'-'I i> IRENE D. PACE THE LIBRARY TOIVERSITY OF C THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SOCIETY BARBAROUS AND CIVILIZED STATE AN ESSAY TOWARDS DISCOVERING THE ORIGIN AND COURSE OF HUMAN IMPROVEMENT. BY W. COOKE TAYLOR, ESQ. LL.D. M.R.A.S. OF TEINITT COLLEGE, DUBLIN. VOL. 1. HOMO SUM: HLMANI NIHIL A ME ALIENUM PUTO. TERENCE. LONDON : LONGMAN, ORME, BROWN, GREEN, & LONGMANS. 1840. LONDON: PRINTED BY MANNING AND MASON, IVY-LANE, PATERNOSTER-BOW. Stack Annex 5 053 3 v.a. THE MOST REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, RICHARD, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN, AND PRIMATE OF IRELAND. MY LORD, THIS book is yours; you suggested, encouraged, and to a great degree directed it, you may therefore claim its patronage as matter of right. Were the case otherwise, I should scarcely have ventured to obtrude my homage, because I should fear my power to control my feelings. To your Grace's friendship I owe in- centives to exertion, motives for confidence, and fresh grounds of hope, inexpressibly precious to the labourer in the field of literature, who must pass through many dark and stormy days before he can expect the seed he has sown to produce even a scanty harvest. The language of gratitude, if warm, would savour of adula- tion, and be rejected by you; if cold, it would too closely resemble ingratitude to be adopted by me. I 2040289 DEDICATION. lay my work before you therefore with such silent and reverential feelings as best beseems the position of the obliged and the benefactor; but I cannot abstain from uttering my ardent prayer that you may long continue to be the ornament and the hope of our common church, our common country, and our common nature. I have the honour to be Your GRACE'S Grateful and obliged servant, W. COOKE TAYLOR. 34, Arlington Street, Camden Town, Sept. 25th, 1840. PREFACE. THIS work was suggested by the Archbishop of Dublin, and it has had throughout the benefit of His Grace's assistance and superintendence. It is necessary that this should be emphatically stated, in order that the Author may escape the imputation of presumption in discussing a subject to which His Grace had already directed his attention in his Lectures on Political Economy. He would not have attempted "to bend the bow of Ulysses/' had he not been invited to the task by its legitimate owner, and taught by him how to draw the string and aim the shaft. His Grace, how- ever, is not responsible for more than general directions; he has strong claims on the merits of the work, but all its imperfections rest on the Author's head. The design of it is to determine, from an examination of the various forms in which society has been found, what was the origin of civilization ; and under what circumstances those attributes of humanity which in one country become the foundation of social happiness, are in another perverted to the production of general misery. For this purpose the Author has separately examined the principal elements by which society, under all its aspects, is held together, and traced each to its vi PREFACE. source in human nature ; he has then directed attention to the development of these principles, and pointed out the circumstances by which they were perfected on the one hand, or corrupted on the other. Having thus by a rigid analysis shewn what the elements and con- ditions of civilization are, he has tested the accuracy of his results by applying them to the history of civil- ization itself, as recorded in the annals of the earliest polished nations, and has thus been led to consider the principal moral causes that have contributed to the growth and to the decline of states. He has in this way applied recorded facts as a test of the accuracy of his reasoning, and if in any part he may have erred, he has supplied the reader with the means of detection. The descriptions of the usages and customs of savage life have been taken from the travellers, ancient and modern, whose narratives have best stood the test of experience and criticism. Where it was necessary to make a choice, preference has been given to those whose views of the nature and tendency of barbarism differed most from those advocated by the Author. Viewing barbarism as a degradation of our nature, it has been an object to point out the tendencies to corruptions, similar in kind, if not in degree, which exist in civilized life, and to shew how necessary it is that society should always keep in action its two great conservative principles intelligence and virtue. In the chapter on the Evidences of Lost Civilization the Author hazarded a conjecture that further investi- gations of the American continent would strengthen the evidence he had collected, to prove that, previous to its discovery by Columbus, it had possessed a greater PREFACE. Vll share of the arts and sciences than could be deduced from the present condition of the Indian races, or from the accounts given of them by their early conquerors. Scarcely had the sheet containing this conjecture gone through the press, when it was singularly confirmed by the following announcement in the daily papers : " Messrs. Stephens and Gatherwood, of New York, now in Guatemala, have sent home accounts of their latest antiquarian discoveries between Quirche and Pa- lenque. They have found ancient temples and statues, varying from' ten to twenty-six feet high, similar to those in Palenque. Some of the monuments resemble the Phoenician or Carthagenian remains. Thus it will doubtless be proved that America, instead of being a ' New World/ is one of a very ancient character." Two chapters have been devoted to an examination of the Scriptural Account of the Origin of Civilization ; in these the Author has been anxious that the spirit of reverence should regulate but not check the spirit of investigation and inquiry. He has throughout con- sulted the records in the original language ; not because he undervalues our authorized version, but because there is a suggestive simplicity in the Hebrew forms of speech which no translation could preserve, but which is of great value in pointing out fresh paths of research, and guiding the way to discovery. He has, however, given only results ; for his object was not to parade learning^ but to simplify and condense, for general readers, the information accumulated by the meritorious labours of Biblical scholars and critics. In the historical investigations connected with the subject, the Author has endeavoured to shew that the viii PREFACE. principal delusions which have at different times exer- cised a pernicious influence over humanity, were founded not on absolute falsehood, but on misconceived truths ; and therefore should be viewed, not with anger, but with pity and tenderness for the frailties of our fellow- mortals. He has laboured to deduce from the records of mistaken opinion, lessons of mutual toleration, mutual forbearance, and brotherly kindness, derived from our sharing a common nature ; so as in all things to maintain the influence of Christian charity, which "thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth." The examination of the diversified elements which have contributed to form our modern system of civili- zation has led the Author over ground already traversed by the most eminent publicists of modern times ; they have shewn how opinions embody themselves in forms and institutions, and how these institutions necessarily influence actions. He could scarcely hope to add any thing to the researches of such men as Lieber, Guizot, Jouffroy, and Victor Cousin, but he has endeavoured to condense and unite their several disquisitions, so as to form an outline of the philosophical history of opinions, and their influence on life an action. Viewing indigence and vice as the great destructive agents in human society, he has deemed it necessary to examine the means adopted by public and private benevolence for their condition, and to test their efficacy by new recorded experience. This may be termed an inquiry into the conservative principles of society a subject naturally suggested by the history of civilization, but one of too great extent and importance to be fully PREFACE. IX discussed in a single chapter. The author has there- fore laboured rather to point out what should be the subjects of inquiry than to answer the doubts and solve the difficulties which such a wide and tangled field of investigation must necessarily present. It would be not only presumptuous, but absurd, to assert that he has executed such a task perfectly and completely ; it would be saying in other words, that he had detected all the wrongs and errors of humanity, and had provided their appropriate remedies. He is aware that he has done little more than collect the scattered materials which eminent moralists and philan- thropists have produced, and formed them into a kind of map, which may be both a convenient record of what has been already accomplished, and perhaps a guide to future discovery. To use the illustration of an Ameri- can poet, he has been anxious to leave " foot-prints on the sands of time" Foot-prints, that perhaps another Sailing o'er life's solemn main, A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, Seeing, shall take heart again. In the discussion of such a variety of topics as neces- sarily enter into the complicated histories of barbarism and civilization, many of which have been the themes of bitter dispute and angry controversy, the Author, without at all compromising his own opinions, has been anxious to avoid saying anything which could reason- ably offend persons of any creed, sect, or party. In one instance he regrets to find that he has violated the rule; he has spoken of the Socialists and their plans with more flippancy than he could wish, not because he has X PREFACE. changed his opinion respecting the folly or the mischief of their schemes, but because he deems that every proposal purporting to be designed for the benefit of humanity should be heard with respectful attention, and answered in terms of kindness and courtesy. The Author has gratefully to acknowledge his very extensive obligations to the Archbishop of Dublin, and to his distinguished Chaplain, the Rev. Dr. Dickenson. Many other friends have supplied him with valuable hints and information for all to whom he communi- cated his design evinced a sincere interest in its com- pletion. He feels deeply grateful for their kindness, and trusts that the work to which they have contributed will not prove unworthy their assistance. He has made it a point of conscience to acknowledge so far as was in his power his obligations to the various authors of whose labours and researches he has availed himself, particularly American and Continental writers whose works are not known in this country. But in this respect he fears that he may have committed in- voluntary injustice; memory is often treacherous in an unsuspected way, it lays hold on some beautiful idea, sentiment or expression, and imprints it so indelibly, that the mind mistakes it for its own, and claims as* its original invention the merits that should be ascribed to others. Conscious of such a failing, the author humbly apologizes to those whose thoughts he may appear to have stolen, and assures them that wherever and when- ever the offence is pointed out, it shall be confessed, and the obligation acknowledged. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTION ------------ 1 II. CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION ----------- 20 III. SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION ------------ 43 IV. SOCIAL RELATIONS PROPERTY ------- 68 V. SOCIAL RELATIONS PERSONAL PROPERTY ----- 90 VI. STATE OF NATURE WAR --------- 107 VII. INDIGENCE ------------ 132 VIII. SUPERSTITIONS AND DETACHED CUSTOMS ----- 164 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. PAGE VARIETIES OF SAVAGE LIFE --------- 190 X. THE ARTS OF SAVAGE LIFE -------- 204 XI. EVIDENCES OF LOST CIVILIZATION ------- 217 XII. FURTHER EVIDENCES OF LOST CIVILIZATION - 246 XIII. IDENTITY OF THE REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA ---------- 279 XIV. SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION - 206 XV. ON THE STATE OF CIVILIZATION DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK OF JOB ------------ 331 NATURAL HISTORY OF SOCIETY. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. WHEN we attempt to take a comprehensive survey of the actual condition of humanity, our attention is not less forcibly arrested by the moral than by the physical differences which offer themselves to our view. One race is in a state of continuous and progressive im- provement : it has exchanged rude paths for smooth roads, it is again changing these for railroads ; every day of its existence produces some new discovery tend- ing to increase the comforts and conveniences of life ; intellectual advancement seems to keep pace with material improvements; problems which in a past generation were the pride of philosophers, are now familiar as household words in the mouth of school- boys ; to want an amount of knowledge, the possession of which would once be esteemed a glory, is now regarded as a disgrace. In fact, a progressive advance is manifest, to which imagination can scarcely assign limits. A second race appears to have set bounds to itself; the evidences of former progress are abundant, but no traces of a tendency to further and future improve- ment can be discovered. Every thing in the physical and moral condition of society seems to have assumed 2 INTRODUCTION. a stereotype character, from the model of the meanest domestic utensil to the highest social institution, there is a permanent uniformity. Such, for instance, is the great empire of China, where thought and action are equally forced to accommodate themselves to an un- changing system devised in remote ages. Passing over many intervening varieties, we arrive at a race which appears little raised above the brute creation; it has few evidences of having ever made progress, and none either of the power or will to advance itself beyond its present condition. There is neither memory of the past, nor foresight of the future : such is the stationary aspect of barbarism, as it is pre- sented to our notice by the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia. We usually describe these differences as indicating a higher or lower degree in the scale of civilization, and sometimes as the result of different systems of civilization. In either case we speak of civilization as a fact which may not only be understood, but applied as a test, whilst we cannot at the same time fail to recognise that it is a fact exceedingly complex, diverse in its aspects, developing itself sometimes in one direction, sometimes in another, and thus hiding the central principle of its unity, which few can see though all can feel. Moral science does not admit of the same precise and rigorous definitions, as those which are connected with matter and its forms ; the facts which its terms express, are not invariable existences; they have arisen from varying circumstances ; by these cir- cumstances they have been modified and enlarged ; our ideas of them are constantly progressive, receiving fresh INTRODUCTION. 3 accessions from every day's experience. To compre- hend the term civilization, we must have recourse to the history of the fact civilization, and see what are the ideas which, by a kind of universal consent, men have agreed to combine in the word. It has been said, that on some estates in the West Indies the negroes were better treated by their masters than independent labourers in Europe by their em- ployers; that every care was taken to supply their physical wants, that they were protected in all their domestic relations, and that all the rules of justice were strictly enforced. Yet even such a condition of slavery was universally declared adverse to civilization : though oppression was absent, still there was compression, a direct restraint on the moral and intellectual develop- ment of existence. Among the Hindoos, provision was made for moral and intellectual culture ; the wants of the mind were to a certain extent supplied like those of the body : but it was an established rule, that man should not labour to procure this moral food for himself, but should receive it from the Brahmin as the negro did physical sus- tenance from his master. The common sense of man- kind has declared Brahminism hostile to civilization, because it produces a stagnancy in the moral life, and fixes limits to the exercise of intellect. Feudalism a condition of society with which we are perhaps better acquainted was not on the whole unfavourable to individual progress, for it nurtured a spirit of independence and enterprise; but it exercised a blighting influence on the internal economy of society. Of individual and social progress it may justly be said, 4 INTRODUCTION. "utumque per se indigenus, alterum alterius auxilio eget;" now feudalism loosened the bands by which society is held together, it tended to produce universal anarchy, and to prevent the development of those prin- ciples which are universally recognised as essential to the well-being of a state. We do not simply mean government a state is no more a government than a helm is a ship, or a mahout an elephant; a state is an organized society, whether of few or many, and its per- fection depends on the security it affords. Under the feudal system, the guilty escaped punishment and the innocent could not find protection. The social state was therefore defective ; and the peculiar independence fostered by feudalism, tended not only to perpetuate, but to extend these defects. While the march of the individual was to a certain extent onwards, that of society was retrograde ; and had such a state of things continued, Europe must have sunk in barbarism to the level of Africa. It is sufficiently obvious that when the relations between men are not advanced in the same ratio as man himself, all improvement must be isolated, and can leave no trace in a future generation.* Comparing all these different conditions, we find that they have one common defect stagnancy : they tend to keep every thing in one fixed position, to check advance and improvement; and hence we may fairly conclude that the primary element of civilization, according to the common sense of mankind, is progress, * Surely every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator, and if time of course alter all things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, where shall be an end ? Bacon's Essays. INTRODUCTION. 5 not from one place to another, but from one condition to another, and always in advance. The idea of pro- gress, development, amelioration, or extension, appears to be the predominant notion (logically speaking, the genus] in the definition of civilization; and the most prominent attribute is, that the progress should be made in social life. It may be objected that this definition would cease to be applicable if perfect civilization were allowed; but we can see no bounds or limits to the advance- ment of knowledge ; The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before us; But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it. Every advance that has yet been made, shews an equally distant horizon placed beyond us. It is not necessary to discuss the question of the perfectibility of the human species, but should humanity attain per- fection, we doubt if civilization would be the proper term to describe its condition. Who has ever dreamed of speaking of the civilization of the kingdom of heaven ! Civilization is progressive, and barbarism stationary; hence many have been led to infer, that the latter is the state of nature, or natural condition of man, an inference which perhaps may be traced to the vulgar notions of motion and rest ; for even philosophers find it difficult to divest themselves of the habit of regarding the vis inertia of matter as more naturally displayed in rest than in motion. Before investigating the question whether civilization or barbarism be the more natural, we should inquire, what is the true state of nature of any person or thing ? 6 INTRODUCTION. A simple instance will suffice to shew that this is not so easy a matter as is generally imagined. Pine trees are found on the high Alps near the confines of per- petual snow; but they are stunted in their growth, they scarce put forth any branches, and their leaves are not fully developed. Pine trees are also found in too luxuriant soils, which give them a precocious exube- rance, leading to a deranged organism and early decay. In either case, can the trees be said to be in their natural state ? Assuredly not; we know that there are fundamental laws of the life and being of the tree, and that the state most natural to it is that in which it fulfils most completely the end and object for which it is made, according to its organization and the principles of its vitality. Man, in a state of nature, must there- fore be man in the state for which nature has fitted him. Is there a definite mould and form to which his faculties are irrevocably predestined and predetermined? then nature has designed him to remain stationary, and the natural man is the savage. On the other hand, are his faculties expansive, his capacities progressive, and his moral endowments susceptible of cultivation ? If so, nature has organized him for progress ; civilization is the natural state, and barbarism the artificial. The erroneous belief that the savage form of life was the natural state, led to the general belief that it was the original condition of man : a belief which branched into two distinct theories, the first describing the solitary and savage life as miserable and wretched, the second asserting that it was a golden age of inno- cence, virtue, and happiness. The first theory is thus stated by Horace, INTRODUCTION. 7 When the first mortals crawling rose to birth, Speechless and wretched from their mother earth, For caves and acorns, then the food of life, With nails and fists they held a bloodless strife ; But soon improved, with clubs they bolder fought, And various arms which sad experience wrought, Till words to fix the wandering sense were found, And names impress'd a meaning upon sound. This theory has been much extended by a modern school of zoologists, at the head of which stands Lamarck : he asserts that the ape was the original type of humanity, and that the varieties of the species are determined by their greater or less departure from the original stock; he even goes farther, and asserts that the existing mammalia were gradually developed from marine types, shewing, as one of his reviewers has quaintly observed, that the exclamation, " 0, ye gods and little fishes!" is a phrase pregnant with meaning; and that the origin of mankind, like his own theory, is "mighty like a whale." Without entering into any investigation of the physiological difficulties of this theory, it will be sufficient to say that none of these animals have ever been taken in the state of transition ; no one has yet discovered a talking race of monkeys, or a mute race of men. The exaggerated accounts given of the intelligence displayed by the chimpanzee and the ourang-outang, have been sufficiently exploded by the exhibition of these animals in the Zoological Gardens; there was no difficulty in discovering the limits within which their faculties ranged, and it was manifest that many other animals, such as the dog and elephant, possessed a more extended scale of intelli- gence. The erect posture was manifestly painful to 8 INTRODUCTION. these animals, more so perhaps than to other species of the monkey tribe ; and it was adopted not for the pur- pose of walking but climbing, as it is by the bear and other animals. A theory contradicted by all existing facts, supported by no past experience, and resting only on doubtful analogies, may safely be dismissed without further examination. The golden dream of savage innocence and original happiness can be traced to equally erroneous views. Men saw on the one hand the perfect laws of nature, and on the other the imperfect institutions of society; they also saw mankind producing enervation, degeneracy and moral evil, by the adoption of customs obviously contrary to nature, and thence they concluded that all evil arose from abandoning or counteracting nature. In the age of Louis XV, when the body was disfigured by the most cumbrous and unsuitable dresses, corre- sponding to shorn trees, denaturalized parks, clipped hedges and formal gardens, when profligacy was deemed a suitable distinction of rank, and prostitution elevated to an order of the state, it is not wonderful that Rousseau, like Juvenal in a similar age, should turn from the depravity of his own times to a fancied age of primeval innocence. It is, however, surprising that he did not discover the obvious fallacies in his very first statements. "All is good," says the author of Emile, "as it came out of the hands of the Creator: every thing degenerates in the hands of man. He forces one land to nourish the productions of another, one tree to bear the fruits of another; he mixes and confounds the climates, the elements, the seasons; he mutilates his INTRODUCTION. 9 dog, his horse, his slave ; he overturns every thing, dis- figures all; he loves deformity, monsters; he wishes nothing to be such as nature made it, not even man ; he must be drilled like a horse in the riding-school ; he must be tortured according to fashion, like the tree of his garden." Rousseau appears not to have known, or else to have forgotten, how much the beauty and fertility of the material world depend upon the industry and operations of man. Our eyes, accustomed to survey land on which ingenuity and labour have been exerted for centuries, do not easily distinguish between that which is actually produced by nature and that which is the result of continued art. When we look at the velvet lawn, the green sward of the pasturage, or the rich grass of the meadow, we too readily give nature credit for a soil whose fertility has been increased a hundred-fold by the continuous care of successive gene- rations. Where, but on cultivated ground, do we see the wheat heavy with its bending ear, or any Cerealia affording abundant food ? Does any virgin soil afford trees bearing such fruit as bends the boughs in our orchards ; what wild vine has rivalled the grapes in our vineyards? Looking merely to beauty, has nature produced the lovely varieties of roses, or the colours of dahlias ? Is it quite certain that much of the beauty of the field has not been indirectly derived from the garden ? Look again to the animal creation : where is the type of our present race of sheep, and even of our domestic fowl ? Is the wild horse a finer animal than the racer at Newmarket, or the hunter at Melton- Mowbray? Has the wild canary bird the plumage or the notes of that which is bred in an artificial state ? 