals which have become known in modern times some
have practical uses. Thus platinum is valuable for vessels which have to
bear extreme heat or resist the action of acids, and aluminium is useful
for its remarkable lightness. But we still mostly depend on the metals
whose origin is lost in antiquity—iron, copper, tin, lead, silver, and
gold.
The mention of these last precious metals leads us to notice the
important part which coin has had in developing civilization, and this
again belongs to the general history of trade or commerce. The modern
Englishman, accustomed to shops and counting-houses, hardly realises
from what rude beginnings our complex commercial system arose. It is
instructive to see trade in its lowest form among such tribes as the
Australians. The tough greenstone, valuable for making hatchets, is
carried hundreds of miles by natives who receive from other tribes in
return the prized products of their districts, such as red ochre to paint
their bodies with; they have even got so far as to let peaceful traders
pass unharmed through tribes at war, so that trains of youths might be
met, each lad with a slab of sandstone on his head to be carried to
his distant home and shaped into a seed-crusher. When strangers visit
a tribe, they are received at a friendly gathering or corrobboree, and
presents are given on both sides. No doubt there is a general sense that
the gifts are to be fair exchanges, and if either side is not satisfied
there will be grumbling and quarrelling. But in this roughest kind of
barter we do not yet find that clear notion of a unit of value which is
the great step in trading. This higher stage is found among the Indians
of British Columbia, whose strings of haiqua-shells, worn as ornamental
borders to their dresses, serve them also as currency to trade with, a
string of ordinary quality being reckoned as worth one beaver’s skin.
In the Old World many traces have come down of the times when value was
regularly reckoned in cattle; as where in the Iliad, in the description
of the funeral games, we read of the great prize tripod that was valued
at twelve oxen, while the female slave who was the second prize was
only worth four oxen. Here the principle of unit of value is already
recognised, for not only could the owner of oxen buy tripods and slaves
with them, but also he who had a twelve-ox tripod to sell could take in
exchange three slaves reckoned at four oxen each. To this day various
objects of use or ornament pass as currency, especially where money is
scarce. Thus the traveller in Abyssinia may have to buy what he wants
with cakes of salt, while elsewhere in Africa he has to carry iron
hoe-blades, pieces of cloth, and strings of beads as money. Cowry-shells
are still small change in South Asia, as they have been since time
immemorial. These things do more or less clumsily what metal money does
so conveniently. The use of money arose out of gold and silver being in
old times bartered by weight for goods, as may be seen in the pictures
of the ancient Egyptians weighing in scales heaps of rings of gold and
silver, which shows that these were not yet real money. It is thus still
with much of the gold and silver traded with in the East, where the
little ingots have to be weighed and reckoned for what each is worth.
The invention of coin comes in when pieces of metal are made of a fixed
weight and standard, and marked with a figure or inscription to certify
them, so that they may be taken without weighing or testing. This looks
a simple thing to do, but the old Egyptians and Babylonians are not
known to have hit upon it. Perhaps the earliest money may have been the
Chinese little marked cubes of gold, and the pieces of copper in the
shapes of shirts and knives, as though intended to represent real shirts
or knives. Coins appear in Lydia and Ægina, in their early form, as rude
dumps of precious metal stamped on one side only with a symbol such as
the tortoise, the other side showing the mark of the anvil or tool they
were placed on to be struck, which accidental back-pattern came to be
improved in later coins into the ornamental reverse. Art came on fast in
coinage, so that among the most beautiful coins in the world are the gold
staters of Philip of Macedon, with the laurel-crowned head on one side
and the two-horse chariot on the other. But one reason why coins are no
longer struck in such high relief is because they would be rubbed down by
wear. The Roman _as_ was not stamped but cast; it seems to have been at
first a pound of copper, its name meaning “one” (as _ace_ at cards still
does). From early ages the coinage has been a government monopoly, and
the practice soon began of lowering the standard and lessening the weight
for the profit of the royal treasury. How this debasing the coinage was
carried on in Europe by one king after another may be seen in the fact
that the _libra_ or pound of silver came down in value to the French
_livre_ or franc, worth tenpence, and to the “_pound_ Scots,” worth
twenty pence. Though changed in value, the coinage of old times may be
traced on to the present day, in our still keeping accounts in the £ _s._
_d._ (libræ, solidi, denarii) of the Romans.
For small trading and at home, metal money answers well. But there is
great trouble and risk in sending coin hundreds of miles to pay for
goods bought at a distance. An easily carried substitute for gold and
silver is the bank-note, a promise to pay so much, issued by the treasury
or some banker, and passing as money from hand to hand. The Emperor
of China appears to have issued such notes in exchange for treasure
about the eighth century, and in the thirteenth century Marco Polo, the
famous merchant-traveller in Tartary, describes the Great Khan’s money
of stamped pieces of mulberry-bark. It is plain from this account that
the notion of paper-money was still strange to the mind of an European
trader, but since then bank-notes have become an important part of the
world’s currency. Even more useful to commerce was the invention of
bills of exchange. Suppose a merchant of Genoa to have sent silks to a
merchant in London. He does not send for his money in return, but gives
an order on a slip of paper that his correspondent in London, who owes
him so much, is to pay it in so many days. This slip of paper is a bill
of exchange, and is bought by another Genoese merchant who happens to owe
money in London, and pays it by sending over the bill which claims the
payment of the money there. Thus, instead of gold being sent backwards
and forwards to pay for shipments between London and Genoa, one debt is
set off against another. This is describing in its simplest form the
system which is so worked in the exchanges of mercantile cities all over
the world, that the immense transactions of commerce are carried on by
mutual credit, with only so much actual travelling of gold and silver as
is necessary to adjust the balances between the different countries.
The main principle of modern commerce is still just what it was among the
rude Indians of Brazil, where the tribes who make the deadly arrow-poison
prepare more than they want for their own use, so as to exchange the
rest for spears of the hard wood that grows in other districts, or the
hammocks of palm-fibre netted by tribes elsewhere. Wealth is created by
trade as well as by manufactures. The Canadian trapper wants for his own
use but few of his plentiful furs, but all he can take are wealth to
him, because the trader brings him in exchange the clothes and groceries
and other things he wants. The general history of commerce in the world,
which is the development of this simple principle, need not be dwelt on
here by giving details of the ancient traffic of Egypt with Assyria and
India, the Phoenician trading colonies on the Mediterranean, the old
trade-routes across Asia and Europe, the rise of the merchant princes of
Genoa and Venice, the first voyages round the Cape to the East Indies,
the discovery of America, the rise of ocean steam-navigation. It is
specially interesting to the student of civilization to notice that
the travelling merchant had in early ages another business hardly less
important than conveying ivory and incense and fine linen from where they
were plentiful to where they were scarce. He was the bringer of foreign
knowledge and the explorer of distant regions in days when nations were
more shut up than now within their own borders, or went across them
only as enemies to ravage and destroy. The merchants did much to break
down the everlasting jealousy and strife between nations into peaceful
and profitable intercourse. Moreover it may be plainly proved that the
old hostile system of nations is kept up by every kind of restriction
on trade, every protective duty imposed to force the production of
commodities in countries ill-suited to them, to prevent their coming in
cheap and good from where they are raised with least labour. There is no
agent of civilization more beneficial than the free trader, who gives
the inhabitants of every region the advantages of all other regions, and
whose business is to work out the law that what serves the general profit
of mankind serves also the private profit of the individual man.
CHAPTER XII.
ARTS OF PLEASURE.
Poetry, 287—Verse and Metre, 288—Alliteration and Rhyme,
289—Poetic Metaphor, 289—Speech, Melody, Harmony, 290—Musical
Instruments, 293—Dancing, 296—Drama, 298—Sculpture and
Painting, 300—Ancient and Modern Art, 301—Games, 305.
To those who have not thought particularly about straightforward prose
talk, and poetry which is set in metre and rhyme, and song which is
chanted to a tune, it may seem that these are three clearly distinct
things. But on careful examination it is found that they shade into
one another, and it can be made out how human speech passed into all
three states. Savage tribes have some set form in their chants, which
shows they feel them different from common talk. Thus Australians,
to work themselves into fury before a fight, will chant, “Spear his
forehead!—Spear his breast!—Spear his liver!—Spear his heart!” and so on
with the other parts of the enemy’s body. Another Australian chant is
sung at native funerals, the young women taking the first line, the old
women the second, and all together the third and fourth.
“Kardang garro “Young-brother again
Mammul garro Son again
Mela nadjo Hereafter I-shall
Nunga broo.” See never.”
Here the words of the savage chant are no longer mere prose, but have
passed into a rude kind of verse. All barbaric tribes hand down such
songs by memory, and make new ones. The North American hunter has chants
which will bring him on the bear’s track next morning, or give him
victory over an enemy. The following is the translation of a New Zealand
song:—
“Thy body is at Waitemata,
But thy spirit came hither
And aroused me from my sleep.
_Chorus_—Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah, ha!”
This last shows a feature extremely common in barbaric songs, the refrain
of generally meaningless syllables. We moderns are often struck with the
absurdity of the nonsense-chorus in many of our own songs, but the habit
is one which seems to have been kept up from the stages of culture in
which the Australian savage sings “Abang! abang!” over and over at the
end of his verse, or a Red Indian hunting-party enjoy singing in chorus
“Nyah eh wa! nyah eh wa!” to an accompaniment of rattles like those which
children use with us.
It is among nations at a higher stage of culture that there appears
regular metre, where the verses are measured accurately in syllables.
The ancient hymns of the Veda are in regular metre, and this is proof
how far the old Aryans had advanced beyond the savage state. Indeed the
resemblances between the metre of the most ancient Indian and Persian and
Greek poetry show that in the remote ages of their national connection
their measured verse had already begun. Metre is best known to us from
Greek and Latin verses, but there are more metres in the world than
Horace knew of. For instance, when Longfellow versified a collection
of American native tales in his “Song of Hiawatha,” he found no metre
among the Indians themselves, who were not cultured enough to have such
a device; so he imitated the peculiar metre of the Kalewala, the epic
poem chanted by the native bards of Finland. Our own poetry, where the
verses are scanned by accent, differs in its nature from the classic
metres whose syllables are measured by quantity or length. Later than the
invention of metre, came other means by which the poet could please his
hearers with new effects of matched and balanced sounds. Thus our early
English forefathers rejoiced in alliteration, where the same consonant
comes in again and again, with a frequency which would weary our modern
taste, though our ear is pleased with occasional touches of it, as
“Sober he seemde, and very sagely sad.”—SPENSER.
“He rushed into the field, and, foremost fighting, fell.”—BYRON.
Rhyme, too, seems comparatively modern in the world’s history of poetry.
Its clumsy beginnings may be judged from such lines as these of an old
Latin poet (perhaps Ennius) quoted by Cicero:—
“Cœlum nitescere, arbores frondescere,
Vites lætificæ pampinis pubescere,
Rami bacarum ubertate incurvescere.”
Thus the Christian hymns of the middle ages, such as the famous
“Dies Iræ,” did not bring in rhyme as quite a novelty, but they used
it skilfully and made it common, and it was taken up also by the
Troubadours, the masters and teachers of Europe in the poetic art.
The best poetry of our own day is full of quaint fancy and delicate
melody, the setting of lovely thought in harmonious language, at once
pictures for the imagination and music for the ear. But besides this,
it has a curious interest to the student of history, as keeping alive in
our midst the ways of thought of the most ancient world. Much of poetic
art lies in imitating the expressions of earlier stages of culture, when
poetry was the natural utterance of any strong emotion, the natural means
to convey any solemn address or ancestral tradition. The modern poet
still uses for picturesqueness the metaphors which to the barbarian were
real helps to express his sense. This may be seen in analyzing a poem of
Shelley’s:—
“How wonderful is Death,
Death and his brother, Sleep!
One, pale as yonder waning moon,
With lips of lurid blue;
The other, rosy as the morn
When throned on ocean’s wave
It blushes o’er the world.”
Here the likeness of death and sleep is expressed by the metaphor of
calling them brothers, the moon is brought in to illustrate the notion of
paleness, and the dawn of redness; while to convey the idea of the dawn
shining over the sea the simile of its sitting on a throne is introduced,
and its reddening is compared on the one hand to a rose, and on the
other to blushing. Now this is the very way in which early barbaric man,
not for poetic affectation, but simply to find the plainest words to
convey his thoughts, would talk in metaphors taken from nature. Even our
daily prose is full of words, now come down to ordinary use, which show
vestiges of this old nature-poetry, and the etymologist may, if he will,
set up again the pictures of the old poetic thoughts which made the words.
To read or recite poetry as we moderns do is to alter its proper nature,
for the purpose of poetry was to be chanted. But this very chanting or
singing grew out of talking. On listening carefully to the talk going on
around us, we may observe that it does not run in an unchanged monotone,
but that all sentences are intoned to an imperfect tune, a rise and
fall of pitch marking the phrases, distinguishing question and answer,
and touching emphatic words with a musical accent. This half-melody of
common speech may be roughly written down in notes; it is not the same
in English and German; and indeed one way in which a Scotchman’s talking
is known from an Englishman’s is the different intoning of his phrases.
When speech becomes solemn or impassioned, it passes more and more into
natural chanting, which at devotional meetings may be heard nearly
passing into distinct tune. The intoning in churches arose from the same
natural utterance of religious feeling, but in course of time it became
fixed by custom, and was forced into the regular intervals of the musical
scale. So the artificial recitative of the opera is a modern musical
working up of what has come down by tradition of the ancient tragic
declamation, which once swayed the listening throng of the Greek theatre.
We are apt to take it as a matter of course that all music must be made
up of notes in scale, and that scale the one we have been used to from
childhood. But the chants of rude tribes, which perhaps best represent
singing in its early stages, run in less fixed tones, so that it is
difficult to write down their airs. The human voice is not bound to a
scale of notes, for its pitch can glide up and down. Nor among nations
who sing and play by musical scales are the tones of these scales always
the same. The question how men were led to exact scales of tones is not
easy to answer fully. But one of the simplest scales was forced upon
their attention by that early musical instrument the trumpet, rude forms
of which are seen in the long tubes of wood or bark blown by forest
tribes in South America and Africa. A trumpet (a six feet length of iron
gas-pipe will do) will sound the successive notes of the “common chord,”
which may be written _c e g c_, on which the trumpeter performs the
simple tunes known so well as trumpet-calls. This natural scale, perfect
so far as it goes, contains the most important of musical intervals, the
octave, fifth, fourth, and third. Another scale, of more notes than this,
though of fewer than our full scale, is not less familiar to English
ears. This is the old five-tone scale, without semitones, which can be
played on the five black keys of the pianoforte, and the best-known
form of which may be written _c, d, e, g, a, c_. Old Scotch airs are
on the five-tone scale, which indeed may still be met with across the
world, as where some traveller in China watching a funeral procession
has been surprised to hear a melancholy dirge like what he last heard
played by a piper on the shore of a Highland loch. Engel, in his _Music
of Ancient Nations_, shows that music of this pentatonic or five-toned
kind has belonged since early times to other Eastern nations, so that any
genuine Scotch melody like “Auld Lang-syne” may give some idea of the
music of antiquity. The more advanced seven-tone scale which prevails in
the modern world is nearly taken from that of the musicians of classic
Greece, who accompanied the singer’s voice on the eight-stringed lyre.
Pythagoras, who first brought musical tones under arithmetical rule, had
the curious fancy that the distances of the seven planets are related as
the seven tones of the octave, an idea which still dimly survives among
us in the phrase “music of the spheres.”
Modern music is thus plainly derived from ancient. But there has arisen
in it a great new development. The music of the ancients scarcely went
beyond melody. The voice might be accompanied by an instrument in unison
or at an octave interval, but harmony as understood by modern musicians
was as yet unknown. Its feeble beginnings may be traced in the middle
ages, when musicians were struck by the effects got by singing two
different tunes at once, when one formed a harmony to the other. It is
still a joke among musicians to sing together in this old-fashioned way
two absurdly incongruous tunes, for instance, “The Campbells are coming”
and “The Vesper hymn,” so arranged that one makes a sort of accompaniment
to the other. The old rounds and catches, still popular, thus make one
part of the tune serve as a harmony for the other. The Roman church
part-music, and the Protestant singing by the congregation, with the
organ to accompany them, had great effect in making the change by which
the mere melody of the ancients grew into the harmonized melody of the
moderns. This great step once understood, the student can follow in the
history of music its successive stages in part-singing and orchestral
composition, in the church and the concert-room, till in the hands of the
great composers of the last three centuries the full resources of modern
musical art were developed.
The musical instruments of the present day may all be traced back to rude
and early forms. The rattle and the drum are serious instruments among
savages; the rattle has come down to a child’s toy with us, but the drum
holds its own in peace and war. Above these monotonous instruments comes
the trumpet, which, as has just been seen, brings barbaric music a long
step further on. The pipe or flageolet appears in its simplest form in
the common whistle, and is improved by holes, by which the player alters
the length of the pipe so as to give several notes. From very remote
times, and far and wide over the earth, the familiar pipe is found,
played single or double, and sometimes blown with the nostril instead
of the mouth. Already in the ancient world it was often provided with a
skin wind-bag which made it into the bagpipe, or, held sideways and blown
across the mouth-hole, it became the flute. Another way of bringing out a
range of notes is seen in the Pan’s pipes, the row of reeds of different
lengths, in old classic days associated with the grace of rural poetry,
but now come down to sound the vulgar pipings of the street showman. In
the modern orchestra, the cornet is a trumpet provided with stops. The
clarionet is a development of the grass-stem with a vibrating slit or
tongue such as children cut in the fields in spring. The whole class
of musical instruments to which the harmonium belongs, work with these
vibrating tongues, which by their name of “reeds” still keep up the
memory of their origin. The organ carries out in the widest range and
grandest proportions the principle of the simple pipe or whistle, so
that there is scientific correctness in the disrespectful name of “kist
o’ whistles” given it by the Scotch, who disliked its use in church.
Not less primitive are the rudest forms in which stringed instruments
appear. It is told in the _Odyssey_ (xxi. 410) how the avenging hero,
when he has strung his mighty bow compact of wood and horn, gives the
stretched string a twang that makes it sing like a swallow in a soft tone
beautifully. One might well guess that the strung bow of the warrior
would naturally become a musical instrument, but what is more, it really
is so used. The Damara in South Africa finds pleasure in the faint tones
heard by striking the tight bowstring with a little stick. The Zulu
despises the bow as a cowardly weapon, but he still uses it for music;
his music-bow, shown in Fig. 75 _a_, has a ring slid along the string to
alter the note, and is also provided with a hollow gourd acting as a
resonator or sounding-box to strengthen the feeble twang. Next, looking
at _b_ in the figure, it is seen how the ancient Egyptian harp may have
been developed from such a rude music-bow, the wooden back being now
made hollow so as to be bow and resonator in one, while across it are
strung several strings of different lengths. All ancient harps, Assyrian,
Persian, even old Irish, were made on this plan, yet we can see at a
glance that it was defective, the bending of the wooden back putting the
strings out of tune. It was not till modern ages that the improvement
was made of completing the harp with the front-pillar, as seen in _c_,
which makes the whole frame rigid and firm. Looking at the three figures,
it is seen how the course of invention was by gradual growth; the harp
with the pillar could not have been first invented, for no men could have
been so stupid as to go on making harps and leave out the front-pillar
when once the idea of it had come into their minds. The harp, though now
made more perfect than of old, is losing its ancient place in music;
but the reason of this is easy to see, it has been supplanted by modern
instruments which have come from it. The very form of a grand piano shows
that it is a harp laid on one side in a case, and its strings not plucked
with the fingers but struck with hammers worked from a keyboard. It is
the latest development from the bowstring of the præhistoric warrior.
[Illustration: FIG. 75.—Development of the Harp, _a_, music-bow with
gourd resonator (South Africa); _b_, ancient harp (Egypt); _c_, mediæval
harp with front-pillar (England).]
Dancing may seem to us moderns a frivolous amusement; but in the infancy
of civilization it was full of passionate and solemn meaning. Savages and
barbarians dance their joy and sorrow, their love and rage, even their
magic and religion. The forest Indians of Brazil, whose sluggish temper
few other excitements can stir, rouse themselves at their moonlight
gatherings, when, rattle in hand, they stamp in one-two-three time round
the great earthen pot of intoxicating kawi-liquor; or men and women dance
a rude courting dance, advancing in lines with a kind of primitive polka
step; or the ferocious war-dance is performed by armed warriors in paint,
marching in ranks hither and thither with a growling chant terrific to
hear. We have enough of the savage left in us to feel how Australians
leaping and yelling at a corrobboree by firelight in the forest can work
themselves up into frenzy for next day’s fight. But with our civilized
notions it is not so easy to understand that barbarians’ dancing may mean
still more than this; it seems to them so real that they expect it to act
on the world outside. Thus among the Mandan Indians, when the hunters
failed to find the buffalos on which the tribe depended for food, every
man brought out of his lodge the mask made of a buffalo’s head and horns,
with the tail hanging down behind, which he kept for such an emergency,
and they all set to dance buffalo. Ten or fifteen masked dancers at a
time formed the ring, drumming and rattling, chanting and yelling; when
one was tired out he went through the pantomime of being shot with bow
and arrow, skinned, and cut up; while another, who stood ready with his
buffalo-head on, took his place in the dance. So it would go on, without
stopping day or night, sometimes for two or three weeks, till at last
these persevering efforts to bring the buffalo succeeded, and a herd came
in sight on the prairie. The description and sketch of the scene will be
found in Catlin’s _North American Indians_. Such an example shows how,
in the lower levels of culture, men dance to express their feelings and
wishes. All this explains how in ancient religion dancing came to be one
of the chief acts of worship. Religious processions went with song and
dance to the Egyptian temples, and Plato said that all dancing ought
to be thus an act of religion. In fact, it was so to a great extent in
Greece, as where the Cretan chorus, moving in measured pace, sang hymns
to Apollo, and in Rome, where the Salian priests sang and danced, beating
their shields, along the streets at the yearly festival of Mars. Modern
civilization, in which sacred music flourishes more than ever, has mostly
cast off the sacred dance. To see this near its old state the traveller
may visit the temples of India, or among the lamas of Tibet watch the
mummers in animal masks dancing the demons out, or the new year in, to
wild music of drums and shell-trumpets. Remnants of such ceremonies,
come down from the religion of England before Christian times, are still
sometimes to be seen in the dances of boys and girls round the Midsummer
bonfire, or of the mummers at Yuletide; but even these are dying out.
The dances of choristers in plumed hats and the dress of pages of Philip
III.’s time, still performed before the high altar of Seville Cathedral,
are now among the quaintest relics of a rite all but vanished from
Christendom. Even sportive dancing, as a graceful exercise, is falling
off in the modern world. The pictures from ancient Egypt show that the
professional dancers were already skilful in their art, which perhaps
reached its highest artistic pitch in classic Greece and Rome. Something
of the old-fashioned picturesque village-dancing may still be seen at
festivals in most countries of Europe except England, but the ball-room
dances of modern society have lost much of the old art and grace.
At low levels in civilization it is clear that dancing and play-acting
are one. The North American dog-dance and bear-dance are mimic
performances with ludicrously faithful imitations of the creatures’
pawing and rolling and biting. So the scenes of hunting and war furnish
barbarians with subjects for dances, as when the Gold Coast negroes
have gone out to war, and their wives at home dance a fetish-dance in
imitation of battle, to give their absent husbands strength and courage.
Historians trace from the sacred dances of ancient Greece the dramatic
art of the civilized world. Thus, in the festivals of the Dionysia, the
wondrous life of the Wine-god was danced and sung, and from its solemn
hymns and laughable jests arose tragedy and comedy. In the classic ages
the player’s art divided into several branches. The pantomimes kept up
the earliest form, where the dancer acted in dumb show such pieces as
the labours of Herakles, or Kadmos sowing the dragon’s teeth, while the
chorus below accompanied the play by singing the story; the modern
pantomime ballets, which keep up remains of these ancient performances,
show how grotesque the old stage gods and heroes must have looked in
their painted masks. In Greek tragedy and comedy the business of the
dancers and chorus was separated from that of the actors, who recited or
chanted each his proper part in the dialogue, so that the player could
now move his audience by words of passion or wit, delivered with such
tone and gesture as laid hold on all who listened and looked. Greek
tragedy, once begun, soon reached its height among the fine arts, so that
the plays of Æschylos and Sophokles are read as examples of the higher
poetry, and the modern acted imitations like the Phèdre of Racine give
an idea of their power when the genius of the actors can rise to their
height of emotion. The modern drama belongs not so much to the sacred
mystery-plays of the middle ages as to the classic revival or renaissance
of four centuries ago. Those who have seen the ruins of classic theatres
at Syracuse, or on the hill-side of Tusculum, will best understand how
a modern playhouse shows its Greek origin not only in the arrangement,
but in the Greek names of its parts—the _theatre_, or spectators’ place,
which still keeps its well-planned horse-shoe shape; the _scene_ with
its painted background and curtain in front; while the _orchestra_ or
dancing-place, which was formerly for the _chorus_, is now given up to
the musicians. The change in the _tragedy_ and _comedy_ performed in the
modern theatre from those of the classic world is partly due to their
having dropped the stiff solemn declamation which belonged to them while
they were still religious ceremonies, and their personages divine. In
the hands of modern dramatists, of Shakspere above all, the characters
came to be more human, though representing human nature in its most
picturesque extremes, and life in its intensest moments. Modern plays
are not indeed bound to be strictly natural, but can still call in the
supernatural, as where now fairies or angels may hover over the scene
where in classic days the gods used to pass in mid-air borne in their
machines. In the modern comedy the persons dress and talk as near as may
be like daily life; yet, even here, when the audience gravely fall in
with the pretence that some of the speeches, though spoken aloud, are
“asides” not heard by the actors close by, this shows that the modern
world has not lost the power to make-believe, on which all dramatic art
is founded.
On this same power of make-believe or imagination are founded the two
other fine arts, sculpture and painting. Their proper purpose is not to
produce exact imitations, but what the artist strives to bring out is
the idea that strikes the beholder. Thus there is often more real art in
a caricature done with a few strokes of the pencil, or in a rough image
hacked out of a log, than in a minutely painted portrait, or a figure at
a waxwork show which is so like life that visitors beg its pardon when
they walk up against it. The painter’s and sculptor’s art seems to have
arisen in the world from the same sort of rude beginnings which are still
to be seen in children’s attempts to draw and carve. The sheets of bark
or skins on which barbarous tribes have drawn men and animals, guns and
boats, remind us of the slates and barn-doors on which English children
make their early trials in outline. Many of these children will grow up
and go through their lives without getting much beyond this childish
stage. The clergyman of a country parish some years ago set the cottagers
to amuse themselves with carving in wood such figures as men digging or
reaping. They produced figures so curiously uncouth, and in style so
like the idols of barbarous tribes, that they were kept as examples of
the infancy of sculpture, and are now to be seen in the museum of Kew
Gardens. Yet mankind, under favourable circumstances, especially with
long leisure time on their hands, began in remote antiquity to train
themselves to skill in art. Especially the sketches and carvings of
animals done by the old cave-men of Europe have so artistic a touch that
some have supposed them modern forgeries. But they are admitted to be
genuine and found over a wide district, while forgeries which have been
really done to palm off on collectors are just wanting in the peculiar
skill with which the savages who lived among the reindeer and mammoths
knew how to catch their forms and attitudes. Two of these ancient
carvings are drawn in Figs. 3 and 4, and others in Lubbock’s _Prehistoric
Times_. The art of colouring would naturally arise, for savages who paint
their own bodies with charcoal, pipeclay, and red and yellow ochre,
would daub their carved figures and fill in their outline drawings with
the same colours. Travellers in Australia sheltering from the storm in
caves, wonder at the cleverness of the rude frescos on the cavern-walls
of kangaroos and emus and natives dancing, while in South Africa the
Bushmen’s caves show paintings of themselves with bows and arrows, and
the bullock-waggons of the white men, and the dreaded figure of the Dutch
boer with his broad-brimmed hat and pipe. Among such people as the West
Africans and Polynesians, the native sculptor’s best skill has been used
on images of demons and gods, made to receive worship and serve as bodies
in which the spiritual beings are to take up their abode. Thus the idols
of barbarians, as specimens of early stages of sculpture, have a value in
the history of art as well as of religion.
In the ancient nations of Egypt and Babylonia art had already risen to
higher levels. Indeed Egyptian sculpture reached its best in the earlier
rather than the later ages, for the stone statues of the older time stand
and step with more free life in their limbs, and the calm proud faces
of the colossal Thothmes and Rameses portraits (like Fig. 19) show the
grandest ideal of an eastern despot, half tyrant, half deity. In the
sculpture halls of the British Museum, it is seen that the early school
of Egyptian sculptors were on their way to Greek perfection, but they
stopped short. With trained mechanical skill they wrought statues by tens
of thousands, hewing gigantic figures of the hardest granite and porphyry
which amaze the modern stonecutter, but their art, bound by tradition,
grew not freer but more stiff and formal. They might divide their plans
into measured squares, and set out faces and limbs by line and rule, but
their conventional forms seldom come up to the Greek lines of beauty, and
their monuments are now prized, not as models of art, but as records of
old-world history. In the British Museum also, the alabaster bas-reliefs
that adorned the palace-courts of Nineveh give a wonderfully clear idea
of what Assyrian life was like, how the king rode in his chariot, or let
fly his arrows at the lion at bay, or walked with the state umbrella held
over his head; how the soldiers swam the rivers on blown skins and the
storming party scaled the fortress, while the archers shot down among
them from the battlements, and the impaled captives hung in rows full in
view outside the walls. But in such scenes proportion did not much matter
if only the meaning were conveyed. It did not seem artistically absurd
to the Assyrians to make archers so big that two fill a whole parapet;
nor did the Egyptians feel the comic impression made on our modern minds
by the gigantic figure of the king striding half across the battle-field
and grasping a dozen pigmy barbarians at a grip, to slash their heads
off with one sweep of his mighty falchion. It was in Greece that the
rules of art were developed which reject the figures of the older nations
as stiff in form and unlifelike in grouping. Greek art is sometimes
written of as though it had itself begun in the rudest stage, with
clumsy idols of wood and clay, till by efforts of their own surpassing
genius the Greek sculptors came to hew in marble the forms which are
still the wonders of the world. But great as Greek genius was, it never
did this. The Greek nations had been for ages in contact with the older
civilizations of the Mediterranean; their starting-point was to learn
what art could do in Egypt, Phœnicia, Babylonia, and then their genius
set them free from the hard old conventional forms, leading them to model
life straight from nature, and even to fashion in marble shapes of ideal
strength and grace. The Egyptian sculptors would not spoil polished
granite with paint, but many of their statues were coloured, and there
are traces of paint left on the Assyrian sculptures and on Greek statues,
so that we are apt to have a wrong idea of a Greek temple, as though its
marble gods and goddesses used to be of the glaring whiteness of a modern
sculpture-gallery. The Greek terra-cotta statuettes in the British Museum
are models of antique female grace in form and costume, only wanting the
lost colour restored to make them the prettiest things in the world.