10 INTRODUCTION. Man has triumphed over the defects and disadvantages of climate; and if any one believes the conquest an evil, let him discard his bread and meat for one month, and support himself on mast and acorns. It would be very difficult to determine what Rousseau and such philosophers mean by their state of nature. " Does man," says Lieber, " live in it only for a moment after his creation ? or does the tattooed savage who beautifies, as he supposes, the body of his child with a variety of artificial and tormenting punctures, live still in a state of nature ?" Assuredly the South- sea islander, with his paint, his punctures, his feather, and his fish bones, is just as much disfigured as the old French courtier with his periwig and powder, his cuffs and his ruffles. What test shall be applied, to deter- mine which is the natural and which the artificial ? The only reason for believing that barbarism was the original condition of mankind, is the supposition that it was the natural state, which we have shewn to be utterly groundless. It is then asked, whence arise all those differences in civilization discovered by travellers ? and many philosophers ascribe them to specific differ- ences in the human race. Capacity of civilization is declared to depend on organization; and the organic differences between the several races of men are declared to be sufficient to constitute them distinct species. This is a subject too important to be summarily passed over, but at the same time it could not be fully discussed without entering more deeply into philosophical re- searches than would be consistent with the character and design of this work. A selection of the most important facts necessary to the formation of an opinion, INTRODUCTION. 11 will perhaps be sufficient to justify us for treating all the varieties of the human race as belonging only to one species. Dr. Lord's admirable work on physiology, one of the best popular treatises on science that has ever been published, has shewn that the varieties of form, colour, and organization in the different races of men are not greater, nor indeed so great as those which occur in the lower orders of creation within the limits of the same species. The term of duration, and nearly all the periodical changes of life, vary but slightly in all races of men.* All human contagious and epidemic diseases are capable of exerting their pernicious influence on all the tribes of men, though some suffer more than others. Dissection exhibits more unity of type in the most discrepant varieties of man than is to be found in the unquestionable varieties of species among the lower animals. It is therefore contrary to anatomy, physi- ology, and analogy, to consider the existing varieties of the human kind as different species. All are aware of the fact, that changes are wrought in the form, colour, and constitution of organized bodies by culture, food, and alterations in the mode of life. This is particularly the case with fruits, flowers, and vegetables ; the potatoe, for instance, is now a very different plant from that which Sir Walter Raleigh brought from South America. Similar changes, from like causes, take place in animals, but the process is slower : " animals," says Boerhaave, " have their roots * Fceminis omnibus communis videtur fluxus menstruus ; ita ut rccte Pliniura mulierem solum animal menstruale vocasse putcm. BLUMENBACH. 12 INTRODUCTION. within their bodies," and consequently the changing cause is generally nutrition. It may also be remarked that the higher the organization the more difficult is the development of a peculiarity, and also the more perma- nent is the peculiarity when formed. The variegated holly will return to the common green holly when pro- pagated by seed, and can only be preserved as a variety by grafting; but very little care is requisite to per- petuate a peculiar breed of swine or sheep. Mankind is not exempt from such influences : want of light and air, act very injuriously on the race : it was found that an immense proportion of monstrous births occurred in France among those who had taken some deserted quarries for their residence, and in con- sequence the caverns were destroyed by order of the government. Cretins are produced in some parts of Switzerland, from the operation, probably, of some atmospheric peculiarity; and Albinos are so frequently produced in the isthmus of Darien, that some travellers regarded them as a distinct tribe. Dr. Lord has minutely examined the modes in which peculiarities may be produced and propagated : it will be sufficient for us to shew the fact of their being perpetuated. Frederick I. of Prussia collected tall men from all parts of the globe to form a regiment of gigantic guards at Potsdam, and Dr. Forster assures us that the greater part of the present inhabitants of the town and its vicinity are remarkable for their extra- ordinary height. Major Henry Bevan declares that he could distinguish the several castes in India by their respective peculiarities of countenance. "We are all familiar with the marked traits that characterize INTRODUCTION. 13 the physiognomy of the Jews and Parsees; and finally, the thick lip first introduced into the house of Haps- burgh by intermarriage with the Jagellons, has been hereditary in the reigning family of Austria for centuries. We can trace very marked peculiarities in men unquestionably descended from the same stock. In America, how different is the tall, lank, gaunt Virginian from the squat, plump, round-faced New Englander. The children of the settlers in New South Wales are tall, thin, and weaker than the European average; they are therefore regarded by Europeans as a depreciated race, and nick-named Currency, while the Europeans proudly call themselves Sterling. The Currency lads and lasses are distinguishable at a glance, and in the course of time no doubt their peculiarities will be as strongly marked as those of the Virginian or New Englander. Constitutional peculiarities are well known to be hereditary in families ; but it is of importance to ob- serve that the peculiarities thus propagated are con- genital and not accidental. No one expects to see a child born with a glass eye or a wooden leg, because the parent has been forced to use such substitutes ; and it would be equally absurd to expect that children would be deficient in limbs because the parent was maimed : but tendencies to gout, consumption, insanity, affec- tions of the stomach or liver, unquestionably descend by inheritance. There is family disease as well as family likeness ; " a nose," as Washington Irving pleasantly observes, "repeats itself through a whole long gallery of family pictures ;" and ' ( ditto repeated," 14 INTKODUCTION. says Sir Astley Cooper, "is no uncommon entry in the ledger of the family apothecary." In the Philosophical Translations for 1813, Colonel Humphreys has given the facts connected with the origin of a new variety or breed of sheep, which throw some light on this curious subject. In the year 1791, one of the ewes on the farm of Seth Wright, in the state of Massachusetts, produced a male lamb, which, from the singular length of its body and shortness of its limbs, received the name of Otter breed. From the curvature of its fore-legs, which caused them to appear like elbows when the animal was walking, Dr. Shuttack termed it An con. This physical conformation incapacitating the animal from leaping fences, appeared to the neighbouring farmers so desirable that they wished it continued. Wright determined on breeding from this ram, and the first year obtained only two, with the same pecu- liarities. The following years he obtained greater numbers, and when they became capable of breeding with one another, a new and strongly-marked variety, before unknown to the world, was established. The perpetuation of this variety of sheep appears a sufficient answer to those physiologists who deny the unity of the human species because there are differ- ences between the skeleton of the Negro and that of the Caucasian ; but we have instances of more marked varieties being propagated. The Dorking breed of fowls have five toes each, the Hungarian hogs do not divide the hoof, and families are known in which most of the individuals are born with six fingers. The anatomical differences between the Negro and Cau- INTRODUCTION. 15 casian are at the best very minute, indeed they can only be discovered by a practised anatomist; but they would disappear altogether if, instead of taking the most marked extremes of the type, the comparison were made between the intermediate and approximating varieties. Anomalies, produced accidentally, may be perpetuated artificially, and circumstances may produce the artificial state no less efficiently than design. Such a result could hardly be produced arbitrarily in the human race, but it might be brought about by the force of circumstances. Dr. Pritchard has shewn that there is in all animals a tendency to the repetition of a variety which has once occurred ;* " thus there are generally more albinos than one in the same family." Among the animals which exhibit varieties perfectly analogous to those of the human albinos, this tendency is very remarkable, particularly, with pets, such as cats, rabbits, and guinea-pigs. Dr. Lord adds, " were a family in which any of these peculiarities had a tendency to occur, isolated from the general stock, so as to necessitate frequent inter- marriage of its members, their peculiarities would be repeated, propagated, and in a few generations ren- dered permanent. ' [The female members of the noble family of Gordon have long been distinguished by a peculiar and beautiful formation of the neck and shoulder.] But this isolation could only take place when the world was thinly inhabited, and a wide space intervened between family and family. Any pecu- * Dr. Lord observes, " The existence of this tendency was strongly exemplified in the mare, which having once conceived by a quagga, had afterwards no less than three or four foals, begotten by different horses, yet all exhibiting more or less of the quagga form." 16 INTRODUCTION. liarity occurring now-a-days speedily merges by inter- mixture, and returns to the common standard/' Medical statistics enable us to go farther, and shew that intermarriages of consanguinity have a tendency not only to perpetuate, but also to produce pecu- liarities ; it is found that the greater number of children born with some natural deficiency, idiotic, blind, deaf and dumb, etc., are the issue of marriages between near relatives. Now, one of the commonest causes of monstrosity, as laid down by Halle, and since illustrated by Meckel, is what Doctor Lord calls " arrest of development ;" that is, " the cessation of growth in any particular organ, while the rest advance towards their usual standard." The Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Negro, are the three primary or best marked varieties of the human species, and the difference appears strongest in the size and shape of the brain and its integument, the cranium. Let us now examine Dr. Lord's history of the brain, in his work on Popular Physiology. " The brain of man excels that of any other animal in com- plexity of organization and fulness of development. But this is only attained by slow and gradual steps. Examined at the earliest period that it is cognizable to the senses, it appears a simple fold of nervous matter, with difficulty distinguishable into three parts, while a little tail-like prolongation towards the hinder part is the only representation of a spinal marrow. Now, in this state it perfectly resembles the brain of an adult fish, thus assuming in transitu the form that in the fish is permanent. In a short time, however, the structure is become more complex, the parts more INTRODUCTION. 17 distinct, the spinal marrow better marked it is now the brain of a reptile. The change continues : by a singular motion certain parts (corpora quadrigemina) which had hitherto appeared on the upper surface, now pass towards the lower; the former is their permanent situation in fishes and reptiles, the latter in birds and mammalia. This is another advance in the scale, but more remains yet to be done. The complication of the organ increases cavities termed ventricles are formed, which do not exist in fishes, reptiles, or birds ; curiously organized parts, such as the corpora striata are added, it is now the brain of the mammalia. Its last and final change seems alone wanting, that which shall render it the brain of MAN." " But we have not yet done with the human brain. M. Serres has made the still more singular observa- tion, that in the advance toward the perfect brain of the Caucasian, or highest variety of the human species, this organ not only goes through the animal transmi- grations we have mentioned; but successively represents the characters with which it is found in the Negro, Malay, American, and Mongolian nations. Nay further, the face partakes in these alterations. One of the earliest points in which ossification commences, is in the lower jaw. This bone is consequently sooner com- pleted than the other bones of the head, and acquires a predominance, which, as is well known, it never loses in the Negro. During the soft pliant state of the bones of the skull, the oblong form which they naturally assume, approaches nearly the permanent shape of the American. At birth, the flattened face and broad smooth forehead of the infant, the position of the eyes 18 INTRODUCTION. rather towards the side of the head, and the widened space between, represent the Mongolian form; while it is only as the child advances towards maturity that the oval face, the arched forehead, and the marked features of the true Caucasian become perfectly developed. Arrest of development might take place that is, the brain might cease to grow from accidental pressure, from an impediment to the vessels carrying it nutrition, or from many other causes. If this arrest took place during any of the later phases we have described, man would be born with either the Negro or Mongolian cerebral formation. There is a tendency to produce such peculiarities in marriages of consanguinity, and there is no doubt that they would be perpetuated by family intermarriages. "To the want of renovation," says Dr. Hancock, " I conceive we may chiefly attribute the barbarism which for unnumbered ages has reigned in Africa, and probably in the South-sea Islands, and amongst the aboriginal tribes of North America, and a jealousy of strangers has kept the Chinese stationary for many hundreds of years. The Arowahs and other American tribes roam at liberty through their native forests and savannahs, but, as it were by one universal magic spell or enchantment, they all kept most strictly to their respective tribes, and by such isolation, through a succession of ages, they have dwindled into pigmies, compared with those whose races are renovated and refreshed by inosculation, or grafting of other varieties." The American and Negro types disappear by inter- mixture with the Caucasian. In the time of Herodotus, the Colchians had the black skin and curled hair of the INTRODUCTION. 19 Negroes, peculiarities which have been lost by inter- marriages ; and it is established beyond a doubt, that the taint of Negro or Indian blood is gradually effaced in American families. A similar wearing away of the Negro type may be observed among the descendants of black servants who have married. We have had an opportunity of observing the continuous process through three generations, and can aver that not a trace of the Negro peculiarities could be found in the great-grand- child of the African. These considerations are sufficient to justify us in asserting the unity of the human species : though we cannot tell when and how varieties have arisen, we can see the possibility of their having originated, and being perpetuated, when men were few and families widely separated from each other. We can also see a cause for the non-appearance of new and strongly-marked varieties after population became more dense, because, as we have shewn, peculiarities are effaced by inter- mixture. It is not necessary to carry the inquiry further : the law of variation in human development, is still regarded as an open question by physiologists, and no one has yet ventured to assign its limits ; but the existence of a very extensive variation has been established beyond the possibility of doubt, and is con- firmed every day by facts within the range of ordinary experience. It follows then that the capacity of becoming civilized belongs to the whole human race that civilization is natural to man that barbarism is not " a state of nature," and that there is no prima facie evidence for assuming it to be the original condition of man. 20 CHAPTER II. CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. INTIMATELY connected with the fallacy that barbarism is the natural state of man, is the equally erroneous belief that such a condition is one of purity, virtue, and happiness. Civilization has been described as a progress -, but in the opinion of some, the direction of this progress is towards physical and moral degradation. This is an inquiry which spreads over a very wide field, and to conduct it with accuracy, we must lay aside systems, and confine ourselves exclusively to facts. Is the physical condition of the savage superior to that of the civilized man ? Let us apply the ordinary tests. In the islands of the Pacific Ocean, where quadrupeds are few, and where the earth yields her productions almost spontaneously, the constitution of the natives, neither strengthened by labour nor invigorated by the chase, has been always found feeble and languid. The dynamometer, an instrument with a graduated scale for measuring muscular force, has been applied as a test, and the sailors of British ships are able to carry the index some degrees farther than any of the various tribes of the South-sea islanders on whom the experi- ment has been tried. The tribes on the continent that supported themselves by hunting, acquired greater BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 21 firmness of body, but yet they were more remarkable for agility than strength. They were for the most part incapable of continuous labour: during the Canadian wars, the Indian allies of Europeans, though formid- able in any single and rapid expedition, were unable to endure the fatigues of a campaign. Indeed, the triumph of the white men over the red men in America, is owing more to perseverance and continuous exertion than to superiority in intelligence or military weapons. Another test of the physical constitution, is the capability of enduring varieties of climate. Although in some cases the North American Indian can journey longer with his heavy burthens across the portages than a white man, he assuredly would not stand the fatigues of an Egyptian or Russian campaign. Far the greater number of the savages who have been at various times removed from their homes to a different climate for the purpose of gratifying the cupidity of curiosity, have sunk by premature decay, in spite of all the care bestowed on their preservation. Longevity is however the best test of the physical constitution of man ; and that the duration of human life has been increased by advancing civilization, is abundantly proved by all bills of mortality. We have no means of determining the average duration of life in countries wholly uncivilized, but in Europe it has been indisputably established that longevity has in- creased with the gradual improvement of society. It is generally remarked that the senses of savages are peculiarly acute ; not only the romances of Cooper, but the grave statements of intelligent travellers, assure us, that the North American Indians will track game, 2 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES pursue an enemy, discover the traces of a stranger, and find their way through the woods by minute observa- tions which escape the notice of Europeans. Every person who has read the Last of the Mohicans, which, though a fiction, is distinctly stated to embody only authentic facts respecting the manners and customs of the Indians, must have been delighted with the descrip- tion of the quickness of observation and certainty of inference displayed by the Indians in following a trail. But with the savage, this capacity is limited in its objects; it is a faculty purely mechanical, and in its greatest extent is far surpassed by the development of the senses which we daily witness in civilized life, among mechanicians of every kind, and particularly among the cultivators of the fine arts. The acute intelligence of the savage is only applied to the pur- suit of prey or the discovery of an enemy; with the civilized man it has an universality of application. There are many instances of the same cultivated quick- ness of perception being displayed in finding coveys of partridge, detecting the beauties or defects of a statue or picture, and discovering the symptoms of latent disease. With the civilized man the acquisition of such a power in one direction, facilitates its exercise in another; with the savage, superior skill as a hunter or warrior disqualifies the possessor for every thing else. Many circumstances contribute to lead voyagers and travellers into mistaken notions of the physical con- dition of savages. They see only the best specimens of the race. From the very nature of a barbarous state, it requires great original strength of constitution to survive the stages of helpless infancy. When chil- OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 23 dren, born with any original taint or weakness, are not immediately destroyed by their parents, they are sure to sink under severity and privation. We have reason to believe that the population of America was not pro- gressive when first it was discovered by Europeans; but there is positive evidence that several of the Indian tribes have not kept up their number, even in localities where they were not exposed to the intrusion of the whites. Among the hunting tribes the care of the children devolves entirely on the women, and is univer- sally regarded as a grievous addition to their domestic toils. Many of them procure frequent abortions by the use of certain herbs, and extinguish the first sparks of that life which they are unable to cherish. All are more or less incapacitated, by other pressing and toil- some avocations, from bestowing that maternal solicitude on helpless childhood which is necessary to counteract any original frailty. As none but the most healthy arrive at maturity, there can consequently be very little variety in the average appearance of savage nations. Hence travellers are always struck by the uniformity of the external figure in these rude tribes, and are led to regard this uniformity as symmetry and perfection. It appears then that the average physical condition of barbarous tribes is inferior to that of civilized nations, and that even this average is attained by a lamentable waste of life in its earliest ages. Those who imagined that the children of savages were all born healthy and sound because the parents were not exhausted by the severe labours of civilized life, can have very imperfect knowledge of the toils and privations entailed by bar- barism. And those who ascribe the uniformity or 24 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES symmetry of the savage form, to the absence of artificial restraints on the development of the body in its earlier stages, have not taken into account the multitudes who necessarily perish in so harsh a course of training. Another source of error, is the absence of indigence and disease in savage tribes. But a brief examination will shew that this absence is more apparent than real, and that in this case also uniformity has been mistaken for perfection. It is generally agreed, that indigence consists in the want of some things absolutely necessary to existence. Such a state cannot exist in barbarous life ; the savage either lives or dies; he is never precisely rich or poor; whilst the means of subsistence are afforded, he exists from hand to mouth ; when they fail, there is no one from whom he can beg or borrow, and few whom he can plunder. With him, destitution is death. It is true that he can support hunger, thirst, pain, to a degree which we cannot approach; that he will feed on substances from which we shrink with horror. But there are limits to his powers of endurance when these are passed, he sinks unnoticed and unknown; there is no one to record that a unit has been subtracted from the amount of human existence. The uniformity which travellers and voyagers have discovered in savage life, is a condition but one degree higher than absolute starvation. Those who sink below it, disappear instan- taneously, and are as if they never had been. For a similar reason, severe diseases are rarely seen by the casual visitors of savage tribes. Death is their doctor, and the grave their hospital. Those who have resided amongst them testify that diseases are produced OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 25 by the privations endured at one period, and the re- pletion in which they indulge when a time of plenty arrives. But unless the cure is rapid, the termination of the disease must be fatal. When patients are left entirely to nature, it is found that nature presses very hard for an immediate payment of her debt. As there are different degrees of barbarism, it is not easy to give a precise description of the intellectual condition of savage life. The native of Van Diemen's Land seems little, if at all, elevated above the brute ; the New Zealander displays some share of ingenuity ; in the Moluccan Archipelago, the inhabitants of islands within sight of each other, are found to exhibit the greatest diversity in mental power; and the red men of North America were far superior to their brethren of the south. There are, however, some tests of general application, the most obvious of which is the display of Providence in making some provision for the future. All travellers have noticed the improvidence of savage life : some will sell for mere trifles the fishing and hunting implements necessary to their support, others refuse to exchange their rude weapons for those of European manufacture, even when the superiority was obvious. No price could tempt the Carib to sell his bed in the evening, when he was disposed to go to rest; but in the morning it might be had for the merest toy that caught his fancy. The strong huts necessary for protection in winter are seldom erected until the cold season is considerably ad- vanced. It is rare to find provisions stored against the chances of scarcity or even the certainties of changing seasons. Like a mere animal, the savage is affected c 26 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES merely by what is before his eyes ; every thing beyond escapes his observation or is perfectly indifferent to him. Consequences ever so slightly removed from immediate apprehension are entirely disregarded. Food, clothing, residence wants which all mankind feel to be the most pressing, are neglected in a barbarous state of society, until the necessity is so urgent as to threaten extinction. The inferiority of uncivilized nations is very obvious in their adaptation of means to an end. It has been customary to admire the ingenuity of their contrivances, and to wonder at the perfection of the workmanship executed by such rude tools as they possess : some of the specimens are no doubt surprising, but what is still more wondrous, is the failure of the workman to discover obvious deficiencies in his tools, and the in- creased efficiency they would obtain from very slight alterations. The mechanical powers are rarely exercised; and when some of the more simple are brought into play, there is a waste of time and strength which might have been saved by a very little attention. Thus those tribes who pass beyond the improvident instinct of animals, continue to display the thoughtless levity of children. The number of languages in any given district is generally in the inverse proportion of the intellectual culture of the inhabitants. Messrs. Spix and Martius collected the vocabularies of sixty different languages in Brazil alone. It is utterly impossible to classify those of Australia ; and to add to the complexity, there is reason to believe that unwritten languages are con- stantly fluctuating. The vocabularies collected by one voyager rarely correspond with those of another ; each OP BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 27 lays the blame on the ignorance or carelessness of his predecessor, but there can be no doubt that many of the discrepancies are to be assigned to the unsteadiness of those by whom uncultivated languages are spoken. As language is the instrument of thought, the nature of a language is in some degree a guide to the in- tellectual condition of those by whom it is spoken. All barbarous languages err both in excess and defect : by a very extravagant use of suffixes and affixes they multiply what may be called synonymns to an almost incredible and very perplexing extent, while the number of objects for which they have names is very limited. Captain Freycinet informs us, that the inhabitants of the Marian or Ladrone islands have different series of numerical names varying according to the objects counted. The following are the series : English n Animated Inanimate Measures of ,-,. , Names. "**' Beings. Beings. Length. One .. hatcha ... maissa... hatchiyai... tak-hatichoun .. hatitip. Two .. hougoua hagoua .. houghiyei .. tak-hougouan .. asgan. Three . toulo .... tatto tourghiyei . tak-touloun tato. Four . fafat fatfat .... fatfatai .... tak-fatoun fatfat. Five., lima ... latima ... limiyai tak-liman latima. Six .. gounoum gounoum gounmiyai . tak-gounoum ... gounoum. Seven, fitgoua... fit! fitghiyei .... tak-fitgonon .... fiti. Eight, goualo... gonagolo gouarghiyai tak-gouarghoun gouagalo. Nine . sigoua ... sigoua ... sighiyai .... tak-sigouon sigoua. Ten .. nianot ... raannot . manotai .... tak-maonton ... mannot. Captain Freycinet adds that these islanders fre- quently count by pairs, and that they then use the numeration belonging to days, with the addition of the word asgun, which signifies " a pair," but ten pairs are called hioussau. The numeration of the days is also applied to months and years, but in the latter case, seven is always expressed tyfiti. 28 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES This tendency to multiply names is found in every form of life where attention is fixed on a limited number of objects, and thus the same cause may pro- duce the same effects in the two extremes of barbar- ism and civilization. In examining the manufactories at Birmingham, we found that the artisans had distinct names for tools, which we at first sight could scarcely distinguish from each other. In the old treatises on hunting, we find a corresponding variety in the words applied to beasts of venery and chase. Thus, the Book of St. Alban's, written in the fifteenth century by the Lady Juliana Barnes, prioress of Sopwell, informs us that in speaking of numbers or flocks we must say a herd of deer, a bevy of roes, a sounder of swine, a rout of wolves, a richess of martens; a brace of bucks, foxes, or hares, and a couple of rabbits. There are also terms for their lodging : a hart is said to harbour, a buck lodges, a roe beds, a hare seats or forms, a coney sits, a fox kennels, a marten trees, an otter watches, a badger earths, a boar couches. Hence there are also separate terms to express their dis- lodging ; we should say, unharbour the hart, rouse the buck, start the hare, bolt the coney, untree the marten, vent the otter, dig the badger, rear the boar. There were also appropriate terms for the different parts of the body, the foot-marks, dung, breeding, etc., of the several beasts. These names are more appropriate and picturesque than general terms, and hence a language in its earliest stages is better adapted to discriptive poetry than when it is more extensively cul- tivated. We shall have occasion to examine language more minutely in a future chapter, and it will perhaps OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 29 be sufficient here to say, what the examples we have quoted sufficiently shew, that an abundance of synonyms, or what are usually called synonyms, in a language with a limited vocabulary, is a proof of its intellectual poverty, shewing it to be confined to a narrow range of objects and ideas. Arithmetic, among savage tribes, is equally limited and cumbrous. Among some of the American Indians there were those who could not reckon further than three, and had no name for numbers beyond it; several could proceed as far as ten, but commonly the utmost limit was twenty. The Australians, where they are not in immediate contact with the British, exhibit similar deficiencies in numeration. Savage languages are deficient in general terms : they are destitute not only of such abstractions as time, space, substance, but of such generic names as tree, plant, quadruped, bird, fish, etc. This has given rise to endless confusion in the vocabularies of barbarous languages : one traveller, pointing to a particular animal or tree, received the specific, not the generic name ; another fell into precisely the same error, but accidentally selected different objects; the names received by each could not be reconciled, and half the labour of collecting the vocabulary was consequently thrown away. Many of the zealous missionaries em- ployed in the conversion of the heathen have formed grammars of several Polynesian, African, and American languages, and, different as are all these tongues, they have one common peculiarity, a cumbrous and clumsy system of construction to disguise the poverty of their several vocabularies. 30 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES In the lowest scale of barbarism there is no effort made to record incident, because all the incidents of such a state have a sad uniformity ; the history of to-day is that of yesterday, and will be that of to- morrow. But as we have not confined our views to the extremes of barbarism and civilization, we may slightly glance at the deficiencies and inconveniences of the efforts made by barbarous nations to acquire a system of records. When we survey the history of nations ignorant of letters, we find generally that both in the Old and New Continent men have attempted to paint the objects which strike their imagination to represent things by a symbol, or rather by putting a part for the whole ; to compose pictures by uniting figures, or the parts that represent them, and thus to perpetuate the memory of some remarkable fact. Thus picture- writing is partly direct representation, partly meta- phor, and partly metonymy, as we shall see when we come to consider some of the specimens found in uncivilized tribes. This invention appears to have co-existed with other mnemonic methods, such as erecting heaps of stones, graving figures on rocks, and in one instance making various knots on cord. The Peruvian mode of " dropping a line," either to one's friends or to posterity, is not very intelligible, and the traditions attached to heaps of stones are liable to great variations in the course of time.* Picture- * In the south of Ireland, near Fermoy, is a remarkable cavern, called, in Celtic, Grian Becht, which, signifies the Sun's-house, and was probably connected with solar worship. By the corruptions of tradition the name is metamorphosed now into Granny's-bed, and associated with a strange tale of a man who married his grandmother ! OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 31 writing^ on the contrary, is obviously an improvable art ; we find it more or less imperfect in proportion to the advancement of the people by which it is cultivated ; it passes, by almost insensible degrees, from simple to composite painting, and thence to symbolic, where it displays a tendency to become an alphabetic cha- racter. It is almost impossible to make a distinction between symbolic and composite painting, for the one runs naturally into the other, and they are only distin- guished by the greater or less abundance of symbolic signs. The rude paintings of the Patagonians, described by Narborough ; those found amongst the natives of Norfolk-bay, on the north-west coast of America; and all the paintings, more or less rude, which have been discovered by travellers among the Indians of the New Continent, in a greater or less degree, unite symbolic signs with direct representation. They exhibit great and marked shades of difference : the highest eminence appears to have been attained by the Aztehs or Mexi- cans, the Zoltedes, and the Ilascalans. Next to these we may rank the sagkokok of the natives of Virginia, the historical paintings of the Iroquois, the Hurons, and the numerous tribes inhabiting the central table- land of the Alleghanies. The sagkokok of the Virginian Indians represented symbolically the events which took place in a cycle of sixty years ; each cycle was represented by a wheel divided by its radii into sixty equal parts. Lederer relates that in the Indian village of Pommaoomek he saw one of these cycles, in which the epoch of the arrival of Europeans on the coast of Virginia was indi- cated by the figure of a white swan, vomiting forth 32 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES fire; thus at once symbolizing their colour, their arrival by water, and the effects which their fire-arms had produced on the Americans. This, however, is a far more comprehensive symbol than any other which we find among the American Indians, and it obviously has the defect of not immediately telling its own story. A clear idea of the historical painting of the Americans may be formed from a pictorial narrative of a warlike expedition, undertaken by some Frenchmen against a tribe of the Iroquois, before Canada was occupied by the English. It is written symbolically in ten lines, figured as follows : The first line contains the arms of France, sur- mounted by a hatchet, and near are eighteen symbols of decades. The hatchet, or tomahawk, being the Indian symbol of war, as the calumet is of peace, this signifies that " a hundred and eighty Frenchmen under- took some warlike expedition/* The second line contains a mountain, with a bird springing from its summit, and a stag with a moon on its back. The mountain was the cognizance of Mon- treal, and the bird signifies departure; so that this line reads, " they departed from Montreal in the first quar- ter of the stag-month, corresponding to our July." The third line, a canoe, with twenty-one huts : that is, " they went by water, landing every night to rest, and were twenty-one days on their journey " The fourth line, a foot with seven huts or wigwams, intimating " they then marched seven days." The fifth line, a hand and three wigwams, over one of which are two pendent branches, and a figure of the sun. This means that "they had come within three days.* OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 33 march of the Sonontuan tribe of the Iroquois, whose cognizance was two bending branches, and that they were coming on the east of the village," which is shewn by the relative positions of the hand and the cogni- zance. The sixth line, twelve symbols of decades, a hut with the same cognizance as before, and a man asleep. " There were one hundred and twenty Sonontuans sur- prised in their beds." The seventh line, a club and eleven heads, five figures of men over as many symbols of decades. "Eleven Sonontuans were killed, and fifty taken prisoners." The eighth line, a bow containing nine heads, with eleven marks beneath. " The victors had nine killed and eleven wounded/' The ninth line, showers of arrows hustling in the air from opposite directions. "The battle was obstinate and well contested." The tenth line, arrows coming from one side only. " The vanquished fled, without any further attempt at resistance." The whole story may be told in a few words. " One hundred and eighty Frenchmen set out from Montreal early in July; after sailing twenty-one days and march- ing seven, they surprised one hundred and twenty Sonontuans on the east side of them ; after an obsti- nate resistance, they killed eleven, captured fifty, and put the rest to flight, with the loss to themselves of nine killed and eleven wounded." It is obvious that such a record is very clumsy, uncertain, and cumbrous ; however we may admire its ingenuity, we must at once see its utter inapplicability c 2 34 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES to any great historical work, and still more to any philosophical or imaginative purpose. It appears, then, from the nature of barbarous language, when it is merely spoken, and from the attempts made at record- ing events in a more advanced stage, that the intel- lectual condition of the savage is far inferior to that of the civilized man. Hitherto we have considered the state of savage nations in man as an individual : but such a condition is confessedly unnatural, all agree that some form of association is necessary to humanity. The first and most simple form is the domestic state. A general state of promiscuous intercourse between the sexes never existed but in the fanciful imaginings of poets, or in the wild speculations of philosophers, who pos- sessed the madness of poetry without the inspiration. Such persons, whose notions of the state of nature appear to have been derived from the brutes, inform us that no permanent unions are formed by the lower animals. The reason is obvious : with them the season of infancy is short ; the young soon acquire vigour and agility; the tenderness of the mother, with little, and sometimes with no assistance, is adequate to the care of the brood. But even among animals, we find the union continued so long as it is necessary to the con- servation of the young. Few observers of nature have failed so see the male bird sharing the task of incuba- tion ; and when the young are clamorous for food, He hears their cry, he grants their hoarse request, And stills the clamour of the craving nest. Even the denizens of cities may have observed the sparrows teaching their young to make the first trial OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 35 of their wing, and both parents sharing the task of guiding them to food. Among animals, the length of union between the parents is directly proportioned to the duration of the state of infancy. But the infancy of man is more protracted, feeble, and helpless than that of any other animal; he is dependent for a much longer period on the care and foresight of his parents ; their desires and unions do not depend on the extrinsic circumstances of times and seasons. If a state of promiscuous intercourse ever existed, it could not be protracted beyond one generation, for the race would become extinct. Domestic union being natural and necessary to man, we have next to inquire what are the conditions that render it most advantageous. Judging from all expe- rience, we should say, mutual confidence, and mutual respect based on mutual equality. The relations be- tween master and slave are equally disastrous to both; the blighting effects of bondage are discoverable in the taskmaster as well as in the serf; the experience of America too fatally shews that the social inferiority of the negro is reflected in the moral degradation of the planter. Many of the more dark and severe pictures of the American slave-owners may be exaggerated, but strong features of resemblance still serve to identify the caricature. The more intimate and close are the relations, the more pernicious is the result of great inequality. Domestic slavery existing as rigidly as predial slavery is a fearful aggravation of the evil. So obvious is this truth, that among all slave-holding communities, we find the lot of the domestic slave rendered less onerous. Horace, 36 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES for instance, threatens it as a severe punishment to an insolent slave, that he would be transferred from the house to the farm. But communities have existed, in which the tyranny of the dwelling rivalled, or even surpassed, the tyranny of the field; and in such cases, vice and misery held joint sway to an extent of which it is scarcely possible to form a conception. In the married state of savages some differences may be observed. When provisions are scanty, and the means of procuring subsistence not easily attainable, the man confines himself to one wife. In warmer regions, where food is more abundant, and nutritious vegetables grow spontaneously, several wives are often taken by one husband. The permanence of the tie also varies: in some countries, marriages are deemed permanent; in others divorces are common on the slightest pretext, and often without any assignable cause. But, however the obligation of the contract is viewed, whether as confined to one or extended to more, whether as permanent or perpetual, the condition of women in barbarous nations is equally humiliating and miserable. Her very first step in life is one of suffering and degradation; she is either stolen, or sold like the beast of the field. The Hon. Mr. Murray, in his very interesting travels, gives us the following account of the daily labours of an Indian woman among the Pawnees of North America: " She rises an hour before daylight, packs up the dried meat, the corn, and other bales, strikes the tent, loads and saddles all the horses and mules, and at dawn the march commences; they generally go from twelve to fifteen miles before their mid-day halt; the OP BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION, 37 husband I'ides; some animals are loaded, many run loose; she travels on foot, carrying on her back either a child or a package of a considerable size; in one hand a bundle or can of water, with the other leading one or two packhorses. On arriving at the camping- place, she unpacks the animals and proceeds to pitch the tent or lodge as before described. But, in order to appreciate the extreme labour of this apparently simple operation, it must be borne in mind that she has to force eight or ten poles, sharpened at the point, into ground baked nearly as hard as brick by a vertical sun, they requiring to be driven nearly six inches deep by the mere strength of her arms, as she is not assisted by the use of any iron-pointed instrument, or any mallet. As soon as the tent is pitched and arranged, she goes in search of wood and water; the latter is generally within half a mile of the camping-place selected, but the former, I can positively affirm from my own observation, she frequently has to seek and carry on the back three or four miles. From mingled commiseration and curiosity, I once or twice raised these wood bundles thus brought in, and am afraid to hazard a conjecture as to their weight, but I feel confi- dent that any London porter would charge high for an extra load, if he was desired to carry one of them half- a-mile: she then proceeds to light the fire, cut up the meat, and pound the corn, for which latter purpose she is obliged to use a heavy club, round at the extremity, and a mortar hollowed by herself from the trunk of a walnut tree. As soon as the meal is finished, she has to strike the tent, reload the horses, and the whole foregoing work has to be repeated, except that the after- 38 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES noon walk is generally not more than eight or nine miles. " This is the ordinary routine of a travelling day; but on the day of a hunt, and on its successor, her labour varies in kind, not much in degree, as besides bringing wood and water, cooking, etc., she has to cut up all the meat into thin flakes or layers to be dried in the sun; to dress the skins or robes, the mode of doing which I shall have to notice presently; to make the mocassins, leggins, and in short whatever clothing is wanted by any part of the family. To perform this incredible labour, there were only three women in our lodge, and I never saw any of the three either grumble or rest a moment, although plagued with the additional care and ceaseless crying of the two before-mentioned brats. Lest it may be supposed, that in the permanent or winter lodge, they enjoy more rest, it is as well to mention, that in addition to their domestic duties, the whole of the agricultural labour, in their coarse system of raising maize, falls to their share." A courtship in Australia is a very striking affair. The lover selects for his mistress the maiden of another tribe, and watches her incomings and outgoings with all the pertinacity of affection. At length he tracks her to some retired spot, the solitude of which seems to afford a favourable opportunity for the declaration of his passion; he rushes forward, strikes her to the earth with a club or wooden sword, and continues beat- ing her about the head, until repeated blows have rendered her senseless. After this very impressive and feeling commencement, he drags the victim, streaming with blood, to the haunts of his own tribe, where she is OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 39 forced to confess herself vanquished by such strong proofs of love, and to become his wife. The course of the union is quite consistent with the commencement : the wife of the Australian savage is a degraded slave; to her share fall the meanest and most toilsome func- tions of subsistence, while life and limb depend on the caprice of her savage master. Where wives are purchased they are scarcely better off than where they are plundered; they become the absolute property and the slaves of those who buy them. They are not bound to the offices of domestic economy alone, but are compelled to perform every laborious and fatiguing service as beasts of burden. So grievous is the lot of the female among savage tribes, that some women in a wild emotion of female tenderness, have destroyed their daughters in infancy, in order to rescue them from the painful and inevitable bondage to which they were destined. Hence, popu- lation is almost always stationary in a savage state; the vigour of the female constitution is easily broken down by toil ; the nurture of a numerous progeny is too severe an aggravation of other labours; infanticide becomes almost a necessary evil, and it is practised with- out the slightest compunction or remorse. This fear- ful slaughter of innocent children, whether in barbarous or semi-civilized lands, has a strange tendency to per- petuate itself. When once the emotions of parental tenderness are stifled in a mother's bosom, it would seem as if they could be restored by nothing short of a miracle. It is notorious, that the British government has made great efforts to abolish female infanticide among the Rajpoots in India, and that they have 40 CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES failed more from the resistance of the wives than of the husbands. Mrs. Postans, in her excellent work on Cutch, adds what may well be deemed an aggravation of the horror. The mother commits the murder by rubbing poison on her breast, and the infant drinks the potion of death from the source where nature had planted the streams of life.