In colour-drawing, or painting, the Egyptian wall-paintings show a style
half-way between the lowest and the highest. Here the scenes of old
Egyptian life are caught at their characteristic moments, the shoemaker
is seen drawing his thread, the fowler throwing at the ducks, the lords
and ladies feasting and the flute-players and tumblers performing before
them. Yet with all their clever expressiveness, the Egyptian paintings
have not quite left behind the savage stage of art. In fact they are
still picture-writings rather than pictures, repeating rows of figures
with heads, legs, and arms drawn to pattern, and coloured in childish
daubs of colour—hair all black, skin all red-brown, clothing white,
and so on. The change from these to the Greek paintings is surprising;
now we have no more rows of man-patterns, but grouped studies of real
men. The best works of the Greek painters are only known to moderns by
the admiring descriptions of the ancients, but more ordinary specimens
which have been preserved give an idea what the paintings of Zeuxis
and Apelles may have been. The tourist visiting for the first time the
museum of Naples comes with a shock of surprise in face of Alexander
of Athens’ picture of the goddesses at play, the boldly drawn frescos
of scenes from the Iliad, and the groups of dancers elegant in drawing
and colouring. Most of these pictures from Herculaneum and Pompeii were
done by mere house decorators, but these tenth-rate Greek painters had
the traditions of the great classic school, and they show plainly that
from the same source we also have inherited the art of design. Modern
European painting comes in two ways from ancient art. On the one hand,
Greek painting spread over the Roman Empire and into the East, and for
ages found its chief home in the Christian art of Constantinople, whence
arose the Byzantine style, often called pre-Raffaelite, which though
wanting in the older freedom of classic Athens, was expressive and rich
in colour. On the other hand, when in the fifteenth century the knowledge
of classic art and thought revived in Europe, the stiff pictures of
saints and martyrs gave place to more natural and graceful forms, and
modern painting arose under Raffaelle and Michael Angelo, Titian and
Murillo, in whom the two streams from the fountain-head of Greek art, so
long separated, joined again. The ancients mostly painted on walls like
the present fresco-painting, or on waxed wooden panels; they did not know
the use of oil to mix the ground colours with. This is just mentioned in
the tenth century, so that the story of the brothers Van Eyck inventing
oil-painting in the fifteenth century is not quite true. But they turned
it to practical use, and from their time painters brought the substance
and play of colour to a perfection which there is no reason to suppose
the ancients ever approached. In modern times water-colour painting, used
by the old masters for light sketches and studies, has also become an art
of itself, especially in England. One branch of painting in which the
moderns unquestionably surpass the ancients is landscape. Of old, however
admirably the figures might be drawn, the hard conventional mountains,
forests, and houses behind were still in the picture-writing stage, they
rather stood as signs of the world outside than depicted it as it is.
But now the artist’s eyes are turned on nature, which he renders with a
truthfulness unknown to the old masters who first gave living form to
gods and heroes, apostles and martyrs.
Something has now to be said of games, for play is one of the arts of
pleasure. It is doing for the sake of doing, not for what is done. One
class of games is spontaneous everywhere, the sports in which children
imitate the life they will afterwards have to act in earnest. Eskimo
children play at building snow huts, and their mothers provide them
with a tiny oil-lamp with a bit of wick to set burning inside. Among
the savages whose custom it is to carry off their wives by force from
neighbouring tribes, the children play at the game of wife-catching, just
as with us children play at weddings with a clergyman and bridesmaids.
All through civilization, toy weapons and implements furnish children
at once play and education; the North American warrior made his boy a
little bow and arrow as soon as he could draw it, and the young South Sea
Islander learnt by throwing a reed at a rolling ring how in after-life to
hurl his spear. It is curious to see that when growing civilization has
cast aside the practical use of some ancient contrivance, it may still
survive as a toy, as where Swiss children to this day play at making fire
by the old-world plan of drilling one piece of wood into another; and in
our country lanes the children play with bows and arrows and slings, the
serious weapons of their forefathers.
It is not quite easy to say whether man in a low savage state ever goes
beyond these practical sports, and invents games of mere play. But higher
up in civilization, such games are known from very ancient times. A
trifling game, if it exactly takes hold of the playful mind, may last
on in the world almost for ever. The ancient Egyptians, as their old
paintings show, used to play our childish game of hot-cockles, where the
blind-man who stoops down has to guess who thumped him on the back. These
Egyptians played also the game of guessing the sum of the fingers held up
by the two players, which is still popular in China, and in Italy, where
one hears it half the night through with shouts of “three!” “seven!”
“five!” “_mora!_”; it is a pity we have not this as a children’s game in
England, for it trains a sharp eye and a quick hand. While some of our
games, such as hoops and whipping-tops, have gone on in the Old World
for thousands of years, others are modern importations; thus it was only
about Stuart times that English children learnt from the Chinese, or some
other nation in the far East, the art of flying kites. Or modern sports
may be late improvements on old ones; the split shank-bones fastened
under the shoes for going on the ice delighted the London ’prentices for
centuries before they were displaced by steel skates. How a game may
sometimes go on for ages unchanged, and then suddenly turn into a higher
form, is curiously seen in the game of ball. The ancients tossed and
caught balls like children now, and a famous Greek and Roman lad’s game
was “common ball,” where there were two sides, and each tried to get the
ball and throw it to the opposite goal. This is still played in a few
country-places in England; its proper name is “hurling,” and football
with the great leather ball is a variety of it. The ancients never seem
to have used a stick or bat in their ball-play. But some 1,000 or 1,500
years ago the Persians began to play ball on horseback, which of course
could only be done with a long stick, mallet, or racket; in this way
there came into existence the fine sport of _chaugán_, which has lasted
ever since in the East, and lately established itself in England under
the name of _polo_. When once the club or racket had been invented for
horseback, it was easy to use it on foot, and thus in the middle ages
there began the whole set of games in which balls are hit with bats, such
as pall-mall and croquet, tennis, hockey and golf, rounders and cricket.
Indoor games, too, have their curious history. Throwing lots or dice is
far too ancient for any record to remain of its beginning, and the very
draught-boards and men which the old Egyptians used to play on are still
to be seen. The Greeks and Romans were draught-players, but their games
were not like our modern game of draughts. On the other hand our merells
or morris belongs to an old classical group of games, and Ovid alludes to
the childish game of tit-tat-to. These games are played in China as well,
and it is not known at which end of the earth they were first devised.
The great invention in intellectual games may have been made a thousand
years or so ago, when some Hindu, whose name is lost, set to work upon
the old draught-board and men, and developed out of them a war-game,
where on each side a king and his general, with elephants, chariots,
and cavalry, and the foot-soldiers in front, met in battle array. This
was the earliest chess, which with some little change passed into the
modern European chess that still holds pre-eminence among sports, taxing
the mind to its utmost stretch of foresight and combination. Our modern
draughts is a sort of simplified chess, where the pieces are all pawns
till they get across the board and become queens. The story in the
history-books that cards were invented in France to amuse Charles VI.
is a fiction, for they were known in the East centuries earlier. But at
any rate the Europeans make with them combinations of skill and chance
which excel anything contrived by their Asiatic inventors. Games which
exercise either body or mind have been of high value in civilization as
trainers of man’s faculties. Games of pure chance played for money stand
on quite a different footing; they have been from the first a delusion
and a curse. In our own time, there is perhaps no more pitiable sign
of the slowness with which scientific ideas spread, than to hear the
well-dressed crowds round the gaming-table at Monaco talking about runs
of luck, and fancying that it makes a difference whether one backs the
black or the red. This goes on although schoolboys are now taught the
real doctrine of chances, and how to reckon the fixed percentage of each
week’s stakes that will be raked in by the croupier, and not come back.
CHAPTER XIII.
SCIENCE.
Science, 309—Counting and Arithmetic, 310—Measuring
and Weighing, 316—Geometry, 318—Algebra, 322—Physics,
323—Chemistry, 328—Biology, 329—Astronomy, 332—Geography and
Geology, 335—Methods of Reasoning, 336—Magic, 338.
Science is exact, regular, arranged knowledge. Of common knowledge
savages and barbarians have a vast deal, indeed the struggle of life
could not be carried on without it. The rude man knows much of the
properties of matter, how fire burns and water soaks, the heavy sinks and
the light floats, what stone will serve for the hatchet and what wood
for its handle, which plants are food and which are poison, what are
the habits of the animals that he hunts or that may fall upon him. He
has notions how to cure, and much better notions how to kill. In a rude
way he is a physicist in making fire, a chemist in cooking, a surgeon
in binding up wounds, a geographer in knowing his rivers and mountains,
a mathematician in counting on his fingers. All this is knowledge, and
it was on these foundations that science proper began to be built up,
when the art of writing had come in and society had entered on the
civilized stage. We have to trace here in outline the rise and progress
of science. And as it has been especially through counting and measuring
that scientific methods have come into use, the first thing to do is to
examine how men learnt to count and measure.
Even those who cannot talk can count, as was well shown by the
deaf-and-dumb lad Massieu, who wrote down among the recollections of his
childhood before the Abbé Sicard educated him, “I knew the numbers before
my instruction; my fingers had taught me them.” We ourselves as children
began arithmetic on our fingers and now and then take to them still, so
that there is no difficulty in understanding how a savage whose language
has no word for a number above three will manage to reckon perhaps a list
of fifteen killed and wounded, how he will check off one finger for each
man, and at last hold up his hand three times to show the result. The
next question is, how numeral words came to be invented. This is answered
by many languages, which show in the plainest way how counting on fingers
and toes led to making numerals. When a Zulu wants to express the number
six, he says _tatisitupa_, which means “taking the thumb;” this signifies
that the speaker has counted all the fingers of his left hand, and begun
with the thumb of the right. When he comes to seven, for instance when
he has to express that his master bought seven oxen, he will say _u
kombile_, that is, “he pointed”; this signifies that in counting he had
come to the pointing-finger or forefinger. In this way the words “hand,”
“foot,” “man,” have in various parts of the world become numerals.
An example how they are worked may be taken from the language of the
Tamanacs of the Orinoco; here the term for five means “whole hand,” six
is “one of the other hand,” and so on up to ten or “both hands”; then
“one to the foot” is eleven, and so on to “whole foot” or fifteen, “one
to the other foot” or sixteen, and thence to “one man,” which signifies
twenty, “one to the hands of the next man” being twenty-one, and the
counting going on in the same way to “two men” which stands for forty,
&c. &c. Now this state of things teaches a truth which has sometimes been
denied, that the lower races of men have, like ourselves, the faculty of
progress or self-improvement. It is evident that there was a time when
the ancestors of these people had in their languages no word for fifteen
or sixteen, nor even for five or six, for if they had they could not have
been so stupid as to change them for their present clumsy phrases about
hands and feet and men. We see back to the time when, having no means of
reckoning such numbers except on their fingers and toes, they found they
had only to describe in words what they were doing, and such a phrase
as “both hands” would serve them as a numeral for ten. Then they would
keep up these as numerals after their original sense was lost, like the
Vei negros who called the number twenty _mo bande_, but had forgotten
that this must have meant “a person finished.” The languages of nations
long civilized seldom show such plain meaning in their numerals, perhaps
because they are so ancient and have undergone such change. But all
through the languages of the world, savage or civilized, with exceptions
too slight to notice here, there is ineffaceable proof that the numerals
arose out of the primitive counting on fingers and toes. This always led
men to reckon by fives, tens, and twenties, and so they reckon still. The
quinary kind of counting (by fives) is that of tribes like the negros
of Senegal, who count one, two, three, four, five, five-one, five-two,
&c.; we never count numbers thus in words, but we write them so in the
Roman numerals. The decimal counting (by tens) is the most usual in the
world, and our ordinary counting is done by it, thus eighty-three is
“eight tens and three.” The vigesimal counting (by twenties) which is
the regular mode in many languages, has its traces left in the midst
of the decimal counting of civilized Europe, as in English “fourscore
and three,” French “quatre-vingt trois,” that is “four twenties and
three.” Thus it can hardly be doubted that the modern world has inherited
direct from primitive man his earliest arithmetic worked on nature’s
counting-board—the hands and feet. This also explains (p. 18) why the
civilized world uses a numeral system based on the inconvenient number
ten, which will not divide either by three or four. Were we starting
our arithmetic afresh, we should more likely base it on the duodecimal
notation, and use dozens and grosses instead of tens and hundreds.
To have named the numbers was a great step, but words hardly serve beyond
the very simplest arithmetic, as any one may satisfy himself by trying
to multiply “seven thousand eight hundred and three” by “two hundred
and seventeen” in words, without helping himself by turning them in
thought into figures. How did men come to the use of numeral figures?
To this question the beginning of an answer may be had from barbaric
picture-writing, as where a North American warrior will make four little
marks //// to show that he has taken four scalps. This is very well for
the small numbers, but becomes clumsy for higher ones. So already when
writing was in its infancy, the ancients had fallen upon the device of
making special marks for their fives, tens, hundreds, &c., leaving the
simple strokes to be used only for the few units over. This is well
seen in Fig. 76 which shows how numeration was worked in ancient Egypt
and Assyria. Nor has this old method died out in the world, for the
Roman numerals I., V., X., L., still in common use among ourselves, are
arranged on much the same principle. Another device, which arose out
of the alphabet, was to take the letters in their order to stand for
numbers. Thus the sections of Psalm CXIX. are numbered by the letters of
the Hebrew alphabet, and the books of the Iliad by the letters of the
Greek alphabet. By these various plans the arithmetic of the ancient
civilized nations made great progress. Still their numeration was very
cumbrous in comparison with that of the modern world. Let us put down
MMDCLXIX. and multiply by CCCXLVIII., or β͵χʹξʹθʹ by τʹμʹηʹ, and a few
minutes’ trial will not fail to convince us of the superiority of our
ciphers.
[Illustration: FIG. 76.—Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian numeration.]
[Illustration: FIG. 77.—Mode of calculation by counters and by figures on
Abacus.]
To understand how the art of ciphering came to be invented, it is
necessary to go back to a ruder state of things. In Africa, negro traders
may be seen at market reckoning with pebbles, and when they come to five,
putting them aside in a little heap. In the South Sea Islands it has been
noticed that people reckoning, when they came to ten, would not put aside
a heap of ten things, but only a single bit of coco-nut stalk to stand
for ten, and then a bigger piece when they wanted to represent ten tens
or a hundred. Now to us it is plain that this use of different kinds of
markers is unnecessary, but all that the reckoner with little stones or
beans has to do, is to keep separate his unit-heap, his ten-heap, his
hundred-heap, &c. This use of such things as pebbles for “counters,”
which still survives in England among the ignorant, was so common in the
ancient world, that the Greek word for reckoning was _psēphizein_, from
_psēphos_, a pebble, and the corresponding Latin word was _calculare_
from _calculus_, a pebble, so that our word _calculate_ is a relic of
very early arithmetic. Now to work such pebble-counting in an orderly
manner, what is wanted is some kind of abacus or counting-board with
divisions. These have been made in various forms, as the Roman abacus
with lines of holes for knobs or pegs, or the Chinese swan-pan with
balls strung on wires, on which the native calculators in the merchants’
counting-houses reckon with a speed and exactness that fairly beats the
European clerk with his pencil and paper. It may have been from China
that the Russian traders borrowed the ball-frame on which they also do
their accounts, and it is said that a Frenchman noticing it in Russia at
the time of Napoleon’s invasion was struck with the idea that it would
serve perfectly to teach little children arithmetic; so he introduced it
in France, and thence it found its way into English infants’ schools. Now
whatever sort of abacus is used, its principle is always the same, to
divide the board or tray into columns, so that in one column the stones,
beans, pegs, or balls, stand for units, in the next column they are tens,
in the next hundreds, and so on, Fig. 77. Here the three stones in the
right-hand column stand for 3, the nine in the next column for 90, the
one in the fourth column for 1,000 and so on. The next improvement was
to get rid of the troublesome stones or beans, and write down numbers in
the columns, as is here shown with Greek and Roman numerals. But now the
calculator could do without the clumsy board, and had only to rule lines
on his paper, to make columns for units, tens, hundreds, &c. The reader
should notice that it is not necessary to the principle of the abacus
that each column should stand for ten times the one next it. It may be
twelve or twenty or any other number of times, and in fact the columns in
our account-books for £ _s._ _d._ or _cwts._ _qrs._ _lbs._, are surviving
representatives of the old method of the abacus. Such reckoning had still
the defect that the numbers could not be taken out of the columns, for
even when each number from one to nine has a single figure to stand for
it, there would still be here and there an empty column (as is purposely
left in Fig. 77) which would throw the whole into confusion. To us now
it seems a very simple thing to put a sign to show an empty column, as
we have learned to do with the zero or 0, so that the number expressed
in the picture of the abacus can be written down without any columns,
241093. This invention of a sign for nothing, was practically one of the
greatest moves ever made in science. It is the use of the zero which
makes the difference between the old arithmetic and our easy ciphering.
We give the credit of the invention to the Arabs by using the term Arabic
numerals, while the Arabs call them Indian, and there is truth in both
acknowledgments of the nations having been scholars in arithmetic one
to the other. But this does not go to the root of the matter, and it is
still unsettled whether ciphering was first devised in Asia, or may be
traced further back in Europe to the arithmeticians of the school of
Pythagoras. As to the main point, however, there is no doubt, that modern
arithmetic comes out of ancient counting on the columns of the abacus,
improved by writing a dot or a round 0 to show the empty column, and by
this means young children now work calculations which would have been
serious labour to the arithmeticians of the ancient world.
Next as to the art of measuring. Here it may be fairly guessed that man
first measured, as he first counted, on his own body. When barbarians
tried by finger-breadths how much one spear was longer than another, or
when in building huts they saw how to put one foot before the other to
get the distance right between two stakes, they had brought mensuration
to its first stage. We sometimes use this method still for rough work,
as in taking a horse’s height by hands, or stepping out the size of a
carpet. If care is taken to choose men of average size as measurers,
some approach may be made to fair measurement in this way. That it was
the primitive way can hardly be doubted, for civilized nations who have
more exact means still use the names of the body-measures. Besides the
_cubit_, _hand_, _foot_, _span_, _nail_, already mentioned in p. 17, we
have in English the _ell_, (of which the early meaning of arm or fore-arm
is seen in _el_-bow, the arm-bend), also the _fathom_ or cord stretched
by the outspread arms in sailors’ fashion, and the _pace_ or double
step (Latin _passus_) of which a thousand (_mille_) made the _mile_.
But though these names keep up the recollection of early measurement by
men’s limbs, they are now only used as convenient names for standard
measures which they happen to come tolerably near to, as for instance
one may go a long way to find a man’s foot a foot long by the rule.
Our modern measurements are made by standard lengths, which we have
inherited with more or less change from the ancients. It was a great
step in civilization when nations such as the Egyptians and Babylonians
made pieces of wood or metal of exact lengths to serve as standards. The
Egyptian cubit-rules with their divisions may still be seen, and the
King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid measures very exactly 20 cubits by
10, the cubit being 20·63 of our inches. Our foot has scarcely altered
for some centuries, and is not very different from the ancient Greek and
Roman feet. The French at the first Revolution made a bold attempt to
cast off the old traditional standards and go straight to nature, so they
established the _metre_, which was to be a ten-millionth of the distance
from the pole to the equator. The calculation however proved inexact,
so that the metre is now really a standard measure of the old sort, but
so great is the convenience of using the same measures, that the metre
and its fractions are coming more and more into use for scientific work
all over the world. The use of scales and weights, and of wet and dry
measures, had already begun among the civilized nations in the earliest
known times. Our modern standards can even to some extent be traced back
to those of the old world, as for instance the pound and ounce, gallon
and pint, come from the ancient Roman weights and measures.
[Illustration: FIG. 78.—Rudimentary practical Geometry. 1, scalene
triangle; 2, folded right angle; 3, folded triangle; 4, rectangle folded
in circle.]
From measuring feet in length, men would soon come to reckoning the
contents, say of an oblong floor, in square feet. But to calculate the
contents of less simple figures required more difficult geometrical
rules. The Greeks acknowledged the Egyptians as having invented
_geometry_, that is, “land-measuring,” and there may be truth in the
old story that the art was invented in order to parcel out the plots of
fertile mud on the banks of the Nile. There is in the British Museum
an ancient Egyptian manual of mensuration (the Rhind papyrus), one of
the oldest books in the world, originally written more than 1,000 years
before Euklid’s time, and which shows what the Egyptians then knew and
did not know about geometry. From its figures and examples it appears
that they used square measure, but reckoned it roughly; for instance,
to get the area of the triangular field ABC Fig. 78 (1) they multiplied
half AC by AB, which would only be correct when BAC is a right angle.
When the Egyptians wanted the area of a circular field, they subtracted
one-ninth from the diameter and squared; thus if the diameter were 9
perches, they estimated that the circle contained 64 square perches,
which the reader will find on trial is a good approximation. All this
was admirable for the beginnings of geometry, and the record may well
be believed that Greek philosophers such as Thales and Pythagoras, when
they came to Egypt, gained wisdom from the geometer-priests of the land.
But these Egyptian mathematicians, being a priestly order, had come to
regard their rules as sacred, and therefore not to be improved on, while
their Greek disciples, bound by no such scientific orthodoxy, were free
to go on further to more perfect methods. Greek geometry thus reached
results which have come down to us in the great work of Euklid, who used
the theorems known to his predecessors, adding new ones and proving the
whole in a logical series. It must be clearly understood that elementary
geometry was not actually invented by means of definitions, axioms, and
demonstrations like Euklid’s. Its beginnings really arose out of the
daily practical work of land-measurers, masons, carpenters, tailors.
This may be seen in the geometrical rules of the altar-builders of
ancient India, which do not tell the bricklayer to draw a plan of such
and such lines, but to set up poles at certain distances, and stretch
cords between them. It is instructive to see that our term _straight
line_ still shows traces of such an early practical meaning; _line_ is
_linen_ thread, and _straight_ is the participle of the old verb to
_stretch_. If we stretch a thread tight between two pegs, we see that the
stretched thread must be the shortest possible; which suggests how the
straight line came to be defined as the shortest distance between two
points. Also, every carpenter knows the nature of a right angle, and he
is accustomed to parallel lines, or such as keep the same distance from
one another. To the tailor, the right angle presents itself in another
way. Suppose him cutting a doubled piece of cloth to open out into the
gore or wedge-shaped piece BAC in Fig. 78 (2). He must cut ADB a right
angle, or his piece when he opens it will have a projection or a recess,
as seen in the figure. When he has cut it right, so that BDC opens in
a straight line, then he cannot but see that the sides AB, AC, and the
angles ABC, ACB must exactly match, having in fact been cut out on one
another. Thus he arrives, by what may be called tailor’s geometry, at the
result of Euklid I. 5, which now often goes by the name of the “asses’
bridge.” Such easy properties of figures must have been practically known
very early. But it is also true that the ancients were long ignorant of
some of the problems which now belong to elementary teaching. Thus it has
just been mentioned how the Egyptian land-surveyors failed to make out
an exact rule to measure a triangular field. Yet had it occurred to them
to cut out the diagram of a triangle from a sheet of papyrus, as we may
do with the triangle ABC in Fig. 78 (3), and double it up as shown in
the figure, then they would have found that it folds into the rectangle
EFHG, and, therefore, its area is the product of the height by half the
base. It would be seen that this is no accident, but a property of all
triangles, while at the same time it would appear that the three angles
at A, B, C, all folding together at D, make up two right angles. Though
the more ancient Egyptian geometers do not seem to have got at either of
these properties of the triangle, the Greek geometers had in some way
become well aware of them before Euklid’s time. The old historians who
tell the origin of mathematical discoveries do not always seem to have
understood what they were talking of. Thus it is said of Thales that
he was the first to inscribe the right-angled triangle in the circle,
and thereupon sacrificed a bull. But a mathematician of such eminence
could hardly have been ignorant of what any intelligent carpenter has
reason to know, how an oblong board fits into a circle symmetrically;
the problem of the right-angled triangle in the semicircle is involved
in this, as is seen by (4) in the present figure. Perhaps the story
really meant that Thales was the first to work out a strict geometrical
demonstration of the problem. The tale is also told of Pythagoras, and
another version is that he sacrificed a hekatomb on discovering that the
square on the hypothenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum
of the squares on the other two sides (Euklid I. 47). The story is not a
likely one of a philosopher who forbad the sacrifice of any animal. As
for the proposition, it is one which may present itself practically to
masons working with square paving-stones or tiles; thus, when the base
is 3 tiles long, and the perpendicular 4, the hypothenuse will be 5, and
the tiles which form a square on it will just be as many as together form
squares on the other two sides. Whether Pythagoras got a hint from such
practical rules, or whether he was led by studying arithmetical squares,
at any rate he may have been the first to establish as a general law this
property of the right-angled triangle, on which the whole systems of
trigonometry and analytical geometry depend.
The early history of mathematics seems so far clear, that its founders
were the Egyptians with their practical surveying, and the Babylonians
whose skill in arithmetic is plain from the tables of square and cube
numbers drawn up by them, which are still to be seen. Then the Greek
philosophers, beginning as disciples of these older schools, soon left
their teachers behind, and raised _mathematics_ to be, as its name
implies, the “learning” or “discipline” of the human mind in strict
and exact thought. In its first stages, mathematics chiefly consisted
of arithmetic and geometry, and so had to do with known numbers and
quantities. But in ancient times the Egyptians and Greeks had already
begun methods of dealing with a number without as yet knowing what it
was, and the Hindu mathematicians, going further in the same direction,
introduced the method now called algebra. It is to be noticed that the
use of letters as symbols in algebra was not reached all at once by a
happy thought, but grew out of an earlier and clumsier device. It appears
from a Sanskrit book that the venerable teachers began by expressing
unknown quantities by the term “so-much-as,” or by the names of colours,
as “black,” “blue,” “yellow,” and then the first syllables of these words
came to be used for shortness. Thus if we had to express twice the square
of an unknown quantity, and called it “so much squared twice,” and then
abbreviated this to _so sq 2_, this would be very much as the Hindus
did in working out the following problem, given in Colebrooke’s _Hindu
Algebra_: “The square root of half the number of a swarm of bees is gone
to a shrub of jasmin: and so are eight-ninths of the whole swarm: a
female is buzzing to one remaining male, that is humming within a lotus,
in which he is confined, having been allured to it by its fragrance
at night. Say, lovely woman, the number of bees.” This Hindu equation
is worked out clumsily from the want of the convenient set of signs =
+ -, which were invented later in Europe, but the minus numbers are
marked, and the solution is in principle an ordinary quadratic. The Arab
mathematicians learnt from India this admirable method, and through them
it became known in Europe in the middle ages. The Arabic name given to
it is _al-jabr wa-l-mukabalah_, that is, “consolidation and opposition,”
this meaning what is now done by transposing quantities on the two
sides of an equation; thence comes the present word _algebra_. It was
not till about the 17th century in Europe that the higher mathematics
were thoroughly established, when Descartes worked into a system the
application of algebra to geometry, and Galileo’s researches on the path
of a ball or flung stone brought in the ideas which led up to Newton’s
fluxions and Leibnitz’s differential calculus, with the aid of which
mathematics have risen to their modern range and power. Mathematical
symbols have not lost the traces of their first beginnings as abbreviated
words, as where _n_ still stands for _number_ and _r_ for _radius_,
while √, which is a running-hand _r_, does duty for root (_radix_),
and ∫, which is an old-fashioned _s_, stands for the sum (_summa_) in
integration.
Mechanics and Physics, worked mathematically, now form the very
foundation of our knowledge of the universe. But in the old barbaric
life, men had only rudimentary notions of them. The savage understands
the path of a projectile well enough to aim it, and how to profit by
momentum when he mounts his axe on a long rather than a short handle.
But he hardly comes to bringing these practical ideas to a principle or
law. Even the old civilized nations of the East, though they could lift
stones with the lever, set their masonry upright with the plumb-line,
and weigh gold in the balance, are not known to have come to scientific
study of mechanical laws. What makes this more sure is that if they had,
the Greeks would have learnt it of them, whereas it is among the Greek
philosophers that the science is found just coming into existence. In
Aristotle’s time they were thinking about mechanical problems, though by
no means always rightly; it was considered that a body is drawn toward
the centre of the world, but the greater its weight the faster it will
fall. The chief founder of mechanical science was Archimedes, who worked
out from the steel-yard the law of the lever, and deduced thence cases of
all the particles of a body balancing on a common centre, now called its
centre of gravity; he even gave the general theory of floating bodies,
which mathematicians far on in the middle ages could hardly be brought
to understand. Indeed, mechanical science, after the classical period,
shared the general fate of knowledge during the long dead time when so
much was forgotten, and what was left was in bondage to the theology of
the schoolmen. It sometimes surprises a modern reader that the “wisdom
of the ancients” should still now and then be set up as an authority in
science. But the scholars of the middle ages, who on many scientific
points knew less than the ancient Greeks, might well look up to them. It
is curious to look at the book of Gerbert (Pope Sylvester II.) who was
a leading mathematician in the tenth century, and who bungles like an
early Egyptian over the measurement of the area of a triangle, though
the exact method as stated by Euklid had been well known in classical
times. Physical science might almost have disappeared if it had not been
that while the ancient treasure of knowledge was lost to Christendom,
the Mohammedan philosophers were its guardians, and even added to its
store. For this they have not always had due praise. A pretty story is
told of Galileo inventing the pendulum, being led to it by watching the
great hanging lamp in the cathedral of Pisa swinging steadily to and
fro; but as a matter of fact, it appears that six centuries earlier Ebn
Yunis and other Moorish astronomers were already using the pendulum as a
time-measurer in their observations. Of all the services which Galileo
did for science, perhaps the greatest was his teaching clearer ideas of
force and motion. People had of old times been deceived by the evidence
of their senses into the belief that the force of a moving body would
gradually become exhausted and it would stop of itself, but this idea of
force was changed by the new principle that force is as much required to
stop a moving body as to set it in motion, and that did no opposing force
retard the arrow or the wheel, the one would fly and the other roll on
for ever. In that age of mathematics applied to science new discoveries
followed fast. If Archimedes could have come to life again, he would
have seen progress going on at last, when the pressure of the air was
weighed with Torricelli’s barometer, and Stevin of Bruges made out the
principle of the parallelogram of forces. The notion of an attractive
force had come into the minds of philosophers by observing how the magnet
attracts iron at a distance, and glass and other substances when rubbed
become attractive. Thus the way was open for Newton to calculate the
effect of gravitation as such an attractive force, and by it to explain
the movements of the heavenly bodies, thus bringing the visible world
within the sway of one universal law. In the present day, among the
great laws which have been established in physical science, is that of
the conservation of energy, that power is not created and destroyed in
the processes of nature or the machines of man, but is transformed into
new manifestations equivalent to those which were before. Philosophers’
minds used often to be set on the invention of a perpetual moving power,
that should go on creating its own force. But nowadays this idea is
so discarded that, when some projector plans an absurd machine, he is
sufficiently answered by being shown that if his machine could work,
the perpetual motion would be possible. The modern mechanician has
only to apply in the most desirable way the stores of force placed at
his disposal by nature, and within this well-understood boundary his
business flourishes more and more.