* Not less remarkable is the moral degradation of females in other respects: chastity in most savage tribes is little regarded; the early voyagers in the South Seas found the Polynesian islanders utterly regardless of female honour, and the same remark is applicable at the present day to the women of Australia. Cruelty is also too general an attribute of savage females. Though Ledyard and Mungo Park received kind attention at their hands, yet Holden's Narrative of his Adventures in Lord North's Island, declares " the female portion of the inhabitants outstrip the men in cruelty and savage depravity, so much so that we were frequently indebted to the tender mercies of the men for escapes from death at the hands of the women." In all the accounts of the horrid tortures and mutilations inflicted by the Indians of North America on their unfortunate prisoners, we find the squaws the principal agents in the work of torture, instigating the men both by exhortation and example to increase the bitterness of death by the most bitter insults and agonizing inflictions. * See " Ellis's Christian Researches" for a description of the great change wrought on maternal feelings by the beneficial influence of Christianity. Nothing can be more affecting than the picture of the converted mothers turning from the assembly to hide their tears for the loss of those children whom they destroyed during their state of heathenism. OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 41 It has been questioned whether man has been im- proved by the progress of arts and civilization in society; but never have philosophers in the wildness of their speculations and the wantonness of their dis- putations raised a doubt on the advantages that women have derived from every advance in civilized life. Con- tempt, degradation, harshness, and neglect, are the lot of the female sex among barbarous nations in every part of the globe. These demoralizing influences have produced their necessary effects, in infanticide, infidelity and ferocity. On such a picture it is painful to dwell : it would be easy to add many darker and deeper shades, but the fact of female degradation and demoralization in the barbarous state of society is so well known and universally acknowledged, that the horrors of further illustration may well be spared. Unequal to the civilized man in his physical powers, far his inferior in intellectual capacity, and still more decidedly in his knowledge and use of the first great element of social happiness, the domestic relations, it is difficult to comprehend how the savage, rather than the brute, became the subject of eulogy with admirers of what they were pleased to call the state of nature. Indeed, the lowest animals would seem to have a better claim to the sensibility of this school of philo- sophers, for with them there is no decided inequality between the female and the male; but in the savage state of humanity, the comforts of one sex are based on the misery of the other, and to call such a condition a state of nature is to assert that nature was at enmity with one half of the human species. There can be no doubt that the domestic union is a state to which all 42 ON BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. are naturally prompted; civilization tends to render that union equal, to form habits of gentleness and tenderness, to raise woman without humbling man. Barbarism establishes a cruel distinction between the sexes; renders the one harsh and unfeeling, consigns the other to servility and subjection. It is conceded on all hands that the union is natural; can it then be doubted which of the two conditions of union are most in accordance with nature ? "There is a place on the earth," says St. Lambert, " where pure joys are unknown, from which politeness is banished, and has given place to selfishness, contra- diction, and half-veiled insults. Remorse and inquie- tude, like fumes that are never weary of assailing, torment the inhabitants. This place is the house of a wedded pair who have no mutual love, nor even esteem. There is a place on the earth to which vice has no entrance, where the gloomy passions have no empire, where pleasure and innocence live constantly together; where cares and labours are delightful where every pain is forgotten in reciprocal tenderness where there is an equal enjoyment of the past, the present, and the future. It is the house, too, of a wedded pair, but who in wedlock are lovers still." 43 CHAPTER III. SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND TENDENCIES OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. FROM the preceding considerations, it sufficiently appears that barbarism is not the natural state of man, that it is not the state best suited to the development of his physical or intellectual powers, and that it is not calculated to form, promote, or preserve his moral purity or domestic felicity. It is necessary, however, to carry the investigation farther; and to shew that civilization gives effect to another and not less important principle natural to man, which bar- barism tends to weaken, if not to destroy namely, his sociality. From the fallacies which we have laboured to expose, many able writers have deduced very erro- neous views of the origin of society, and ascribed to the free action of ripe judgment and forecast, the for- mation of all states and communities. Horace, in a passage already quoted, declares that the first men united into societies for the purpose of mutual protec- tion and assistance, and the same opinion has been strenuously maintained by the celebrated economist, M. Say. Such a proceeding would infer a most extra- ordinary degree of sagacity and foresight, and a vast amount of knowledge antecedent to experience in each and all of the individuals who thus formed a social 44 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS compact. But we have seen that the most striking and marked characteristic of the savage is improvi- dence, and this feature is one of the last that dis- appears as he ascends in the scale of civilization. How, it may be asked, could these isolated individuals learn the advantages of society? To what miracle or accident are we to ascribe the fact, that these advantages were discovered simultaneously by persons previously unconnected ? How were the conditions of the com- pact framed ? Was there a marvellous unanimity in the acceptance of the terms; if not, what became of the dissidents ? These are a few, and only a few, of the difficulties which must be removed before we can be persuaded that society was the work of man an institution adopted with preference, purpose, and after mature reflection. A very little exertion of thought is necessary to shew that the advantages of society could only have been dis- covered by experience : destitute of all previous know- ledge, the isolated man would more reasonably have expected outrage than protection, injury than assistance, from associating with his fellows. In the very few authentic accounts of perfectly isolated individuals such as that of Peter the wild boy we find no trace of anything like a desire for society, and still less anything like the wisdom necessary to the formation of a social compact. Men united because they could not help it; they did not discover the advantages of association, but they found them out after they had been associated. It is probably in this sense that we are to understand the remarkable expression of Aristotle, that " the state existed before the individual ;" for man undoubtedly is OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 45 led to promote the final ends of society before he dis- tinctly perceives them or knows the advantages that they will bring to himself. This is far different from the assertion that man is ingtfstinctively a gregarious animal, an error into which Cicero and several of the ancient philosophers have^^Wr fallen. Sociality is not an attribute of the physical',, but of the moral constitution of man. Bees congre- S #*-> gate now for the purpose of constructing a honeycomb <x^"/ in precisely the same forms and under the same con- ?.-* ditions that they ever did ; the principle of cohesion in ^ ' their community is not one whit greater or less than it was when they were first noticed by man ; but the social principle in humanity is infinitely developed and extended by every advance in civilization. Sociality is first manifested in the domestic union, which, as we have already seen, has a tendency to be- come perpetual in the human species, because conjugal attachment is not, as with other animals, limited to certain seasons. This principle is still further ex- tended and developed in the relations of the family, the ties between parent and child, brother and sister, etc. The practice of infanticide, which we find in almost every barbarous country, necessarily hardens the hearts of parents against the children who are spared. It is true that we find in voyages and travels many examples of outbursts of paternal or maternal tenderness, but these are only momentary ebullitions; there is no permanent or abiding love of offspring, no care or forethought for future welfare of children. In KolfFs Voyage of the Dourga, we find that the Papuans, or natives of New Guinea, will not hesitate to sell their own children into slavery. 46 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS " Natives worthy of belief have assured me," says Lieut. Kolff, "that if a Papua of the coast is struck by a desire to obtain any articles brought by the foreign trader, for which he has no productions to give in ex- change, he will not hesitate to barter one or two of his children for them ; and if his own are not at hand, he will ask the loan of those of his neighbour, promising to give his own in exchange when they come to hand, this request being rarely refused. This appeared to me to be almost incredible, but the most trustworthy natives were unanimous evidence to its truth. The mountaineers themselves sometimes sell their children also. In other places, I have known parents sell their children when their maintenance became too heavy a burthen for them to bear, without heeding whether they would ever see them again. Such a total absence of feeling certainly brings these savage people below the level of dumb animals ! " The slave-dealers of the last century relate countless anecdotes of similar barbarity among the African tribes, and their account is fully confirmed by the missionaries. Father Labat mentions one instance of this worse than brutal disregard of natural ties, which is too curious to be omitted. He tells us that being one day, during the year 1654, in his convent of St. Salvador, a native of Congo came into the church and made such loud and doleful lamentations, that he gathered round him all the inhabitants of the convent. They eagerly in- quired what dreadful calamity had befallen him, but so extreme was his affliction that he was long unable to make an answer. After much labour, and many kind attempts at consolation, he at length unfolded the OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 47 nature of his grief. He told them that he was reduced to the extreme of misery and despair; he had sold his children, his wives, his only sister, his younger brothers, and finally his father and mother; he was therefore in great distress, because there was not one of his family left whom he could turn into money. The worthy Capuchins were astounded; at first they could not forbear from laughing at so strange a complaint ; they then endeavoured to shew him what an unnatural monster he was, and how justly he merited sufferings far more severe than those he endured. He coolly replied that he had done nothing but what had been constantly practised in that country, and there could be no crime in reducing them to that slavish condition to which he himself had run the risk of being reduced by them. It may be said that this unnatural conduct should be attributed to the blighting influence of slavery and the slave trade rather than to barbarism. Undoubtedly, if there were not purchasers, children and relatives could not be sold as slaves : but it would be going too far to say that the mere demand produced the supply; or, if that were conceded, it would be still evident that those ties must be weak which could be so easily broken at the first appearance of temptation. But parental love is a subject on which very great and injurious errors are made, not only in relation to savage, but also to civilized life. It is, in its origin, an animal sensation a blind instinct, which belongs to the insect, the bird, the quadruped, as well as the man; an immutable law of nature, and nothing more. " In beings inferior to man," says Aime Martin, " we 48 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS see the operation of this instinct associating itself with the passions, doubling their power, and raising them almost to intelligence. The bird forms its nest before it knows that it is about to produce anything of which it must take care; it lines that nest with a delicate down, before it knows the delicacy of its brood ; it sits, that is to say, the most restless of beings sits unmove- able, during several weeks, upon a lifeless egg, before it knows that it encloses beings like itself. At length, the young ones being hatched, it brings their food, it drives away their enemies, is anxious for their preser- vation, and all these labours, painful or pleasurable, are to remain without a recompense : no filial tender- ness will ever respond to this parental tenderness. One day the little ones try their wings, another they take their flight, and wing their way into the plains of air. The animals have no family they have none of the true parental affection they are the servants of nature." That this tenderness, so affecting to witness, is purely instinctive, and all but mechanical, appears from the fact that animals will bestow the same atten- tion on a substituted progeny as on their own offspring. The hen is not less fond of ducklings than of chickens; the wild bird, though sometimes sorely perplexed by its ravenous appetite, bestows the same care on the intrusive cuckoo as on her own young : a cat, deprived of its kittens, has been known to bring up a leveret, a rat, and even a chicken. Among rational beings, the extraordinary love shewn by childless persons for pets may probably be referred to the same instinct; for many, whose sensibilities towards favourite animals are OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 49 so acute as to become absurd, are far from exhibiting tenderness of heart in the other relations of life. It has passed into a proverb, that the sympathy wasted on a dead ass was refused to a living mother. Whether this imputation on Sterne be true or false, we can our- selves aver that we have seen expensive luxuries wasted on a pampered cat by those who refused the slightest relief to starving relatives. " A fact, worthy of remark," continues Aime Martin, " is that maternal (or parental) love only lasts in each animal the time necessary for the preservation of the species ; so soon as the little ones have ceased to need their mother, their mother abandons them. In the morning the parent would have waged furious war for those young ones whom in the evening she cannot recognise. And this indifference awakens no regret, leaves no remembrance, enters the mind at the very time when gratitude and habits long formed seem to render it impossible. "When we reflect that the order and harmony of the world are maintained by this double law of love and indifference, we are asto- nished that it does not excite more attention. Let us only imagine what a new order of things the durable affection of animals would introduce upon this globe, what a power added to their exterminating instincts ! Let the war-cry be heard, and twenty generations rally round one female, whole families will be armed, and all these armies will work in the labour of destruction. To prevent this destruction, to establish the balance be- tween life and death, the law of indifference suffices."* * See " Woman's Mission," chapter viii., for a beautiful application of these principles to the moral training of a family. D 50 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS Parental love, as distinguished from instinctive im- pulse, begins where that of the animal terminates. Nature seems to have provided for its gradual for- mation and development as a moral principle, by protracting the infancy of man to a longer period than that of other animals, and consequently extending the time during which the instinctive impulse acts. To animals the instinct is valuable merely for the preser- vation of the species ; to man it is still more valuable, from its tendency to produce a moral obligation, the most binding principle of sociality, the rational affection between parent and child that is, an affection for which both can assign a cause.* It is obvious that time is wanting to form this desirable principle, and that if parental care cease alto- gether with the stage of helplessness, or nearly so, the moral tie can be but faintly established. Among all barbarous nations, parental care is rarely extended beyond the early stages of childhood. Even in their infancy the children are subjected to no coercion or corrective discipline; which some very unwise reasoners have ascribed to the indulgent and fond disposition of the parents. An indulgent parent is not a fond parent, he is nothing more than a negligent one : children are not spoiled by too much affection, but by the want of affection; true affection will not grudge toil nor trouble; the cruel parent, and the indulgent parent equally want active affection ; the blow and the bribe * Experience has taught us that children, in earlier infancy than is generally imagined, can distinguish between instinctive and moral affection ; and that even when the former is the more indulgent, the latter is the more respected, and far the more beloved. OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 51 are both base means of avoiding the labour of care, watchfulness, and corrective discipline. The savage does not chide his child; but this forbearance arises not from love, but from that recklessness which shews the weakness or absence of love. He suffers the children to be absolute masters of their own conduct, because he is too lazy to watch and superintend their actions. Such a course of education, we are told, tends to render the children " independent," which is true enough, if the word be taken in the sense given to it by Denzil Holies, " not to be depended upon." " In an American hut," says Father Charlevoix, " a father, a mother, and their posterity, live together like persons assembled by accident, without seeming to feel the obligation of the duties mutually arising from this connexion." Similar remarks are made respecting the families of the New Zealanders, by the mission- aries; in Australia, the bonds of domestic attachment are scarcely known; and throughout the South Sea islands the greatest difficulty which the various mis- sionaries have had to overcome is the habitual and mutual neglect of parents and children from the moment that the latter approached maturity.* Justly then has Dr. Robertson remarked, " the ideas which seem to be natural to man in his savage state, as they result necessarily from his circumstances and condition, affect the two capital relations in domestic life. They render the union between husband and wife unequal. They shorten the duration, and weaken the force of the connexion between parents and children." * See " Ellis's Polynesian Researches," passim. 52 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS The fraternal relations are not less weak and uncer- tain than the parental. Fratricide is just as common as any other species of murder. Theodore Irving, a professed admirer of what he is pleased to call the chivalry of savage life, relates the following anecdote of the lotan, a chief of the Otoe Indians, and his brother, as an illustration of Indian revenge. " The Otoe Indians having procured several kegs of whiskey, resolved to have a grand carousal, and aware of the fury to which their passions would be stimulated by intoxication, removed all weapons beyond their reach. When the whiskey began to work, a fearful brawl commenced, and in the frenzy of strife the brother bit off a part of the chieftain's nose. The lotan was sobered in a moment, he paused, looking intently in the fire, without utter- ing a word; then drawing his blanket over his head, walked out of the building, and hid himself in his own lodge. On the following morning he sought his brother, and told him that he had disfigured him for life : ' to-night/ said he, ' I will go to my lodge and sleep ; if I can forgive you when the sun rises you are safe, if not you die.' He kept his word; he slept upon his purpose, but sleep brought no mercy. He sent word to his brother that he had resolved upon his death, that there was no further hope for him ; at the same time he besought him to make no resistance, but to meet his fate as a warrior should. " His brother received the message and fled from the village. An Indian is untiring in his pursuit of re- venge, and though years may elapse, yet he will obtain it in the end. From the time that it became the fixed purpose of the lotan to slay his brother, his assiduity OP BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 53 never slept ; he hunted him for months. He pursued his trail over the prairies ; he followed his track from one thicket to another, he traced him through the friendly villages, but without success ; for although he was untiring his brother was watchful, and kept out of his way. The old warrior then changed his plan of action. He laid in wait for him in the forest, crouch- ing like a tiger, in the paths which he thought he might frequent in hunting, but he was for a long time unsuccessful. At length, one day when seated on a dead tree, he heard the crackling noise of a twig breaking beneath a cautious footstep. He in- stantly crouched behind the log, and watched the opposite thicket. Presently an Indian emerged from it, and gazed earnestly around. The lotan recognised his brother instantly. His care-worn face and ema- ciated form evinced the anxiety and privations that he had suffered. But this was nothing to the lotan ; as yet his revenge was unsated, and the miserable appear- ance of his brother touched no chord of his heart. He waited until he was within a few feet of him, then sprang from his lurking-place and met him face to face. His brother was unarmed; but met his fiery look with calmness, and without flinching. "'Ha, ha! brother/ cried the lotan, cocking his rifle, ' I have followed you long in vain, now I have you you nrnst die.' "The other made no reply, but throwing off his blanket, stepped before him, and presented his breast. The lotan raised his rifle, and shot him through the heart !" Many anecdotes equally revolting might be collected 54 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS from the missionary registers, shewing that the ties of relationship and friendship are so feeble as to be snapped in sunder by trivial events, and former amity changed into deadly hatred. We are, however, to con- sider on the other hand, anecdotes, just as well authen- ticated, of the strong feelings exhibited by barbarous tribes when they meet their friends or relatives, after a long journey or a distant voyage. As an illustration, we may quote Cruise's description of their reception by their relatives of the nine New Zealanders, who came along with him in the Dromedary from Port Jackson. " When their fathers, brothers, etc., were admitted into the ship," says he, " the scene exceeded descrip- tion; the muskets were laid aside, and every appear- ance of joy vanished. It is customary with these extraordinary people, to go through the same ceremony upon meeting and taking leave of their friends. They join their noses together, and remain in this position at least half an hour ; during which time, they sob, and howl in the most doleful manner. If there be many friends gathered around the person who has returned, the nearest relation takes possession of his nose, while the others hang upon his arms, shoulders, and legs, and keep perfect tune with the chief mourner (if he may be so called), in the various expressions of his lamentation. This ended, they resume their wonted cheerfulness, and enter into a detail of all that hap- pened during their separation. As there were nine New Zealanders just returned, and more than three times that number to commemorate the event, the howl was quite tremendous, and so novel to almost every one in the ship, that it was with difficulty our people's OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 55 attention could be kept to matters at that moment much more essential. Little Repero, who had fre- quently boasted during the passage that he was too much of an Englishman, ever to cry again, made a strong effort when his father Shungie approached him, to keep his word, but his early habit soon got the better of his resolution, and he evinced if possible more distress than any of the others." We could not call this a scene of affection: if affec- tion be understood in an active sense, it was a mere display of passionate emotion, which began and ended with the feelings. There is no mistake more common, than the confusion between good feelings and good actions; generous sensibility and generous deeds, pious emotions and pious conduct. To excite the passion is easy, for to feel it is pleasant ; to change the passion into action is about one of the most difficult things in the world, especially as every repetition of the passion weakens the tendency to action. Sensibility, as the word is generally used, is a mere animal instinct, use- less when it does not immediately lead to active bene- volence ; and in such a case not only useless but per- nicious, because it has a tendency to produce a resting satisfied with the emotion and a neglect of the action. Mr. Cruise does not tell us that this scene of passion led to any interchange of mutual kindness, the pas- sengers from Sidney did not produce any of the novel- ties they had procured in the British colony to offer to these affectionate relatives, and the welcoming party brought no fresh provisions to comfort those who had grown weary of naval cookery. The whole scene of affection was written in and with water ; when it was 56 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS over, not a trace of it remained, all returned to their occupations as usual. All barbarous nations evince great respect for the dead, and the length of time that their mourning for the deceased lasts has been frequently adduced as a proof of the strength of their natural affection. A recent traveller in Australia gives us the following curious account of the lamentations of the natives over a grave : " Nothing can be more pitiable, nothing more strik- ing, than to witness the lamentations of the natives over the dead. They appear terror-stricken by a power they know not of, and cannot account for. At the natural decease of one of their tribe, the men appear bewildered in their imaginations, they shout furiously, and make wild exclamations. By fierce countenances and violent gestures, they seem to defy and threaten the spirit or enemy who had come amongst them, while the women, on the other hand, assembling together, rend the air with their pitiful and lamenting yells. " The above scene I can only describe as I witnessed it, which struck me as being a most melancholy spec- tacle. I had left my camp one morning to reconnoitre some ground near Mount Wayo, in Argyle, and after travelling for an hour, I crossed a rather steep grassy ridge, and descended into a rich forest-flat, between the hills, of some extent. Bent on following the valley upward, I had proceeded about a quarter of a mile, when my attention was attracted by sounds of human voices, wailing in wild and melancholy strains. I listened attentively, and the more I was struck with the peculiarity of the noise. Having made for the OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 57 direction from which the sounds proceeded, I soon perceived before me three native black women, and rode up to them. They were sitting round a mound of earth, with their heads depressed and nearly touching one another, nor did my presence at all disturb them or rouse their attention, but they remained in the same posture, and did not even look up. " I waited some time in astonishment observing their actions, and listening to their horrid lamentable yells. They were each of them striking their heads with a tomahawk, holding that instrument in their right hand, and wounding particularly the upper part of the back of the head. Their hair was besmeared with blood, which I could perceive trickling down behind their neck and ears. I called to them loudly, but in vain. Determined, if possible, to find out the cause of the extraordinary scene before me, I dismounted, and tethered my horse at a little distance, and allowed them to remain undisturbed, while I took notice of the tomb and place around. The mound of earth might have been about three feet high; it was shaped as a dome, and built of a reddish clay; it was surrounded by a kind of flat gutter or channel, outside of which was a margin, both formed of the same material. The staves of the women were leaning upon it, and their nets, with their contents, thrown aside. " The appearance of the place was agreeable, though lonely and sequestered, and trees of various descrip- tions ornamented the rich pasture on the ground. The trees all round the tomb were marked in various pecu- liar ways, some with zigzags and stripes, and pieces of bark curiously cut. 58 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS "Having satisfied myself with the appearance and locality of the place, I went up and pulled one of them by the cloak, and succeeded in making her look up. But when she did, I may safely assert, that it would be impossible to behold a more miserable, and I may add frightful, creature. She was the picture of utter wretchedness, anguish, and despair. Her face was covered with blood, and tears were falling fast in suc- cession down her cheeks, as was the case with the others. She muttered something to me which I could not understand, then dropped her head again, and commenced wailing as before, in all the bitterness of agonizing grief. " Such excessive weeping could only arise from natural affection, and regret for the loss of a departed relative. But what they utter, or for what reason they wound their heads, is yet a mystery and unknown to us. It is impossible to say, therefore, whether they invoke the dead, as able to hear beyond the grave, or whether the gashes in the head are intended to soothe the departed spirit. " These tombs, or raised graves, of the natives are but seldom seen in the interior, and it is very probable that they are intended only to honour the burial-place of a chief on some particular occasions. " It is a custom, however, among the women at par- ticular times, to weep over these graves, which they invariably do in the manner above stated, and they are, no doubt, the relatives of the dead. " In some instances these graves have been of a neces- sity removed by settlers, but the spot is always remem- bered and wept over in the same manner. As a proof OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 59 of this, I sometime afterwards saw some women weep- ing as described, by the corner of a garden near a gentleman's house on Mulwaru Plains, who informed me that there had been the grave of a native at that spot. " The method of their disposing of their dead is gene- rally as follows (and although few have ever witnessed the burial of a native, still, the spot having been known, the corpse has been seen in the grave after burial) : The body is removed to the place appro- priated for its burial ; the head is then bound down by strings of bark, close and nearly between the knees ; the two hands are fastened behind each ancle, so that the body is forced into a crouching form, and takes up as little space as possible. The grave, or hole, is made just large enough to admit the body, and deep enough to allow rather more than a foot of earth above it when interred. The body is buried naked, with the excep- tion of the bandages of bark with which it is confined, and the cloak, spears, and other weapons of the deceased are claimed, and become the property, I believe, of the chief." The very intelligent gentleman to whom we are indebted for this description ascribes this apparent ex- travagance of grief to intensity of affection, but as the Australians are remarkable for their apathy to living relatives it would be indeed singular if they were to display such strong attachment to the dead. If the traveller had ever witnessed a funeral in the remote districts of the west and south of Ireland, he would have known that loud lamentations are very often a mere mockery of woe. Often have we seen women 60 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS run out, join in the train of a passing funeral, raise that dismal of all human cries the keen, with every outward appearance of the most bitter affliction, and when their breath was exhausted, very coolly ask, " who is dead?" Theodore Irving relates an anecdote which illustrates the precise value of this mourning over the grave. When entering an Indian village, " our attention," he says, " was attracted by a low mournful cry, from the midst of a number of small mounds, at a short distance, the burial ground of the village. We approached the spot so cautiously, as not to disturb the person who was seated there. Upon the top of one of the graves, a large mound covered with grass, was lying an Indian girl. Her buffalo robe had escaped from her shoulder, and her long dishevelled black hair was mingled with the grass of the prairie. Her bosom was resting upon the sod, and her arms extended as if embracing the form of the being who was mouldering beneath. " Believing that she was some female belonging to the tribe, singing a dirge over the grave of some departed friend, we listened attentively to her song. At one moment it would rise in the air with a plaintive sound, as if she was dwelling with mournful tenderness upon the virtues of the deceased. At times she would seem to speak of the feelings of his heart ; at others the note would seem to be one of war, of battle ; and then her song would burst from her, with the startling energy of a person who was in the midst of the scene itself, and was acting over the feats of the silent dead. At these moments she raised her head, and her whole frame seemed swelling with the inspiration of the OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 61 theme ; but in the very midst of this energetic burst of enthusiasm, the chord of some more mournful recollec- tion would be touched, and the song would sink from its high and ardent tone, to a note of woe, so despair- ing, that it appeared as if the sluices of her heart were opened, and the deep hidden stream of her affection was flowing out in the mournful melody ." Interested and excited by the scene, Mr. Irving and his companions hasted to inquire the history of this lonely mourner, from "the half-bred interpreter," a man of great gravity and experience. " If it had been in the nature of his face to wear a more scornful ex- pression than it usually did, the smile of contempt which passed over his weather-beaten features as we told the story, would have added to it. For a moment he seemed surprised, then added that she was a squaw who resided in the adjoining lodge, and but a short time before he had heard her say to her mother, that as she had nothing else to do, she believed she would go and take a bawl over her brother's grave. He had been killed five years before."* Mr. Irving' s narrative shews how easy it is to mis- take passionate emotion for abiding principle ; and to the influence of this error we must ascribe the very opposite pictures of domestic affection in savage life, presented to us by travellers. When a father, husband, * A distinguished clergyman of the Church of Ireland has fur- nished the author with the following anecdote illustrating this subject. " A servant of mine who had lost a brother some months past, was to go with us to the part of the country where his brother was in- terred ; he said to one of my children with great joy in his counte- nance : "O sir, what fine shoutin' and bawlin' I'll have when I go to my brother's grave. 'Tis I that'll play murther over it !" 62 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS or brother is attacked by painful disease, no tender cares watch over his couch, no kindness soothes his pain, For him no hand the cordial cup applies, Nor wipes the tear that stagnates in his eyes ; application is perhaps made to some enchanter to try the influence of magical charms, but laborious atten- tion is refused to his wants and his sufferings. His agonies excise no sympathy, and even his last agony is viewed with indifference. But his funeral is celebrated with the howls of passionate grief; weeping and wail- ing are abundant; the passing stranger sees these bursts of sorrow and exclaims, " Behold the proofs of sincere affection !" Experience might have shewn him that these bursts of passion may indicate animal in- stincts, not moral feeling ; that these lamentations when genuine, are worth very little, and that the appearance of grief is very easy to be assumed. In civilized life a widow's tears are sometimes an untaxed advertise- ment for another husband, and despairing melancholy the herald of joyous indulgence. In barbarous coun- tries the nearest relations are mutually afraid to make any demand or solicit any service : there is no inter- change of good offices, no effort to increase the com- fort and happiness of another; for the labour necessary to alleviate the cares and ills of life, is substituted the luxury of a bawl over the grave. It is now more than a century since Bishop Butler pointed out the distinction between passive and active habits, and the danger of confounding emotions with principles. Though the lazy indulgence of the emotion is absolutely destructive of the active principle, there OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 63 are still people who confound them together. One man blindly bestows alms on those who appeal to his compassion, thereby gratifying the mere impulse of pity or of pride, and is honoured as benevolent and charitable ; another exerts himself to discover the cause of the misery for the purpose of removing it before giving his money, he gives what is still more valuable, his time and his trouble, and has the moral certainty of being called cold-blooded and hard-hearted for his pains. In the pictures of savage life, we find invariably bursts of passion described as instances of affection; but when we come to the analysis of the picture, reason, like the half-bred interpreter, dispels the romance, and the whole ends in self-indulgence, for yielding to a passion is as much a selfish gratification as any other form of sensuality. The Family obtains a higher importance with every advance in civilization, for though the family is natural to man, and essentially human, barbarism, as we have seen, raises obstacles in every direction to the develop- ment of its relations. It is scarcely possible to overrate the importance of the family in the formation and pre- servation of human society. Within its hallowed circle sympathy and disinterested affection are first evolved; patriotism, as all languages testify, springs from " the hearth;" a good son has given a pledge that he will be a good subject, and there is a moral certainty that a good brother will be a good citizen. Sympathy and disinterested affection the refreshing dew that renders the arid fields of life both fruitful and lovely are first evolved in the family; and every thing that dis- turbs the domestic relations, or weakens the domestic 64 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS affections, destroys the sources of those feelings and principles that best adorn and dignify humanity. Some philosophers, whose tenets have been adopted by the Jesuits, condemn the love of relatives as a carnal inclination. They praise those ascetics who trample on all natural ties; they contrast an unbounded and universal benevolence with an affection limited to per- sons and localities, and insinuate that attachment to individuals generates indifference to the species. To this conclusion the Jesuits and the Owenites equally arrive, though starting from very different principles; and when they do agree, of course, "their agreement is wonderful." It is of some importance, at the present day, to shew that the principle of sociality by no means leads to the anomalous institution denominated socialism, and that the monastic rules adopted by the ascetics and the New Harmony institutes of the Owenite are adverse to the present happiness and future progress of humanity. To begin with the Jesuits; they declare that the domestic affections are carnal. Nobody denies that they are so in their origin; for it is a principle of our nature, that the first impulses are given by the physical world: parental love is carnal; it is in its origin a mere animal instinct, but without it the race would become extinct : the whole machinery of industry is chiefly set in motion by the wants of man to satisfy his natural appetites; * but who ever said that on this account all parental love is animal passion, or all industry a mere matter of the belly ? There is probably no such thing as perfect purity in the most exalted instance of virtue, or perfect depravity * "C'estla fairn, c'est le petit venire qui fait mouvoir le monde," said Napoleon at St. Helena. OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 65 in the worst exhibition of vice; human life is a " tangled yarn," good and ill together; the slave who accompanied the victor of yore in his triumphal chariot, typified a principle of degradation within the conqueror's bosom though "Nero fiddled when Rome was burning," there were softer feelings mingled in his character, for humble gratitude flung flowers on his tomb: when we come to the analysis of the best or the worst of characters, we find equally the apologue of Beauty and the Beast. The spiritual is not essentially hostile to the carnal; it springs from it, and is supported by it. Our duty is not to eradicate natural feeling, but to develope, perfect, transform, purify, ennoble, and spiritualize them. The love of those with whom we are connected by natural ties, so far from being adverse to the formation of universal benevolence, is the only permanent foundation on which it can be based, and the only valid pledge which can be given for its existence. " He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" The apostle's argument is irresistible. But, say some of these universalists, " those who make charity begin at home, frequently make it end there." The sentence is a pretty antithesis, and nothing more : those who quote the hackneyed proverb, "Charity begins at home," as an excuse for hardness of heart abroad, neither begin charity at home nor anywhere else. Follow them to their families and their homes; you will find them exhibiting the same coldness and callousness in the domestic circle which they evince to general humanity. Every generous emotion is in its nature elastic, and 66 SOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS naturally labours to widen the sphere of its influence: the first impulse Serves the virtuous mind to wake, As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake ; The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds, Another still, and still another spreads; Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace, His country next, and next all human race. But there are minds like stagnant pools whose surface has never been moved, where the undisturbed waters grow putrid and corrupt, until they taint the air with a moral miasma. To such a one, quoting the proverb, " Charity begins at home," it was once justly replied, " Sir, I should be glad to learn that your charity began anywhere." To the rational Owenites, if such exist, it would be sufficient to say that the aggregate happiness of a community must be exactly equal to the sum of the separate felicities of the individuals that compose it. The sophism by which they impose upon themselves is, that society has a right to benefit at the expense of the individual. This is by no means a cruel proposal ; it was an acknowledged principle of action in all the Greek republics. Now it would be easy to shew that society has no such right, but it is more important to observe that such a principle would confer no benefit. Suppose a society thus constituted, and every thing must be made to yield to its original institutes. There can be no progress, for enthusiasm and character are equally banished. Enthusiasm can only be generated by freedom of individual action ; character can only be formed by spontaneous development. The Owenite tells us that his community will be held together by OF BARBARISM AND CIVILIZATION. 67 social love, and at the same time proceeds to banish all natural love, kindliness, and generosity; that is, he proposes to hold mankind in union by a chain, every link of which he has previously unfastened. This is the exact converse of the fable of the old man and the bundle of sticks, for the sticks are to be broken sepa- rately before the attempt is made to unite them into a whole. We trust that this little digression will be pardoned, for in shewing the importance of the family in the com- parison of barbarism and civilization, it was scarcely possible to avoid noticing the preference shewn for the barbarous usage by some who call themselves civilized men. Unfortunately this preference is not confined to the domestic relations; we shall find, as we proceed, that many of the essential principles of barbarism are advocated by persons who profess to be apostles of civilization. 68 CHAPTER V. SOCIAL RELATIONS PROPERTY. WE have already seen that the State is simply or- ganized society, without any reference to the legislative or executive power, by which that society is regulated. Government is an additional contrivance to facilitate the execution of the purposes for which society was instituted, and thus it becomes an essential part of the state, but not the state itself. We often see eleven rowers manage a boat without the aid of a helm or steersman, but we know that their labour is lightened, their safety secured, and their certainty of reaching their destination increased by the addition of a rudder. No one, however, asserts the rudder to be the boat, or the pilot the crew. It is of importance to keep this distinction constantly before us, because most writers have confounded the origin of the government with the origin of the state, and have reasoned as if the form came into existence at the same moment with the substance. We have seen that the principle of sociality, natural to man, is first developed in the family; that a little society is formed within the hallowed precincts of the domestic circle, the advantages of which are the more appreciated the more they become the objects of ex- perience and reflection. The prevailing idea in the family, that which renders its association so admirable SOCIAL RELATIONS. 69 and so holy, is love ; not the sentiment or passion known by that name, but the continued action of sacrificing personal and individual considerations to promote the happiness of the beloved object or objects. A very little consideration will shew that any wide ex- tension of such sacrifices is impracticable ; their moral loveliness arises from the sphere in which they are exercised, and common sense would stigmatise the man as unjust who would do no more for his own child than he would for a stranger. When the principle of sociality extends beyond the family, as it naturally tends to do, it developes a new idea that of justice, or securing to every person his in- dividual right. In the state every obligation is mutual; no duty is exacted from a member for which he does not receive an equivalent, obedience to social law is rewarded by social protection, and every extraordinary exertion for the common good is rewarded by the hope, if not by the enjoyment of fame. The state and the family, therefore differ, not only in size, but in the essentials of their constitution ; at the same time, however, it is undeniable that there have been stages in the history of humanity, when the ideas of state and family were closely interwoven, and almost blended together. They were mixed up in the patriarch, they were continued when the family grew into a tribe, they were not always formally separated when the tribe became a nation. But the idea of justice is not the only one that first acquires a distinct existence when it is developed and enlarged; every institution, every art, and every science begins in an undefined state, mixed up with others, and is not sepa- 70 SOCIAL RELATIONS : rated or distinctly developed until carried to a consider- able distance from its source by the onward progress of civilization. Were the same person in our days to hold the offices of Astronomer Royal, Architect to the Board of Works, and Archbishop of Canterbury, he would be assailed by a storm of indignant ridicule, which would drive him out of society ; yet, the uncontrolled direction xjf physical science, architecture, and theology, was committed to the Egyptian priesthood. Painting and writing were originally the same art, they are now very different arts. All the parts of the oldest watches were made by the same artist : there are now distinct trades for the manufacture of almost every individual piece. The confusion between a family and a state has been the source of much evil. Dr. Copleston, the present bishop of Llandaff, has very ably shewn the danger of arguments from analogy : there is a natural tendency in the human mind to infer a similitude between things themselves from a similitude between their relations, and when once the first step in error has been made, the discovery of the fallacy becomes a matter of considerable difficulty. A monarch is fre- quently represented as the father of his subjects, and there is sufficient similarity in the mutual relations of king and father to justify the metaphor, but assuredly there is not such an identity in their conditions as to justify monarchs in treating their subjects like children who had not reached the years of discretion. The Athenian republic was called the mother of the citizens; and from the title it was inferred that the republic might compel rich citizens to provide enter- PROPERTY. 