Among the forms or manifestations of energy are sound, light, heat,
electricity. The classic philosophers knew in a vague way that sound
spreads like waves; and the relation between the length of a harpstring
and its note was laid down in arithmetical rule by Pythagoras, who
measured it with the instrument we still use, the monochord. But it was
the moderns who measured the velocity of sound, explained musical pitch
by the rate of vibration, and made the science of tone. About light the
ancients knew more. Their polished metal mirrors, flat and curved, had
taught them the first principles of reflexion. Nor were they ignorant of
refraction; they already knew the familiar experiment of putting a ring
in a basin and pouring in water till it becomes visible. A rock-crystal
lens has been dug up at Nineveh, and the Greeks and Romans were well
acquainted with glass lenses. One is surprised that neither the Arab
astronomers, who knew a good deal of optics, nor Roger Bacon, who in the
thirteenth century gave an intelligent account of their science, ever
seem to have combined two lenses into a telescope. It was not till the
seventeenth century that a telescope is plainly mentioned in Holland,
and Galileo, hearing of it, made the famous instrument with which he saw
Jupiter’s moons, and revolutionized men’s ideas of the universe. The
microscope and telescope may be called inverted forms of one another,
and their inventions came nearly together. By these two instruments the
range of man’s vision has been so vastly extended beyond his unaided
eyesight, that animalcules under a ten-thousandth of an inch long can
now be watched through all the stages of their life, while stars whose
distance from the earth is hundreds of thousands of billions of miles,
are within the maps of the universe. The rainbow led to the problem of
the decomposition of light and the theory of colour. The doctrine that
light was as it were bright particles emitted in straight lines from the
luminous body, failed to explain effects such as light extinguishing
light by interference, and it has yielded to the undulatory theory, of
ethereal light-waves of extreme smallness and speed. In our own day the
lines of the spectrum have become the means of recognising a glowing
substance, so that the astronomer whose telescope reveals the faint
shine of a nebula in the depths of the heavens, may test its composition
with the spectroscope, as if it were a gas-jet on the laboratory table.
Closely connected with the science of light, is the science of heat. Not
only do heat and light proceed together from the sun or fire, but the two
were seen to be subject to the same laws, when it was noticed that the
mirror or lens which concentrated a bright spot of light, also brought
to the same focus heat that would set wood on fire. The great step in
the study of heat was the invention of the heat-measurer or thermometer.
Who first made it is not known, but it was about three centuries ago,
and its earliest form may have been the air-flask with its tube in which
coloured water rises and falls, which is still the most striking way of
showing a class the principle of thermometers. The doctrine of heat as
due to vibration explains how heat is transformed force, so that the
steam-hammer worked by the heat used in the furnace can be set to beat
cold iron till it is white-hot; thus part of the force which came from
heat has gone back into heat, and with the heat re-appears the other
form of radiant energy, light. Lastly, the history of electricity comes
from the time when the ancients wondered to see amber when rubbed pick
up morsels of straw, and the loadstone draw bits of iron. The pointing
of the loadstone south and north seems to have been earliest noticed
by the Chinese, whence in the middle ages came its world-wide use in
navigation. The electrical machine is only an enlarged form of the old
experiment of rubbing the bit of amber. But the discoveries associated
with the name of Volta and Galvani brought in a new method of generating
electricity by chemical action in the battery. Franklin’s kite proved the
lightning-flash to be but a great electric spark. Oersted’s current-wire
deflecting a magnetic needle showed the relation between electricity and
magnetism, and set on foot the line of invention to which the world owes
the electric telegraph and much besides.
Next, as to chemistry. Its beginnings lie in practical processes such as
smelting metal from the ore, fusing sand and soda into glass, and tanning
leather with astringent pods or bark. The oldest civilized nations knew
these and many other chemical arts, which not only were learnt by the
artificers of Greece and Rome, but from time to time new processes were
added to the store of knowledge, as when we hear of their distilling
mercury from cinnabar, or treating copper with vinegar to make verdigris.
In early civilized ages also there arose beside these practical recipes
the first dim outlines of scientific chemistry. The Greek philosophers
expressed their ideas of the states of matter by the four elements, fire,
air, water, earth; and they also had learnt or invented the doctrine of
matter being made up of atoms—a principle now more influential than ever
in modern lecture-rooms. The successors of the Greeks were the Arabic
alchemists, and their disciples in mediæval Christendom. Their belief
that matter might be transmuted or transformed led many of them to spend
their lives among their furnaces and alembics in the attempt to turn
baser metals into gold. To modern chemists, who would not be surprised to
find all the many so-called elements proved to be forms of one matter,
the alchemists’ idea does not seem quite unreasonable in itself, and
practically it led them to the pursuit of truth by experiment, so that
though they found no philosophers’ stone, they were repaid by discoveries
such as alcohol, ammonia, sulphuric acid. Their method, being founded on
trials of real fact, cleared itself more and more from the magical folly
it had grown up with, and the alchemist prepared the way for the later
chemist. What of all things brought on the new chemical knowledge, was
the explanation of what takes place in burning, rusting, and breathing.
How is it that the air in a receiver is spoilt by a burning candle or a
mouse within, so that it no longer allows flame or life? How is it that
while some substances, like charcoal, seem to be dissipated by fire,
others, like lead or iron, turn into matter heavier than before? The
answers to such questions led the way to clearer notions of chemical
combination, but it was long before it was understood by what fixed laws
of affinity and proportion this combination takes place. The advanced
student of chemistry may spend an instructive hour in looking over old
chemistry books, where the catalogue of substances is a confused chaos,
not as yet brought into form and order on the lines of Dalton’s atomic
theory.
From the chemical nature of matter we pass to the nature of living
things. The more evident parts of biology or the science of life, have
come under man’s attentive observation from the first. So far as zoology
and botany consist in noticing the forms and habits of animals and
plants, savages and barbarians are skilled in them. Such people, for
instance, as the natives of the South American forests, have names for
each bird and beast, whose voices, resorts, and migrations they know
with an accuracy that astonishes the European naturalist whom they
guide through the jungle. The catalogue of the Brazilian native names
of animals and plants, often curiously descriptive of their natures,
would make a small book. Thus the _jaguara pimina_ or painted jaguar
is distinguished from the _jaguarete_ or great jaguar; the _capybara_
signifies the creature “living in the grass,” the _ipe-caa-goene_, or
“little wayside-plant-emetic,” is our _ipecacuanha_. Mankind everywhere
possesses this sort of popular Natural History. So it is with anatomy.
When the savage kills a deer, cuts it up, cooks the joints, heart, and
liver, makes clothes and straps of the hide, cuts harpoon-heads and
awls out of the long bones, and uses the sinews for thread, it stands
to reason that he must have a good rough knowledge of the anatomy of
an animal. The barbaric warrior and doctor have beyond such butchers’
anatomy an acquaintance with the structure of man’s body, as may be
seen in the description of the wounds of the heroes in the Iliad, where
the spear takes one in the diaphragm below the heart, and another has
the shoulder-tendon broken which makes his arm drop helpless. Among
the Greeks such rough knowledge passed into the scientific stage when
Aristotle wrote his book on animals, and Hippokrates took medicine
away from the priests and sorcerers to make it a method of treatment
by diet and drugs. The action of the body came to be better understood
during this classical period, as, for instance, is seen in the nerves
leading to and from the brain being no longer confounded with the sinews
which pull the limbs, although the same Greek word _neuron_ (_nerve_)
still continued to be used for both. It is curious how long it took the
ancients to get at the notion of what muscle is, and how it acts. They
never understood the circulation of the blood, though they had ideas
about it, as in Plato’s celebrated passage in the Timaios which compares
the heart to a fountain sending the blood round to nourish the body,
which is like a garden laid out with irrigating channels. Imperfect as
ancient knowledge was, it may be plainly seen how modern science is
based upon it. Thus the medical terms of Galen’s system, such as the
_diagnosis_ of disease, are still used; and indeed many old physician’s
words have passed into common talk, as when one is said to be in a
_sanguine humour_, which carries us back to the time when the humours
or fluids of the body were thought to cause the state of mind, the
humour which is sanguine, or “of the blood,” being lively and impetuous.
But in knowledge of the body the moderns have left the ancients quite
behind, now that the microscope shows its minute vessels and tissues,
and there have been made out the circulation of the blood, the process
of respiration, the chemistry of digestion, and the travelling of
currents along the nerves. Natural History still goes on the principles
of Aristotle, when he traces life on from lifeless matter through the
series of plants and animals. Modern naturalists like Linnæus so improved
the old classification, that it became possible to take a plant or
animal one had never seen before and did not know the name of, and make
out by examination that it must belong to such and such a genus and
species. Moreover, naturalists have long been seeking to understand why
the thousands of species should arrange themselves in groups or genera,
the species in each genus being connected by a common likeness, and the
genera themselves falling into higher groups, or orders. The thought that
the likeness among the species forming a genus is a family likeness,
due to these species being in fact the varied descendants of one race
or stock, is the foundation of that theory of development or evolution
which for many ages has been in the minds of naturalists, and now so
largely prevails. This is not the place to discuss the doctrine of
descent or development (see page 38), but it is worth while to remember
that the very word _genus_ meant originally birth or race, so that the
naturalist who sets down the horse, ass, zebra, quagga, as all belonging
to one genus Equus, is really suggesting that they are all descended from
one kind of animal, and are in fact distant cousins, which is the first
principle of the development-theory.
The world we live in is the subject of astronomy, geography, geology. It
seems plain how the rudiments of these sciences began from the evidence
of men’s senses. Children living unschooled in some wild woodland would
take it as a matter of course that the earth is a circular floor, more
or less uneven, arched over with a dome or firmament springing from the
horizon. Thus the natural and primitive notion of the world is that it
is like a round dish with a cover. Rude tribes in many countries are
found thinking so, and working out the idea so as to account for such
phenomena as rain, which is water from above dripping in through holes
in the sky-roof. This firmament is studded with stars, and is a few
miles off. There is nothing to suggest to the savage that the sun should
be enormously more distant than the cloud it seems to plunge into. The
sun seems to go down in the west into the sea, or through an opening
in the horizon, and to rise in like manner in the east, so that sunset
and sunrise force on the minds of the first rude astronomers the belief
in an under-world or infernal region, through which the sun travels
in the night, and which to many a nation has seemed also the abode of
departed souls, when after their bright day of life they sink like the
sun into the night of death. The sun and moon move as living gods in the
heaven, or at least are drawn or driven by such celestial powers, while
the presence of living beings in the sky seems peculiarly manifest in
eclipses, when invisible monsters seize or swallow the sun and moon.
All this is very natural, so natural indeed that more correct astronomy
has not yet rooted it out of Europe. Not many years ago a schoolmaster
who ventured to lecture on astronomy in the west of England roused the
displeasure of the country folk, that this young man should tell them
the world was round and went about, when they had lived on it all their
lives and knew it was flat and stood still. One part of the earliest
astronomy, which was so sound as to have held its own ever since, was the
measurement of time by the sun, moon, and stars. The day and the month
fix themselves at once. In a less exact way the seasons of the year, such
as the rainy season, or the icy season, or the growing season, furnish
a means of reckoning, as where a savage tells of his father’s death
having been three rains or three winters ago. Rude tribes, who observe
the stars to find their way by, notice also that the rising and setting
of particular stars or constellations mark the seasons. Thus the natives
of South Australia call the constellation Lyra the Loan-bird, for they
notice that when it sets with the sun, the season for getting loan-birds’
eggs has begun. It stands to reason that the great facts of the year’s
course, the change of the sun’s height at noon, and the lengthening and
shortening of the days, would be noticed, so that even among people who
have not as yet measured them with any accuracy, there exists in a loose
way the notion of the year. Within the year, too, the successive moons
or months come to be arranged with some regularity, as where the Ojibwas
reckoned in order the wild-rice moon, the leaves-falling moon, the
ice-moon, the snow-shoes moon, and so forth. But such lunar months have
to be got into the year as they best may. Indeed what distinguishes the
uncivilized calendar, is that though days, months, and years are known,
the days are not yet fitted regularly into the months, nor is it settled
how many months, much less how many days, the year is to consist of.
When we look from this to the astronomy of the ancient cultured nations,
we find great progress made in observing and calculating. Yet the
astronomer-priests who for ages watched and recorded the aspect of
the heavens, had not yet cut themselves free from the ideas of their
barbarian forefathers as to what the world as a whole was like. In the
Egyptian Book of the Dead, the departed souls descend with the sun-god
through the western gate, and travel with him among the fields and rivers
of the under-world, and the Assyrian records also tell of the regions
below, where Ishtar descends into the dark abode of fluttering ghosts,
the house men enter but cannot depart from. Yet the Egyptians who held
to this primitive astronomy had set the Great Pyramid by the cardinal
points with remarkable exactness. In reckoning the year, they not only
added to the 12 solar months of 30 days 5 intercalary days to make
365, but becoming aware that even this was not accurate, they recorded
its variation till it should come round in a cycle of 1,461 years, as
determined by the rising of Sirius. Even more advanced was the astronomy
of the Chaldæans, with its records of eclipses extending over 2,000
years. In the astronomy of barbarians the five planets Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, are not thought much of in comparison with the
Sun and Moon. But among the Chaldæans all the seven planets were classed
together as objects of worship and observation, starting the ideas of
the sacred number seven, which thence pervaded the mystical philosophy
of the ancients. It may have been among the Babylonian astronomers that
the study of the motions of the planets led to the theory that they were
carried round on seven crystal spheres; to this day people talk of being
“in the seventh heaven.” The next and great step in astronomy was when
the long-treasured knowledge of Babylon and Egypt was taken up by the
Greeks, to be carried on by the exact methods of the geometer. The Greek
astronomers were familiar with the idea of the earth being a sphere; they
calculated its circumference, and usually taking it as the centre of the
universe, they measured the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies.
This system, in its most perfect form known as the Ptolemaic, held its
place into the middle ages, when it came into rivalry with the Copernican
system of a central sun round which revolve the earth and other planets.
How this became in the hands of Kepler and Newton a mechanical theory of
the universe, and how man was at last stripped of the fond conceit that
his little planet was the centre of all things, need not be re-told here.
Geography is a practical kind of knowledge in which the rudest tribes
are well skilled, so far as it consists in the lie of their own land,
the course of the streams, the passes over the mountains, how many days’
marches through forest and desert to reach some distant hunting-ground,
or the hill-side where hard stone for hatchets is to be found. However
uncivilized a people may be, they name their mountains and rivers in such
terms as “red hill” or “beaver brook.” Indeed the atlas contains hundreds
of names of places that once had meanings in tongues which no man any
longer speaks. Scientific geography begins when men come to drawing maps,
an art which perhaps no savage takes to untaught, but which was known to
the early civilized nations; the oldest known map is an Egyptian plan of
the gold-mines of Æthiopia. The earliest known mention of a geographer
attempting a map of the world is by Herodotus, who tells of Aristagoras’s
bronze tablet inscribed with the circuit of the whole earth, the sea
and all rivers. But to the ancients the known world was a very limited
district round their own countries. It brings the growth of geography
well before our minds to look at the map in Gladstone’s _Juventus Mundi_,
representing the world according to the Homeric poems, with its group of
nations round the Mediterranean, and the great Ocean River encircling
the whole. Later, in the world as known to geographers such as Strabo,
the lands of men form a vast oval, reaching from the pillars of Herakles
across to far India, and from tropical Africa up to polar Europe. How
land and sea came to lie as they do, it is the business of geology to
explain. This is among the most modern of sciences, yet its problems
had long set rude men thinking. Even the Greenlanders and the South Sea
Islanders have noticed the fossils inland and high on the mountains, and
account for them by declaring that the earth was once tilted over, or
that the sea rose in a great flood and covered the mountains, leaving at
their very tops the remains of fishes. In the infancy of Greek science,
Herodotus speculated more rightly as to how the valley of Egypt had
been formed by deposits of mud from the Nile, while the shells on the
mountains proved to him that the sea had once been where dry land now is.
But two thousand years had to pass before these lines of thought were
followed up by the modern geologists, to whom the earth is now revealing
the long history of the deposit and removal, rising and sinking of its
beds, and the succession of plants and animals which from remote ages
have lived upon it.
From this survey of the various branches of science, it is clear that
their progress has been made in age after age by facts being more fully
observed and more carefully reasoned on. Reasoning or logic is itself a
science, but like other sciences, it began as an art which man practised
without stopping to ask himself why or how. He worked out his conclusions
by thinking and talking, untold ages before it occurred to him to lay
down rules how to argue. Indeed, speech and reason work together. A
language which distinguishes substantive, adjective, and verb, is already
a powerful reasoning-apparatus. Men had made no mean advance toward
scientific method when their language enabled them to class wood as heavy
or light, and to form such propositions as, light wood floats, heavy
wood sinks. The rise of reasoning into the scientific stage was chiefly
due to the Greek philosophers, and Aristotle brought argument into a
regular system by the method of syllogisms. Of course the simpler forms
of these had always belonged to practical reasoning, and a savage, aware
that red-hot coals burn flesh, would not thank a logician for explaining
to him that in consequence of this principle a particular red-hot coal
will burn his fingers. It must not be supposed that the introduction
of logic as a science had the effect of at once stopping bad argument,
and it was rather by setting practically to work on exact reasoning,
especially in mathematics, that the Greeks brought on a general advance
in knowledge. The importance of science was recognised when the famous
Museum of Alexandria flourished, the type of later universities, with its
great libraries, its laboratories, its zoological and botanical gardens.
Hither students came by thousands to follow mathematics, chemistry,
anatomy, under professors who resorted there at once to teach others
and to learn themselves. Looking at the history of science for eighteen
hundred years after this flourishing time, though some progress was made,
it was not what might have been expected, and on the whole things went
wrong. The so-called scholastic period which prevailed in Europe was
unfavourable, partly because excessive reverence for the authority of
the past fettered men’s minds, and partly because the learned successors
of Aristotle had come to believe so utterly in argumentation as to fancy
that the problems of the world could be dealt with by arguing about them,
without increasing the stock of real knowledge. The great movement of
modern philosophy with which the name of Bacon is associated as a chief
expounder, brought men back to the sound old method of working experience
and thought together, only now the experience was more carefully sought
and observed, and thought arranged it more systematically. We who live
in an age when every week shows new riches of nature’s facts, and new
shapeliness in the laws that connect them, have the best of practical
proof that science is now moving on a right track.
The student who wishes to compare the mental habits of rude and ancient
peoples with our own, may look into a subject which has now fallen into
contempt from its practical uselessness, but which is most instructive in
showing how the unscientific mind works. This is Magic. In the earlier
days of knowledge men relied far more than we moderns do on reasoning by
analogy or mere association of ideas. In getting on from what is known
already to something new, analogy or reasoning by resemblance always was,
as it still is, the mind’s natural guide in the quest of truth. Only its
results must be put under the control of experience. When the Australians
picked up the bits of broken bottles left by the European sailors, the
likeness of the new material to their own stone flakes at once led them
to try it for teeth to their spears; experience proved that in this
case the argument from analogy held good, for the broken glass answered
perfectly. So the North American Indian, in default of tobacco, finds
some more or less similar plant to serve instead, such as willow-bark.
The practical knowledge of nature possessed by savages is so great, that
it cannot have been gained by mere chance observations; they must have
been for ages constantly noticing and trying new things, to see how far
their behaviour corresponded with that of things partly like them. And
where the matter can be brought to practical trial by experiment, this is
a thoroughly scientific method. But the rude man wants to learn and do
far more difficult things—how to find where there is plenty of game, or
whether his enemies are coming, how to save himself from the lightning,
or how to hurt some one he hates, but cannot safely throw a spear at.
In such matters beyond his limited knowledge, he contents himself with
working on resemblances or analogies of thought, which thus become the
foundation of magic. On looking into the “occult sciences,” it is easy to
make out in them principles which are intelligible if one can only bring
one’s mind down to the childish state they belong to. Nothing shows this
better than the rules of astrology, although this is far from the rudest
kind of magic. According to the astrologers, a man born under the sign
Taurus is likely to have a broad brow and thick lips, and to be brutal
and unfeeling, but when enraged, violent and furious. If he had been born
under the sign Libra, he would have had a just and well-balanced mind.
All this is because two particular groups of stars happen to have been
called the bull and the balance; the child whose hour of birth has some
sort of astronomical relation to these constellations is imagined to have
a character resembling that of a real bull or a real pair of scales. So
with the planets. He over whom Mars presides in his better aspect will
be bold and fearless, but where the planet is “ill-dignified,” then he
will be a boastful shameless bully, ready to rob and murder. Had he but
been born when Venus was in the ascendant, how different would he have
been, with dimpled cheek and soft voice apt to speak of love. Practically
foolish as all this is, it is not unintelligible. There is in it a train
of thought which can be followed quite easily, though it is a train
of thought hardly strong enough for a joke, much less for a serious
argument. Yet such is the magic which still pervades the barbaric world.
The North American Indian, eager to kill a bear to-morrow, will hang up
a rude grass image of one and shoot it, reckoning that this symbolic act
will make the real one happen. The Australians at a burial, to know in
what direction they may find the wicked sorcerer who has killed their
friend, will take as their omen the direction of the flames of the
grave-fire. The Zulu who has to buy cattle may be seen chewing a bit of
wood, in order to soften the hard heart of the seller he is dealing with.
The accounts of such practices would fill a volume, and they do not seem
broken-down remains of old ideas, for there is no reason to suppose they
ever had more sense in them than is to be plainly seen now. They may be
derived from some such loose savage logic as this:—Things which are like
one another behave in the same way—shooting this image of a bear is like
shooting a real bear—therefore, if I shoot the image I shall shoot a
real bear. It is true that such magical proceedings, if tested by facts,
prove to be worthless. But if we wonder that nevertheless they should so
prevail among mankind, it may be answered that they last on even in our
own country among those who are too ignorant to test them by facts—the
rustics who believe a neighbour’s ill-wishing has killed their cow, and
who, on true savage principles, try to punish the evil-doer by putting
a heart spitefully stuck full of pins up the chimney to shrivel in the
smoke, that in like manner sharp pangs may pierce him and he may waste
away.
In another and very different way the student of science is interested
in magic. Loose and illogical as man’s early reasonings may be, and slow
as he may be to improve them under the check of experience, it is a law
of human progress that thought tends to work itself clear. Thus even
the fancies of magic have been sources of real knowledge. Few magical
superstitions are more troublesome than the Chinese geomancy or rules of
“wind and water,” by which a lucky site has to be chosen for building a
house. Absurd as this ancient art is, its professors appear to have been
the earliest to use the magnetic compass to determine the aspects of the
heavens, so that it seems the magician gave the navigator his guide in
exploring the world. What exact science owes to astrology is well known,
how in Chaldæa the places of the stars were systematically observed and
recorded for portents of battle and pestilence, and registers of lucky
and unlucky days. The old magical character hung to astronomy even into
modern ages, when astrologers like Tycho Brahe and Kepler, who believed
that the destinies of men were foretold by the planets, helped by their
observation and calculation to foretell the motions of the planets
themselves. Thus man has but to go on observing and thinking, secure that
in time his errors will fall away, while the truth he attains to will
abide and grow.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE SPIRIT-WORLD.
Religion of Lower Races, 342—Souls, 343—Burial, 347—Future
Life, 349—Transmigration, 350—Divine Ancestors, 351—Demons,
352—Nature Spirits, 357—Gods, 358—Worship, 364—Moral Influence,
368.
It does not belong to the plan of this book to give a general account
of the many faiths of mankind. The anthropologist, who has to look at
the religions of nations as a main part of their life, may best become
acquainted with their general principles by beginning with the simple
notions of the lower races as to the spirit-world. That is, he has to
examine how and why they believe in the soul and its existence after
death, the spirits who do good and evil in the world, and the greater
gods who pervade, actuate, and rule the universe. Any one who learns
from savages and barbarians what their belief in spiritual beings means
to them, will come into view of that stage of culture where the religion
of rude tribes is at the same time their philosophy, containing such
explanation of themselves and the world they live in as their uneducated
minds are able to receive.
The idea of the soul which is held by uncultured races, and is the
foundation of their religion, is not difficult to us to understand, if
we can fancy ourselves in their place, ignorant of the very rudiments
of science, and trying to get at the meaning of life by what the senses
seem to tell. The great question that forces itself on their minds is one
that we with all our knowledge cannot half answer, what the life is which
is sometimes in us, but not always. A person who a few minutes ago was
walking and talking, with all his senses active, goes off motionless and
unconscious in a deep sleep, to wake after a while with renewed vigour.
In other conditions the life ceases more entirely, when one is stunned
or falls into a swoon or trance, where the beating of the heart and
breathing seem to stop, and the body, lying deadly pale and insensible,
cannot be awakened; this may last for minutes or hours, or even days, and
yet after all the patient revives. Barbarians are apt to say that such
a one died for a while, but his soul came back again. They have great
difficulty in distinguishing real death from such trances. They will talk
to a corpse, try to rouse it and even feed it, and only when it becomes
noisome and must be got rid of from among the living, they are at last
certain that the life has gone never to return. What, then, is this soul
or life which thus goes and comes in sleep, trance, and death? To the
rude philosopher, the question seems to be answered by the very evidence
of his senses. When the sleeper awakens from a dream, he believes he
has really somehow been away, or that other people have come to him.
As it is well known by experience that men’s bodies do not go on these
excursions, the natural explanation is that every man’s living self or
soul is his phantom or image, which can go out of his body and see and be
seen itself in dreams. Even waking men in broad daylight sometimes see
these human phantoms, in what are called visions or hallucinations. They
are further led to believe that the soul does not die with the body, but
lives on after quitting it, for although a man may be dead and buried,
his phantom-figure continues to appear to the survivors in dreams and
visions. That men have such unsubstantial images belonging to them is
familiar in other ways to the savage philosopher, who has watched their
reflexions in still water, or their shadows following them about, fading
out of sight to reappear presently somewhere else, while sometimes for
a moment he has seen their living breath as a faint cloud, vanishing
though one can feel that it is still there. Here then in few words is the
savage and barbaric theory of souls, where life, mind, breath, shadow,
reflexion, dream, vision, come together and account for one another in
some such vague confused way as satisfies the untaught reasoner. The Zulu
will say that at death a man’s shadow departs from his body and becomes
an ancestral ghost, and the widow will relate how her husband has come in
her sleep and threatened to kill her for not taking care of his children;
or the son will describe how his father’s ghost stood before him in
a dream, and the souls of the two, the living and the dead, went off
together to visit some far-off kraal of their people. The Malays do not
like to wake a sleeper, lest they should hurt him by disturbing his body
while his soul is out. The Ojibwas describe how one of their chiefs died,
but while they were watching the body, on the third night his shadow came
back into it, and he sat up and told them how he had travelled to the
River of Death, but was stopped there and sent back to his people. The
Nicaraguans, when questioned by the Spaniards as to their religion, said
that when a man or woman dies, there comes out of their mouth something
that resembles a person and does not die, but the body remains here—it
is not precisely the heart that goes above, but the breath that comes
from their mouth and is called the life. The lower races sometimes
avoid such confusion of thoughts as this, by treating the breath, the
dream-ghost, and other appearances, as being separate souls. Thus, some
Greenlanders reckoned man as having two souls, his shadow and his breath;
and the Fijians said that the “dark spirit” or shadow goes down to the
world below, but the “light spirit” or reflexion seen in water stays near
where he dies. The reader may call to mind examples how such notions of
the soul lasted on hardly changed in the classic world; how in the Iliad
the dead Patroklos comes to the sleeping Achilles, who tries in vain to
grasp him with loving hands, but the soul like smoke flits away below the
earth; or how Hermotimos, the seer, used to go out from his body, till at
last his soul, coming back from a spirit-journey, found that his wife had
burnt his corpse on the funeral pile, and that he had become a bodiless
ghost. At this stage the idea of the soul was taken up by the Greek
philosophers and refined into more metaphysical forms; the life and mind
were separated by dividing the soul into two, the animal and the rational
soul, and the conception of the soul as of thin ethereal substance gave
place to the definition of the immaterial soul, which is mind without
matter. To follow the discussion of these transcendental problems in
ancient and modern philosophy will occupy the student of metaphysics,
but the best proof how the earlier and grosser soul-theory satisfied the
uncultured mind is that to this day it remains substantially the belief
of the majority of the human race. Even among the most civilized nations
language still plainly shows its traces, as when we speak of a person
being in an _ecstasy_ or “out of himself” and “coming back to himself,”
or when the souls of the dead are called _shades_ (that is, “shadows”)
or _spirits_ or _ghosts_ (that is, “breaths”), terms which are relics of
men’s earliest theories of life.
It may have occurred to some readers that the savage philosopher
ought, on precisely the same grounds, to believe his horse or dog to
have a soul, a phantom-likeness of its body. This is in fact what the
lower races always have thought and think still, and they follow the
reasoning out in a way that surprises the modern mind, though it is
quite consistent from the barbarian’s point of view. If a human soul
seen in a dream is a real object, then the spear and shield it carries
and the mantle over its shoulders are real objects too, and all lifeless
things must have their thin flitting shadow-souls. Such are the souls
of canoes and weapons and earthen pots that the Fijians fancy they see
swimming down the stream pellmell into the life to come, and the ghostly
funeral gifts with which the Ojibwas imagine the souls of the dead laden
on their journey to the spirit-land—the men carrying their shadowy guns
and pipes, the women their baskets and paddles, the little boys their
toy bows and arrows. The funeral sacrifices, which in one shape or other
are remembered or carried on still in every part of the globe, give us
the clearest idea how barbaric religion takes in together the souls of
men, animals, and things. In Peru, where a dead prince’s wives would
hang themselves in order to continue in his service, and many of his
attendants would be buried for him to take their souls with him, people
declared that they had seen those who had long been dead walking about
with their sacrificed wives, and adorned with the things that were put in
the grave for them. So only a few years since in Madagascar it was said
that the ghost of King Radama had been seen dressed in a uniform buried
with him, and mounted on one of the horses that were killed at his tomb.
With such modern instances before us, we understand the ancient funeral
rites of which the traces remain in the burial-mounds on our own hills,
with their skeletons of attendants lying round the chief, and the bronze
weapons and golden arm-rings. Classic literature abounds in passages
which show how truly the modern barbarian represents the ancient; such
are the burning of Patroklos with the Trojan captives and the horses
and hounds, the account of the Scythian funerals by Herodotus, and his
story of Melissa’s ghost coming back shivering because the clothes had
not been burnt for her at her burial. There are districts in India where
the _suttee_ or “goodwife” is even now burnt on her husband’s funeral
pile. In Europe, long after the wives and slaves ceased thus to follow
their master, the warrior’s horse was still solemnly killed at his grave
and buried with him. This was done as lately as 1781 at Treves, when a
general named Friedrich Kasimir was buried according to the rites of the
Teutonic Order; and in England the pathetic ceremony of leading the horse
in the soldier’s funeral is the last remnant of the ancient sacrifice.
Other quaint relics of the old funeral customs are to be met with. There
are German villages where the peasants put shoes on the feet of the
corpse (the “hell-shoon” with which the old Northmen were provided for
the dread journey to the next world), and elsewhere a needle and thread
is put in for them to mend their torn clothes, while all over Europe, at
an Irish wake for instance, the dead has a piece of money put in his hand
to pay his way with.
Mention has just been made of ancient burial-mounds. Seeing how
barbarians reverence and fear the souls of the dead, we may understand
the care they take of their bodies, leaving the hut as a dwelling for
the dead, or drying the corpse and setting it up on a scaffold, or
burying it in a canoe or coffin, or building up a strong tomb over it,
or for the ashes, if the people have taken to cremation. Prehistoric
burial-places in our own country are still wonders to us for the labour
they must have cost their barbaric builders. Most conspicuous are the
great burial-mounds of earth or cairns of stones. Some of the largest of
these appear to date from the stone-age. But their use lasted on through
the bronze-age into the iron-age; and to this day in the Highlands of
Scotland the memory of the old custom is so strong, that the mourners,
as they may not build a cairn over the grave in the churchyard, will
sometimes set up a little one where the funeral procession stops on the
way. Within the old burial-mounds or barrows, there may be a cist or rude
chest of stone slabs for the interment, or a chamber of rude stones,
sometimes with galleries. Many such stone structures are to be seen above
ground, especially the _dolmens_, _i.e._ stone tables, formed of three
or four great upright stones, with a top-stone resting on them, such as
Kit’s Coty House, not far from Rochester. The remains dug up show that
the dolmens were tombs. Another kind of early stone monuments are the
_menhirs_, _i.e._ long stones set up singly. It happens that the Khasias
of north-east India have gone on to modern times setting up such rude
pillars as memorials of the dead, so that it may be reasonably guessed
that those in Brittany for instance had the same purpose. Another kind of
rude stone structures well known in Europe are the _cromlechs_, or stone
circles, formed of upright stones in a ring, such as Stanton Drew, not
far from Bristol. There is proof that the stone circles have often to do
with burials, for they may surround a burial-mound, or have a dolmen in
the middle. But considering how tombs are apt to become temples where the
ghost of the buried chief or prophet is worshipped, it is likely that
such stone circles should also serve as temples, as in the case of South
India at the present time, where cocks are actually sacrificed to the
village deity, who is represented by the large stone in the centre of a
cromlech. Rude stone monuments may be traced in a remarkable line on the
map, from India across to North Africa, and up the west side of Europe
(_see_ Fergusson’s map.) The purpose of them all is not fully understood,
especially the lines of great stones at Carnac and Abury, and Stonehenge
with its great hewn upright and cross stones. But, as has been here
shown, there are facts which go far to explain the meaning of dolmens,
menhirs, and cromlechs. The fanciful speculations of the old-fashioned
antiquaries, such as that the dolmens were “Druid’s altars,” are giving
place to sober examination such as the reader may find in Lubbock’s
_Prehistoric Times_.
In the barbaric religion, which has left such clear traces in our midst,
what is supposed to become of the soul after death? The answers are many,
but they agree in this, that the ghosts must be somewhere whence they can
come to visit the living, especially at night time. Some tribes say that
the soul continues to haunt the hut where it died, which is accordingly
deserted for it; or it hovers near the burial-ground, which is sometimes
the place of village resort, so that the souls of ancestors can look on
kindly, like the old people sitting round the village green watching the
youngsters at their sports; or the ghosts flit away to some region of the
dead in the deep forests or on mountain-tops or far-away islands over
the sea, or up on the plains above the sky, or down in the depths below
the ground where the sun descends at night. Such people as the Zulus can
show the holes where one can descend by a cavern into the under-world
of the dead, an idea well known in the classic lake Avernus, and which
has lasted on to our own day in St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Dearg.
By a train of fancy easy to follow, it is often held that the home
of the dead has to do with that far-west region where the sun dies at
night. Islanders like the Maoris imagine the souls speeding away from the
westernmost cape of New Zealand, just as on the coast of Brittany, where
Cape Raz stands out westward into the ocean, there is the “bay of souls,”
the launching-place where the departed spirits sail off across the sea.
Many rude tribes think the spirit-world to be the pleasant land they see
in dreams, where the dead live in their spirit-villages, and there is
game and fish in plenty, and the sun always shines; but others fancy it
the dim land of shadows, the cavernous under-world of night. Both ideas
are familiar to us in poetry—one in the earthly paradise of the legends,
the other in such passages as describe Odysseus’ visit to the bloodless
ghosts in the dreary dusk of Hades, or the shadows of the dead in
Purgatory wondering to see Dante there, whose fleshly body, unlike their
own phantom forms, stops the sunlight and casts a shadow.
Hitherto we have been speaking of the bodiless souls or ghosts of the
dead, but it also agrees with their nature that they may enter into new
bodies and live again on earth. In fact one of the most usual beliefs
of the lower races is that the souls of dead ancestors are re-born in
children, an idea which explains the fact of children having a likeness
to the father’s or mother’s family. For instance, the Yoruba negroes
greet a new-born child with the salute, “Thou art come!” and then set
themselves to decide what ancestral soul has returned. It does not,
however, follow that the body in which the soul takes up its new abode
should be human: it may enter into a bear or jackal, or fly away in a
bird, or, as the Zulus think, it may pass into one of those harmless
snakes which creep about in the huts, liking the warmth of the family
hearth, as they did while they were old people, and still kindly taking
the food given by their grandchildren. In such simple forms there appears
among the lower races the notion of transmigration which in Brahmanism
and Buddhism becomes a great religious doctrine.
To return to the souls of the dead which flit to and fro as ghosts.
These, wherever they dwell, are naturally believed to keep up their
interest in the living, and their families hold kindly intercourse with
them. Thus, in North America a Mandan woman will talk by the hour to her
dead husband or child; and a Chinese is bound to announce any family
event, such as a wedding, to the spirits of his ancestors, present in
their memorial tablets. The ghosts of dead kinsfolk are not only talked
to but fed; the family offer them morsels of food at their own meals, and
hold once a year a feast of the dead, when the souls of ancestors for
generations back are fancied present and invisibly partaking of the food.
Such offerings to the dead not only go on through the savage and barbaric
world, but last on into higher civilization, their traces still remaining
in Europe. The Russian peasant, who fancies the souls of his forefathers
creeping in and out behind the saints’ pictures on the little icon-shelf,
puts crumbs of cake there for them. One has only to cross the Channel to
see how the ancient feast of the dead still keeps its primitive character
in the festival of All Souls, which is its modern representative; even
at the cemetery of Père-Lachaise they still put cakes and sweet-meats
on the graves, and in Brittany the peasants that night do not forget to
make up the fire and leave the fragments of the supper on the table, for
the souls of the dead of the family who will come to visit their home.
All this belongs to the ancestor-worship or religion of the divine dead,
which from remote antiquity has been, as it is even now, the main faith
of the larger half of mankind. But this worship does not come only from
family affection, for the ghosts of the dead are looked upon as divine
beings, powerful both for good and harm. The North American Indian, who
prays to the spirits of his forefathers to give him good weather or luck
in hunting, if he happens to fall into the fire will believe he has
neglected to make some offering to the spirits, and they have pushed him
in to punish him. In Guinea the negroes who regularly bring food and
drink to the images of their dead relatives look to them for help in
the trials of life, and in times of peril or distress crowds of men and
women may be seen on the hill-tops or the skirts of the forest, calling
in the most piteous and touching tones on the spirits of their ancestors.
Such accounts help us to understand what real meaning there is in the
ancestor-worship which to a Chinese or Hindu is the first business of
life, and how the pious rites for the dead ancestors or lares formed
the very bond which held a Roman family together. Our modern minds have
rather lost the sense of this, and people often think the apotheosis of
a dead Roman emperor to have been a mere act of insane pride, whereas in
fact it was an idea understood by any barbarian, that at death the great
chief should pass into as great a deity.
That barbarians should imagine the manes or ghosts of their dead to be
such active powerful beings, arises naturally from their notions of the
soul; but this requires a word of explanation. As during life the soul
exercises power over the body, so after death when become a ghost it
is believed to keep its activity and power. Such ghosts interfering in
the affairs of the living are usually called good and evil spirits, or
demons. There is no clear distinction made between ghosts and demons;
in fact, savages generally consider the demons who help or plague them
to be souls of dead men. Good or evil, the man keeps after death the
temper he had in mortal life. Not long ago, in South India, where the
natives are demon-worshippers, it was found that they had lately built a
shrine of which the deity was the ghost of a British officer, a mighty
hunter, whose votaries, mindful of his tastes in life, were laying on
his altar offerings of cheroots and brandy. The same man will be a good
spirit to his friends and an evil spirit to his enemies, and even to
his own people he may be sometimes kind and sometimes cruel, as when
the Zulus believe that the shades of dead warriors of their tribe are
among them in battle and lead them to victory; but if these ghostly
allies are angry and turn their backs, the fight will go against them.
When people like the American Indians or the African negroes believe
that the air around them is swarming with invisible spirits, this is not
nonsense. They mean that life is full of accidents which do not happen
of themselves; and when in their rude philosophy they say the spirits
make them happen, this is finding the most distinct causes which their
minds can understand. This is most plainly seen in what uncivilized men
believe about disease. We have noticed already that they account for
fainting or trance by supposing the soul to leave the body for a time,
and here it may be added that weakness or failure of health is in the
same way thought to be caused by the soul or part of it going out. In
these cases, to bring the soul back is the ordinary method of cure, as
where the North American medicine-man will pretend to catch his patient’s
truant soul and put it back into his head, or in Fiji a sick native has
been seen lying on his back, bawling to his own soul to come back to him.
But in other conditions of disease the patient’s behaviour seems rather
that of a man who has got a soul in him that is not his proper soul. In
any painful illness, especially when the sick man is tossing and shaking
in fever, or writhing in convulsions on the ground, or when in delirium
or delusion he no longer thinks his own thoughts or speaks with his own
voice, but with distorted features and strange, unearthly tones breaks
into wild raving, then the explanation which naturally suggests itself
is that another spirit has entered into or possessed him. Any one who
watches the symptoms of a hysterical-epileptic patient, or a maniac, will
see how naturally in the infancy of medical science demoniacal possession
came to be the accepted theory of disease, and the exorcism or expulsion
of these demons the ordinary method of treatment. It is so among savages,
as when a sick Australian will believe that the angry ghost of a dead
man has got into him and is gnawing his liver; or when in a Patagonian
skin hut the wizards may be seen dancing, shouting, and drumming to
drive out the evil demon from a man down with fever. Such ideas were at
home in ancient history, as in the well-known Egyptian memorial tablet
of the time of Rameses XII (12th century B.C.) to be seen in the Paris
Library, and translated in _Records of the Past_, where the Egyptian
god Khons was sent in his ark to cure the little princess Bentaresh of
the evil movement in her limbs. When he came, the demon said, “Great
god who chasest demons, I am thy slave, I will go to the place whence
I came.” Then they made a sacrifice for that spirit, and he went in
peace, leaving the patient cured. As far back as the history of medicine
reaches, we find the contest between this old spirit-theory of disease
and the newer ideas of the physicians, with their diet and drugs; and
though the doctors have now taken the upper hand, yet in any nation short
of the most civilized the earlier notions may still be found unchanged.
When Prof. Bastian, the anthropologist, was travelling in Burma, his
cook had an apoplectic fit, and the wife was doing her best to appease
the offended demon who had brought it on, by putting little heaps of
coloured rice for him, and prayers, “Oh, ride him not! Ah, let him go!
Grip him not so hard! Thou shalt have rice! Ah, how good that tastes!”
In countries where this theory of disease prevails, the patients’ own
delusions work in with and confirm it in most striking ways. As fully
persuaded as the bystanders of the reality of their demons, they will
recognise them in the figures they dream of or see in their delirium, and
what is more, under delusion or diseased imagination they so lose their
sense of being themselves, as to talk with what they believe to be the
voice of the demon within them, answering in its name, just as the sick
princess did in Syria three thousand years ago. Englishmen in India and
the far East often have the opportunity of being present at these strange
old-world scenes, and hearing the demon-voice whisper, or squeak, or
roar, out of the patient’s mouth, that he is the spirit so-and-so, and
tell what he is come for; at last, when satisfied with what he wants,
or subdued by the exorcist’s charms and threats, the demon consents to
go, and then the patient leaves off his frantic screams and raving,
his convulsive writhing quiets down, and he sinks into an exhausted
sleep, often relieved for a time when the malady is one where mental
treatment is effective. Nor is it necessary to go to India or China for
illustrations of this early theory of disease. In Spain the priests still
go on exorcising devils out of the mouths and feet of epileptic patients,
though this will probably cease in a few years, when it is known how
successfully that hitherto intractable disease may be treated with
potassium bromide.
In other ways the notion of spirits serves to account for whatever
happens. That certain unusually fierce wolves or tigers are “man-eaters”
is explained by the belief that the souls of wicked men go out at night
and enter into wild-beast bodies to prey on their fellow-men; these are
the man-tigers and were-wolves—that is, “man-wolves”—which still live in
the popular superstition of India and Russia. Again, we all know that
many living people grow pale and bloodless and pine away; in Slavonic
countries this is thought to be caused by blood-sucking nightmares,
whose dreadful visits the patient is conscious of in his sleep, and
these creatures are ingeniously accounted for as demon-souls dwelling
in corpses, whose blood accordingly keeps fluid long after death; they
call them vampires. It has been suggested that primitive men gained from
their ideas of souls and spirits their first clear notions of a cause
of anything, and this is at any rate so far true that rude tribes do
find in the doings of spirits around them a reason for every stumble
over a stone, every odd sound or feeling, every time they lose their
way in the woods. Thus, in the scores of good and evil chances which
meet the barbarian from hour to hour, he finds work for many friendly or
unfriendly spirits. Especially his own luck or fortune takes shape in
a guardian spirit who belongs to him and goes about with him. This may
be, as the rude Tasmanians have thought, a dead father’s soul looking
after his son, or such a patron-spirit as the North American warrior
fasts for till he sees it in a dream; or it may be, like the _genius_ of
the ancient Roman, a spirit born with him for a companion and guardian
through life. The genius of Augustus was a divine being to be prayed and
sacrificed to, but how we moderns have left behind the thoughts of the
ancients, while still using their words, is curiously seen in the changed
meaning with which we now talk of the genius of Handel or Turner. Not
less striking is the change which has come in our thoughts about the
world around us, the sky and the sea, the mountains and the forests.
We have learnt to watch the operation of physical laws of gravity and
heat, of growth and decomposition, and it is only with an effort that
we can get our imagination back to the remote days when men looked to
an infinite multitude of spiritual beings as the causes of nature. Yet
this belief arises plainly from the theory of the soul, for these spirits
are looked upon as souls working nature much as human souls work human
bodies. It is they who cast up the fire in the volcano, tear up the
forest in the hurricane, spin the canoe round in the whirlpool, inhabit
the trees and make them grow. The lower races not only talk of such
nature-spirits, but deal with them in a thoroughly personal way which
shows how they are modelled on human souls. Modern travellers have seen
North Americans paddling their canoes past a dangerous place on the river
and throwing in a bit of tobacco with a prayer to the river-spirit to let
them pass. An African woodcutter who has made the first cut at a great
tree has been known to take the precaution of pouring some palm-oil on
the ground, that the angry tree-spirit coming out may stop to lick it
up, while the man runs for his life. The state of mind to which these
nature-spirits belong must have been almost as clearly remembered by the
Greeks, when they could still fancy the nymphs of the lovely groves, and
springs, and grassy meadows, coming up to the council of the Olympian
gods and sitting around on the polished seats, or the dryads growing with
the leafy pines and oaks, and uttering screams of pain when the woodman’s
axe strikes the trunk. The Anglo-Saxon dictionary preserves the curious
word _woodmare_ for an echo (_wudu-mær_ = wood-nymph), a record of the
time when Englishmen believed, as barbarians do still, that the echo is
the voice of an answering spirit; the word _mare_, for spirit or demon,
appears also _nightmare_, the throttling dream-demon who was as real to
our forefathers as he is to the natives of Australia now. Superseded by
physical science, the old nature-spirits still find a home in poetry and
folklore; the Loreley is only a modernized version of the river-demon who
drowns the swimmer in the whirlpool; the healing water-spirits of the old
sacred wells have only taken saints’ names, the little elves and fairies
of the woods are only dim recollections of the old forest-spirits. It
may surprise the readers of Huxley’s _Physiography_ to recognise in
fairy-tales the nature-spirits in whose personal shape præhistoric man
imagined the forces of nature.
Above the commonalty of souls, demons, and nature-spirits, the religions
of all tribes recognise higher spirits, or gods. Where ancestor-worship
prevails, the souls of great chiefs and warriors or any celebrated
persons may take this divine rank. Thus, the Mongols worship as good
deities the great Genghis Khan and his princely family. The Chinese
declare that Pang, who is worshipped by carpenters and builders as
their patron divinity, was a famous artificer who lived long ago
in the province of Shangtung, while Kwang-tae, the War-god, was a
distinguished soldier who lived under the Han dynasty. The idea of the
divine ancestor may even be carried far enough to reach supreme deity,
as where the Zulus, working back from ghostly ancestor to ancestor, talk
of Unkulunkulu, the Old-Old-one, as the creator of the world; or the
Brazilian tribes say that Tamoi the Grandfather, the first man, dwelt
among them and taught them to till the soil, at last rising to the sky,
where he will receive their souls after death. Among the nature-spirits
also the barbarian plainly perceives great gods who rule the universe.
The highest deity of the African negroes is the Sky, who gives the
rain and makes the grass grow, and when they wake in the morning they
thank him for opening the door to let the sun in. Thus they are at the
same stage of thought as our Aryan ancestors, whose great deity _Dyu_,
sung of in the hymns of the Veda, was at once the solid personal Sky
that rains and thunders, and the Heaven-god who animates it. This deity
remains even in name in the Greek _Zeus_, and Latin _Jupiter_, the
Heaven-father, both religions keeping up its double sense of sky and
sky-god, belonging to the barbaric theology which could see massive
life in the over-arching firmament, and could explain that life by an
in-dwelling deity, modelled on the human soul. We may best understand
what was meant by the Heaven-god, if we think of him as the soul of the
sky. Among all the relics of barbaric religion which surround us, few
are more striking than the phrases which still recognise as a deity
the living sky, as “Heaven forgive me!” “The vengeance of Heaven will
overtake him.” The rain and thunder are mostly taken as acts of the
Heaven-god, as where Zeus hurls the thunderbolt and sends the showers.
But some peoples have a special Rain-god, like the Khonds of Orissa, who
pray to Pidzu Pennu that he will pour down the waters through his sieve
upon their fields. Others have a special Thunder-god, like the Yorubas,
who say it is Shango who casts down with the lightning-flash and the
thunder-clap his thunder-axes, which are the stone celts they dig up in
the ground; we English keep up the memory of the god Thunder or Thor in
our word _Thursday_, which is a translation of _Dies Jovis_. In barbaric
theology, Earth, the mother of all things, takes her place, as when the
pious Ojibwa Indian digging up his medicine-plants is careful to leave an
offering for great-grandmother Earth. No fancy of nature can be plainer
than that the Heaven-father and the Earth-mother are the universal
parents, nor could any ceremony acknowledge them more naturally than
the Chinese marriage when bride and bridegroom prostrate themselves
before Heaven and Earth. The Earth-goddess is clear in classic religion,
Dēmētēr, Terra Mater, and perhaps the last trace of her worship among
ourselves may be the leaving of the last handful of corn-ears standing in
the field or the carrying it in triumph in the harvest-home. In modern
times it is among the negroes of the Guinea coast that the clearest idea
of the Sea-god is to be found, when the native kings, praying him not to
be boisterous, would have rice and cloth and bottles of rum, and even
slaves, cast into the sea as sacrifices. So a Greek or Roman general,
before embarking on the dangerous waves, would sacrifice a bull to
Poseidōn or Neptune. To men who could thus look on the sky, earth, and
sea as animated, intelligent beings, the Sun, giver of light and life
to the world, rising and crossing the sky and descending at night into
the under-world whence he arose, has the clearest divine personality.
There is a quaint simplicity in the account which not many years ago
a Samoyed woman gave of her daily prayers; at sunrise, bowing to the
sun, she said, “When thou, God, risest, I too rise from my bed!” and
in the evening, “When thou, God, goest down, I too get me to rest.” As
far back as ancient history reaches, the Sun-god appears, as where, in
the pictures on Egyptian mummy-cases, Ra, the Sun, is seen travelling
in his boat through the upper and lower regions of the universe. Every
morning those modern ancients, the Brahmans, may be seen standing on
one foot with their hands held out before them and their faces turned
to the east, adoring the Sun: among the oldest prayers which have come
down unchanged from the old Aryan world is that which they daily repeat,
“Let us meditate on the desirable light of the divine Sun; may he rouse
our minds!” The Moon-god or goddess marks the festivals of rude forest
tribes who dance by the light of the full moon. It is not uncommon for
the Moon to rank above the Sun, as perhaps for astronomical reasons was
the case in ancient Babylonia; but more usually the Sun stands first, as
seems to us more natural; and commonly Sun and Moon are looked on as a
pair, brother and sister, or husband and wife. It is easy to understand
why at the famous temple in Syria, Sun and Moon had no images like the
other gods, because they themselves were to be seen by all men. No doubt
this is why of all the old nature-gods they alone still have personal
obeisance done to them among us to this day; in Germany or France one may
still see the peasant take off his hat to the rising sun, and in England
the new moon is saluted with a bow or curtsey, as well as the curious
practice of “turning one’s silver,” which seems a relic of the offering
of the moon’s proper metal. Fire, though hardly a deity of the first
order, is looked upon as a personal being, and worshipped both for the
good and harm it does to man, and as minister of the greater gods. Among
the Aryan nations, the first word of the Veda is the name of _Agni_, the
Fire-god (Latin _Ignis_), the divine priest of sacrifice; the Parsis,
representatives of the religion of ancient Persia, whose most sacred
place is the temple at the burning wells of Baku (p. 273), are typical
fire-worshippers; among the old Greeks Hestia, the sacred hearth, was fed
with fat and libations of sweet wine, and her name and worship went on
in Rome in the temple of Vesta, with the eternal fire in her sanctuary.
The Wind-gods are as well known to the North American Indians and the
South Sea Islanders as they were to the Greeks, from whose religion they
have come down to us so that every ploughman’s child hears of rude Boreas
and gentle Zephyr. To conclude the list, the Rivers have seemed beings
so far greater than the little spirits of the brooks, that they often,
like Skamandros and Spercheios, had temples and priests of their own;
men swore by them, for they could seize and drown the perjurer in their
floods, and to the Hindus still the most awful of oaths is by a divine
river, above all the Ganges.
Such a list of gods, the vast souls of the sky, earth and sea, of the
sun and moon, and the rest of the great powers of nature, each with his
own divine personality, his own rational purpose and work in the world,
goes far to explain polytheism, as it is found in all quarters of the
globe. The explanation cannot, however, be complete, because both the
names and natures of many gods have become confused. A deity worshipped
in several temples is apt to split up into several deities, and men
go on worshipping these by different names after their first sense is
forgotten. Among nations who have become blended by alliance or conquest,
the religions also mix, and the various gods lose their distinct
personality. The classical dictionary is full of examples of all this.
The thundering sky and the rainy sky, Jupiter Tonans and Jupiter Pluvius,
came to be adored like two distinct beings. The Latin Neptunus and the
Greek Poseidōn, put together into one because both were sea-gods, form
a curious divine compound. Under the name of Mercurius, god of trade,
comes in another ancient deity, the Greek Hermes, messenger of the gods,
leader of the dead into the land of Hades, god of thieves and merchants,
of writing and science, who himself bears traces of having been pieced
together out of yet older deities, among them the writing-god of ancient
Egypt, the ibis-headed Thoth. This will give a notion of the confusion
which begins in religion as soon as the worshippers cease to think of a
deity by his first meaning and purpose, and only know of him as the god
so-and-so, whose image stands in such-and-such a temple. The wonder is
not that the origin of so many ancient gods is now hard to make out, but
that so many show so clearly as they do what they were at first, a divine
ancestor, or a sun, or sky, or river. The gods of barbaric religion also
show plainly at work, in the minds of the rude theologians, a thought
destined to vast importance in higher stages of civilization. Regarding
the world as the battle-ground of good and evil spirits, some religions
see these ranged in two contending armies with higher good and evil
gods over them, and above all the sovereign good deity and evil deity.
This system of dualism, as it is called, is worked out in the contest
between the powers of light and darkness, under Ormuzd and Ahriman, the
good and evil spirits, in the religion of ancient Persia. In barbaric
stages of religion there appears also in rude forms the system of divine
government, so well known in the faiths of more cultured nations. As
among the worshippers themselves there are common men, and chiefs above
them, and great rulers or kings above all, with high and low officers
to do their bidding; so among their gods they frame schemes of lower
and higher ranks of deities, with above all the majesty of a supreme
deity. It is not agreed everywhere which god is to have this supremacy.
As has been already said, men who look to the souls of the dead as their
gods may hold even the highest divinity to be such a soul, an ancestor
expanded into creator and ruler of the world. Often, and naturally,
the heaven-god is looked upon as supreme creator and controller of the
universe. Among the nations of West Africa, some say Heaven does his will
through his servants, the lesser spirits of the air, but others think him
too high above to trouble himself much with earthly things. The doctrine
of the Congo negroes shows a thoughtful, if not a happy, philosophy
of life. They say it is the crowd of good and evil spirits, souls of
the departed, who are still active in the concerns of life, and mostly
the evil spirits have the best of it; but now and then, when they have
made the world unbearable, the great Heaven rouses himself, terrifies
the bad demons with his thunder, and lets fly his thunderbolts at the
most obstinate; then he goes back to rest, and lets the spirits rule as
before. A more cheerful view of nature-spirits working beneath heaven is
familiar to us in the Homeric court of the gods on Olympus, where Zeus,
the personal sky, sits enthroned above, holding sway over the lower gods
of earth, air, and sea. In other countries the Sun may be looked upon as
supreme, as he is among many hill-tribes of India, where he rules over
the gods of the forest and the plain, the tribe-gods, and the ancestral
ghosts. Or there may be, as among the native tribes of North America,
a Great Spirit, who is, as it were, the soul of the universe, which he
created and still controls, supreme over even such mighty nature-gods
as the sun and moon. When the reader goes on to study the religion and
philosophy of the ancient civilized world, he will find men’s thoughts
working in these same two ways toward pantheism or monotheism, according
as they conceive the whole universe as one vast body animated by one
divine soul, or raise to the same divine height the one deity who reigns
supreme over the rest. It lies beyond our range to follow this argument
further here.
Let us now look at the chief acts of barbaric worship, which are not hard
to understand when it is borne in mind that the deities they are paid to
are actual human souls, or transformed human souls, or beings modelled on
human souls. Even among savages, prayer is already found; indeed, nothing
could be more natural than that the worshipper should address with
respectful words and entreaties for help a divine being who is perhaps
his own grandfather. The prayers of barbarians have often been listened
to and written down. Thus among the Zulus, the sacrificer says: “There is
your bullock, ye spirits of our people. I pray for a healthy body that I
may live comfortably, and thou so-and-so, treat me with mercy, and thou
so-and-so” (mentioning by name the dead of the family). The following
is part of a prayer of the Khonds, when offering a human sacrifice to
the Earth-goddess: “By our cattle, our flocks, our pigs, and our grain
we procured a victim and offered a sacrifice. Do you now enrich us. Let
our herds be so numerous that they cannot be housed; let children so
abound that the care of them shall be too much for the parents, as shall
be seen by their burnt hands; let our heads ever strike against brass
pots innumerable hanging from our roofs; let the rats form their nests
of shreds of scarlet cloth and silk; let all the kites in the country be
seen in the trees of our village, from beasts being killed there every
day. We are ignorant of what it is good to ask for. You know what is
good for us. Give it to us.” These two specimens of prayers are chosen
because they show how closely prayer is connected with sacrifice, how
the offering is brought and the favour asked with it, just as would be
done to a living chief. Barbaric sacrifices are not mere formal tokens
of respect; they are mostly food, and will be consumed by the divinity,
though he, being a spirit, is apt to take only the spirit, flavour, or
essence, of the viands; or he snuffs up the steam or smoke as it ascends
from the altar fire, a spiritual food of much the same thin ethereal
substance which the spirit or god himself is thought to be of. It is in
the higher religions that the sacrificial rite loses its grosser sense of
feeding the deity, so that although the drink-offering is still poured
out and the bullock burnt on the altar, the act has passed into the
giving up of something prized by the worshipper, and a sign of adoration
acceptable to the god.
There are several ways in which the worshipper can hold personal
intercourse with his deities. These, being souls or spirits, are of
course to be seen at times in dreams and visions, especially by their
own priests or seers, who thus get (or pretend to get) divine answers
or oracles from them. Being a soul, the god can also enter a human
body, and act and speak through it, and thus hysterical and epileptic
symptoms, which we have seen to be ascribed to an evil demon possessing
the patient, are looked on more favourably when the spirit is considered
to be a deity come to inspire his minister and talk by his voice. The
convulsions, the unearthly voice in which the possessed priest answers
in the name of the deity within, and his falling into stupor when his
god departs, all fit together, and in all quarters of the world the
oracle-priests and diviners by familiar spirits seem really diseased in
body and mind, and deluded by their own feelings, as well as skilled
in cheating their votaries with sham symptoms and cunning answers. The
inspiration or breathing-in of a spirit into the body of a priest or
seer appears to such people a mechanical action, like pouring water
into a jug. Also, as in the ordinary transmigration of souls, a deity
is considered able to enter into the body of an animal, as when he
flies from place to place in the form of a sacred bird, or lives in the
divine snake fed and worshipped among the negroes of the Slave coast.