71 tainments and theatrical shows for the people, to fit out vessels of war for common defence, and support other public burthens, on the principle of a mother compelling a child to share a large plumcake with its brothers and sisters. This fallacy of paternal and maternal government has not been less mischievous in its love than in its cruelty and caprice ; it generated a mischievous spirit of meddling, which would not allow people to be happy or to become prosperous in their own way. Bounties, protecting duties, and monopolies were devised with the best intentions; regulations were issued, directing what processes should be used and what avoided, until merchants and manufacturers combined in the common request, " Let us alone !" Nor has the fallacy on the other hand failed to in- fluence subjects and citizens ; they very commonly expect from ministers and parliaments, what neither ministers nor parliaments can bestow ; nations, like individuals, have sometimes taken fits of sulkiness, and assailed their rulers for inactivity when they had de- prived them of all means of exertion ; the Romans of old refused to enlist, and at the same time accused their rulers for not repelling the incursions of the Volsci. If the fallacy has occasionally made rulers appear as injudicious parents on the one hand, it has exhibited the subjects as pettish children on the other. The state is a society founded upon the relation of right. We have next to inquire, what is right? We have seen that man is a moral being, that is, a free agent, and yet that he is bound to live in society, which of necessity must limit his freedom of action. For, as all his fellows have the same claims, it is 7Z SOCIAL RELATIONS : necessarily a condition of society, a law of its existence, that the use of freedom by one should not contravene the enjoyment of liberty by another. Man does not create the relation of right, it conies into existence at the same instant with society; the upholding and enforcing that right is the object of society, constituted as a state. There is no error more common than confounding what society has unfolded and promulgated, with what society has called into existence. The most striking example of this is the right of property, which, from its acquiring, additional strength and security by the progress of society, is very commonly supposed to have been an invention of society. The golden age, when all things were common, has been celebrated by poets and philosophers without number ; even grave divines have asserted, that the division of property was a consequence of the iniquity of man. It is not easy to discover whether this community of property so lauded, was an attribute of men individually, or of men in society, but in either case the theory rests on an obvious fallacy ; namely, that things which were not owned by any individual were the property of all, the fact being that they were the property of none. Who is the owner of the uncaught fish in the ocean, or the unplucked fruit in a pathless forest ? They become the property of him by whom they are first taken : " this fish is mine, for I have caught it ;" " these berries are mine, for I have plucked them," are claims at once recognised, but they should at once be rejected, if the fruits and fishes were the property of all mankind. Their title is established by the most PROPERTY. 75 forcible and conclusive of arguments the exclusion of all the contraries " to whom should this fish or fruit belong if not to me 1" Appropriation being universally recognised as a title, the notion of community of property must be aban- doned. But appropriation, so far from being a super- induced attribute of man, is natural to him in every stage of society and in every age of life. " Property/' says Lieber, "is nothing else than the application of man's individuality to external things, or the realiza- tion and manifestation of man's individuality in the material world." The desire of appropriating objects making them, as it were, a part of the individual self and thus rescuing them from undefined generality, meets us everywhere. A child, only two years old, calls one hyacinth hers, and another her brother's, although she knows that neither will be permitted to touch the glasses in which they are growing. Children, looking together at passing clouds, at leaves floating on a stream, or even at waves breaking on the shore, will single out one of these objects as their own ; will dispute whether the favoured cloud is the brighter, the chosen leaf the best swimmer, or the selected wave loudest in its roar. In our foundling hospitals and charity schools, every child is desirous to have something which it may call its own ; the galley- slave, toiling at the oar, and the monarch seated on his throne, equally desire to impress their individuality upon some species of property, some object that may be called " mine." We do not always meet with the notion of landed property among uncivilized tribes ; but every savage is E 74 SOCIAL RELATIONS: " monarch of his shed," the fish-hook he has made, the beasts he has hunted, and the canoe for which he has bartered, are his own. The notion of community has never entered into his head, he would resent every attempt to deprive him of these objects as a gross outrage. Private property must necessarily exist so long as man possesses individuality; no complaint of the very poets who loudly celebrate the imaginary community of goods is more melancholy, than that no harvest is reaped by their own sickle. But an attempt has been made in our own days to realize this poetic dream, which has excited no small share of public attention, and which therefore requires more examination than either its merits or its novelty could reasonably demand. The social system as this effort to revive forgotten folly is designated professes to abolish all the crimes resulting from the possession of property, by establish- ing a community of goods. Such a proposal has often been made before, and is not unlikely to be frequently revived so long as society can be divided into what Sir E. L. Bulwer felicitously terms "the Have-nots" and " the Haves." It is therefore worth while to inquire whether such a scheme be practicable, and if practicable, whether its adoption would be beneficial to mankind ? The two questions are very distinct in their nature, but it is scarcely possible to discuss one without taking some notice of the other. The first objection to the schemes of the Socialists, as they choose to call themselves, is that they do not abolish private property. Corporate possessions are as much private property as individual acquisitions. PROPERTY. 75 Robert Owen does not assert that all property should be common, but merely that all property belonging to the denizens of some square or parallelogram, some species of social barrack, should be common to the members of that community. He . does not assert, though he is careful not to deny, that the property of said community should not be shared by other communities. The property, therefore, of the social barrack is as much private, as the property of an English municipality or a Franciscan monastery. At the best his proposal is merely to establish a Mutual Assurance Company, and he has so far succeeded that the stock of assurance possessed by himself and his followers is of very remarkable amount. But we may be told that this objection would be obviated if an entire nation adopted the barrack, or, as it is falsely called, the social system. This does not mend the matter; for that nation would undeniably have a right to insist on its joint-stock property, against the claims of any other nation. There is a significant hint in one of Robert Owen's pamphlets, recommending that the young should be instructed in the manual and platoon exercise; so that these social barracks are, like older establishments, to be not merely civil, but military. It is then a mere delusion, if not a downright fraud, to talk about the abolition of private property, when at most it is only proposed to transfer the right of property from an individual to an association. Again, it is untrue that the right of property is ever abolished with regard even to the individuals in any social barrack. Not to speak of that monopoly of talk and of time which every socialist desires to establish in 76 SOCIAL RELATIONS his own favour, it is certain that men cannot be equal in their physical and mental acquirements. Nature herself has bestowed capacity, as private property, on every individual, and that property is inalienable and incommunicable. The clever and skilful artist will execute his task in a shorter time than he who is not gifted with the same powers ; he will, therefore, have more leisure in the barrack : but time is property, leisure is property, enjoyment is property. Here then is inequality arising from the inevitable laws of nature. The barrack arrangement is to supersede that of the family; but if a person is not to have a pet child, is he to be prevented from having a pet bird, or a tame rabbit ? Is there to be a common snuff-box, a steam- smoking apparatus with branch pipes, and a universal shaving machine to run down the ranks when the members are paraded for the manual exercise, brushing the faces and mowing the beards with the speed of a locomotive ? " These little things are great to little men," comforts and conveniences will always be adapted to the taste of individuals, and the variety of taste will of necessity generate private property in some direction or other. The socialists have been fortunate in finding antagonists who can keep their countenances : had they not been libelled as knaves, they would have been laughed at as fools. Let us not be understood to deny that there are cases in which great benefit may be derived from co-operative labour, and co-operative expenditure. Grant to the socialists the benefit of their favourite example of the bee there may be associations that will collect honey, but there may also be associations with nothing of the PROPERTY, 77 bee but the sting. Gil Bias was introduced to such a social barrack, established by Captain Rolando, an eminent professor of community of property. More- over the bees turn the drones out of the hive, while the socialists propose that drones and working bees should share alike. But the co-operative principle has been known since the creation of the world ; "Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground :" it exists in every united family, in every banking and commercial company but, so far from being averse to private property, it is actually founded upon it; for individual exertion preceded united exertion, and led the way to the discovery of its advantages. But socialism, we are boastingly told, has made many converts, no doubt of it : there are two ways of gratifying vanity and self-love, raising one's self up, or pulling others down, the latter plan appears generally the easiest of accomplishment. In those preeminently social compacts, trade-unions, the great object of the regulations is to prevent the intelligent artisan gaming a higher rate of wages than the botch ; the barrack system is the mere application of the same principle on a larger scale. But we are told that the barrack system will destroy covetousness, avarice, and their consequent train of evils. We should be glad to know if these eminent moralists have ever given themselves the trouble of inquiring what covetousness is. It is nothing more than the vitiated excess of a principle originally inno- cent and even laudable. We have shewn that the desire of property springs naturally and necessarily from our constitution as human beings ; it is, as we have said. 78 SOCIAL RELATIONS : an inevitable result of individuality. As the desire is universal, its vitiated excess must be common. But to propose the destruction of that vice by the abolition of private property, is not one whit more sensible than to recommend the disuse of food as a check to gluttony, or the abolition of language as a prevention to socialists talking nonsense. Finally we are told that a community of property existed among the first Christians. The fact is ques- tionable (see " Hind's Rise and Progress of the Chris- tian Religion") ; but supposing that it were ever so well established, the early Christians found it practicable only so long as they remained a small sect and an oppressed church ; they were held together by the bond of mutual love, not mutual advantage, and having a further uniting force the pressure from without the physical force of persecution. If we are asked when was property divided? we answer by the previous question, when was it common ? for if it was never common, the necessity for supposing a division ceases. If it be inquired when was it first appropriated? the answer is, when the first man breathed the first breath of air, and appropriated a portion of the atmosphere to the exclusive use of his own lungs ; the process was then continued by his plucking fruit for food, sewing fig-leaves together for aprons, and using the skins of beasts for clothing. To a certain extent private property is recognised even by the lower animals ; birds have their own nests, beasts their own lairs, and are ready to do battle against all intruders. Having shewn that individual property, not com- munity, is natural to man ; it remains to point out the PROPERTY. 79 advantages of its existence. In the first place, it is absolutely essential to the individuality of man, to his continuing a moral being, personally responsible for his actions. Men, united in society, are not like drops of liquid, merged into a single and uniform mass ; they are united, but not amalgamated. The greatness, the goodness, the energy and the activity of each, are manifested only in the individuality of each, and all these manifestations are associated with the acquisition of property, which is nothing more than the extension of man's individuality to the material world. Man strives to gather property that he may see his own, his personal skill, industry and perseverance, visibly and palpably represented. " It is a fixed law of nature, that industry working either with the hand or with the mind the application of the powers to some task, to the achievement of some result, lies at the founda- tion of all human improvement/' Though the notion of property is natural to man, and not only beneficial, but absolutely essential to his well-being, yet it does not suggest itself to his mind at once, perfect in all its bearings. It is a notion pre- eminently capable of progressive and continuous deve- lopment. We have already shewn that every thing which characterises man as man, every condition essential to his humanity, appears clearer and more distinct, with every advancing stage of civilization, which consequently must be the true end, and not the artificial aim of human society. This is preeminently the case with respect to property: and no instance more strongly shews that, on the one hand, all that is natural to man, all that is essentially characteristic of him, unfolds itself more perspicuously with the pro- 80 SOCIAL RELATIONS: gress of civilization ; and on the other, whatever shews itself in a steady gradation more perspicuously with the progress of civilization, is truly natural. Looking at the differences between barbarous and civilized life in their relations to property, we find that they differ not as to the matter but the means. The processes of the individualization of things with us are few and simple, they may all be reduced to production, appropriation, and occupancy by recognised tenure; interference with the possession is at once seen and confessed to be not merely a trespass against the arbitrary enactments of society, but a violation of that natural equity which is independent of all political arrangements. Simple as these notions appear, it is by civilization that they have been simplified; among all savage tribes they are overwhelmed by a multitude of devices, which have falsified and perverted the prin- ciples of rectitude. Theft or robbery is not considered disgraceful by the savage : all the early voyagers found these children of nature ready to pilfer every thing on which they could lay their hands; and the crews of several ships have been cruelly massacred for the mere sake of the plunder. In fact, a savage scarcely deems theft or robbery a moral crime, unless it is accompanied with a breach of hospitality, confidence, or friendship. They are strong adherents to what has been called The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can. Assuredly the poet of freebooters was mistaken in ascribing to this "good old rule" the merit of sim- plicity; on the contrary, it is one of the most compli- cated plans in the world : there is, on the one hand, PROPERTY. 81 a constant appetite of aggrandizement not unfrequently directed to objects of doubtful or even impracticable attainment, there is, on the other, an equally restless apprehension of losing what has been attained. The action of both feelings necessarily generates a multitude of artifices and contrivances, compared with which the most complex problems in the law of property are the very perfection of simplicity. The study of " Fearn's Contingent Remainders" is a mere joke compared with the remainders contingent on the forays of plundering tribes. It is evident that the barbarian recognises property; he only differs from the civilized man respecting the mode of acquisition ; he recognises force and fraud as legitimate forms of acquisition, in fact, as branches of industry; he believes power, courage, or cunning, suffi- cient to establish a title, not that every thing belongs promiscuously to every one. Even when civilization has advanced, we find traces of the barbarous title of power and courage being recognised among men. When Telemachus is described in the Odyssey as visit- ing Pylos, and receiving the rites of hospitality from Nestor, the old host, after feasting and praying with him, very coolly inquires whether his guests were mer- chants or pirates ? Now, gentle guests ! the genial banquet o'er, It fits to ask you, what your native shore, And whence your race? on what adventure say, Thus far ye wander through the watery way? Relate if business, or the thirst of gain, Engage your journey o'er the pathless main : Or are ye pirates, who through seas unknown, Seek others' lives, and peril thus their own ! 82 SOCIAL RELATIONS: Telemachus answers the question with the same cool- ness, without feeling at all offended at the suspicion of piracy. We have only to look at the history of the Middle Ages to find robbery by land and sea held not merely innocent but laudable. A proclamation of the English Edward III. sets forth that, " Whereas certain right noble lords and right honourable ladies, do ac- custom themselves to robbery on the high roads, and piracy on the high seas," it had become necessary to check these fashionable amusements, not so much on account of their criminality, as because they diminished the returns to the royal exchequer, by deterring foreign merchants from visiting the country. Roderick Dhu logically argues his right to seize with the strong hand, and brings nature herself to support the argument: Ask we the savage hill we tread, For fatten'd steer or household bread, - Ask we for food those shingles dry, And well the mountain might reply : " To you, as to your sires of yore, Belong the target and claymore ; I give you shelter in my breast, Your own good blades must win the rest." In the reign of Elizabeth and the first James, buc- caneering was no dishonourable profession; men of noble rank, high bearing, and even some who laid claim to religious principle Sir Walter Raleigh for instance recognised "no peace south of the line." Even within our own memory privateering was deemed innocent, and soldiers were considered fairly entitled to the plunder of a town taken by storm. The slave- trade is still deemed a legitimate traffic by nations call- ing themselves civilized and Christian; the protection PROPERTY. 83 of aborigines from the violence of settlers, is a duty only just beginning to be acknowledged by statesmen.* The natural notions of property are sufficiently plain, and yet we find them warped and perverted by such monstrous devices as those we have described. So far as they at least are concerned, the work of civilization consists in the abolition of the numerous devices by which barbarism has falsified and perverted the natural dispositions of the human heart and understanding, and in the reformation of society upon principles more consistent with their unsophisticated dictates. The right of property, leads immediately to the con- sideration of the important question, whether there is a necessary increase of crime in proportion to the progress of civilization? This is merely an inquiry into facts; and yet, practically, it will be found to turn in a great degree on the definition of terms. The word crime is vaguely used for three very distinct classes of offences : violations of natural equity, violations of moral opinion confessedly an arbitrary and variable standard, and violations of conventional rules devised for the con- venience of society. There is a further source of con- fusion, chiefly found in religious writings, a tendency to confound crime with sin, and thus further perplex the subject by introducing a consideration of the divine law; nay more, to increase indefinitely the enactments of that law by exaggerated comments. These varieties of crime differ so much in the amount of their intensity, that millions of one class would not equal a single unit of another. For instance, it is by law a crime for any householder in London not to have the space before his door, after a fall of snow, swept clean at a certain hour * See Howitt's History of Colonization and Christianity. 84 SOCIAL RELATIONS : before noon, and the penalty for neglect is equally severe with that usually levied for rioting, intoxication, and sometimes for aggravated assaults. Everybody, however, will confess that there is more moral turpitude in any one act of physical violence, than in leaving the snow undisturbed from one end of London to the other. Here then we see that the number of criminals is far from being a correct measure of the amount of criminality. The law declares that a gambling debt cannot be recovered; society stigmatises a refusal to pay such a debt, when fairly incurred, as dishonourable. Now suppose a man, or a set of men, regularly taking advantage of the law of opinion to recover when they win, and sheltering themselves under the law of the land to avoid payment when they lose, there would clearly result a large amount of moral, though not of technical crime, which would never form an item in a table of criminal statistics. Adultery and seduction are atrocious crimes by divine and moral law, but they are not crimes in the statute book. Breaking a window is a legal offence, but breaking a heart escapes the cognizance of the legislator. There are it seems, sinful, or as they are sometimes termed criminal actions, that are not crimes, and crimes that are not sins or criminal actions. Hence necessarily arises an immense source of error in esti- mating the amount of criminality in any given age or country. It is no doubt true that every advanced stage of society offers new opportunities for crime ; this indeed, is only saying, that when the relations between men are multiplied, the possibility of violating such relations is multiplied in the same proportion. A periodical PROPERTY. 85 writer lately assailed railroad travelling, and asserted that the amount of casualties on the road between Birmingham and London was greater than in the days of stage-coaches. Granting that this were the case, the inference would still be in favour of the safety and security of railroad travelling, because the number of passengers travelling by the trains, bears a far greater proportion to the amount who travelled by coaches than the causualties under the new system does to the old. The proper business of the state is to protect and regulate the relations of society, to foster the use and prevent the abuse ; but a possibility of abuse is inherent in every new relation, and hence the number of punish- able and indictable offences necessarily increases with the progress of civilization. But to prove that crimi- nality increases, it is necessary not only to shew an additional per centage in reference to the population, but also to the relations established between the mem- bers of that population. There can be no forgery where there is not the art of writing, and no picking of pockets where everybody goes naked. Mr. C. "W. Dilke has directed our attention to another very important consideration. We must na- turally expect most lapses where there is most tempta- tion; but on the other hand a greater amount of virtue is exercised, or called into being, by resistance to temptation. Criminal returns give us only the number of those who have fallen, but where are we to seek for the records of that unbending integrity which has triumphed over countless trials of which the barbarian and the rustic are wholly ignorant ? The entire system of commercial credit and confidence, is an exhibition of virtue the merits of which are rarely appreciated. It 86 SOCIAL RELATIONS : was an intimate knowledge of human nature, that dictated the petition, " Lead us not into temptation !" it is a prayer which should teach us the duty of charitable judgment. "Whenever I hear of transgres- sion," said an eminent divine, " I do not say, thank God that I have not so fallen ! but thank God that I have riot been so tempted !" In all fairness the amount of virtue in resisting temptation should be taken into account, as well as the amount of vice in yielding to temptation, when we proceed to investigate the crimi- nality produced by civilization. Some writers, misled by M. Guerry's " Criminal Statistics of France," have not hesitated to infer that education in France is the parent of crime. Taking his returns as they stand, and omitting the very im- portant corrections which Mr. Porter has shewn to be necessary, let us see what is really the inference to be deduced from his tables. The greatest amount of offences against property is to be found in those dis- tricts where intelligence is most generally diffused. But those are also the departments in which there are most branches of industry, most activity of commerce, and the greatest accumulation of wealth, so that in fact the only justifiable inference would be that there is most crime against property wherever there is most property ; an assertion which nobody will be disposed to controvert. Pockets cannot be picked where there is nothing in them, nor frauds practised where there is no traffic. There is no poaching where there is no game.* * It is said that an intelligent artisan of Manchester, whose experi- ence of life was limited to the precincts of the manufactories, ex- pressed his surprise that poaching should be considered as a crime, since he found it an excellent mode of dressing eggs ! PROPERTY. 