This leads on to a belief which seems still stranger to our minds. The
modern Englishman wonders that a human being, however ignorant, should
prostrate himself before a stake stuck in the ground or a stone picked
up by the wayside, and even talk to it and offer it food; but when the
African or Hindu explains that he believes this stock or stone to be a
receptacle in which a divine spirit has for a time embodied itself, this
shows that there is a rational meaning in the act. Images of gods, from
the rudely carved figures of ancestors which the Ostyaks set up in their
huts, to the Greek statues shaped by Phidias or Praxiteles to represent
the heaven-god or the sun-god, are mostly formed in the likeness of
man—an additional proof of how these nature-gods are modelled on human
beings. When such images stand to represent gods, the worshipper may
look on them as mere signs or portraits, but commonly he is led by his
spirit-philosophy to treat them as temporary bodies for the deities. A
Tahitian priest, when asked about his carved wooden idol, would explain
that his god was not always in the image, but only now and then flew to
it in the body of a sacred bird, and at times would come out of the idol
and enter his own (the priest’s) body, to give divine oracles by his
voice. This takes us back to the times when, fifteen hundred years ago,
Minucius Felix describes the heathen gods entering into their idols and
fattening on the steam of the altars, or creeping as thin spirits into
the bodies of men, to distort their limbs and drive them mad, or making
their own priests rave and whirl about. Lastly, rude tribes may believe
in and worship spirits without having come to build houses for them and
set up tables for their food. Yet such temples and altars appear far
back in barbaric religion, and remain still with the thoroughly human
character of the worship as plain as ever in them; as when in India the
image of Vishnu is washed and dressed by his attendants, and set up in
the place of honour in his temple with a choice feast before him, and
musicians and dancing girls to divert him. This is the more instructive
to us, because we know Vishnu before his original meaning was so
spoilt, when he was a sun-god, an animating principle or soul of the
sun in personal human shape, and thus a remnant of præhistoric natural
philosophy.
We have hitherto only looked at barbaric religion as such an early system
of natural philosophy, and have said nothing of the moral teaching
which now seems so essential to any religion. The philosophical side
of religion has been kept apart from the moral side, not only because
a clearer view may be had by looking at them separately, but because
many religions of the lower races have in fact little to do with moral
conduct. A native American or African may have a distinct belief in souls
and other spirits as the causes of his own life and of the events of the
surrounding world, and he may worship these ghostly or divine beings,
gaining their favour or appeasing their anger by prayers and offerings.
But though these gods may require him to do his duty towards them, it
does not follow that they should concern themselves with his doing his
duty to his neighbour. Among such peoples, if a man robs or murders,
that is for the party wronged or his friends to avenge; if he is stingy,
treacherous, brutal, then punishment may fall on him or he may be scouted
by all good people; but he is not necessarily looked upon as hateful to
the gods, and in fact such a man is often a great medicine-man or priest.
While they hold also that the soul will continue to exist after death,
flitting as a ghost or demon among the living or passing to the gloomy
under-world or the shining spirit-land, they often think its condition
will be rather a keeping-up of earthly character and rank, than a reward
or punishment for the earthly life. If some readers find it difficult
to understand such theology separate from morals, they may be reminded
how, among more civilized nations, religions may drop into the same
state by losing the use of the moral laws they profess; as when a Hindu
may lead the wickedest of lives, while the priests for gifts make his
peace with the gods, or as in Europe brigands are notoriously devout
church goers. As a rule, the faiths of the higher nations have more and
better moral influence than the faiths of the ruder tribes. Yet even
among savages the practical effect of religion on men’s lives begins to
show itself. The worship of the dead naturally encourages good morals;
for the ancestor who, when living, took care that his family should do
right by one another, does not cease this kindly rule when he becomes
a divine ghost powerful to favour or punish. This manes-worship does
not bring in new doctrines or reforms; indeed it is felt that nothing
displeases the ancestral deity like changing the old customs he was
used to. But for keeping up old-fashioned family goodness, the worship
of ancestors has an influence over the many nations among whom it still
prevails, from the Zulu, who believes that he must not ill-treat his
brothers lest the father should come in a dream and make him ill, to the
Chinese, who lives ever in presence of the family spirits, and fears
to do wrong lest they should leave him to fall into distress and die.
In the great old-world religions, where a powerful priesthood are the
intellectual class, the educators and controllers of society, we find
moral teaching fully recognised among the great duties of religion. The
gods take on themselves the punishment of the wicked; the Heaven-god
smites the perjurer with his thunderbolt, and the Nation-god brings
sickness and death on the murderer. The doctrine of the transmigration
of souls is brought to bear as a moral power; as where the Hindu books
threaten evil-doers with being re-born in other bodies in punishment
for their sins done in this, when the wicked shall be born again
blind or deformed, the scandal-monger shall have foul breath and the
horse-stealer shall go lame, the cruel man shall be born as a beast of
prey, the grain-stealer as a rat; and thus, eating the fruits of past
actions, men shall work out the consequences of their deeds, souls sunk
in darkness being degraded to brutes, while the good rise in successive
births to become gods. Even more widely spread is the doctrine that
man’s life is followed by judgment after death, when evil-doers are
doomed to misery, and only those who have lived righteously on earth
will enter into bliss. How this doctrine prevailed in ancient Egypt, the
papyrus strips of the Book of the Dead, and its pictures and hieroglyphic
formulas on the mummy-cases, remain to show. Thus in any museum we may
still see the scene of the weighing of the soul of the deceased, and his
trial by Osiris, the judge of the dead, and the forty-two assessors,
while Thoth, the writing-god, stands by to enter the dread record on
his tablets. In the columns of hieroglyphics are set down the crimes of
which the soul must clear itself, a curious mingling of what we should
call ceremonial and moral sins, among them the following: “I have not
privily done evil against mankind. I have not told falsehoods in the
tribunal of Truth. I have not done any wicked thing. I have not made
the labouring man do more than his task daily. I have not calumniated
the slave to his master. I have not murdered. I have not done fraud to
men. I have not changed the measures of the country. I have not injured
the images of the gods. I have not taken scraps of the bandages of the
dead. I have not committed adultery. I have not withheld milk from the
mouths of sucklings. I have not hunted wild animals in the pasturage. I
have not netted sacred birds. I am pure, I am pure, I am pure!” Thus,
among the cultured old-world nations, already in the earliest historical
ages theology had joined with ethics, and religion as a moral power was
holding sway over society.
Animism, or the theory of souls, has thus been shown as the principle out
of which arose the various systems of spirits and deities, in barbaric
and ancient religions, and it has been noticed also, how already among
rude races such beliefs begin to act on moral conduct. We here see under
their simplest aspects the two sides of religion, its philosophical
and its moral side, which the reader should keep steadily in view in
further study of the faiths of the world. In looking at the history of
a religion, he will have to judge how far it has served these two great
purposes—on the one hand that of teaching man how to think of himself,
the world around him, the awful boundless power pervading all—on the
other hand that of practically guiding and strengthening him in the
duties of life. One question the student will often ask himself—how it is
that faiths once mighty and earnest fall into decay and others take their
place. Of course to no small extent such changes have come by conquest,
as where in Persia the religion of Mohammed well nigh stamped out the old
Zoroastrian faith of Cyrus and Darius. But the sword of the conqueror
is only a means by which religions have been set up and put down in the
world by main force, and there are causes lying deeper in men’s minds. It
needs but a glance through history at the wrecks of old religions to see
how they failed from within. The priests of Egypt, who once represented
the most advanced knowledge of their time, came to fancy that mankind had
no more to learn, and upheld their tradition against all newer wisdom,
till the world passed them by and left them grovelling in superstition.
The priests of Greece ministered in splendid temples and had their fill
of wealth and honours, but men who sought the secret of a good life
found that this was not the business of the sanctuary, and turned away
to the philosophers. Unless a religion can hold its place in the front
of science and of morals, it may only gradually, in the course of ages,
lose its place in the nation, but all the power of statecraft and all
the wealth of the temples will not save it from eventually yielding to a
belief that takes in higher knowledge and teaches better life.
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY AND MYTHOLOGY.
Tradition, 373—Poetry, 375—Fact in Fiction, 377—Earliest Poems
and Writings, 381—Ancient Chronicle and History, 383—Myths,
387—Interpretation of Myths, 396—Diffusion of Myths, 397.
History is no longer looked to for a record of the earliest ages of
man. As the first chapter of this volume shows, we moderns know what
was hidden from the ancients themselves about the still more ancient
ancients. Yet it does not at all follow that ancient history has lost its
value. On the contrary, there are better means than ever of confirming
what is really sound in it by such evidence as that of antiquities and
language, while masses of very early writings are now newly opened to
the historian. It was never more necessary to have clear ideas of what
tradition, poetry, and written records can teach as to the times when
history begins.
The early history of nations consists more or less of traditions handed
down by memory from ages before writing. Our own experience does not
tell us much as to what such oral tradition may be worth, for it has
so fallen out of use in the civilised world, that now one knows little
of what happened beyond one’s great-grandfather’s time, unless it has
been written down. But writing has not yet quite overspread the globe,
and there are still peoples left whose whole history is the tradition
of their ancestors. Thus the South Sea Islanders, who till quite lately
had no writing, were intelligent barbarians, much given to handing down
recollections of bygone days, and in one or two cases which it has been
possible to test among them, it seems as though memory may really keep
a historical record long and correctly. It is related by Mr. Whitmee
the missionary that in the island of Rotuma there was a very old tree,
under which according to tradition, the stone seat of a famous chief had
been buried; this tree was lately blown down, and, sure enough, there
was a stone seat under its roots, which must have been out of sight for
centuries. In the Ellice group, the natives declared that their ancestors
came from a valley in the distant island of Samoa generations before, and
they preserved an old worm-eaten staff, pieced to hold it together, which
in their assemblies the orator held in his hand as the sign of having the
right to speak; this staff was lately taken to Samoa, and proved to be
made of wood that grew there, while the people of the valley in question
had a tradition of a great party going out to sea exploring, who never
came back. Among these Polynesian traditions the best known are those
handed down by the Maoris as to the peopling of New Zealand by their
ancestors. They tell how, after a civil war, their forefathers migrated
in canoes from Hawaiki in the far north-east; they give the names of
the builders and crews of these vessels and show the places where they
landed; they repeat, generation by generation, the names of the chiefs
descended from those who came in the canoes, by which they reckon
about eighteen generations, or 400 to 500 years, since their taking
possession of the islands. Notwithstanding that, as might be expected,
the traditions of various districts disagree a good deal, they are
admitted as the title-deeds by which the natives hold land in the right
of their ancestors who landed in the canoes Shark (_Arawa_) and God’s-Eye
(_Mata-atua_), and it can hardly be doubted that such genealogies,
constantly repeated among people whose lands depended on them, are
founded on fact. Yet these Maori traditions are about half made up of the
wildest wonder-tales; when the builder of one of the canoes cuts down a
great tree to make the hull, on coming back to the forest next morning
he finds that the tree has got up again in the night; and when the canoe
is finished and puts to sea, a certain magician is left behind, but on
getting to New Zealand there he is before them on the shore, having come
across the ocean on the back of a sea-monster, like Arion on his dolphin.
These traditions of a modern barbarous people may give us not an unfair
idea of the mixture of real memory and mythic fancy in the early history
of Egypt or Greece, where it has come down by tradition from the distant
past when there was as yet no scribe to engrave on a stone tablet even
the names of kings.
Traditions are yet more lasting when handed down in fixed words, which
is especially when the poets have set them in verse. Even now in England
some notable event may be made into a ballad and sung through the length
and breadth of the land. In days before printing, the importance of
the poet as historian was far greater, and many an old European chant
has touches of true chronicle. The old songs of Brittany are often
very true to history, as where in one there is mention of Bertrand du
Guesclin’s hair being like a lion’s mane, and in another, Jeanne de
Montfort (Jeanne-la-Flamme) going forth from Hennebont with sword and
burning brand to fire the French camp, is described as putting on her
suit of armour, which history elsewhere records that she really wore.
But though the poet or minstrel preserves many picturesque incidents
like these, he has not the historian’s conscience about facts. Eager to
rouse and delight his audience, to flatter the national pride of his
people and the family pride of the chieftain in whose halls he sang, the
singer brought in real names and events, but he shifted them as would
best suit his dramatic scenery, or he even made his own history outright.
The great German epic, the Nibelungen Lied, begins in Burgundy, where
the three kings hold court at Worms on the Rhine, their sister is the
lovely Kriemhilt, whose husband Sîfrit is treacherously slain at the well
by Hagen’s spear; afterwards she marries Attila the Hun-king, and the
tale of blood, ending with her vengeance and death, leaves Attila and
Theodoric of Verona (Etzel and Dietrich von Bern) weeping together over
the slaughter of their men. Here are places and personages historical
enough to make a poem history, if history could be made by such means;
but the reader of Gibbon knows that Attila really died two years before
Theodoric was born. In fact the poem is a late version of a story
preserved in an earlier shape in Scandinavia as the saga of the Volsungs;
the court at Worms, and the tournament, and the rest of the historic
names and local circumstances, are worked in to give poetic substance and
colour. If poets ventured thus to falsify history in the middle ages,
when the chronicles were there to convict them, how are we to tell fact
from fiction in the poems of ages where the check of history is wanting?
The Iliad and the Odyssey may contain many memories of real men and their
deeds, an Agamemnon may have reigned in Mykēnai, there may have been a
real siege of Troy, perhaps round the very mound where Schliemann has dug
out the golden cups and necklace. But it is too hard a task to sift out
historic truth in Homer, where natural events are as hopelessly mixed
up with miracles as in the Maori legends. It is too hard to judge how
far chronicles of old nations are impartially preserved by a bard whose
rule it is (as Mr. Gladstone points out in his _Primer of Homer_) that
no considerable Greek chieftain is ever slain in fair fight by a Trojan.
Were nothing to be had out of ancient poetry except distorted memories
of historical events, the anthropologist might be wise to set it aside
altogether. Yet, looked at from another point of view, it is one of his
most perfect and exact sources of knowledge.
Although what the poet relates may be fiction, what he mentions is apt
to be history. In the names of nations and countries and cities, he is
unconsciously pourtraying for us the world and its inhabitants as they
were in his time. The catalogue of ships and men in the second book
of the Iliad is a chart and census of the Mediterranean. Homer knows
of the Ægyptians, their irrigated fields and their skill in medicine,
and of the ship-famed Phœnicians and their purple stuffs. The name of
Kadmos belongs to the Phœnician tongue, and signifies the “Eastern,”
while the “seven-gated” Thebes built by his people shows that they had
that reverence for the mystic number seven, which has its origin in
the worship of the seven planets in Babylon. The poet can hardly have
thought, when he told his wonder-tales with the circumstances of the
actual world around him, how future ages would prize for itself that
record of real life. Odysseus, clinging under the belly of the great
ram, or sailing to the land of Hades to the weak shades of the dead, is
mere myth. Yet the description of Polyphēmos is one of the few ancient
pictures of the manners of low barbarians, and the visit to Hades is a
chapter of old Greek religion, recording what men thought of the dull
ghost-life beyond the tomb. So it is with the descriptions of life and
manners. Nausikaa, the king’s daughter, drives the wain with the pair
of mules down to the river’s mouth to carry the clothes to be washed.
Odysseus walks through the streets of the seafaring Phaiakians, wondering
at the haven and the mighty walls and bastions, till he crosses the
bronze threshold of the palace of Alkinoos, and entering, clasps the
knees of Queen Arētē; then he crouches on the hearthstone in the ashes,
till the king, mindful of Zeus the Thunderer standing near to care for
the suppliant, takes the guest by the hand, and makes him sit by him on
his own son’s glittering seat. Thus following the romantic fortunes of
the many-wiled Odysseus, we see as in the scenes of a dissolving-view
how the heroes of old days went spear in hand with their swift dogs at
their heel, how at the house-door they threw aside their garments to go
into the bath-chamber, and came forth anointed with oil to the feast
where with no such refinements as plates or knives they ate their fill
of roast meat and cakes of bread; how they diverted themselves with
throwing quoits on the smooth turf, or lounged on outspread hides in the
sunshine playing merells; how in solemn rites they poured the libations
of dark wine and burned the meat in sacrifice, with prayers for what
their hearts desired, yet knowing all the while that the gods would, as
they listed, this grant and that deny. All this is not only history, but
history of the finest kind. Looked at by the student of culture, even
the wild mixture of the natural and supernatural, so bewildering to the
modern mind, is the record of an early stage of religious thought. The
gods meet in council in the halls of cloud-gathering Zeus, to settle
what shall be done with their contending armies of worshippers on the
plains below. In the very fray of mortal warriors divine beings take
part; Poseidōn plucks out the bronze-tipped spear from the shield of
Aineias, lifts up the Trojan hero and bears him away unharmed over the
heads of the warriors; even the goddesses set on one another like mortal
shrews, when Hērē tears away the bow and quiver of Artemis, and with
scornful laughter boxes her ears with them till the virgin huntress goes
off in tears, leaving her bow behind. It would be wrong to think that all
this seemed mere make-believe and poetic ornament to the men who first
listened to the wondrous rhapsodies. They were in the changing state of
religion described in the last chapter (see p. 362) when the spiritual
beings, which to their ruder forefathers had served as personal causes of
nature and events, were passing away from their first clearness, yet were
still regarded as divinities presiding over nature and interfering with
men’s lives. Contrasting such a state of thought with that of the present
day will help us to realize one of the greatest events in all history,
the change of men’s minds from the mythological temper to the historical
temper. This change did not happen all at once, but has for many ages
been gradually coming about. There is hardly a more instructive chapter
in Grote’s _History of Greece_, than that in which he describes the
philosophic age, when the Greeks were beginning to notice with perplexity
and pain that the Homeric poems, become to them a sacred book, agreed but
ill with their own experience of life, so that they asked themselves, can
the world have really so changed since the days when men sat at table
with the gods?
Much of what is called ancient history has to be looked at in this way.
Historical criticism, that is, judgment, is practised not for the purpose
of disbelieving but of believing. Its object is not to find fault with
the author, but to ascertain how much of what he says may be reasonably
taken as true. Thus a modern reader may have a sounder opinion about
early Roman history than the Romans themselves had in the time of Livy
and Cicero. We see more plainly than they, that the name of Rome is less
likely to have been given from a man called Romulus, than that the name
of Romulus was invented to account for the city being called Rome. To
modern minds, the whole famous story of the wolf-fostermother of Romulus
and Remus collapses when it is known to be only a version of the same
old wonder-tale told by Herodotus as the story of the birth of Cyrus.
Yet here again may be seen the indirect value of history even where its
events are most questionable. Though there may never have been any such
person as Romulus, the legend of the tracing of the city walls by his
bronze ploughshare is a true record of the ceremony with which cities
were anciently founded. Even later history, where the historian had
written records to go upon, must often be sifted in this way. Suppose a
class reading the 35th book of Livy. Such matters as Hannibal’s oath,
and the preparations for war with Antiochus, are taken without question
as good history. But when it comes to the story that about this time
an ox belonging to one of the consuls uttered the awful words “Roma,
cave tibi!” there is a laugh. Here it is not enough for the form-master
simply to pass the story by as Livy’s nonsense. He has to admit that the
historian probably took it from the official record of prodigies, so
that at any rate it is good historical evidence that in ancient Rome men
not only believed that an ox might speak, but that its so doing would
be a divine portent, and notions of this kind had so become part of the
national religion and government, that the augurs took care a regular
supply of such omens should be forthcoming to guide the rulers of the
state, or at least to enable them to impose upon the multitude. Thus the
passages of history which seem at first sight most silly and false, may
be solid facts in the history of civilisation.
It is plain that the compositions which serve as records of old-world
life need not have been intended as history. If only the genuine words
and thoughts of the ancients about anything have been handed down, it is
for the moderns to extract history from them. Thus the Sanskrit hymns
collected in the Veda serve as a record of the daily life of the early
Aryans who chanted them. For when a hymn to the wind gods brings them
in as driving in chariots with strong felloes and well-fashioned reins
and cracking whips, then it is plain to the modern reader that the Aryan
people among whom the hymn was made drove themselves in such chariots.
Where the bright gods have gold chains on their breasts for beauty, carry
spears on their shoulders and daggers at their sides, this mythical fancy
gives a real picture of the accoutrement of the Aryan warrior. Thus,
piece by piece, this præhistoric hymn-book shows the old patriarchal
Aryan life, with the herds of cattle roaming over wide pastures or shut
in the winter cow-stall, the ploughing of the fields and the reaping of
the corn, the family ties and legal rights, the worship of the great
nature-gods of sky and earth, sun and dawn, fire and water and winds, the
intense belief in the shining regions of the immortal dead, the honour
to the almsgiver and praise to the just man. In the sacred books of the
old Persians, collected in the Avesta, have come down the long-remembered
traditions of another branch of the Aryan race, who, dividing off from
their Brahman kinsfolk, followed the faith of Zarathustra. The deep
schism between the two religions is seen in the Zarathustrians having
degraded the bright gods (_deva_) of the Brahmans into evil demons
(_daeva_). Their horror of defiling the sacred fire by burning corpses as
the Brahmans do had already led them to expose the dead to be devoured
by wild beasts and carrion birds, as the Parsis still do in their “towers
of silence.” In the beginning of the Avesta, there is mentioned as first
and best of the good regions created by the good deity, the country
called _Airyana vaejo_, the “Aryan seed,” which afterwards the evil deity
cursed with ten months’ winter; this description of the climate looks as
though the old Persians believed their early Aryan home was on the bleak
slopes of Central Asia toward the sources of the Oxus and Yaxartes. Here
and there among the sacred verses comes a touch of the life of these
proud fierce herdsmen and tillers of the soil, little like the corrupt
Persian and the thrifty Parsi of modern times. Their enthusiasm for the
rough work of making the earth fit for man’s abode is quaintly shown
where they sing of the delight the earth feels when the husbandman drains
the wet soil and waters the dry, how she brings wealth to him who tills
her with the right arm and the left, with the left arm and the right:
“When the corn grows, then the demons hiss;
When the shoots sprout, then the demons cough;
When the stalks rise, then the demons weep;
When the thick ears come, then the demons fly.”
So necessary were the fierce dogs which kept the wolf from the fold and
the thief from the village, that there are solemn ordinances about them,
how the dog who does not bark and is not right in his mind is to be
muzzled and tied up, and what punishment is to be inflicted on the man
who gives a dog bad food; it is as sinful (they say) as if he had done it
to a well-to-do householder. One forms a lifelike picture of the sturdy
farmers who made these laws to be repeated to their children’s children
and carried on to future ages.
While these rough Aryans were handing on memories of the past by word
of mouth in their sacred verses, more cultured nations had long since
begun to write down memorials of their own times. The best way to bring
to our minds what this earliest contemporary history was like, is to
look at the translations of Egyptian and Assyrian documents in _Records
of the Past_, published under the directions of the _Society of Biblical
Archæology_. Here is to be found, for instance, Dr. Birch’s translation
of the inscription recording the expeditions of Una, crown-bearer to
king Teta, before 2,000 B.C. (see page 3), and of the account on the
sanctuary walls of Karnak, of the battle of Megiddo, where Thothmes
III., about 1,500 B.C., overcame the armies of Syria and Mesopotamia and
opened the way into the interior of Asia. It is related how the king,
marching from Gaza, reached the south of Megiddo on the shore of the
waters of Kaner, where he pitched his tent and made a speech before his
whole army: “Hasten ye, put on your helmets, for I shall rush to fight
with the vile enemy in the morning!” The watchword was passed, “Firm,
firm, watch, watch, watch actively at the king’s pavilion!” It was on the
morning of the festival of the new moon that the king went forth in his
golden decorated chariot in the midst of his army, the god Amun being the
protection in his active limbs, and he prevailed over his enemies; they
fell prostrate before him, left their horses and chariots, and fled to
the fort, where the garrison shut up inside pulled off their clothes to
haul them up over the walls. The Egyptians slaughtered their enemies till
they lay in rows like fish, and conquering entered the fort of Megiddo,
where the chiefs of the land came bearing tribute, silver and gold, lapis
lazuli and alabaster, vessels of wine and flocks. The lists of spoil,
made with curious minuteness, include living captives 240, hands (cut off
the dead) 83, mares 2,041, fillies 191, an ark of gold of the enemy, 892
chariots of the vile army, and so on. A later part of the inscription
commemorates the liberal endowments bestowed by the victorious king on
the god Amen Ra, the fields and gardens to supply his temple, the pairs
of geese to fill his lakes, to supply him with the two trussed geese
daily at sunset, a charge to remain for ever, and so on with the loaves
of bread and pots of beer for daily rations. As the king says in his
inscription, he does not boast of what he has done, saying that he has
done more when he has not, and so causing men to contradict him. Here we
see the check of public opinion beginning to act in history. It does not
really compel exact truth, it allows national victories to be exaggerated
and defeats kept out of sight, but even the vainglorious scribes of Egypt
would hardly venture to record events without a foundation of fact.
Turning now to the inscriptions of the Babylonian-Assyrian district,
we may take as an example a temple-brick of the famous city Ur of the
Chaldees, now called Mugheir, which bears these words in cuneiform
writing:
“To (the god) Ur, eldest son of Bel his king,
Urukh, the powerful man, the fierce warrior,
King of (the city) Ur, king of Sumir and Akkad,
Bit-timgal the house of his delight built.”
Sumir and Akkad, here mentioned, were the seats of the old Chaldæan
civilisation. As early as the 16th century B.C., Hammurabi overcame these
nations, a great event in the change that absorbed their ancient culture
and religion into the conquering Assyrian empire. In an inscription of
this king of Babylon, he says, “the favour of Bel gave into my government
the people of Sumir and Akkad, for them I dug out afresh the canal called
by my name, the joy of men, a stream of abundant waters for the people,
all its banks I restored to newness, new supporting walls I heaped up,
perennial waters I provided for the people of Sumir and Akkad.”
By the aid of such contemporary writings, historians are now able
to check the recorded lists of ancient kings, and to piece together
something like a continuous line of dynasties in Egypt and Babylonia
since the foundation of the great cities Memphis and Ur. We may notice
where the records and traditions of the Israelites, written down in later
ages in the historical books of the Old Testament, come in contact with
ancient history from the monuments. Israelite tradition records (Gen.
xi., xii.) that their ancestors had been in the Chaldæan district of
Ur, and in Egypt, which is evidence of their intercourse with the two
great nations of the ancient world. The mention in Exodus (i. 11) of the
Israelites being set to build for Pharaoh a city called Rameses, points
to their oppression in Egypt having been under the Great Rameses II.
of the XIX. dynasty, apparently about 1400 B.C., which makes a point
of contact between Egyptian and Hebrew chronology. In the books of
Kings there come into view later persons and events, well known in the
contemporary records of other countries, as in the mention of Shishak,
king of Egypt, who fought against Rehoboam and plundered the temple (1
K. xiv. 25). It seems likely, when Herodotus (ii. 141) describes the
army of Sennacherib, king of Assyria, being put to flight from the mice
gnawing the soldiers’ bows, that this is a version of the great disaster
of Sennacherib, of which the Bible gives a different account (2 K. xix.).
With Herodotus the student comes in view of the Old World as it was known
to a Greek traveller and geographer of the 5th century B.C. The Father
of History, as he has been called, wrote not as a chronicler of his
own nation, but with the larger view of an anthropologist to whom all
knowledge of mankind was interesting. The way in which modern discoveries
have come in to confirm his statements, justifies us in relying on
ancient historians when, like him, they are careful to distinguish mere
legend or hearsay from what they have themselves enquired into. Thus
Herodotus tells the strange story of the impostor who passed himself off
as Smerdis, and sat on the throne of Persia till he was detected by his
cropped ears, and Darius slew him. When, a few years ago, the cuneiform
characters of the inscription sculptured in a high wall of rock near
Behistan in Persia were deciphered, it proved to be the very record set
up by Darius the king in the three languages of the land, and it matches
the account given by Herodotus closely enough to show what a real grasp
he had of the course of events in Persia a century before his time. Yet
more remarkable is the test which can be put to what Herodotus says he
learnt from the priests in Egypt about their kings who reigned 2000 years
before. From their dictation he wrote down the names of the pyramid-kings
Cheops, Chephren, Mykerinos. In later ages critics had sometimes come to
doubt whether these kings belonged to fact or fable, but when the lost
meaning of the Egyptian hieroglyphics was anew interpreted by modern
scholars, there stood the names recognisable as the Greek historian heard
them. The best ancient history is apt to receive such confirmation from
long-lost monuments. Thucydides relates (vi. 54) that Peisistratos (the
younger) dedicated two altars, from one of which the Athenians erased the
inscription, but the other (the historian says) may still be read, though
in faint letters: “this monument of his archonship Peisistratos son of
Hippias set up in the enclosure of Pythian Apollo.” Professor Newton
reports that this very stone with its inscription is declared to have
been found in 1878 in a courtyard near the Ilissos. How lively a sense of
reality such monuments give to history may be understood by the student
who, fresh from his books, goes to the British Museum and sees among the
ancient coins the grand head of Alexander the Great with the ram’s horns,
commemorating that curious episode of his life when he was declared to be
son of Zeus Ammon; or who notices with surprise the gold coins that prove
Cymbeline, now best known in Shakspere, to have been a real British king
who coined money with his name.
Having thus looked at the sources of early history as belonging to the
study of mankind, we need not go over the well-trodden ground of later
history. It remains to notice myth, the stumbling-block which historians
have so often fallen over. Myth is not to be looked on as mere error
and folly, but as an interesting product of the human mind. It is
sham history, the fictitious narrative of events that never happened.
Historians, especially in writing of early ages, have copied down the
traditions of real events so mixed up with myths, that it is one of the
hardest tasks of the student to judge what to believe and what to reject.
He is fortunate when he can apply the test of possibility, and declare
an event did not happen because he knows enough of the course of nature
to be sure it could not. For instance, cultured nations have learnt from
science that what appears to be a blue dome or firmament above our heads,
the sky or heaven, is not really the solid vault the ancients thought
it was, but only thin air and watery vapour. The consequence of knowing
this is that people have had to strike out of their history the old myths
of gods dwelling in palaces and holding courts in the skies, of men
climbing or flying up from earth into heaven, of giants heaping mountain
Ossa on Pelion, to scale the cloudy heights and wage battle with the gods
above. Besides this way of detecting myth by its relating what could
not have taken place, there are other means of judging it. It is often
possible to satisfy oneself that some story is not really history, by
knowing the causes which led to its being invented.