87 Mr. Francis Clarke, of Birmingham, has pointed out another source of error. An increase in the criminal returns may prove, not an increase in crime, but in the vigilance of the police. Many offences are winked at in one state of society, which are strictly repressed in another. Faction-fighting, at Irish fairs, was, until very recently, permitted, or at least connived at by the magistrates, and the number of persons now punished for the offence swells the criminal calendar, but adds nothing to the real amount of crime in the country. There is an old saw applied to sportsmen, What is hit is history, But what is mist is mystery. It is no less applicable to criminal returns; it is a very conceivable state of things, to have the gaols most empty when crime is most abundant. At the last meeting of the British Association, a document was read, tending to shew that the mining districts are the most moral in England; but before admitting the inference, it was proposed that it be referred to the geological section, to determine at what distance beneath the surface of the earth the Queen's writ ceased to run. The number of offences against law must necessarily be modified by the number of offences created by law. Now, there is a tendency in human nature to multiply these offences beyond what the necessity of the case requires. Whatever people have a right to do they will do, especially if it involves some privilege. Luther, enumerating " the nine qualities and virtues of a good preacher," gives as the sixth, "that he should know when to stop." In the same way as preachers, lawyers and parliamentary orators speak too much, legislators 88 SOCIAL RELATIONS: are found to legislate a little too much. " I could never obtain a grant of sixpence/' said a celebrated statesman, " but I could always carry a felony without benefit of clergy." In almost all acts of police, there is more or less of vexatious and interfering legislation, because those who undertake to direct the morals of the poor, are generally ignorant of the habits of the poor, and consequently frame enactments that provoke their own violation. It is with morality as with vitality; the forms of vice and the forms of death are multiplied, but criminality and mortality are not increased. We may look on our criminal statutes as on the boxes and bottles of an apothecary's shop; remedies are provided for diseases of which our ancestors never heard, or to which they submitted as trifling inconveniences unworthy of notice. On the first appearance of a cough we hasten to gargles, pills, mixtures, and all the combinations of drugs that can be expressed in bad writing and worse Latin. With them, the cough often continued to the coffin. In spite however of the multitudinous diseases, and in spite or in consequence of the still more multitudinous drugs, there is no statistical fact better ascertained, than that the average duration of human life has been increased by the progress of civilization. Let the tables of criminality be examined like the tables of mortality look not to the numerical amount of diseases or of crimes, but to the absolute amount of guilt and of death. Thus viewed, the official returns which have been published, and which seem to prove an increase in the number and variety of crimes, are far from being discouraging: they do not justify the PROPERTY. 89 feelings of apprehension, with which the progress of humanity is so often viewed, nor the cry of alarm that is so often raised;* they do indeed hold out motives for continued exertion and increased energy for mea- sures of prevention and vigilance not to stop the progress of degradation, but to accelerate the advance of amelioration. It has been necessary to depart a little from the usual order of viewing the social relations of the state to its members, and to consider protection of property before protection of person, because the two most common errors respecting civilization are connected with property: the first, that property is the creature of society; and the second, that violations of property are produced by civilization. Though few hold these opinions in their extremes, they are found very com- monly mixed up with most speculations and reasonings on the subject, and it was therefore necessary to remove difficulties which lay at the very threshold of our inquiries. * " Alarm/' says Dr. Dewey, " appears to he one of the epidemic diseases of the age. Every religious association, every little spiritual coterie, every school of sect, speculation, and philanthopy, is trembling for the fate of the world. Aow, the philosophy of the world is going to ruin it; then, its extravagance, intemperance, licentiousness, is to do the work; then popery, heresy, infidelity, is elevated to this bad eminence in mischief. The danger from some of these quarters I freely admit; but is it really worth while to observe through how many prophecies of ruin, through how many critical and doomed periods, the world has lived. Truly, one is sometimes tempted to say to these alarmists Good sirs, have a little patience, the world is likely to last our time; the purposes of Providence will stand, though you be disappointed in some of your favourite theories and projects." Moral Views of Commerce, etc., p. 215. 90 CHAPTER V. SOCIAL RELATIONS PERSONAL SECURITY. WE have shewn that the State is natural to man, and exists of necessity; but there remain two points to be examined, which are very commonly misrepresented. It is often said, that " every man, coming into society, abandons a portion of his natural rights to protect the remainder." No man ever did any such thing; the state exists, not to absorb individuality, but to enable each individual to obtain the true ends of his existence. It takes away no natural right, it only requires that each right should be advantageously exercised. It does not necessarily deprive a man of freedom, it only pre- vents each from injuring the other. A man is not robbed of his gun when he is forbidden to shoot his neighbour, nor is he deprived of the use of his limbs when prevented from committing an assault. The dream of a social compact, that is of individual men agreeing to form a society, has perplexed a very simple subject, and led to the sophism, that the prohibition of the abuse is a restriction on the use. But the laws of nature would be as great restraints as the laws of society were this the case: a man may walk as he pleases, but if he throw the centre of gravity back- ward or forward too much, he will get a severe fall; he may exercise his hands as he pleases, but if he PERSONAL SECURITY. 91 cut the carotid artery he will die; he may eat what he likes, but he will not find arsenic safe food, nor Prussic acid wholesome drink. The state, in direct- ing the use and preventing the abuse of the human faculties and powers, does no more than what nature itself has done. Hence the eminent Selden, in his notes to Fortescue, truly says, "But in truth, and to speak without perverse affectation, all laws in general are originally equally ancient. All were grounded upon nature, and no nation was, that out of it took not their grounds; and nature being the same in all, the begin- ning of all must be the same." Victor Cousin, in his History of Philosophy, takes a more extensive view. " That which men have been pleased to call society, in a state of nature is nothing more than a state of war, where the right of the strongest reigns, and the idea of justice comes not at all, or comes only to be trodden under foot by passion Justice established, con- stitutes the state. The use of the state is to cause justice to be respected by means of force; and it acts in conformity with an idea which is inherent in that of justice, to wit, that injustice ought not only to be repressed but punished The state takes no notice of the infinite variety of human elements which were conflicting amidst the chaos and confusion of natural society; it does not embrace the whole man; it considers him only in the relations of the just and the unjust that is to say, as capable of committing or receiving an injury that is to say again, as capable of impeding or being impeded by others, by fraud or violence, in the exercise of that agency which, so far as it is inoffensive, ought to be voluntary and free. Hence SOCIAL RELATIONS: are derived all legal duties and all legal rights. The only legal right is that of being respected in the peace- able exercise of liberty; the only duty I speak now only of civil order is that of respecting the liberty of others. Justice is no more than this; justice is the maintenance of reciprocal liberty. The state then does not put a limit to liberty, as has been sometimes said, for it only developes and confirms it." It appears from these considerations, that man sacri- fices no right to society or the state; it remains then to consider, whether man derives right from the state. This would undoubtedly be the case if we accepted the common definition of right, that it is " nothing but lawfulness, or that which the law permits." But that this is an erroneous account of right, must appear evident on a very little reflection. If law be antecedent to right, where did the legislator acquire his right to make laws? It is not positively enacted by English law, that a man may do every thing which is not pro- hibited by law, but the principle is universally recognised. Where then does this right come from ? If we were to regard law as conventional the mere expression of the arbitrary will, either of a legislator or of society we should deprive it of its highest sanction; but all law- givers have appealed to an authority superior to all con- ventional establishments. " GOD spake these words and said," is the introduction to the decalogue Lycurgus sought a confirmation to his code by an appeal to the Delphic oracle. To the imprint stamped on all created things by their Creator, every code refers as its ultimate source; even the Atheist bows to this authority, while he tries to deceive himself by calling it nature. PERSONAL SECURITY. 93 The theory that laws are merely conventional, that the rights of humanity exist only in consequence of a social compact, we have shewn to be a mere poetic fiction ; for had not society previously existed, no com- pact could have heen framed. Even as a conventional formula, it is an awkward circuitous way of arriving at a truth, M'ithout the previous belief of which, the con- tract itself would be nugatory. The very notion of a contract assumes original rights in the community, inherent in the very nature of man, and independent of all social institutions. The feigned contract adds nothing, and presupposes every thing, whether it exist or not : we must still, as men, have the rights which mankind, simply as mankind, possessed. The fiction, then, is only an indirect mode of asserting original rights which the very contract takes for granted in the contractors. It is not by the sacrifice of rights, but for the preservation of rights, that society exists. The doctrines of the divine right of kings, passive obedience, and non-resistance, are not based, as many have endeavoured to prove, on absolute falsehood, but on a mistaken view of a simple truth. The state is, as we have said, a society founded on right, existing naturally and necessarily, and therefore designed for man by his Creator. It may consequently be said to be of divine institution. Being a natural, that is, a divine institution, every member singly must owe some duties to the members collectively ; and of course, all members collectively must have certain rights, and consequently certain duties towards each man singly. Some machinery must exist for enforcing the fulfilment of these duties ; the government is the instrument by 94 SOCIAL RELATIONS : which the state fulfils its functions ; and hence the divine rights belonging to the state have been some- times believed inherent in the government. It is a simple transfer of the attribute of the substance to the accident. It is scarcely a digression to add a few words on a subject so deeply important, and so open to misrepre- sentation. Many persons believe, that though the theory of the divine right of governments is not an absolute truth, yet that it ought to be kept as a con- venient formula for expressing the duty of obedience. But the formula is liable to the same objection as the fiction of the social compact it is unnecessary, and it is an obscure mode of stating a very simple truth. The duty of obedience arises from the very nature of society. " It is our duty to obey, because mankind, or at least that large portion of mankind which we term our country, would suffer in its rights if we were not to obey." Hence, even imperfect governments are found to possess a powerful hold on the obedience of the wise and good; hence the tendency to insurrection is found to diminish with the progress of civilization. Knowledge is the great conservative principle of society. A constable with his simple staff, claims and receives that obedience in England which an Oriental despot cannot enforce without the presence of an army. Popu- lar ignorance is perilous to every government, but especially to a representative government. In the remarkable words of Dr. Dewey, "A representative government represents the character of the people, and that government which represents prevailing ignorance, degradation, brutality, and passion, has its fate as cer- PERSONAL SECURITY. 95 tainly sealed, as if from the cloud that envelopes the future, a hand came forth and wrote upon your moun- tain-walls the doom of utter perdition." Security of obedience cannot safely be based on any fiction, neither on the contract to which we were not parties, nor on the imaginary transfer of right from the state to the government. Its sure foundation is the knowledge, that obedience is essential to the public weal, to the general happiness of the community, to the maintenance of the rights of each individual sepa- rately, and the rights of society collectively. Edmund Burke, with his usual force and truth, says, "The speculative line of demarcation, where obedience ought to end, and resistance must begin, is faint, obscure, and not easily definable. It is not a single act, or a single event which determines it. Governments must be abused and deranged indeed, before it can be thought of; and the prospect of the future must be as bad as the experience of the past. When things are in this lamentable condition, the nature of the disease is to indicate the remedy to those whom nature has qua- lified to administer, in extremities, this critical, ambi- guous, bitter potion to a distempered state. Times, and occasions, and provocations, will teach their own lessons. The wise will determine from the gravity of the case ; the irritable from sensibility to oppression ; the high-minded, from indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands ; the brave and bold, from the love of honourable danger in a generous cause : but with or without right, a revolution will be the very last resource to the thinking and the good." In another passage we find this great statesman 96 SOCIAL RELATIONS: pointing out, with similar clearness, the true conser- vative principles of human society. " In every arduous enterprise/' says he, " we consider what we are to lose, as well as what we are to gain; and the more and better stake of liberty every people possess, the less they will hazard in a vain attempt to make it more. THESE ARE THE CORDS OF MAN." The same great authority observes, that it is not by forms or by statutes, but by pervading principle, that the framework of society is held together. " Do you imagine," he asks, " that it is the land-tax which raises your revenue ? that it is the mutiny-bill which inspires your army with bravery and discipline ? No ! surely no ! It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to the government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious constitution, which gives you your army and navy, and infuses into both that liberal confidence, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber." Right being natural, and not conventional, it follows that the state does not create original rights ; but that, in order to protect them, it modifies their mutual ope- ration, publicly acknowledges, limits and sanctions them. In the same way the state does not create value, it merely recognises its existence, stamps coin to represent it, and makes regulations for its exchange. "Chris- tianity" has been declared, on high authority, "part and parcel of the law of England ;" but no one would assert that therefore the Christian religion is the creature of English law. One of the Lateran councils proclaimed the necessity of believing in the immor- tality of the soul, but assuredly it was not the vote of PERSONAL SECURITY. 97 the assembled fathers that rendered the soul immor- tal. The French Convention decreed their belief in a Supreme Being, but this was only recognising a belief which previously existed. Right being natural, that condition of society must be most accordant with nature, in which human rights are most fully developed, and best protected. This principle immediately leads to the exposure of the fallacy, that the barbarian possesses more liberty than the civilized man. Absolute liberty a total freedom from all restraints save those imposed by the conscience and understanding can only exist in the exceptional cases of individuals totally isolated from society. Of such liberty no estimate can be formed a standard of comparison is wanting : one thing, however, is clear ; that such a state can neither be very desirable, nor very valuable; because the few who have been found in such a condition, differ little, if at all, from beasts in their lair. Wherever there is society, there must of necessity be law ; there must be restraint. Political liberty the liberty belonging to man in his natural, that is to say, in the social state has been justly defined, by Lord Plunket, to be protection in doing every thing not prohibited by law. Obedience to law is, consequently, a necessary element of freedom ; for law being instituted to protect the exercise of indi- vidual rights, a violation of law is not so much an exercise of individual freedom as an intrusion on the rights of others. Let us take fiscal regulations as an example : the smuggler evades the payment of duties on certain articles of consumption, and argues his right to purchase what he requires as cheap as he F yo SOCIAL RELATIONS: can ; but nothing is more clear, than that his exercise of this right violates the rights of others. It sounds harsh, but it is nevertheless true, that the smuggler robs his neighbours ; for they must be taxed to make good the deficiency which he causes in the revenue : a right is not destroyed when its exercise is modified; on the contrary, it may be thus rendered more valu- able and perfect. We are not prevented from eating and drinking because disease is attendant on gluttony and intoxication : the rules for regulating riding and driving on the public road do not prevent travelling ; on the contrary, they enable all to travel with ease and safety. The misconceptions which prevail on this subject arise from the primary error, of a natural state of man and a natural liberty having no reference to society. Civil liberty is falsely judged by an imaginary and negative standard. It is believed that the less you are required to give up of your supposed original liberty, the greater will be the amount of civil liberty. Such a notion is radically wrong. It assumes society to be a human institution, a conventional contrivance ; whereas we have shewn that it is not only natural, but absolutely necessary to the existence of man, since, without it, he would be a naked rover of the forests, a miserable fugitive before its other savage tenants, and the most helpless of all living things. Liberty, then, is not to be measured by the greater or less absence of restraint; unless, indeed, we take the account of it said to have been given by a heated partisan of faction. " I wish I were free, I wish I were free !" exclaimed this worthy gentleman. " And PERSONAL SECURITY. 99 are you not free ?" asked a friend. " Can you not do as you please ?" " Ay," he replied, " but I cannot make you do as I please !" Is this what is meant by original liberty ? Restraint is not inconsistent with liberty, because there is no giving up of any thing which we formerly possessed. We are forbidden to bear false witness against our neighbour. But as Lieber justly asks, "had we ever the right to speak against our neighbour ?" In the supposed state of original liberty, man had no neighbours. He might, of course, mutter to himself what he chose, and we may say against our neighbour any thing we like, provided we take care that no one overhears the calumny. Designing and intending the death of the sovereign or the overthrow of the govern- ment is highly penal in every civilized society ; but in the imaginary original condition, the natural man is his own sovereign and his own government ; if he be guilty of designing and intending against himself, he will assuredly have to pay the penalty. Liberty, then, exists in the degree in which a man's action and activity in all just and right things are un- fettered by the action and activity of others. Hence the absence of law and government, in so far as these restraints are really wanting in the savage state, is not favourable to liberty, or the source of happiness, but is the great curse and blight of a barbarous condition. In truth, it is only of the protecting power of the laws that the people are deprived, of their controlling and oppressive efficacy they feel more than enough. What- ever of independence exists, belongs to the chiefs alone, and they are generally subject to the caprice of a more 100 SOCIAL RELATIONS : powerful head, the only constitutional check on whose tyranny, is the dread of assassination. The character of a barbarous sovereign the only kind of monarch found in the savage state is forcibly drawn by the prophet Samuel: "This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you : he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horse- men; and some shall run before his chariots. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties ; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers. And he will take your fields, and your vine- yards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers and to his servants. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your good- liest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your sheep : and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out on that day because of your king which ye have chosen you ; and the LORD will not hear you in that day." 1 Sam. viii. 1118. Nor is the state of society better when the royal authority is either weak or wanting. The condition of Palestine under its worst tyrant was not so bad as when "there was no king in Israel, and every man did that which was right in his own eyes." As there is nothing fixed and nothing defined, every savage is PERSONAL SECURITY. 101 almost constantly interfering with his neighbour. The sower is not sure that he will be the reaper; the hunter having run down the chase, is not sure that another man will not start fresh from the bush, and intercept his prey. Ere Latium became civilized, the same word, hostis, signified both an enemy and a stranger. Kidnapping and slavery, in their worst forms, are invariably found in savage life. There is, unfortunately, no doubt that slavery has existed in countries claiming a high degree of civilization; but this remnant of barbarism has always been restricted, both by positive law and by the force of public opinion. Even in the slave-states of America, a tyrannical and cruel master is an object of general odium. There are times, indeed, when the cowardice of fear prompts the whites to measures of sanguinary precaution, as, indeed, must always be the case, wherever there is a legalised ascendency; but except when influenced by such a passion, civilized society resents the infliction of wanton cruelty. But in barbarous nations, slavery is unre- stricted; there are no limits to the power of the master and there is no definition of his relations to the slave. A New Zealand chief puts a cookee to death with as little compunction as a European brushes away a fly. Captain Cruise informs us that when a son of one of the chiefs died in Mr. Marsden's house in New South Wales, it required the interposition of that gentleman's authority to prevent some of the boy's countrymen who were with him from killing a few of their slaves in honour of their deceased friend. That civilization is more favourable to personal liberty than barbarism, appears evident from the fact, 102 SOCIAL RELATIONS: that all who have aided the progress of civilization, as legislators and reformers, have directed their attention to a mitigation of the horrors of slavery whenever they found its complete abolition impossible, under existing circumstances. The humane institutions of Moses are generally known. Theseus prohibited cruelty to slaves when he began a constitution in Attica; and, ever afterwards, those who fled from the cruelty of their masters, found an asylum in his temple. Even Mo- hammed extended his care to this oppressed class, in a chapter revealed at Medina, and, consequently, belonging to the later and triumphant portion of his career, when his object was rather to confirm his authority than to gain favour. " Unto such of your slaves," says he, "as desire a written instrument allow- ing them to redeem themselves on paying a certain sum, write one, if ye know good of them; and give them of the riches of God, which he hath given you." Al Beidawi, in his Commentary, declares, on the authority of tradition, that the Prophet extended this precept to all Moslems, whether masters or servants, requiring them to aid slaves in making up the amount of their ransom, and to assist those who had purchased freedom in obtaining the means of honest livelihood.* It is not easy, under any circumstances, to reconcile * That the horrors of slavery were mitigated by every advance in civilization, is also evident from the preference which slaves themselves hare always evinced for servitude in a city rather than in a rural dis- trict. When Horace wanted to check the insolence of a slave, his most formidable threat was, that he would send him to work on his Sabine farm. In America, slavery is not found in the commercial and manufacturing states, but only in the agricultural states of the union. PERSONAL SECURITY. 