We know how strong our own desire is to account for everything. This
desire is as strong among barbarians, and accordingly they devise such
explanations as satisfy their minds. But they are apt to go a stage
further, and their explanations turn into the form of stories with names
of places and persons, thus becoming full-made myths. Educated men do
not now consider it honest to make fictitious history in this way, but
people of untrained mind, in what is called the myth-making stage, which
has lasted on from the savage period and has not quite disappeared among
ourselves, have no such scruples about converting their guesses at what
may have happened, into the most lifelike stories of what they say did
happen. Thus, when comparative anatomy was hardly known, the finding of
huge fossil bones in the ground led people to think they were the remains
of huge beasts, and enormous men, or giants, who formerly lived on the
earth. Modern science decides that they were right as to the beasts,
which were ancient species of elephant, rhinoceros, &c., but wrong as
to the giants, none of the great bones really belonging to any creature
like man. But while the belief lasted that they were bones of giants,
men’s imagination worked in making stories about these giants and their
terrific doings, stories which are told still in all quarters of the
globe as though they were traditions of real events. Thus the Sioux of
the western prairies of North America say their land was once inhabited
by great animals, bits of whose bones they still keep for magic, and
also, they tell of the giant Ha-o-kah, who could stride over the largest
rivers and the tallest pines, and to whom they sing and dance at their
festivals. It appears that fossil bones, very likely of the mastodon, had
to do with this native belief in old monstrous beasts, nor need we be
surprised at the giants coming into the story, considering that so lately
as the last century Dr. Cotton Mather, the Puritan divine, sent to our
Royal Society an account of the discovery of such bones in New England,
which he argued were remains of antediluvian giants.
Another thing which in all parts of the world has set the imagination of
myth-makers to work, is the fact that people live in tribes or nations,
each known by a particular name, such as Ojibwa, Afghan, Frank. The
easiest and favourite way of accounting for this is to suppose each tribe
or nation to have had an ancestor or chief of the like name, so that his
descendants or followers inherited their tribe-name from him. It really
happens so sometimes, but in most cases a pretended tradition of such an
eponymic or name-ancestor arises from the makers of genealogies first
inventing him out of the name of the tribe, and then treating him as a
historical personage. They may now and then be caught in the act of doing
this. Thus among the native race of Brazil and Paraguay, some tribes are
called _Tupi_ and others _Guarani_, so to account for this division, a
tradition is related that two brothers named _Tupi_ and _Guarani_ came
over the sea to Brazil, and with their children peopled the country, but
a talking parrot made strife between the wives of the two brothers, and
this grew into a quarrel and separation, Tupi staying in the land, and
Guarani going off with his family into the region of La Plata. Now there
happens to be a means of checking this story, for Martius says that the
name guarani (meaning warrior) was first given by the Jesuits to the
southern Indians whom they collected in their missions, so that the tale
of the two ancestor-brothers must be a myth of modern manufacture. Such
eponymic myths of national ancestors were not only made in ancient times,
but are mixed up in the chronicles of Old World nations as though they
were real history. The classical student knows the legends of the twin
brothers _Danaos_ and _Aigyptos_, ancestors of the _Danaoi_ (Greeks) and
_Ægyptians_; and of _Hellēn_, father of the _Hellēnes_, whose three sons
_Aiōlos_, _Dōros_, _Xouthos_, were fathers of the _Æolians_, _Dorians_,
&c.
Having looked at these two frequent kinds of myths derived from fossil
bones and national names, it is worth while to notice how both come
together in our own country. The History of the Britons, compiled in
the 12th century by Geoffrey of Monmouth, relates that our island was
in old time called Albion, and was only inhabited by a few giants; but
_Brutus_, a banished Trojan prince, landed with his followers and called
the land _Britain_, after his own name, and his companions _Britons_.
With him came a leader called _Gorineus_, and he called the part of
the country which fell to him _Corinea_ and his people _Corineans_,
that is, _Cornish_. In that part the giants were most numerous, and one
especially, named _Goemagot_ (elsewhere called _Gogmagog_) was twelve
cubits high, and could pull up an oak like a hazel wand. On a certain
day, when there had been a battle and the Britons had overcome a party
of giants and slain all except this hugest monster, he and Corineus
had a wrestling-match, when Corineus caught the giant up in his arms,
and running with him to the top of the cliff now called the Hoe at
Plymouth, cast him over, wherefore (says the chronicler) the place is
called “Goemagot’s leap” to this day. Quaint as this legend is, it is
not hard to find the sense of it. It was the fashion to trace the origin
of nations from Troy; _Brutus_ and _Corineus_ were invented to account
for the names of _Britain_ and _Cornwall_; _Goemagot_ or _Gogmagog_ is
the Biblical _Gog_ and _Magog_ rolled into one, these personages being
recognised in tradition as giants. But why the story of his having been
thrown over the Hoe at Plymouth? The answer seems to be that this is a
place where the bones of fossil animals are actually dug up, such as were
looked upon as remains of giants. Even in modern times, when excavations
were being made on the Hoe for the fortifications, huge jaws and teeth
were found, which were at once settled by public opinion to be the
remains of Gogmagog.
These are examples of the myths easiest for modern civilised minds to
enter into, for they are little more than inferences or guesses as to
what may have actually happened, worked up with picturesque details which
give them an air of reality. But to understand another kind of myths we
must get our minds into a mood which is not that of scientific reasoning
in the class-room, but of telling nursery tales in the twilight, or
reading poetry in the woods on a summer afternoon. Former chapters
have shown how, in old times and among uncultured people, notions of
the kind which still remain among us as poetic fancy were seriously
believed. When to the rude philosopher the action of the world around
him was best explained by supposing in it nature-life like human life,
and divine nature-souls like human souls, then the sun seemed a personal
lord climbing proudly up the sky, and descending dim and weary into
the under-world at night; the stormy sea was a fearful god ready to
swallow up the rash sailor; the beasts of the forest were half-human in
thought and speech; even the forest-trees were the bodily habitations
of spirits, and the woodman, to whom the rustling of their leaves
seemed voices, and their waving branches beckoning arms, hewed at their
trunks with a half-guilty sense of doing murder. The world then seemed
to be “such stuff as dreams are made on;” transformation of body and
transmigration of spirit were ever going on; a man or god might turn
into a beast, a river, or a tree; rocks might be people transformed into
stones, and sticks transformed snakes. Such a state of thought is fast
disappearing, but there are still tribes living in it, and they show what
the men’s minds are like who make nature-myths. When a story-teller lives
in this dreamland, any poetic fancy becomes a hint for a wonder-tale, and
though (one would think) he must be aware that he is romancing, and that
the adventures he relates are not quite history, yet when he is dead, and
his story has been repeated by bards and priests for a few generations,
then it would be disrespectful, or even sacrilegious, to question its
truth. This has happened all over the world, and the Greek myths of the
great nature-gods which Xenophanes and Anaxagoras ventured to disbelieve
with such ill consequences to themselves, were of much the same fabric as
those of modern barbarians like the South Sea Islanders. Let us look at a
few nature-myths, choosing such as most transparently show how they came
to be made.
The Tahitians tell tales of their sea-god Hiro, whose followers were
sailing on the ocean while he was lulled to sleep in a cavern in the
depths below; then the wind-god raised a furious storm to destroy the
canoe, but the sailors cried to Hiro, till, rising to the surface, he
quelled the storm, and his votaries came safe to port. So in Homer,
Poseidōn the sea-god, dweller in caves of ocean, sets on the winds to
toss the frail bark of Odysseus among the thundering waves, till Ino
comes to his rescue and bids him strip and swim for the Phaiakian shore.
Both tales are word-pictures of the stormy sea told in the language of
nature-myth, only with different turns. The New Zealanders have a story
of Maui imprisoning the winds, all but the wild west-wind, whom he cannot
catch to shut into its cavern by a great stone rolled against its mouth;
all he can do is to chase it home sometimes, and then it hides in the
cavern, and for a while dies away. All this is a mythic description of
the weather, meaning that other winds are occasional, but the west wind
prevalent and strong. These New Zealanders had never heard of the classic
myth of Æolus and the cave of the winds, yet how nearly they had come to
the same mythic fancy, that it is from such blow-holes in the hill-sides
that the winds come forth. The negroes of the West Indies tell a tale of
the great quarrel between Fire and Water, how the Fire came on slowly,
stopped by the stream, till he called the Wind to his aid, who carried
him across everything, and the great fight came off, the Bon Dieu looking
on from behind a curtain of clouds. It is not likely that these negro
slaves had ever heard of the twenty-first Iliad, to know how the same
world-old contest of the elements is told in the great battle between the
Fire-god and the Rivers, when the Winds were sent to help, and carried
the fierce flames onward, and the eels and fish scuttled hither and
thither as the hot breath of the blast came upon them.
The beams of light darting down from the sun through openings in the
clouds seem to have struck people’s fancy in Europe as being like the
rope over the pulley of an old-fashioned draw-well, for this appearance
is called in popular phrase, “the sun drawing water.” The Polynesians
also see the resemblance of the rays to cords, which they say are the
ropes the sun is fastened by, and they tell a myth how the sun once used
to go faster, till a god set a noose at the horizon and caught him as he
rose, so that he now travels bound and slowly along his daily appointed
path. In English such an expression as that the sun is “swallowed up
by night” is now a mere metaphor, but the idea is one which in ancient
and barbaric times people took more seriously. The Maoris have made out
of it the story of the death of their divine hero Maui. You may see,
they say, Maui’s ancestress, Great-Woman-Night, flashing and as it were
opening and shutting out on the horizon where sea and sky come together;
Maui crept into her body and would have got through unharmed, but just
at that moment the little flycatcher, the _tiwakawaka_, broke out with
its merry note and awoke the Night, and she crushed Maui. That this is
really a nature-myth of the setting sun dying as he plunges into the
darkness, is proved by the mention of the bird, which has the peculiarity
of singing at sunset. Of all the nature-myths of the world, few are so
widely spread as those on this theme of night and day, where with mythic
truth the devoured victims were afterwards disgorged or set free. The
Zulu story-tellers describe the maw of the monster as a country where
there are hills and houses and cattle and people living, and when the
monster is cut open, all the creatures come out from the darkness; with a
neat touch of nature which shows that the story-teller is thinking of the
dawn, the cock comes out first, crying, “_kukuluku!_ I see the world!”
Our English version of the old myth is the nursery tale of Little Red
Ridinghood, but it is spoilt by leaving out the proper end (which German
nurses have kept up with better memory), that when the hunter ripped up
the sleeping wolf, out came the little damsel in her red satin cloak,
safe and sound.
Such stories are fanciful, but the fancy of the myth-maker can take yet
further flights. The mythic persons as yet described have been visible
objects like the sun, or at least what can be perceived by the senses and
made real objects of, such as wind, or day. But when the poet is in the
vein of myth-making, whatever he can express by a noun and put a verb
to, becomes capable of being treated as a person. If he can say, summer
comes, sleep falls on men, hope rises, justice demands, then he can set
up summer and sleep, hope and justice, in human figures, dress them, and
make them walk and talk. Thus the formation of myth is helped by what
Professor Max Müller has called a “disease of language.” This, however,
is not the whole matter. We saw in the last chapter how the notion of
soul or spirit helped men on to the notion of cause. When the cause of
anything presents itself to the ancient mind as a kind of soul or spirit,
then the cause or spirit of summer, sleep, hope, justice, comes easily
to look like a person. No one can really understand old poetry without
knowing this. Homer could fancy on the field of battle the awful _Kēr_,
whose figure was shown on the shield of Achilles with blood-stained
garment flung over her shoulders, as she seized some warrior wounded to
the death, or dragged a corpse by the feet out of the fighting throng.
This being is not merely a word turned into a reality, she is a personal
cause, a spirit-reason, why one warrior is slain and not another. So far
is the idea of her spread in Aryan mythology, that it appears again among
the Northmen, when Odin sends to every battle the maidens who in Walhalla
serve the feast and fill the bowls with ale for the spirits of the
heroes; these maidens are the Valkyriur, who guide the event of victory,
and choose the warriors who shall fall. Another well-known mythic group
shows again how what to us moderns are but ideas expressed in words, took
personal form in the minds of the ancients. In the classic books of
Greece and Rome we read of the three fate-spinners, the Moirai or Parcæ,
and their Scandinavian counterparts appear in the Edda as the three wise
women whose dwelling is near the spring under the world-ash Ygdrasill,
the Norns who fix the lives of men. The explanation of these three mythic
beings is that they are in personal shape the Past, Present, and Future,
as is shown by the names they bear, _Was_, _Is_, _Shall_ (_Urdhr_,
_Verdhandi_, _Skuld_).
Stories are always changing and losing their meanings, and from age to
age new bards and tale-tellers shape the old myths into new forms to
suit new hearers. Considering how stories thus grow and change, one must
expect their origins to be as often as not lost beyond recovery. While,
as we have seen, it may be often possible to make out what they came
from, this must be done cautiously. Clever writers are too apt to sit
down and settle the mythic origin of any tale, as if this could be done
by ingenious guessing. Even if it is nonsense and never was intended for
anything else, the myth-interpreter can find a serious origin for it
all the same. Thus a learned but rash mythologist declares that in our
English nursery rhyme, “the cow jumped over the moon,” is a remnant of
an old nature-myth, describing as a cow a cloud passing over the moon.
What is really wanted in interpreting myths is something beyond simple
guessing; there must be reasons why one particular guess is more probable
than any other. It would have been rash to judge that _Promētheus_
the fire-bringer is a personification of the wooden fire-drill (p.
262), were it not known that the Sanskrit name of this instrument is
_pramantha_; taken together, the correspondence of name and nature
amounts to a high probability that we have got back to the real origin of
the Prometheus-legend. We may choose another example from the mythology
of India, in the story of Vâmana, the tiny Brahman, who, to humble the
pride of King Bali, begs of him as much land as he can measure in three
steps, but when the boon is granted, the little dwarf expands into the
gigantic form of Vishnu, and, striding with one step across the earth,
another across the air, and a third across the sky, drives Bali down into
the infernal regions, where he still reigns. This most remarkable of all
the Tom Thumb stories seems really a myth of the sun, rising tiny above
the horizon, then swelling into majestic power and crossing the universe.
For Vâmana, the “dwarf,” is one of the incarnations of Vishnu, and Vishnu
was originally the Sun. In the hymns of the Veda the idea of his three
steps is to be found before it had become a story, when it was as yet
only a poetic metaphor of the Sun crossing the airy regions in his three
strides. “Vishnu traversed (the earth), thrice he put down his foot; it
was crushed under his dusty step. Three steps hence made Vishnu, unharmed
preserver, upholding sacred things.”
It remains to see how myths spread. Whenever a good story is told,
whether real or made-up does not matter, it becomes part of the
story-teller’s stock, who puts to it any new name that will suit, and
often succeeds in planting it not only in popular legend, but even in
history. There is a fragment by Demaratus preserved in the collection of
Stobæus, where there is related with Greek names, as an episode of the
history of Arkadia, the grand story which we were taught as an event of
Roman history, the legend of the Horatii and Curiatii. Roman history,
it seems, only borrowed it from an earlier tale, much as modern Swiss
history borrowed from older folklore the tale of the archer and the
apple, to adorn their national hero, Tell. To show how legend is put
together from many sources, historical and mythical, let us take to
pieces one of the famous children’s tales of Europe. Blue Beard was a
historical person. He was Gilles de Retz, Sieur de Laval, Marshal of
France, nicknamed Barbe Bleue from having a beard of blue-black shade.
Persuaded by an Italian alchemist that his strength could be restored
by bathing in the blood of infants, he had many children entrapped for
this hideous purpose into his castle of Champtocé on the Loire, the
ruins of which are still to be seen. At last the horrible suspicions of
the country folk as to what was going on were brought to proof, and the
monster was burnt at the stake at Nantes in 1440. In all this, however,
there is not a word about murdered wives. Indeed the historical Blue
Beard, in his character of murderous monster, seems to have inherited
an older tale belonging to the wife-murderer of Breton legend, Comor
the Cursed, Count of Poher, whose name and deeds are set down to near a
thousand years earlier, in the legendary chronicles which tell of him as
a usurper and tyrant who married and murdered one wife after another,
till at last when he had wedded and killed the beautiful Trifine,
vengeance overtook him, and he was defeated and slain by the rightful
prince. It is not easy to say whether this is a version of a yet older
story, or whether there is a historical foundation for it; if Henry VIII.
of England had lived in those times, such a legend might have gathered
round his name. Other points of the modern Blue Beard appear already
in the story of Trifine, her sending for aid to her kinsmen when she
knows her danger, and her discovery of the murder of the former wives.
This last, however, does not come to pass in the modern way; in the
legend, Trifine goes down into the chapel to pray in the hour of need,
and there the tombs of the four murdered wives open and their corpses
stand upright, each with the knife or cord or whatever she was murdered
with in her hand. Instead of this powerful and ghastly scene, the modern
version brings in the hackneyed episode of the forbidden chamber,
which had long been the property of story-tellers for use on suitable
occasions, and is to be found in the _Arabian Nights_. The old Trifine
legend has a characteristic ending. Her wicked husband pursues her into
the forest and cuts her head off, but St. Gildas makes her body carry
it back to Comor’s castle, which he overthrows by flinging a handful of
dust at it, then he puts Trifine’s head on for her again, and she retires
into a convent for the rest of her life. The story-tellers of later times
prefer a more cheerful if more commonplace finish.
The miracle-legend just quoted brings us back to the historical use of
myth, which was spoken of earlier in this chapter. The story of St.
Gildas bringing the fair Trifine back to her castle with her head in her
hand, and his afterwards putting it back on her shoulders, is history.
It records the intellectual state of the age when it was held edifying
to tell such wonders of holy men, for holy men were believed able to do
them. Old tales which seem extravagant to our minds are apt thus to have
historical value by pointing back to the times when, seeming possible,
they were made. This is true even of Æsop’s fables. In the stage of
thought when human souls are thought able to live in animals’ bodies,
when a wolf may have one’s enemy’s soul in him, or one’s grandfather may
be crawling on the hearth in the body of a snake, stories of rational
beasts themselves seem rational. Among the Buddhists, where beast-tales
early became moral apologues, they are told as incidents of the many
births or transmigrations of the great founder of the religion. It was
Buddha himself who, as a bird, took the bone out of the lion’s throat,
and was repaid by being told that he was lucky to be so well out of it.
It was Buddha who, born in the body of a peasant, listened to the ass
in the lion’s skin, and said he was but an ass. That millions of people
should have this as part of their sacred literature is a fact of interest
in the study of civilization, warning us not to cast aside a story as
worthless, because it is mythical. For understanding the thoughts of
old-world nations, their myths tell us much we should hardly learn from
their history.
CHAPTER XVI.
SOCIETY.
Social Stages, 401—Family, 402—Morals of Lower Races,
405—Public Opinion and Custom, 408—Moral Progress,
410—Vengeance and Justice, 414—War, 418—Property,
419—Legal Ceremonies, 423—Family Power and Responsibility,
426—Patriarchal and Military Chiefs, 428—Nations, 432—Social
Ranks, 434—Government, 436.
In the reports of crimes which appear daily in the newspapers of our
civilized land, such phrases often occur as _savage_ fury, _barbarous_
cruelty. These two words have come to mean in common talk such behaviour
as is most wild, rough, and cruel. Now no doubt the life of the less
civilized people of the world, the _savages_ and _barbarians_, is more
wild, rough, and cruel than ours is on the whole, but the difference
between us and them does not lie altogether in this. As the foregoing
chapters have proved, savage and barbarous tribes often more or less
fairly represent stages of culture through which our own ancestors passed
long ago, and their customs and laws often explain to us, in ways we
should otherwise have hardly guessed, the sense and reason of our own.
It should be understood that it is out of the question to give here even
a summary of the complicated systems of society: all that can be done is
to put before the reader some of its leading principles in ancient and
modern life.
Mankind can never have lived as a mere struggling crowd, each for
himself. Society is always made up of families or households bound
together by kindly ties, controlled by rules of marriage and the duties
of parent and child. Yet the forms of these rules and duties have been
very various. Marriages may be shifting and temporary pairing, or unions
where the husband may have several wives, and the wife several husbands.
It is often hard to understand the family group and its ties in the rude
and ancient world. Thus it seems to us a matter of course to reckon
family descent in the male line, and this is now put in the clearest
way by the son taking the father’s surname. But in lower stages of
civilization, on both sides of the globe, many tribes take the contrary
idea as a matter of course. In most Australian tribes the children belong
to the mother’s clan, not the father’s; so that in native wars father
and son constantly meet as natural enemies. Chiefship often goes down in
the royal mother’s line, as among the Natchez, who had their sun-temples
in what is now Louisiana. Yet this wide-spread law of female descent,
deep as it lies in the history of society, had been so lost sight of
among the ancient civilized nations, that when Herodotus noticed it
among the Lykians, who took their names from their mothers and traced
their pedigrees through the female branches only, the historian fancied
this was a peculiar custom, in which they were unlike all other people.
In the savage and barbaric world there prevails widely the rule called
by McLennan exogamy or marrying-out, which forbids a man to take a wife
of his own clan—an act which is considered criminal, and may even be
punished with death. It is a strange contrast to the popular idea that
savage life has no rules, when we find Australian tribes where every man
is bound to marry into the particular clan which is, so to speak, the
wife-clan to his own. Among the Iroquois of North America the children
took the clan-name or totem of the mother; so if she were of the Bear
clan, her son would be a Bear, and accordingly he might not marry a Bear
girl, but might take a Deer or Heron. Such laws appear also among higher
nations who reckon descent in the male line. Thus in India a Brahman is
not to marry a wife whose clan-name (her “cow-stall,” as they say) is the
same as his; nor may a Chinese take a wife of his own surname. Though the
family and tribe rules of the savage and barbaric world are too intricate
to be fully discussed here, there are some instructive points to which
attention should be called. Marriage is in early stages of society a
civil contract. Thus, among the wild hunting-tribes of Nicaragua, the
lad who wishes a girl for a wife kills a deer and lays it with a heap of
firewood at the door of her parents’ hut, which symbolic act is his offer
to hunt and do man’s work; if the gift is accepted, it is a marriage,
without further ceremony. Among peoples of higher culture more formal
promises and ceremonies come in, with feasts and gatherings of kinsfolk;
and then, as in other important matters of life, the priest is called in
to give divine blessing and sanction to the union. Where this is done, a
wedding has come to be very different from what it was in the rough times
of marriage by capture, such as might be seen in our own day among fierce
forest tribes in Brazil, where the warriors would make forays on distant
villages and by main force bring home wives. Ancient tradition knows this
practice well, as where the men of Benjamin carry off the daughters of
Shiloh dancing at the feast, and in the famous Roman tale of the rape
of the Sabines, a legend putting in historical form the wife-capture
which in Roman custom remained as a ceremony. What most clearly shows
what a recognised old-world custom it was, is its being thus kept up as
a formality where milder manners really prevail. It had passed into this
state among the Spartans, when Plutarch says that though the marriage
was really by friendly settlement between the families, the bridegroom’s
friends went through the pretence of carrying off the bride by violence.
Within a few generations the same old habit was kept up in Wales, where
the bridegroom and his friends, mounted and armed as for war, carried off
the bride; and in Ireland they used even to hurl spears at the bride’s
people, though at such a distance that no one was hurt, except now and
then by accident, as happened when one Lord Hoath lost an eye, which
mischance seems to have put an end to this curious relic of antiquity.
It was one of the consequences of increase of property in the world,
that the practice of buying wives came in, as where a Zulu bargains with
a girl’s people to let him have her perhaps for five oxen or ten. This
was the custom in England among our barbaric forefathers, as appears in
the West-Saxon law of Ine—“If a man buy a wife,” &c. Cnut somewhat later
forbade the wife to be sold, but the husband might give something of his
own will. It is an interesting problem in the history of law how the
money once paid as the bride’s price passed into a gift or dower for her;
some provision of this kind became necessary when the widow was no longer
provided for by being taken, as she would have been in a ruder state of
society, as a wife by her husband’s brother.
Marriage has been here spoken of first, because upon it depends the
family, on which the whole framework of society is founded. What has been
said of the ruder kinds of family union among savages and barbarians
shows that there cannot be expected from them the excellence of those
well-ordered households to which civilized society owes so much of its
goodness and prosperity. Yet even among the rudest clans of men, unless
depraved by vice or misery and falling to pieces, a standard of family
morals is known and lived by. Their habits, judged by our notions, are
hard and coarse, yet the family tie of sympathy and common interest is
already formed, and the foundations of moral duty already laid, in the
mother’s patient tenderness, the father’s desperate valour in defence of
home, their daily care for the little ones, the affection of brothers
and sisters, and the mutual forbearance, helpfulness, and trust of all.
From the family this extends to a wider circle. The natural way in which
a tribe is formed is from a family or group, which in time increases and
divides into many households, still recognising one another as kindred,
and this kinship is so thoroughly felt to be the tie of the whole tribe,
that, even when there has been a mixture of tribes, a common ancestor is
often invented to make an imaginary bond of union. Thus _kindred_ and
_kindness_ go together—two words whose common derivation expresses in the
happiest way one of the main principles of social life.
Among the lessons to be learnt from the life of rude tribes is, how
society can go on without the policeman to keep order. It is plain
that even the lowest men cannot live quite by what the Germans call
“faustrecht,” or “fist-right,” and we call “club law.” The strong savage
does not rush into his weaker neighbour’s hut and take possession,
driving the owner out into the forest with a stone-headed javelin sent
flying after him. Without some control beyond the mere right of the
stronger, the tribe would break up in a week, whereas in fact savage
tribes last on for ages. Under favourable circumstances, where food
is not too scarce nor war too wasting, the life of low barbaric races
may be in its rude way good and happy. In the West Indian islands where
Columbus first landed, lived tribes who have been called the most
gentle and benevolent of the human race. Schomburgk, the traveller, who
knew the warlike Caribs well in their home life, draws a paradise-like
picture of their ways, where they have not been corrupted by the vices
of the white men; he saw among them peace and cheerfulness and simple
family affection, unvarnished friendship, and gratitude not less true
for not being spoken in sounding words; the civilized world, he says,
has not to teach them morality, for though they do not talk about it,
they live in it. At the other side of the world in New Guinea, Kops,
the Dutch explorer, gives much the same account of the Papuans of Dory,
who live in houses built on piles in the water, like the old lake-men
of Switzerland; he speaks of their mild disposition, their inclination
to right and justice, their strong moral principles, their respect for
the aged and love for their children, their living without fastenings to
their houses—for theft is considered by them a grave offence, and rarely
occurs. Among the rude non-Hindu tribes of India, English officials
have often recorded with wonder the kindliness and cheerfulness of
the rude men of the mountains and the jungle, and their utter honesty
in word and deed. Thus Sir Walter Elliot mentions a low poor tribe of
South India, whom the farmers employ to guard their fields, well knowing
that they would starve rather than steal the grain in their charge;
and they are so truthful that their word is taken at once in disputes
even with their richer neighbours, for people say “a Kurubar always
speaks the truth.” Of course these accounts of Caribs and Papuans show
them on the friendly side, while those who have fought with them call
them monsters of ferocity and treachery. But cruelty and cunning in
war seem to them right and praiseworthy; and what we are here looking
at is their home peace-life. It is clear that low barbarians may live
among themselves under a fairly high moral standard, and this is the
more instructive because it shows what may be called natural morality.
Among them religion, mostly concerned with propitiating souls of
ancestors and spirits of nature, has not the strong moral influence it
exerts among higher nations; indeed their behaviour to their fellows is
little affected by divine command or fear of divine punishment. It has
more to do with their life being prosperous or miserable. When want or
the miseries of war upset their well-being, they (like their betters)
become more brutal and selfish in their ways, and moral habits are
at all times low among the comfortless hordes of savages whose daily
struggle for existence is too harsh for the gentler feelings to thrive.
Moreover, there is this plain difference between low and high races of
men, that the dull-minded barbarian has not power of thought enough to
come up to the civilized man’s best moral standard. The wild man of the
forest, forgetful of yesterday and careless of to-morrow, lolling in his
hammock when his wants are satisfied, has little of the play of memory
and foresight which is ever unrolling before our minds the panorama of
our own past and future life, and even sets us in thought in the places
of our fellows, to partake of their lives and enter into their joys
and sorrows. Much of the wrong-doing of the world comes from want of
imagination. If the drunkard could see before him the misery of next
year with something of the vividness of the present craving, it would
overbalance it. Ofttimes in the hottest fury of anger, the sword has been
sheathed by him across whose mind has flashed the prophetic picture of
the women weeping round the blood-stained corpse. The lower races of
men are so wanting in foresight to resist passion and temptation, that
the moral balance of a tribe easily goes wrong, while they are rough and
wantonly cruel through want of intelligent sympathy with the sufferings
of others, much as children are cruel to animals through not being able
to imagine what the creatures feel. What we now know of savage life will
prevent our falling into the fancies of the philosophers of the last
century, who set up the “noble savage” as an actual model of virtue to be
imitated by civilized nations. But the reality is quite as instructive,
that the laws of virtue and happiness may be found at work in simple
forms among tribes who make hatchets of sharpened stones and rub sticks
together to kindle fire. Their life, seen at its best, shows with
unusual clearness the great principle of moral science, that morality
and happiness belong together—in fact that morality is the method of
happiness.
It must not be supposed that in any state of civilization a man’s
conduct depends altogether on his own moral sense of right and wrong.
Controlling forces of society are at work even among savages, only in
more rudimentary ways than among ourselves. Public opinion is already a
great power, and the way in which it acts is particularly to be noticed.
Whereas the individual man is too apt to look to his own personal
interest and the benefit of his near friends, these private motives
fall away when many minds come together, and public opinion with a
larger selfishness takes up the public good, encouraging the individual
to set aside his private wishes and give up his property or even his
life for the commonwealth. The assembled tribe can crush the mean and
cowardly with their scorn, or give that reward of glory for which the
high-spirited will risk goods and life. Travellers have remarked that the
women, however down-trodden, know how to make their influence felt in
this way, and many a warrior whose heart was failing him in face of the
enemy, has turned from flight when he thought of the girls’ mockery when
he should slink home to the village, safe but disgraced. This pressure
of public opinion compels men to act according to custom, which gives
the rule as to what is to be done or not done in most affairs of life.
Explorers of wild countries, not finding the machinery of police they are
accustomed to at home, have sometimes rashly concluded that the savages
lived unrestrained at their own free will. We have here already noticed
that this is a mistake, for life in the uncivilized world is fettered
at every turn by chains of custom. To a great extent it is evident that
customs have come into existence for the benefit of society, or what was
considered so. For instance, it is generally held right in wild countries
that hospitality shall be freely given to all comers, for every one knows
he may want it any day himself. But whether a custom is plainly useful
or not, and even when its purpose is no longer known, once established
as a custom it must be conformed to. Savages may have finger-joints cut
off, or undergo such long and severe fasts that many die; but often the
only reason they can give for inflicting such suffering on themselves is
that it was the custom of their ancestors. In some parts of Australia
custom forbade to the young hunters, and reserved for the old men, much
of the wild fowl and the best joints of the large game. No doubt this was
in some measure for the public benefit, as the experienced elders, who
were past the fatigue of hunting, were able to stay in camp, make nets
and weapons, teach the lads, and be the repositories of wisdom and the
honoured counsellors of the tribe. Nothing could prove more plainly how
far society is, even among such wild men of the desert, from being under
the mere sway of brute force.
Thus communities, however ancient and rude, always have their rules of
right and wrong. But as to what acts have been held right and wrong,
the student of history must avoid that error which the proverb calls
measuring other people’s corn by one’s own bushel. Not judging the
customs of nations at other stages of culture by his own modern standard,
he has to bring his knowledge to the help of his imagination, so as to
see institutions where they belong and as they work. Only thus can it
be made clear that the rules of good and bad, right and wrong, are not
fixed alike for all men at all times. For an example of this principle,
let us observe how people at different stages of civilization deal with
the aged. Some of the lower races take much care of their old folks even
after they are fallen into imbecility, treating them with almost gentle
considerateness and very commonly tending them till death, when respect
to the living ancestor passes into his worship as an ancestral spirit.
But among other tribes filial kindness breaks down earlier, as among
those fierce Brazilians who knock on the head with clubs the sick and
aged, and even eat them, whether they find their care too burdensome, or
whether they really think, as they say, that it is kind to end a life no
longer gladdened with fight and feast and dance. We realize the situation
among roving tribes. The horde must move in quest of game, the poor
failing creature cannot keep up in the march, the hunters and the heavily
laden women cannot carry him; he must be left behind. Many a traveller
has beheld in the desert such heartrending scenes as Catlin saw when he
said farewell to the white-haired old Puncah chief, all but blind and
shrunk to skin and bone, crouched shivering by a few burning sticks, for
his shelter a buffalo-hide set up on crutches, for his food a dish of
water and a few half-picked bones. This old warrior was abandoned at his
own wish when his tribe started for new hunting-grounds, even as years
before, he said, he had left his own father to die when he was no longer
good for anything. When a nation settled in the agricultural state has
reached something of wealth and comfort, there is no longer the excuse of
necessity for killing or abandoning the aged. Yet history shows how long
the practice was kept up even in Europe, partly with the humane intent
of putting an end to lingering misery, but more through the survival of
a custom inherited from harder and ruder times. The Wends in what is
now Germany practised the hideous rite of putting the aged and infirm
to death, cooking and eating them, much as Herodotus describes the old
Massagetæ as doing. In Sweden there used to be kept in the churches
certain clumsy wooden clubs, called “family-clubs,” of which some are
still preserved, and with which in ancient times the aged and hopelessly
sick were solemnly put to death by their kinsfolk. It is interesting
to trace in the old German records the change from such hard ancient
barbarism to gentler manners, when the infirm old house-father, dividing
his substance among his children, is to sit henceforth well cared for
in the “cat’s place” by the hearth. One of the marks of advancing
civilization was the growing sense of the sacredness of human life, even
apart from its use and pleasure, and under this feeling the cutting
short of even a burdensome and suffering existence, which our ancestors
resorted to without reproach, has come to be looked upon with horror.
It must be clearly understood also that the old-world rules of moral
conduct were not the same towards all men. A man knew his duty to his
neighbour, but all men were not his neighbours. This is very clearly seen
in the history of men’s ideas of manslaughter and theft. The slaying of
a man is scarcely held by the law of any people to be of itself a crime,
but on the contrary it has been regarded as an allowable or praiseworthy
act under certain conditions, especially in self-defence, war, revenge,
punishment, and sacrifice. Yet no known tribe, however low and ferocious,
has ever held that men may kill one another indiscriminately, for even
the savage society of the desert or the jungle would collapse under such
lawlessness. Thus all men acknowledge some law “thou shall not kill,”
but the question is how this law applies. It is instructive to see
how it works among those fierce tribes who approve the killing of men
simply as a proof of valour. Thus the young Sioux Indian, till he had
killed his man, was not allowed to stick the feather in his head-dress
and have the title of brave or warrior; he could scarcely get a girl to
marry him till he had “got the feather.” So the young Dayak of Borneo
could not get a wife till he had taken a head, and it was thus with the
skull or scalp which the Naga warrior of Asam had to bring home, thereby
qualifying himself to be tattooed and to marry a wife, who had perhaps
been waiting years for this ugly marriage-licence. The trophy need not
have been taken from an enemy, and might have been got by the blackest
treachery, provided only that the victim were not of the slayer’s own
tribe. Yet these Sioux among themselves hold manslaughter to be a crime
unless in blood-revenge; and the Dayaks punish murder. This state of
things is not really contradictory; in fact its explanation lies in the
one word “tribe.” The tribe makes its law, not on an abstract principle
that manslaughter is right or wrong, but for its own preservation.
Their existence depends on holding their own in deadly strife with
neighbouring tribes, and thus they put a social premium on the warrior’s
proof of valour in fight against the enemy, though in these degenerate
days they allow the form to be meanly fulfilled by bringing in as a
warrior’s trophy the head of some old woman or wretched waylaid stranger.
In this simple contrast between one’s own people and strangers, the
student will find a clue to the thought of right and wrong running
through ancient history, and slowly passing into a larger and nobler
view. The old state of things is well illustrated in the Latin word
_hostis_, which, meaning originally stranger, passed quite naturally into
the sense of enemy. Not only is slaying an enemy in open war looked on as
righteous, but ancient law goes on the doctrine that slaying one’s own
tribesman and slaying a foreigner are crimes of quite different order,
while killing a slave is but a destruction of property. Nor even now does
the colonist practically admit that killing a brown or black man is an
act of quite the same nature as killing a white countryman. Yet the idea
of the sacredness of human life is ever spreading more widely in the
world, as a principle applying to mankind at large.
The history of the notion of theft and plunder follows partly the same
lines. In the lower civilization the law, “thou shalt not steal,” is
not unknown, but it applies to tribesmen and friends, not to strangers
and enemies. Among the Ahts of British Columbia, Sproat remarks that
an article placed in an Indian’s charge on his good faith is perfectly
safe, yet thieving is a common vice where the property of other tribes
or of white men is concerned. But, he says, it would be unfair to
regard thieving among these savages as culpable in the same degree
as among ourselves, for they have no moral or social law forbidding
thieving between tribe and tribe, which has been commonly practised for
generations. Thus, although the Africans within their own tribe-limits
have strict rules of property, travellers describe how a Zulu war-party,
who have stealthily crept upon a distant village and massacred men,
women, and children, will leave behind them the ransacked kraal flaring
on the horizon and return with exulting hearts and loads of plunder.
The old-world law of a warlike people is well seen among the ancient
Germans in Cæsar’s famous sentence, “Robberies beyond the bounds of each
community have no infamy, but are commended as a means of exercising
youth and diminishing sloth.” Even in the midst of modern civilization,
a declaration of war may still carry society back to the earlier stages
of plunder and prize-money. But in peace the safety of property as well
as life is becoming more settled in the world. The extradition treaties
by which criminals, deprived of their old refuge over the border, are now
given up to justice in the country where they offended, mark the modern
tendency to unite nations in one community, which recognises among all
its members mutual right and duty.
Hitherto we have been looking at right and wrong chiefly as worked by
men’s own moral feelings and by public opinion. But stronger means have
at all times been necessary. It is now reckoned one of the regular duties
of civilization to have a criminal law to punish wrong-doers with fine,
imprisonment, blows, and even death. This system, however, only gradually
arose in the world, and history can show plain traces of how it grew up
from the early state of things when there were as yet no professional
judges or executioners, but it was every man’s right and duty to take the
law into his own hands, and that law was what we now call vengeance. When
in barbaric life fierce passion breaks loose and a man is slain, this
rule of vengeance comes into action. How it works as one of the great
forces of society may well be seen among the Australians. As Sir George
Grey says in his account of it, the holiest duty a native is called on to
perform is to avenge the death of his nearest relation. If he left this
duty unfulfilled, the old women would taunt him; if he were unmarried,
no girl would speak to him; if he had wives, they would leave him; his
mother would cry and lament that she had given birth to so degenerate a
son, his father would treat him with contempt, and he would be a mark for
public scorn. But what is to be done if the murderer escapes, as must
in so wild and thinly peopled a country be easy? Native custom goes on
the ancient doctrine that the criminal’s whole family are responsible;
so that when it is known that a man has been slain, and especially when
the actual culprit has escaped, his kinsfolk run for their lives; the
very children of seven years old know whether they are of kin to the
manslayer, and, if so, they are off at once into hiding. Here then we
come in view of two principles which every student of law should have
clearly in his mind in tracing its history up from its lowest stages. In
the primitive law of vengeance of blood, he sees society using for the
public benefit the instinct of revenge which man has in common with the
lower animals; and by holding the whole family answerable for the deed
of one of its members, the public brings the full pressure of family
influence to bear on each individual as a means of keeping the peace.
No one who sees the working of blood-vengeance can deny its practical
reasonableness, and its use in restraining men from violence while there
are as yet no judges and executioners. Indeed among all savages and
barbarians the avenger of blood, little as he thinks it himself in his
wild fury, is doing his part toward saving his people from perishing
by deeds of blood. Unhappily his usefulness is often marred through
ignorance and delusion turning his vengeance against the innocent. These
Australians are among the many savages who do not see why anybody should
ever die unless he is killed, so they account for what we call natural
death by settling it that some enemy killed the sufferer by magic art,
wounding him with an invisible weapon, or sending a disease-demon to
gnaw his vitals. Therefore, when a man dies, his kinsmen set themselves
to find out by divination what malignant sorcerer did him to death, and
when they have fixed on some one as the secret enemy the avenger sets
out to find and slay him; then of course there is retaliation from the
other side, and a hereditary feud sets in. This is one great cause of
the rancorous hatred between neighbouring tribes which keeps savages in
ceaseless fear and trouble.
Passing to higher levels of civilization, among the nations of the
ancient world we still find the law of blood-vengeance, but it is being
gradually modified by the civilization which in time ousts it altogether.
Thus the law of the Israelites, while still authorizing the avenger
of blood, provides that there shall be cities of refuge, and that the
morally innocent manslayer shall not be as the wilful murderer. Among
nations where wealth has been gathered together, and especially where it
has come to be measured by money, the old fierce cry for vengeance sinks
into a claim for compensation. In Arabia to this day the earlier and
later stages may be seen side by side; while the roaming Beduin tribes
of the desert carry on blood-feuds from generation to generation with
savage ferocity, the townsfolk feel that life can hardly go on with an
assassin round every street-corner, so they take the blood-money and
loose the feud. This state of things is instructive as being like that
of our own early ancestors when the Teutonic law was still that a man
took vengeance for hurt done to him or his, unless he compounded it. The
Anglo-Saxon word for such composition was _wér-gild_, probably meaning
“man-money,” 200 shillings for a free man, less for lower folk, and less
for a Welshman than an Englishman. Again, where the rule of vengeance is
a life for a life, lesser hurts are also repaid in kind, which is the
Roman _lex talionis_, or “law of the like”—_retaliation_. This is plainly
set forth in the Jewish law, life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth,
wound for wound, stripe for stripe. It is still law in Abyssinia, where
not long since a mother prosecuted a lad who had accidentally fallen
from a fruit-tree on her little son and killed him; the judges decided
that she had a right to send another son up into the tree to drop on the
boy who had unintentionally caused the first one’s death, which remedy
however she did not care to avail herself of. Of course retaliation came
to be commuted into money, as when old English laws provide that, if any
one happen to cut off the fist or foot of a person, let him render to him
the half of a man’s price, for a thumb half the price of a hand, and so
on down to 5_s._ for a little finger and 4_d._ for a little-finger nail.
In the times we live in, justice has passed into a higher stage, where
the State takes the duty of punishing any serious wilful hurt done to
its citizens. Reading some murderous tale of a Corsican “vendetta,” we
hardly stop to think of it as a relic of ancient law lingering in a wild
mountain island. Yet our criminal law grew out of such private vengeance,
as is still plain to those who attend to traces of the past, when they
hear such phrases as “the vengeance of the law,” or think what is meant
by the legal form by which a private person is bound over to prosecute,
as though he must still be suing, as he would have done in long-past
ages, for his own revenge or compensation. It is now really the State
that is seeking to punish the criminal for the ends of public justice.
The avenger of blood, once the guardian of public safety, would now be
himself punished as a criminal for taking the law into his own hands,
while the moralists, now that the conditions of society are changed, lay
it down that vengeance is sinful.
Law, however, though it has so beneficially taken the place of private
vengeance, has not fully extended its sway over the larger quarrels
between State and State. The relation of private vengeance to public war
is well seen among rude tribes, such as inhabit the forests of Brazil.
When a murder is done within the tribe, then of course vengeance lies
between the two families concerned; but if the murderer is of another
clan or tribe, then it becomes a public wrong. The injured community
hold council, and mostly decide for war if they dare; then a war-party
sets forth, in which the near kinsmen of the murdered man, their bodies
painted with black daubs to show their deadly office, rush foremost
into the fight. Among neighbouring tribes the ordinary way in which war
begins is by some quarrel or trespass, then a man is killed on one side
or the other, and the vengeance for his death spreads into blood-feud
and tribal war ever ready to break out from generation to generation.
This barbaric state of things lasted far on into the history of Europe.
It was old German law that any freeman who had been injured in body,
honour, or estate might, with the help of his own people, avenge himself
if he would not take the legal commutation; that is to say, he had the
right of private war. It was a turning-point in English history when
King Edmund made a law to restrain this “unrighteous fighting,” but it
was not stopped at once, especially in Northumberland, and we know how
it went on into modern times between clan and clan in the wild Scotch
Highlands. Long after the mere freeman ceased to go to war with his
neighbours, there were nobles who stood to their old right. As late as
the time of Edward IV. Lord Berkeley and his followers fought a battle
with Lord Lisle at Nibley Green in Gloucestershire. Lord Lisle was slain,
and in the end Lord Berkeley compounded by a money payment to the widow.
Freeman, who in his _Comparative Politics_ mentions this curious incident
of fifteenth-century history, thinks it the last English example either
of private war or the payment of the wér-gild. The law of England which
forbids the levying of private war represents one of the greatest steps
in national progress. The State now replaces, by the justice of legal
tribunals, the barbaric expedients of private vengeance and private war.
But State and State still fight out their quarrels in public war, which
then becomes on a larger scale much what deadly feud used to be between
clan and clan.
The civil law of property may, like the criminal law, be traced from
the ideas of old times. A fair notion may be had of what early rules of
property were like, by noticing what they are in the uncivilised world
still. Among the lower races, the distinction which our lawyers make
between real and personal property appears in a very intelligible way.
Of the land all have the use, but no man can be its absolute owner. The
simplest land-law, which is also a game-law, is found among tribes who
live chiefly by hunting and fishing. Thus in Brazil each tribe had its
boundaries marked by rocks, trees, streams, or even artificial landmarks,
and trespass in pursuit of game was held so serious that the offender
might be slain on the spot. At this stage of society in any part of the
world, every man has the right to hunt within the bounds of his own
tribe, and the game only becomes private property when struck. Thus there
is a distinct legal idea of common property in land belonging to the
clan or tribe. There is also a clear idea of family property: the hut
belongs to the family or group of families who built it; and when they
fenced in and tilled the plot of ground hard by, this also ceased to be
common land, and became the property of the families, at least while
they occupied it. To each family belonged also the hut-furniture, such
as hammocks, mealing-stones, and earthen pots. At the same time personal
ownership appears, though still under the power of the family, through
the father or head. Personal or individual property was chiefly what each
wore or carried—the man’s weapons, the ornaments and scanty clothing of
both sexes, things which they had some power to do as they liked with
during life, and at death very commonly took away with them to the world
beyond the grave (see p. 346). Here then we find barbarians already
acquainted with the ideas of common land, family freehold, family and
personal property in movables, which run through the systems of old-world
law. Not that they are worked out in the same way everywhere. Thus in
the village communities which had so great a part in settling Asia and
Europe, and whose traces still remain in modern England, not only the
hunting-grounds and meadows were held in common, but the families did
not even own the ploughed fields, which were tilled by common labour or
re-allotted from time to time among the households, so that the family
freehold did not reach beyond its house and garden-plot. At various times
in history, the rise of military nations revolutionised the earlier
ways of land-holding. In invaded countries, lands of the conquered were
distributed by the king or leader to be held by his captains or soldiers
doing military service in return; the greatest and best-known example
is the feudal system of Europe in the Middle Ages. It is instructive to
notice how in England, before the Norman Conquest, the folk-land, the
common property of the state, was already passing into the hands of
the king to grant at his pleasure. Or in a military state the sovereign
may become the universal landlord, allowing his subjects to hold lands
on payment of an annual tribute or tax—a system well known in ancient
Egypt and modern India. In Roman history we find the state, or families
owning large lands, letting portions of them as farms to tenants who
paid part of the produce in return. This shows the beginning of rent,
a thing unknown to primitive law. While these changes were coming on
as to the land, movable property was becoming more and more important.
War-captives kept as slaves to till the soil became part of the wealth
of the family, and the pastoral life brought in cattle, not only for
food, but to plough the fields. The manufacture of valuable goods, the
growth of commerce, the accumulation of treasure, and the use of money,
added other possessions. If now we look at our modern ways of dealing
with property, it is seen what great changes we have made by taking it
out of the hands of the family and allowing an individual owner to hold
and dispose of it—an arrangement suited to our age of shifting trading
enterprise. Even land is bought and sold by individuals, though the law,
by making a field and cottage transferable by a different process and
with greater formality and cost than a diamond necklace or a hundred
chests of tea, keeps up traces of the old system under which it could
only have changed hands, if at all, with difficulty and by the consent
of many parties. Through all changes it is instructive to notice how far
the old family system of property holds its place. This is well seen by
considering what becomes of a man’s property when he dies. The two most
usual arrangements made in early times are the simplest, namely, either
that the family shall go on living on the undivided property, or that
it shall be divided among the children, or sons. When the eldest son
is patriarchal head of the family, to keep up this dignity he may have
an extra or double portion for his “birth-right”; this is a well-known
ancient rule, common to the Aryan and Semitic nations, for it is both
in the Hindu laws of Manu and in Deuteronomy. In France at this day the
ancient principle of division is legally enforced, and the family take
their shares as a matter of right. In England the power of wills has
become so great, that in theory a man may leave his property to whom he
pleases; but practically this is kept within bounds by moral feeling and
public opinion, which condemn it as an unnatural act for a man to strip
his own children to endow a stranger or a hospital. If the Englishman
dies without leaving a will, the law recognises the rights of his family
by fairly dividing among them his personal property. It is otherwise with
the land or real estate, which in most cases will pass to the eldest son.
Why the law should thus allow the claims of the rest of the family to
the money, but not to the land, is an interesting point of history. The
reader of Maine’s _Ancient Law_ will find how, in Europe about a thousand
years ago, lands held as fiefs came to pass to the eldest son, not by any
means for the purpose of enriching him by disinheriting the others, but
that the united kinsfolk might live upon the land and defend it under
him as chief of the little clan. If in modern times the head of the
family has become possessed of the family estate for his own use, this
is because old laws working under new circumstances are apt to produce
results which those who framed them never foresaw. Primogeniture did not
prevail over the whole of England, but older rules of family inheritance
have in some parts lasted on from times before feudalism. The best known
of these is where at the father’s death the land is divided among the
sons, as Domesday Book shows was usual in Edward the Confessor’s time.
This is now known as gavelkind, or the custom of Kent, but it appears
elsewhere; for instance, Kentish Town in the north of London is supposed
to have its name from lands so held there. There even exists in England
a rule of inheritance which seems to belong to a yet earlier state of
society. This is the custom of borough-english, by which, for instance
at Hackney or Edmonton, if a man die intestate the land passes to his
youngest son. This right of the youngest, strange as it seems to us, is
still found here and there in Europe and Asia. It is a reasonable law of
inheritance of the settlers in a new country, where there is yet plenty
of land to be had for the taking, and the sons as they grow up and marry
go out and found new homesteads of their own. But the youngest stays at
home and takes care of the old father and mother; he is, as the Mongols
say, the “fire-keeper,” and at their death he naturally succeeds to the
family home. This is one of the hundreds of cases of customs which seem
arbitrary and unreasonable, because they have lost their sense by lasting
on from the state of life to which they properly belonged.
In the old days before there were lawyers and law books, solemn acts
and rights were made plain to all men by picturesque ceremonies suited
to lay hold of unlettered minds. Many of these old ceremonies are still
kept up and show their meaning as plainly as ever. For example, when two
parties wish to make firm peace or friendship, they will go through the
ceremony of mixing their blood, so as to make themselves blood-relations.
Travellers often now ally themselves in such blood-brotherhood with
barbarous tribes; an account of East Africans performing the rite
describes the two sitting together on a hide so as to become “of one
skin,” and then they made little cuts in one another’s breasts, tasted
the mixed blood, and rubbed it into one another’s wounds. Thus we find
still going on in the world a compact which Herodotus describes among the
ancient Lydians and Scythians, and which is also mentioned in the Sagas
of the old Northmen and the ancient Irish legends. It would be impossible
to put more clearly the great principle of old-world morals, that a man
owes friendship not to mankind at large but only to his own kin, so
that to entitle a stranger to kindness and good faith he must become
a kinsman by blood. With much the same thought even rude tribes hold
that eating and drinking together is a covenant of friendship, for the
guest becomes in some sort one of the household, and has to be treated
as morally one of the family. This helps to explain the vast importance
people everywhere give to the act of dining together. Among the millions
of India at this day the very constitution of society turns on the caste
rules whom a man may or may not eat with. Among the marriage ceremonies
of the world, one well known in the far East is that the couple by eating
together out of one dish become man and wife. How ceremony expresses
meaning in still more striking metaphor is seen in the Hindu marriage,
where the skirts of the bridegroom and bride’s garments are tied together
as a sign of union, and the bride steps on a stone to show she will be as
firm as stone. A custom is described among English vagrants of the last
century, where a man and woman would join hands across the body of a dead
beast, thus promising that they would be joined till death should part
them. Among the dramatic ceremonies known to European law is the scene in
an ancient Roman law-court, where a man put in his claim to a slave by
stepping forward and touching him with a rod which represented a spear;
or when in old Germany a piece of land was transferred by the owner
handing over a sod of the turf with a green twig stuck up in it; or when
in feudal times the vassal placed his hands between the lord’s, and so
“putting himself in his hands” became his man.
There were ceremonies in old-world law which were more than such
gesture-language. Barbaric law early began to call on magical and divine
powers to help in the difficult tasks of discovering the guilty, getting
the truth out of witnesses, and making a promise binding. This led to the
wide-spread system of ordeals and oaths. Some ordeals have really served
to discover truth by their effect on the conscience of the evil-doer.
It is thus with the mouthful of rice taken by all of a suspected
household in India, which the thief’s nervous fear often prevents him
from swallowing. This used to be done in England with the corsnæd or
trial-slice of consecrated bread or cheese; even now peasants have not
forgotten the old formula, “May this bit choke me if I lie!” Another of
the few ordeals that linger in popular memory may be seen when, in some
out-of-the-way farmhouse, all suspected of a theft are made to hold a
bible hanging to a key, which is to turn in the hands of the thief; this
keeps up a form of divination practised in the classic world with a sieve
hanging by the points of an open pair of shears. Ordeals have had their
day, and are now discarded from the laws of the most civilised nations.
Nowadays one has to go to such countries as Arabia to find the ordeal by
hot iron recognised by law, as it was in England in the days when the
legend was told of Queen Emma walking over the red-hot ploughshares; the
conjurors now go through this ancient performance as a circus-show. Yet
even of late years, English rustics have been known to duck some wretched
old woman supposed to be a witch, little knowing that they were keeping
up the ancient water-ordeal, where the sacred element rejects the wrong
and accepts the right, so that the guilty floats and the innocent sinks—a
judicial rite which forms part of the old Hindu law-book of Manu, and
which in English law, till the beginning of the 13th century, was a legal
means of trying those accused of murder or robbery. Ordeals by which
the taker brings down present harm on himself if he is guilty, are of
much the same nature as oaths. It is usual, however, for oaths to call
down future punishment, in this life or after death, as when, in Russian
law-courts in Siberia, the curious spectacle may be seen of bringing in
a bear’s head that an Ostyak may bite at it, thereby calling on a bear
to bite him if he is forsworn. The legal oaths in our own country bear
in their gestures the traces of high antiquity. In Scotland the witness
holds up his hand toward heaven, the gesture by which Greek and Jew took
the supreme Deity to witness, and called down divine vengeance on the
perjurer. In England the kissing of the book comes from the practice of
touching a halidome, or sacred object, as an ancient Roman touched the
altar, or Harold the casket of relics. The form “So help me God,” is
inherited from ancient Teutonic-Scandinavian law, under which the old
Northman, touching the blood-daubed ring on the altar, swore “So help
me Frey, and Niordh, and the almighty god” (that is, Thor). The first
and last of these are the two old English gods whose names we keep up in
_Friday_ and _Thursday_.
To come now to the last subject of this volume, the history of
government. Complicated as are the political arrangements of civilised
nations, their study is made easier by their simple forms being already
found in savage and barbaric life. The foundation of society, as has been
already seen, is the self-government of each family. Its authority is
apt to be vested in the head of the household; thus among low barbaric
tribes in the Brazilian forests, the father may do as he pleases with his
own wives and children, even selling them for slaves, and the neighbours
have no right or wish to interfere. Even what civilised nations now take
as a matter of course, that every human being coming into the world has a
right to live, is scarcely recognised by the lower races. In such a life
of hardship as the Australians and many savages lead, new-born children
are often put out of the way from sheer need, because the parents have
already as many mouths as they can feed. That among such tribes this
comes of hardness of life, rather than hardness of heart, is often seen
when the parents will go through fire and water to save the very child
they were doubting about, a few weeks before, whether it should live
or die. Even where the struggle for existence is not so severe, the
wretched custom of infanticide remains still common in the world. Nothing
more clearly shows that European nations came up from a barbaric stage
than the law which the ancient Romans had in common with our Teutonic
ancestors, that it was for the father of the family to say whether the
new-born child should be brought up or exposed. Once become a member of
the household, the child has a firmer assurance of life; and when the
young barbarian grows up to be a warrior, and becomes himself the head of
a new household, he is usually a free man. But the oldest Roman law shows
the head of the family ruling with a strictness hardly imaginable to our
modern minds, for the father might chastise or put to death his grown-up
sons, give them in marriage or divorce them, and even sell them. With the
advance of civilization, in Rome as elsewhere, the sons gradually gained
their rights of person and property; and in comparing old-world life
with our own, it is plainly seen how Christianity, looking not to family
rights but to individual souls, tended toward personal freedom. With all
the growth of individual freedom in modern life, the best features of
family despotism remain in force; it is under parental authority that
children are trained for their future duties, and the law is careful how
it gives the child personal rights against the parent, lest it should
weaken the very cement which binds society together. As, however, the
family ceased to be so perfect a little kingdom within itself, the
individual became responsible for his own doings. We have seen how, in
rude society, when a crime is committed, the family of the aggrieved take
vengeance on the culprit’s family. Modern ideas of justice may teach us
that this is wrong, that it is punishing the innocent for the guilty.
But in the lower barbaric life it is practically the best way to keep
order, and to those who live under it it seems right and natural, as
where, among the Australians, when one of a family has done a murder the
others take it as a matter of course that they are guilty too. Far from
this idea being confined to savages, the student becomes familiar with it
in the law of ancient nations, such as Greece and Rome. Here it will be
enough to quote the remarkable passage from the Hebrew law which at once
records what the old principle was, and reforms it by bringing in the
ideas of higher jurisprudence:—“The fathers shall not be put to death for
the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers:
every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” (Deut. xxiv. 16.)
Wherever the traveller in wild regions meets a few families roaming
together over the desert, or comes upon a cluster of huts by a stream
in the tropical forest, he may find, if he looks closely enough, some
rudiments of government; for there is business which concerns the whole
little community, such as a camping-ground to be chosen, or a fishery
quarrel to be settled with the next tribe down the river. Even among
the Greenlanders, as little governed a people as almost any in the
world, it was noticed that when several families lived together all the
winter, one weather-wise old fisherman would have the north end of the
snow-house for his place and be appointed to look after the inmates,
taking care about their keeping the snow walls in repair, and going out
and coming in together so as not to waste heat; also when they went out
in hunting parties an experienced pathfinder would be chosen as leader.
It is common to find among rude tribes such a headman or chief, chosen
as the most important or shrewdest; but he has little or no actual
authority over the families, and gets his way by persuasion and public
opinion. Naturally such a headman’s family is of consequence already,
or, if not, he makes them so, and thus there is a tendency for his
office to become hereditary. In tribes formed under the rule of female
kinship, where the chief’s own son may be out of the succession, the
new chosen chief will probably be a younger brother or a nephew on the
mother’s side. Under the rule of succession on the father’s side, which
is so much more familiar to us, the very growth of the family brings on
a patriarchal government. Suppose a single household to move out into
the wilds and found a new settlement, it begins under the rule of the
father, who, as new huts are built round the first home, remains head
of the growing clan; but as old age comes on, his eldest son more and
more acts in his name, and at his death will be recognised as succeeding
him in the headship of the community. Here then is seen the rise of the
hereditary chief or patriarch of the tribe, first in rank as representing
the ancestor, and with more or less of real authority. But here also
there is a practical power of setting the successor aside if he is too
timid or wilful or dull, when perhaps his uncle or brother will be put in
his place, though the line of succession is not set aside by this. The
patriarchal system extends far on in civilization. It is not confined
to one particular race or nation, but may at this day be studied alike
among the brown hill-men of India and the negroes of West Africa. To
us it is especially well known from the Old Testament, which shows it
in the form it takes in a pastoral nation, and which still may be seen
with little change among the Arabs of the desert, whose clans and tribes
are governed by their patriarchs, the sheykhs or old men. Not less does
it lie at the foundation of the politics of the Aryan race, where its
remains may still be traced in the village communities of India and
Russia, the village elder presiding in the council of “white-heads” being
the modern representative of the earlier patriarch with the chiefs of
younger branches of the clan around him. Under such mild rule, people
of few wants may prosper in time of peace, in the kindly communism
which is possible where there are no rich and no poor. The weak point
of such a society is that it can hardly advance, for civilization is at
a standstill where it is regulated by ancestral custom administered by
great-grandfathers. Everywhere in the world, in war some stronger and
more intelligent rule than this is needed and found. The changes which
have shaped the descendants of wild hordes into civilized nations have
been in great measure the work of the war-chief.
When among such uncultured tribes war breaks out, the peace-chief is
pushed aside and a leader chosen, or in warlike tribes the war-chief may
be the acting head at all times. Of course he is a tried warrior, and
his endurance may even be put to a special examination, as when the
Caribs would test a candidate for war-chief by mercilessly flogging and
scratching him, smoking him in a hammock over a fire of green leaves, or
burying him up to the middle in a nest of stinging-ants. We even find in
America the principle of competitive examination for king, when Chilian
tribes would choose as their chief the man who could lift the biggest
tree on his shoulder and carry it longest. In these rude countries the
change is wonderful when war turns the loose crowd into an army under
a leader, with powers of life and death to enforce discipline. When
Martius the naturalist was travelling through a Brazilian forest with
a Miranha chief, they came to a fig-tree where the skeleton of a man
was bound to the trunk with cords of creepers, and the chief grimly
explained that this was one of his men who had disobeyed orders by not
summoning a neighbouring tribe to help against the invading Umauas, and
he had him tied up there and shot to death with arrows. In barbarous
countries the tribe-chief and the war-chief may be found side by side;
but when the power of the bow and spear once asserts itself, it is apt
to grow further. Throughout history, war gives the bold and able leader
a supremacy which may nominally end with the campaign, but which tends
to pass into dictatorship for life. Military government in civil affairs
is, in fact, despotism; and if the military leader can thus become
the tyrant of his own land, still more can he rule with a rod of iron
a conquered country. The negro kingdom of Dahome, the result of two
centuries of barbaric military rule, is an astounding specimen of what a
people will submit to from a despot whom they regard as a kind of deity;
they approach him grovelling on all-fours, and throwing dust over their
heads; the whole nation are his slaves, whose lives he takes at will;
the women are all his, to give or sell; the land is all his, and none
owns anything but at his pleasure. The kings of Asiatic nations have
been theoretically as absolute as this, but practically in advancing
civilization the king makes or sanctions laws which bind himself and his
successors, making society more fixed and life more tolerable. Also, as
soon as religion becomes a power in the state, it becomes joined or mixed
with civil and military government. Thus among negroes the high-priest
and war-chief may be the two heads of the government, while the Incas of
Peru, as descendants and representatives of the divine sun, ruled their
nation with paternal despotism which settled for the people what they
should do and eat and wear, and whom they should marry. In such a kingdom
royalty must be hereditary in the divine ruling family. Indeed, monarchy,
however gained, tends to become hereditary, and especially the military
usurper will found a dynasty on the model of a patriarchal chief. Thus
sovereignty may be elective, hereditary, military, ecclesiastical, and,
difficult as is the history of kingdoms, some combination of these causes
can always be traced in them.
The effects of war in consolidating a loosely formed society are
described by travellers who have seen a barbaric tribe prepare to
invade an enemy or defend their own borders. Provisions and property
are brought into the common stock; the warriors submit their unruly
wills to a leader, and private quarrels are sunk in a larger patriotism.
Distant clans of kinsfolk come together against the common enemy, and
neighbouring tribes with no such natural union make an alliance, their
chiefs serving under the orders of a leader chosen by them all. Here are
seen in their simplest forms two of the greatest facts in history,—the
organised army, where the several forces are led by their own captains
under a general, and the confederation of tribes, such as in higher
civilisation brings on political federations of states like those in
Greece and Switzerland. Out of such alliances of tribes, when they
last beyond the campaign, there arise nations, where often, as in old
Mexico, the head of the strongest tribe will become king. Tribes which
thus unite are apt to be of common race, speaking kindred dialects, for
this is everywhere a natural bond of union; and when they have allied
themselves into one people, and come to bear a common name, such as
Dorians or Hellenes, they willingly take up the old patriarchal idea,
and imagine themselves more closely of one _nation_ or “birth” than they
really are, even setting up, as we have seen (p. 389), a fictitious as a
national ancestor. Events take a different course, but with a somewhat
like effect, when some Kafir leader conquers other tribes around, and,
setting himself above them all, forces the conquered chiefs to bring him
tribute and warriors to fight his battles. This is empire on a small
scale and with rude surroundings, but on the same principles as that of
a Cæsar or a Napoleon. Thus one understands why in the early history of
nations it is so inextricably difficult to make out how far any people
have grown up from a single unmixed tribe, or have been built up by
alliance and conquest. What shows how this piecing together of nations
must have gone on, is the number and variety of their gods. While a
tribe grows of itself, the names and worship of the same tribe-gods will
be a bond of union in all the clans, and even when they move far off
they will sometimes go on pilgrimage to the shrines of their old home.
But when peoples amalgamate, their different gods are kept up, as when
the Peruvians gave places to the gods of conquered tribes under their
own great deities. Every district in ancient Egypt shows by its varied
combination of gods how many little states and local religions went to
make up the great despotism and hierarchy. It was plainly through this
growth of nations, which had been going on we know not how long before
history began, that the higher civilization of mankind arose. Scattered
families of barbarians in a land where there is still elbow room may
thrive without strong government; but when men live in populous nations
and crowded cities, there has to be public order. That this political
order came out of military order cannot be doubted. War not only put
into the hands of the sovereign the power over a whole nation, but his
army served as his model on which to organize his nation. It is one of
the plainest lessons of history that through military discipline mankind
were taught to submit to authority and act in masses under command. Egypt
and Babylon, with military system pervading not only the standing army,
but the orders of priests and civilians, developed industry and wealth
highest in the ancient world, and were the very founders of literature
and science. They built up for future ages the framework of government,
which we freer moderns of our own will submit ourselves to for our own
benefit. A constitutional government, whether called republic or kingdom,
is an arrangement by which the nation governs itself by means of the
machinery of a military despotism.
As society in tribes and nations became a more complex system, it early
began to divide into classes or ranks. If we look for an example of the
famous first principle of the United States, “that all men are created
equal,” we shall in fact scarcely find such equality except among savage
hunters and foresters, and by no means always then. The greatest of
all divisions, that between freeman and slave, appears as soon as the
barbaric warrior spares the life of his enemy when he has him down,
and brings him home to drudge for him and till the soil. How low in
civilization this begins appears by a slave caste forbidden to bear arms
forming part of several of the lower American tribes. How thoroughly
slavery was recognized as belonging to old-world society may be seen
by the way it formed part of the Hebrew patriarchal system, where the
man-servant and maid-servant are reckoned as a man’s wealth just before
his ox and his ass. It was no less so under Roman law, as is evident from
the very word _family_, which at first meant not the children but the
slaves (_famulus_). We live in days when the last remains of slavery are
disappearing from the higher nations; but though the civilized world has
outgrown the ancient institution, the benefits which early society gained
from it still remain. It was through slave labour that agriculture and
industry increased, that wealth accumulated, and leisure was given to
priests, scribes, poets, philosophers, to raise the level of men’s minds.
Out of slavery probably arose the later custom of hired _service_, the
very name of which, as derived from _servus_, a slave, tells the story
of a great social change. The master at first let out his slaves to work
for his profit, and then free men found it to their advantage to work
for their own profit, so that there grew up the great wage-earning class
whose numbers and influence make so marked a difference between ancient
and modern society. In all communities, except the smallest and simplest,
the freemen divide themselves into ranks. The old Northmen divided men
into three classes, “earls, churls, and thralls,” which roughly match
what we should now call nobles, freemen, and slaves. Nobles again fall
into different orders, especially those who can claim royal blood forming
a princely order, and looking down on the chieftains and officers of the
army, state, and church who fill the lower ranks of nobility.
As nations become more populous, rich, and intelligent, the machinery
of government has to be improved. The old rough-and-ready methods no
longer answer, and the division of labour has to be applied to politics.
Thus, one of the chief’s early duties was to be judge. A Kafir chieftain
will make it his business to hear suits between his people; each side
brings him a gift of oxen. At higher levels of civilization the Eastern
monarch sits in the gate of justice; and it was so among the ancient
Germans, where the king sat crowned and gave judgment in his own court.
It is still the king’s court, but the actual administration has long
passed into the hands of professional judges. So with other departments
of government. By the time civilization had come to the level of ancient
Egypt and Babylon public affairs were administered by officials in grades
like an army, who collected the taxes, attended to public works, punished
offences, and did justice between man and man. It has just been noticed
how far a modern nation is worked by an official system similar to that
of the ancients, and how we, really among the freest of peoples, preserve
the forms of an absolute monarchy, where sovereign power is administered
through servants of the Crown down to the exciseman and constable. In
the politics of savages and barbarians, the outlines of the civilized
system of government already come into view. We have seen how among such
rude tribes the chief or king appears, who holds his place in some form
through higher nations. Even the consul or president of a republic is a
kind of temporary elective king. Of not less antiquity is the senate.
The old men squatting round the council fire of an Indian tribe on the
prairies have in their way a greater influence than a civilized senate,
for where there are no written records and books the old men are the very
sources and treasuries of wisdom. In the nations of the world, seats at
such councils are given to wise old men, priests and officers of high
rank, and heads of great families, so that the two terms _senate_ and
_house of lords_ both have their proper meaning, and the two claims of
wisdom and rank are more or less combined. With the very beginning of
political life appears also the popular assembly. In small tribes the
whole community, or at least the freemen, come together. It may be only
a forest tribe in Brazil called together by the chief to decide some
question of an expedition to net wildfowl or attack a neighbouring tribe,
yet solemn form will be observed. There is silence for the orators, and
if the assembly approve they will at last cry “good!” or “be it so!”
More civilized forms of the assembly of the people may be studied in
Freeman’s comparison of the Achaian _agora_ described in the second book
of the Iliad, with the “great meeting” held outside London in Edward the
Confessor’s time. Even in our own day the great meeting of the people
has not disappeared from Europe. The wonderful sight is still to be seen
of the people of a Swiss canton gathered together in a wide meadow or
market-place to vote Yes or No on the great questions which their supreme
authority decides. With the growth of nations the folk-moot or assembly
of the whole people, never a good deliberative body, soon becomes
unmanageable by mere numbers; but there is a way by which its authority
may be kept in a less unwieldy form when the people, no longer able to
go themselves, send chosen representatives to act for them. This seems a
simple device enough, and indeed the first savage tribe that ever sent a
discreet orator to negotiate peace or war on its behalf had seized the
idea of a political representative. But in fact it is one of the most
remarkable points in political history, how the principle of popular
representation has been worked out in England from the time of Simon de
Montfort’s famous parliament in the 13th century. It is for historians
to discuss how the knights and burgesses who came up to grant the king’s
supplies passed into the lower house of parliament as it is now; what
has to be noticed here is the change which, while the huge promiscuous
assembly of the people shrank into an aristocratic upper house, gave us
a new elective popular body, the _house of commons_. It is not too much
to say that no event in English history has had so great an effect in
shaping the course of modern civilization. On the whole, looking at what
government is coming to among the most enlightened nations, it will be
seen that it attains its ends, not so much by casting off the methods of
our remote barbaric ancestors, as by improving and regulating them. The
administration of the state under the system of sovereign authority, the
control of the senate, and the source of political power in the will of
the nation itself, are made to work together and restrain one another so
as fairly to keep the benefits and neutralize the excesses of all, while
the constitution has within it the power of continual reform, so that
the machine of government may be ever shaping itself into more perfect
fitness to its work.
Here this sketch of Anthropology may close. The examination of man’s age
on the earth, his bodily structure and varieties of race and language,
has led us on to enquire into his intellectual and social history. In
his many-sided life there may be clearly traced a development, which,
notwithstanding long periods of stoppage and frequent falling back, has
on the whole adapted modern civilized man for a far higher and happier
career than his ruder ancestors. In this development, the preceding
chapters have shown a difference between low and high nations, which it
only remains to put before the reader as a practical moral to the tale
of civilization. It is true that both among savage and civilized peoples
progress in culture takes place, but not under the same conditions. The
savage by no means goes through life with the intention of gathering more
knowledge and framing better laws than his fathers. On the contrary,
his tendency is to consider his ancestors as having handed down to him
the perfection of wisdom, which it would be impiety to make the least
alteration in. Hence among the lower races there is obstinate resistance
to the most desirable reforms, and progress can only force its way with
a slowness and difficulty which we of this century can hardly imagine.
Looking at the condition of the rude man, it may be seen that his
aversion to change was not always unreasonable, and indeed may often have
arisen from a true instinct. With his ignorance of any life but his own,
he would be rash to break loose from the old tried machinery of society,
to plunge into revolutionary change, which might destroy the present good
without putting better in its place. Had the experience of ancient men
been larger, they would have seen their way to faster steps in culture.
But we civilized moderns have just that wider knowledge which the rude
ancients wanted. Acquainted with events and their consequences far and
wide over the world, we are able to direct our own course with more
confidence toward improvement. In a word, mankind is passing from the age
of unconscious to that of conscious progress. Readers who have come thus
far need not be told in many words of what the facts must have already
brought to their minds—that the study of man and civilization is not only
a matter of scientific interest, but at once passes into the practical
business of life. We have in it the means of understanding our own lives
and our place in the world, vaguely and imperfectly it is true, but at
any rate more clearly than any former generation. The knowledge of man’s
course of life, from the remote past to the present, will not only help
us to forecast the future, but may guide us in our duty of leaving the
world better than we found it.
SELECTED BOOKS, &c.
PHYSICAL AND DESCRIPTIVE ANTHROPOLOGY:—
Waitz, Anthropologie der Naturvölker.
Topinard, Anthropology.
Darwin, Descent of Man.
Huxley, Man’s Place in Nature; Geographical Distribution of
Mankind (in _Journal of Ethnological Society_, Vol. II. 1870).
Vogt, Lectures on Man.
Prichard, Natural History of Man.
Wood, Natural History: Man.
Peschel, Races of Man.
Quatrefages, Human Species.
Flower, Hunterian Lectures on “The Comparative Anatomy of Man.”
_Nature_, July 1879, and May and June 1880.
Broca, Instructions Craniologiques.
Anthropological Notes and Queries for Travellers, &c. (British
Association).
Journal of the Anthropological Institute (London).
Revue d’Anthropologie (Paris).
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie (Berlin).
Accounts of races by travellers and missionaries, such as
Catlin, North American Indians; Ellis, Polynesian Researches;
Wallace, Travels on the Amazon, and Malay Archipelago; Burton,
Lake Regions of Central Africa; J. L. Wilson, Western Africa;
Grey, Travels in Australia; etc., etc.
GEOLOGY AND ARCHÆOLOGY OF MAN:—
Lubbock, Prehistoric Times.
Lyell, Antiquity of Man.
Dawkins, Cave-hunting; Early Man in Britain.
Evans, Ancient Stone Implements of Great Britain.
Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments.
Keller and Lee, Lake Dwellings of Switzerland.
Nilsson, Primitive Inhabitants of Scandinavia.
Wilson, Prehistoric Man.
PHILOLOGY:—
Max Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language.
Sayce, Comparative Philology; Introduction to the Science of
Language.
Whitney, Language and the Study of Language.
Hovelacque and Vinson, The Science of Language.
Pictet, Origines Indo-Européennes.
Steinthal, Charakteristik der hauptsachlichsten Typen des
Sprachbaues.
CIVILISATION:—
Maine, Ancient Law.
Lubbock, Origin of Civilisation.
Bagehot, Physics and Politics.
Freeman, Comparative Politics; Historical Essays.
Draper, Intellectual Development of Europe.
McLennan, Studies in Ancient History.
Morgan, Ancient Society.
Spencer, Principles of Sociology.
Klemm, Allgemeine Culturgeschichte; Culturwissenchaft.
Tylor, Early History of Mankind; Primitive Culture.
INDEX.
A
Abacus, 314
Abstract ideas, 52, 119, 135
words, 135
Acclimatisation, 74
Administration, 434
Æsop, 399
Affixes, 142
Africans, 2, 57, 65, 87
languages, 164
Aged, 409
Agglutinating languages, 161
Agriculture, 214
Ainos, 73
Albinos, 68
Alchemy, 328
Alcoholic liquors, 268
Algebra, 322
Alliteration, 289
Alphabet, 175
Altar, 367
Amentum, 194
Americans, 63, 102, 168
languages, 165
Analogy, 338
Analytic languages, 139
Anatomy, 330
Ancestor-worship, 352, 358, 369
Animals, cries of, 122
domesticated, 219
quaternary, 30
succession of, 37
Animism, 371
Antiquity of Man, 1, 25, 33, 40, 113, 166
Apes and Man, 38, 48, 260
Arabs, 109
language, 11, 159
Arch, 235
Architecture, 21, 232
Aristocracy, 225, 435
Arithmetic, 17, 314
Armour, 222
Army, 226, 434
Arrow, 26, 195, 212
poisoned, 221
Artillery, 227
Aryans, 10, 109, 156, 381
languages, 10, 156
Assyrians, 22, 160, 313, 384
language, 160
Astrology, 339
Astronomy, 21, 332
Australians, 57, 91
Auxiliary words, 137
Avesta, 381
B
Babylonians, 22, 163, 172
language, 163
Baking, 266
Ball, 307
Bantu languages, 149, 164
Barbaric stage, 24, 401
Bark-clothing, 244
Barometer, 325
Barter, 281
Basuto, 165
Beast-fables, 399
Beer, 268
Berbers, 95
language, 160
Biblical history, 385
Bill-hook, 190
Bills of exchange, 284
Black races, 2, 5, 80, 87
Blood-brotherhood, 423
Blood-vengeance, 414
Blow-tube, 196
Blue Beard, 398
Boat, 252
Body-measures, 17, 316
Boiling, 266
Boomerang, 193
Borer, 192
Botany, 329
Bow, 16, 195, 212
Brachykephalic, 61
Brain, 45, 60
Brand-tillage, 218
Bread, 266
Brick, 234
Broiling, 265
Bronze, 21, 278
Bronze Age, 25, 279
Brown races, 2, 5, 91
Buddha, 399
Burial, 347
Burning-lens and mirror, 263
Bushmen, 57, 89, 165
C
Cafusos, 82
Candle, 272
Cannibalism, 224, 410
Canoe, 252
Cardinal points, 21, 334
Caribs, 78
Caste, 69
Cattle, 219
Cause, spirit, 356
Cave-men, 30, 261
Caves, 229
Celt, 26, 187
Cereals, 215
Ceremonies, 365, 403, 423
Chaldeans, 22, 384
Chemistry, 328
Chess, 308
Chiefs, 428
Children’s language, 128
Chimney, 264
Chinese, 2, 57, 63, 162, 170
language, 162
Civilisation, 13, 18, 24, 75, 180, 400
Civilised stage, 24, 401
Clicks, 165
Clothing, 15, 236
Club, 184
Coffee, 270
Coin, 283
Colour, 66, 81, 85
Comedy, 299
Commerce, 285
Common land, 419
Compass, 28, 341
Concord, 147
Consciousness, 53
Constitution of races, 73
Constitutionalism, 438
Cookery, 264
Copper, 277
Corn, 215
Counting, 18, 310
Creator, 358
Cromlech, 348
Cross-bow, 16, 196
Crossed races, 6, 80
Cultivation, 215
Cuneiform writing, 172, 31
Custom, 409
D
Dagger, 190
Dancing, 224, 296
Dark-whites, 2, 56, 68, 107
Dead, worship of, 352
Deaf-and-dumb signs, 115
Death, 343
Decimal counting, 311
Decline of culture, 19
Deformation of skull, &c., 240
Degeneration, 19, 86
Demoniacal possession, 353
Demons, 352
Demon-worship, 353
Descent, female and male, 402
Despotism, 431
Digging-stick, 216
Diseases, 73, 353
Distilling, 269, 328
Dog, 209
Dolichokephalic, 2, 61
Dolmen, 348
Domesticated animals, 219
Drama, 298
Dravidians, 94
languages, 164
Drawing, 31, 300
Dreams, 343
Drift, animals of, 30
implements of, 28, 187
Drift-period, 28
Drill, 202
Drum, 293
Dryads, 357
Dualism, 363
Dutch, 9
Dwellings, 229
E
Ear- and nose-ornaments, 242
Earth-god, 359
Echo, 357
Education, capacity for, 74
Egyptians, 3, 21, 69, 79, 95, 173, 383
language, 160
Electricity, 327
Elephants, fossil, 30, 388
Emotional sound, 120, 124
Empire, 433
English, 133
Eponymic myths, 389
Esquimaux, 105, 265
Ethiopians, 69
Etymology, 126, 134
Europeans, 60, 109
Evolution, 36, 331
Exogamy, 402
Exorcism, 354
Eyes, 2, 63, 70
F
Facial angle, 62
Fair-whites, 2, 56, 68, 107
Families of language, 9, 155
Family, 402, 426
Fates, 395
Father, power of, 427
Features, 44, 63
Federation, 433
Female succession, 429
Feudalism, 420
Fiction, 379
Fields, 218, 420
Figures, 312
Fijians, 90
Finger- and toe-counting, 18, 310
Finger-nails, 240
Finns, 98
Fire, 260
Fire-arms, 17, 197, 227
Fire-drill, 16, 261
Fire-god, 361
First man, 358
Fish-hook, 213
Fishing, 212
Flakes, stone, 26, 185
Flint-and-steel, 261
Food, 206, 264
Forests, succession of, 27
Fortification, 228
Fossil bones, 388
Fowling, 208
Freemen, 225, 434
Fruits, 216
Future life, 344, 349
G
Game law, 419
Games, 305
Garments, 249
Gas, 273
Gender, 149
Genius, 356
Geography, 335
Geology, 29, 32, 336
Geometry, 17, 318
Germans, 110
language, 9
Gesture-language, 114, 124, 310
Ghosts, 344, 349
Giants, 388
Glacial period, 30
Glass, 276
Gods, 358
Gogmagog, 390
Government, 15, 428, 437
Grain, 215
Grammar, 119, 146, 156
Grammatical words, 137
Gravitation, 325
Greeks, 158
Grimm’s law, 155
Guardian spirits, 356
Gypsies, 112
H
Hair, 2, 44, 71, 82
Hair-dressing, 238
Hammer, 185
Hand and foot, 42
counting on, 18, 310
Harmony, 293
Harp, 204
Harpoon, 214
Hatchet, 188
Hawking, 209
Heat, 327
Heaven-god, 359
Hebrew, 11, 159
Herodotus, 385
Hieroglyphics, 173
Hindus, 111, 157
Historic period, 5, 22, 375
Hoe, 216
Horatii and Curiatii, 397
Hospitality, 409
Hottentots, 89, 165
language, 165
House, 231
Houses of Lords and Commons, 437
Hungarians, 98
language, 162
Hunting, 207, 220
Hut, 230
I
Ideas, 52, 119, 135
Idols, 366
Imitative signs, 116
sounds, 124
words, 121
Implements, 183
Index, Kephalic, 61
India, hill-tribes, 2, 94
laterite, 31
races, 111, 164
Individuals, 421, 428
Infanticide, 427
Inflecting languages, 161
Inheritance, 421
Inspiration, 366
Instinct, 51
Interjections, 121, 124
Intonation, 162, 291
Iron, 21, 277
Iron Age, 25, 279
Italians, 158
J
Javelin, 193
Jews, 4, 109, 159, 385
Justice, 436
K
Keltic peoples, 28, 71, 110, 153
languages, 158
Kephalic index, 61
Killing, 412
old and infirm, 410
King, 430, 436
Knife, 189
L
Labret, 242
Lamp, 272
Lancet, 192
Land, common, 219, 419
Land-law, 218, 419
Language, 7, 53, 129, 152, 337
analytic and synthetic, 139
and race, 166
children’s, 128
connexion of, 154
development of, 130
families of, 9, 155
natural, 122
origin of, 130, 165
Lapps, 98
Lathe, 203
Latin, 7, 156
Law, 405, 412, 423
Lazo, 212
Leather, 245
Lens, 263
Libyans, 69
Life, future, 344, 349
Light, 326
Lion, cave, 30
Liquors, 268
Logic, 336
Long-bow, 16, 195
Loom, 248
Lucifer-matches, 263
M
Machines, 198
Magic, 338
Maize, 215
Malayo-Polynesians, 102
language, 163
Malays, 99
Mammoth, 30
Man, 38, 45
antiquity of, 1, 25, 33, 40, 113, 166
first, 358
primitive, 33, 40, 113
unity of, 6, 85
races of, 1, 56, 75, 85, 113
Manes, 352, 358
Manslaughter, 412
Maoris, 102, 374
Mariner’s compass, 328, 341
Marriage, 402
Masonry, 21, 233
Mathematics, 17, 321
Mats, 246
Maui, 393
Measures, 17, 316
Mechanics, 323
Medicine, 15, 330
Melanesians, 89
Melanochroi, 107
Melody, 293
Memory, 49
Menhir, 348
Mensuration, 317
Mesokephalic, 61
Metal Age, 25, 189
Metals, 20, 189, 277
Metaphor, 126, 290
Metre, 288
Mexicans, 105, 169
Micronesians, 102
Mill, 200, 204
Mind, 47
Mirror, 263, 326
Missiles, 193
Mixed races, 80, 85
Monarchy, 431
Money, 282
Mongolians, 5, 63, 96
languages, 162
Monosyllabic languages, 162
Monotheism, 364
Moon-god, 361
Moors, 111
Morals, 368, 405
Mourning, 237
Mulattos, 80
Music, 291
Mutilations, 240
Myth, 387
N
Nation, 433
Natural language, 122
Nature-myths, 391
Nature-spirits, 356, 391
Need-fire, 262
Needle, 249
Negritos, 89
Negro-European dialects, 153
Negros, 2, 57, 65, 87
Neolithic implements, 26, 187
Nets, 212
Nightmare, 357
Nobles, 435
Nomades, 219
Norns, 395
Nose, 63
Nubians, 94
Numerals, 18, 310
Nymphs, 357
O
Oar, 256
Oath, 362, 425
Oblique eyes, 2, 63
Oracle-priests, 366
Ordeal, 425
Origin of language, 130, 165
of man, 85
Ornaments, 241
Orthognathous, 62
Outrigger, 255
P
Paddle, 256
Painting, 301
body, 237
Palæolithic implements, 26, 186
Pantheism, 364
Pantomime, 114, 298
Paper-money, 284
Papuas, 72, 90
Parts of speech, 138
Pasturage, 219
Patagonians, 57
Paternal power, 427
Patriarchal system, 429
Pendulum, 324
Persians, 63, 157, 381
Personal property, 420
Personification, 395
Peruvians, 59, 105
Phœnicians, 175
language, 59
Physics, 323
Picture-writing, 168
Pipe, 294
Plaiting, 246
Plants, 214
Plough, 217
Poetry, 287, 375
Poison, arrow-, 221
fish, 213
Polynesians, 102, 374
language, 163
Polytheism, 362
Popular assembly, 437
Porcelain, 276
Possession, demoniacal, 15, 353
Potato, 215
Pottery, 274
wheel, 275
Præhistoric period, 5, 374
Prayer, 360, 364
Primogeniture, 422
Printing, 180
Private war, 419
Prognathous, 62
Prometheus, 396
Pronouns, 138
Property, 419
Proportions of body, 58
Prose, 287
Public opinion, 408
Pulley, 198
Punishment, 414
Pyramids, 21, 233, 334
Pyrites, 263
Q
Quadroons, 80
Quaternary period, 29
Quinary numeration, 311
R
Races and languages, 153, 165
characters of, 1, 56, 75, 80, 113
degeneration of, 86
mixture or crossing of, 80, 85
permanence of, 80
variation of, 80, 85
Raft, 255
Rain-god, 359
Rank, 434
Real words, 137
Reason, 50, 336
Red Ridinghood, 394
Reduplication, 128
Religion, 342, 368, 407, 432
Rent, 420
Representation, political, 437
Retaliation, 417
Retribution, future, 368
Rhyme, 289
Right of life, 427
River-god, 361
Romance languages, 7
Romulus and Remus, 380
Roots, 144
Rude stone monuments, 348
Rudimentary organs, 36
S
Sacrifice, 346, 360, 365
Sail, 256
Samoyeds, 60
Sanskrit, 10, 156
Savage stage, 24, 32, 401
Saw, 192
Scandinavians, 111, 158
Screw, 192, 203
Sculpture, 300
Sea-god, 360
Semitic nations, 4, 69, 80
languages, 11, 159
Senate, 436
Sentences, 139
Sewing, 249
Shield, 222
Ship, 257
Siamese, 97, 162
Sign-language, 114
Skin, 2, 66, 81
Skull, 2, 60
deformation, 240
Sky-god, 359
Slavery, 225, 421, 434
Sling, 194
Smell of races, 2, 70
Society, 401
Song, 224, 287, 375
Soul, 343, 350, 369
Sound, 326
South-East Asian languages, 162
Spade, 216
Spear, 186, 194, 213
Spear-throwers, 194
Species, descent of, 36, 331
Spelling, 178
Spinning, 246
Spirit, 344, 349, 356, 391
Stature, 56, 76
Steam-power, 204, 259, 271
Steel, 278
Stone Age, 25, 28, 187, 279
implements, 26, 187
monuments, 348
Stove, 264
String, 246
Succession, 429, 432
Sun-god, 360, 368
Sun-myth, 394, 397
Supreme deity, 364
Survivals, 15
Sword, 190
Symbolic sound, 126, 143
Syntax, 119, 139, 146
Synthetic languages, 141
Syrians, 69, 80
T
Tactics, 226
Tanning, 245
Tasmanians, 91
Tatars, 98
language, 161
Tatooing, 237
Tea, 270
Temperament of races, 74
Temple, 348, 367
Tent, 231
Teutons, 158
Theatre, 298
Theft, 413
Thunderbolt, 26, 359
Thunder-god, 359
Tools, 183, 192
Torch, 272
Totem, 403
Trade, 285
Tradition, 373
Tragedy, 299
Trance, 343
Transmigration of soul, 350, 369
Trapping, 211
Tree-spirits, 357
Tribe-land, 419
Trumpet, 293
Turanian languages, 161
Typical men, 76
V
Vampire, 356
Variation of races, 84
Veda, 156, 381
Veddas, 164
Vengeance, 414
Verse, 287
Vertebrates, 35, 47
Vessels, 274
Vigesimal counting, 311
Village community, 219, 420
Vishnu, 367, 397
Visions, 343
W
Wages, 435
War, 221, 418, 432
War-chief, 430
Water-wheel, 204
Weapons, 184, 221
Weaving, 247
Werewolf, 356
Wergild, 416
Wheel-carriage, 198
White race, 2, 5, 57, 69, 109, 113
Widow, 346, 404
Wife-capture, 225, 305, 403
Wife-purchase, 404
Wilhelm Tell, 397
Wind-god, 361
Wind-mill, 204
Wine, 268
Words, borrowed, 155
combination, 140
formation, 126, 140
Worship, 364
Writing, 169
X
Xanthochroic, 107
Y
Yellow race, 2, 5, 69, 96
Z
Zoology, 329
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANTHROPOLOGY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF MAN AND CIVILIZATION ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™
Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