103 the existence of slavery with that of political liberty. In the indignant words of Lord Brougham, " What is freedom where all are not free, where the greatest of God's blessings is limited by the most paltry of all distinctions a difference of colour ? . . . The existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime a crime which makes the name of liberty half suspected, and the boast of it disgusting/' . . . But there is another aspect under which it is of importance that this subject should be viewed ; we must look not only to the yoke imposed upon the slave, but to the moral servitude inflicted upon the master. The dread of a servile Avar, or at least of a domestic insurrection, is almost ever present to his mind ; the cowardice of fear drives him to precautions which only aggravate his danger ; for there is a point where excess of weakness passes into excess of strength ; it is the point where endurance abandons hope, and grasps despair. Most persons have heard of a form of insanity once common in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, which was called " running a muck;" but it is not generally known that this perilous madness was engen- dered by servitude. " The old accounts of Java," says Count Hagendorp, "teem with stories of the Amokspewers, who, in their blind rage, ran through the streets, killing or wounding all they met, until they even cut down themselves. These displays have become exceedingly rare since the abolition of the slave-trade. They were chiefly the recently-imported Bouginians or Bolinians, who, regretting their country, their parents, a wife or a child, became desperate ; or who, unable to execute commands which they did not 104 SOCIAL EELATIONS : comprehend, and fearing punishment, felt a disgust for life, which rapidly passed into madness. They seized the first weapon on which they could lay their hand, and struck at random all who came in their way, knowing beforehand that they would themselves fall in turn, and that death would terminate their suffer- ings." How can a man be said to enjoy liberty, when the energies of despair are every hour developed around him ; when his personal safety requires incessant vigi- lance, and when his life is at the mercy of those who have learned to place no value on their own. Every account we have received of barbarous society is decisive in its statement of the fact, that there is very little protection for person or property. So much, indeed, is this the case, that in many instances it would seem as if total isolation were a preferable condition. This furnishes an additional argument against those who believe society to be a mere human institution, for the advantages of society are not perceptible in what have been called its earliest stages ; they are only deve- loped when society has considerably advanced. Nobody has described slavery as a natural condition of society ; its origin is usually ascribed either to pro- gress, or to a corrective principle applied to a super- induced evil. Slaves were probably at first captives taken in war, and their services were deemed a ransom given for life. This was certainly an improvement on indiscriminate massacre, but it was an improvement which suggested making war for the sake of obtaining captives, and this naturally led to piracy and kidnapping. Though there are no natural principles in humanity which lead to barbarism, we shall find that men have PERSONAL SECURITY. 105 the power of so perverting natural principles as to de- rive from them the very opposite of the purposes for which they were implanted. The love of power is not necessarily bad in its origin ; it is connected with the desire or urgency of action which is inherent in our nature, and which, like the love of acquisition, urges man to individualize the objects by which he is sur-. rounded, and to stamp on the external world the imprint of himself. The difference between men is not about the end, but the means. In the anecdote already quoted, of the father who said to his son, " Take your physic, master Tommy, and you shall have the dog to kick/' is embodied all the sophistry with which tyrants, whether in wide or contracted spheres, have deluded their supporters, since the crea- tion of the world. Master Tommy was tempted by an opportunity for exercising his love of activity ; his anxiety to act, to produce, to exert his faculties in short, to display power. The father's error was not the giving an opportunity for the exercise of power, but it was the direction of the power to an improper object : had he promised a top to spin, instead of a dog to kick, the bribe would, in all probability, have been equally effectual. There can be no doubt that barbarism has a ten- dency to generate a state of slavery; for we find such a condition among all uncivilized nations, save where it is limited by the difficulty of procuring subsistence ; for it is the essential attribute of power that, if un- checked, it will continue to increase. Civilization alone supplies the check, and, consequently, civilization is necessary, not merely to the enjoyment, but even to the 106 SOCIAL RELATIONS. possession of freedom. Liberty arises out of the deve- lopment of society; it is indeed a natural principle, but then it is a principle which requires both sanction and protection. Like property, it has been acknow- ledged, in some form or other, from the earliest ages ; as civilization advanced it became more clearly denned, more distinctly recognised in the various spheres of human activity and enterprise, spheres which could not have existed or been maintained without civiliza- tion. 107 CHAPTER VI. STATE OF NATURE WAR. ONE of the strangest, and at the same time one of the most common misrepresentations respecting a state of barbarism is, that it is a scene of universal love and harmony. The dreamers who have published their visions of an original condition of ignorance and inno- cence, averred that the union which bound man to man under such circumstances, was a spirit of spontaneous love, leading each to delight in the brotherhood of his kind, and thus gathering together all the members of the tribe into one affectionate and harmonious family. A close examination of savage life has reversed the picture ; instead of being a state of universal love and harmony, it is commonly one of perpetual discord and violence. We have shewn that the feeling of right is natural to man, and that the efficacy of civilization is most sensibly experienced in defining, strengthening, and securing the rights both of the individual and the community; but where rights are unsettled and unde- fined, wrongs must be frequent, and recourse must be had to violence for that redress which no law exists to afford. When the right of redressing his own wrongs is left to every individual, injuries are felt most deeply, and revenge is sought with unrelenting rancour. In civi- lized life we too frequently see the fatal influence of 108 STATE OP NATURE : such a principle; the worst outrages are usually per- petrated by those who " take the law into their own hands," a servile war, a Jacquerie, or an agrarian insurrection, are far more to be dreaded than plague, pestilence, and famine. But these horrors, which are found occasionally in civilized states, constitute almost the entire history of savage existence : no time can obliterate the memory of an offence, and no expiation can be received for injury but the blood of the offender. It is not altogether to the encroachments of the Whites that we must attribute the rapid disappearance of the Red men from America; at least as destructive a cause is the inveterate passion of the Indians for war, and their insatiate thirst for vengeance. In a future chap- ter, we shall see that there is strong evidence to prove that depopulation had commenced among the abori- gines of North America long before the New World was visited by Europeans, and since that period, tribes have disappeared from the interior, which never were brought into contact with the white intruders. Mr. Kolff, in his recent examination of the Indian Archipelago, found the islanders invariably engaged in war, and, conscious of the mutual sufferings they in- flicted on themselves, most of them expressed anxiety that the Dutch would establish their supremacy over all parties, and become umpires in their quarrels. One example will shew from what trifling causes a series of sanguinary feuds may arise and be perpetuated. The following is his account of the enmity which had arisen against the people of the Romian, in the Tenimber islands : "The people of Romian happened to have more WAR. 109 success in the Trepang fishery than the people of the other villages during two successive years, which gave rise to an envious feeling on the part of their neigh- bours, which was increased by a Chinese vessel having remained at Eomian to trade, while only one of the China-men belonging to her proceeded to Ewena to barter with the inhabitants. These circumstances gave rise to distrust and estrangement, and the people of both villages began to avoid each other, though with- out coming to an open rupture. " A third accidental circumstance which occurred, tended to enlarge the breach. While the children belonging to the two villages were playing with small bows and arrows, a child from Ewena happened to wound slightly one of those from Romian. The inha- bitants of the latter place, viewing the accident as an intentional offence, demanded satisfaction, and when- ever parties from each village met, they proceeded from words to blows, and at length broke out into open war with each other. Each party robbed the other of their women, destroyed their fisheries, and put a stop to their agriculture, becoming more embittered at the occurrence of every deed, until at length, a few weeks before my arrival, a downright skirmish ensued, in which the people of Ewena had one man killed and nine wounded, while ten belonging to the other party were wounded also. " The people of Ewena being the less powerful of the two, demanded assistance from the inhabitants of Aweer. The parties now became so exasperated, that there existed no possibility of those who had not entered into the quarrel being able to pacify them, and 110 STATE OP NATURE : the strife soon extended to Larrat, and even to the more distant Serra, where individuals influenced by family connexions took up the cause of one or the other party." The New Zealanders, in many respects the most remarkable barbarous nation with which we are ac- quainted, do not yield to any other in savage ferocity; their wars are incessant, and frequently arise from the most trivial causes. A feud, which Mr. Marsden had the good fortune to reconcile just as it was about to lead to sanguinary outrages, will give a very good idea of their propensity to war on the most trivial occasion. " When Mr. Marsden visited the neighbourhood of the Shukehanga in 1819, he found a quarrel about to commence between two of the principal chiefs whose lands lay contiguous, and who were also, as it appeared, nearly related in consequence of the pigs of the one having got into the sweet potato grounds of the other, who had retaliated by shooting several of them. The chief whose pigs had committed the trespass, and whom Mr. Marsden was now visiting, was an old man, appa- rently eighty years of age, named Warremaddoo, who had now resigned the chief authority to his son Ma- tanghee : yet this affair rekindled all the ancient enthu- siasm of the venerable warrior. The other chief was called Moodeewhy. The morning debate, at which several chiefs spoke with great force and dignity, had been suddenly interrupted; but it was resumed in the evening, when Mr. Marsden was again present. On this occasion, old Warremaddoo threw off his mat, took spear, and began to address his tribe and the chiefs. He made strong appeals to them against the injustice WAR. Ill and ingratitude of Moodeewhy's conduct towards them recited many injuries which he and his tribe had suffered from Moodeewhy for a long period, men- tioned instances of his bad conduct in the time that his father's bones were removed from the Aboodu Pa to their family vault, stated acts of kindness which he had shewn to Moodeewhy at different times, and said that he had twice saved his tribe from total ruin. In the present instance, Moodeewhy had killed three of his hogs. Every time he mentioned his loss, the recol- lection seemed to nerve afresh his aged sinews ; he shook his hoary beard, stamped with indignant rage, and poised his quivering spear. He exhorted his tribe to be bold and courageous, and declared that he would lead them in the morning against the enemy, and rather than submit, he would be killed and eaten. All that they wanted was firmness and courage; he knew well the enemies they had to meet their hearts did not lie deep ; and if they were resolutely opposed, they would yield. His oration continued nearly an hour, and all listened to him with great attention. This dispute, however, partly through Mr. Marsden's inter- cession, who offered to give each of the indignant leaders an adze if they would make peace, was at last amicably adjusted, and the two, as the natives expressed it, were made both alike inside. But Mr. Marsden was a good deal surprised on observing old Warremaddoo, immediately after he had rubbed noses with Moodee- why in token of reconcilement, begin, with his slaves, to burn and destroy the fence of the enclosure in which they were assembled, belonging to Moodeewhy, who, however, took no notice of the destruction of his pro- 112 STATE OP NATURE : perty thus going on before his face. Upon inquiry, he was told that this was done in satisfaction for a fence of the old man's, which Moodeewhy had destroyed in the first instance, and the breaking down of which had in fact given rise to the trespass. A New Zealander would hold himself guilty of a breach of the first prin- ciples of honour, if he ever made up a quarrel without having exacted full compensation for what he might conceive to be his wrongs." When we find such trifles as a quarrel between chil- dren, the breaking down of a fence, or a trespass com- mitted by pigs, giving rise to sanguinary wars, we can easily believe that causes for hostility must be abundant, and consequently wars incessant. The desire of vengeance is the first, and almost the only principle, which a savage instils into the minds of his children. It grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength ; and as their attention is directed to a few objects, it naturally acquires an intensity unknown in countries where the mind is occu- pied by a variety of avocations and pursuits. The revenge of a savage resembles the blind rage of an animal, rather than the passion of a man; it is often directed against inanimate objects, the stone upon which he falls, the arrow by which he is wounded, the implement which, from his own awkwardness, has failed to accomplish his purpose. But when directed against enemies, the vengeful passions of a savage know no bounds. He neither pities, nor forgives, nor spares. The duration of his vengeance is equal to its intensity; the anecdote already quoted by the lotan's deadly pursuit of his brother, is a fair specimen of the unrelenting vengeance displayed in savage life. WAR. 113 Unreflecting persons may, perhaps, be ready to con- clude that when the motives for war are personal, and when the warriors act individually, we should find examples of chivalrous daring and heroic courage, instances of gallant exploits, more ennobling than all the " pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war." No such deeds relieve the ferocity of savage warfare. Its general nature is well described in the following narrative, recorded by Theodore Irving : " The black chief (of the Pawnee Indians) had, by some means or other, fallen into disgrace with his people. They shunned him, and refused to admit him into their councils, until by some heroic action he should wipe oiF the stain upon his name. He knew that there was no resource ; that the blood of an enemy would alone retrieve his fame. He determined there- fore to shed it, in a manner which even the most des- perate of his own tribe would not have dreamed of, and which would strike a salutary terror of his name into the hearts of his hostile neighbours. " Early one morning, taking his bow and quiver, he left his lodge, and started on foot for the Crow village, about two hundred miles distant. He set out upon his journey without attendants, and singing his death-song. His tribe watched till he was out of sight; they knew not where he was going ; he might return soon, in a day, in a month, and perhaps never. They knew his desperate character; they knew that his errand was of blood; and they doubted not that if he returned, he would bring home trophies sufficient to place him once more at the head of their councils. " On the evening of the fourth day, he reached the 114 STATE OF NATURE : Crow village ; but waited at a short distance, concealed in a prairie, until it was completely dark. He then entered the village, and passed through its very centre. Several of the inhabitants were stirring, but the dark- ness was so great, that they did not regard him par- ticularly, and he passed on undetected. At length he came to a lodge a little apart from the rest, with a horse standing at the door, tied by a halter of buffalo hair. Peering over the bear-skin, which hung before the inner entrance, he beheld two Indians reclining in front of a fire. A few feet from them, a squaw was pounding corn, in a large wooden mortar; and at a little distance was a child sleeping on the floor. The backs of all were turned towards the warrior, and he hesitated a moment how to act. Drawing forth his knife with his left hand, and grasping his tomahawk in his right, he dashed into the building. With two blows he clove the skulls of the men ; he sheathed his knife in the heart of the woman, and dashed out the brains of the child. Having scalped his victims, he mounted the horse at the door and started off. He had gone but a few paces, before he observed an Indian making for the lodge. He felt a strong hankering after his scalp also ; but there were several other Indians at hand, and he feared detection. Resisting therefore the powerful temptation, he turned away, and galloped for the prairie. Scarcely had he got clear of the village, when it rang with yells and screams; and in a few minutes he heard the clattering of hoofs, and the sound of voices, in hot pursuit. In a night chase, however, the pursued has always the advantage ; he has but to dash forward, while his foes must either stop to keep WAR. 115 his trace, or follow at random. So it was with the black chief; and long- before morning, his horse had borne him beyond the sound of pursuit. "He reached his village in safety; related his tale, and displayed his scalps. They hesitated not a moment to believe him ; for in recounting his exploits an Indian never lies. He was received with honour, and once more resumed his place in the councils of his nation. " This is a picture of Indian warfare to steal like an assassin upon an unarmed enemy, and butcher him without the slightest chance of resistance. Blood is what he seeks no matter whether from the veins of man or woman, infancy or age. A scalp is his trophy; and is alike glorious, whether silvered with age, or torn from the reeking head of a youthful warrior. With the savage, a hankering for blood is ambition; a relentless fury in shedding it, renown." In his description of the lotan, the most favourable specimen of an Indian chief he had seen, Mr. Irving is again compelled to record the horrible features of savage warfare. " His countenance, though calm and grave, had a mild expression not usually met among Indians. His whole demeanour was prepossessing, and when he spoke, his voice was like soft music. He was a favourite with most of the wild traders in that part of the coun- try, on account of his generous character. If a stranger entered the village, he was the first to welcome him to his lodge, and to protect him from the insults of the meaner spirits of his nation. Yet even with this chivalrous nature, he was an Indian warrior; and an Indian warrior is little better than a murderer. He had counted as many scalps as any of his nation; but 116 STATE OP NATURE: those of hoary age, of the woman and the child, were hanging in the smoke of his lodge, in companionship with those of the war-worn warrior ." Baron Meyendorff's narrative of his journey from Orenburgh to Bokhara, published some years ago at the expense of the Russian government, contains many striking illustrations of the barbarity displayed in the wars between the wild tribes of Central Asia. As the book is little known, we shall translate a short extract, omitting some details unfit for publication. " I saw several examples of the inhumanity of the Kirghiz, one particularly attracted my attention. Several of those who accompanied us, having imagined that they recognised in a beggar, a person who had been engaged in the plunder of their horde, seized his horse and clothes, tied his hands behind his back, and would have cut off his head, only for the interference of the chief. The mendicant was released, but he had great difficulty in escaping from the injuries and insults with which he was overwhelmed. " I was witness to another scene, still more illustra- tive of their ferocity. The sultan, Harun Ghazi, who accompanied us, sent on some hundreds of his men in advance, who, without our knowledge attacked the aoul (village) of the sultan Manem-beg Janghaze, one of his enemies, attached to the party of the Khan of Khiva. The prudent Manem-beg, forewarned in time of his adversary's intentions, had escaped; but his wives, his brother Yakash, and all his flocks, became the prey of the Kirghiz of Harun Ghazi. We saw them near the Sir-deria (the ancient Juxartes). The flocks were driven to Bokhara; and the women, lodged in three WAR. 117 tents, were exposed to the brutality of the brothers of the Sultan The Kirghiz, so far from pitying their fate, spoke of it as a good joke. ' It is the con- queror's right/ said they, ' and no one can gainsay it/ Yakash, guarded by five Kirghiz, followed Harun Ghazi, mounted on the worst horse that could be found. Unfortunately, Yakash had, some months before, acted as a guide to a party of Khivians, who had pillaged the aoul of Harun Ghazi. The poor young man was about twenty-two years of age, handsome and finely formed; but now, foreseeing the fate that awaited him, he was cast down and broken in spirit. "An old Kirghiz went up to the Sultan and said to him ' my children were massacred during the late incursion of the Khivians; Yakash was their destroyer; God and man ordain that I should avenge their death/ Harun Ghazi was constrained to deliver up the captive though he was his cousin-german, and the young man's fate was decided. The old Kirghiz came behind Yakash, who was on horseback, and fired at him but missed him. In an instant the other Kirghiz threw themselves on the unfortunate man, stripped off his dress for fear of soiling it, and, deaf to the prayers of the victim, cut his throat as mercilessly as if he were a sheep, with one of the small knives which they usually carry about them; they then spurned his corpse, and gashed it with their lances, to glut their rage against this unfortunate young man/' The treatment of captives is one of the most revolt- ing features in savage warfare, and it is the custom which has most obstinately been maintained, in spite of the exertions of missionaries. When the Jesuks 118 STATE OF NATURE : first undertook the conversion of the Canadian Indians, they honourably exerted themselves to lessen the hor- rors of the incessant wars they witnessed, but in gene- ral they found that they only exposed themselves to danger, without effecting anything in favour of the unhappy victim. We shall quote one of their narra- tives, from the old English translation; simply pre- mising that the war to which it refers had commenced long before that part of America was visited by any European nation. " One day, the Hurons having advantage in a skir- mish, made an Iroquois chief captive, and he was brought to one of the Huron villages, where the Jesuit fathers were assembled. No sooner was he arrived than it was decreed in an assembly of the ancient savages that he should be presented to one of their old chiefs, to replace his nephew, who had been killed in war, or to be disposed of as he should think proper. Brebeuf, one of the Jesuits, immediately resolved to convert him to Christianity. The captive was clothed in a new beaver habit, and his temples were circled with a kind of diadem. He was surrounded by a troop of triumphant warriors, and seemed to be quite uncon- cerned at his fate. When Brebeuf approached him, he perceived that he had been tortured even before his fate was determined. One of his hands had been crushed between two flints, and had lost a finger. His other hand had lost two, which had been cut off by a hatchet. The joints of his arms had been burned, and a great gash appeared on one of them. All this had been inflicted on the poor wretch before he entered the Huron village ; for he no sooner arrived there than he WAR. 119 was treated with tlie greatest endearments, and a young woman was assigned him for his wife. Such was this barbarian's situation when he was converted by Bre- beuf; and he is esteemed to be the first adult convert that ever was made of the Iroquois nation, being bap- tized by the name of Joseph. " All this while the captive was loaded with caresses, and Brebeuf was permitted to take him to his tent every night ; but his sores now became putrid and full of worms. To increase his misery, he was carried in triumph from village to village, and wherever he came he was obliged to sing, so that sometimes his voice entirely failed him; nor had he the least respite, but when he was alone with Brebeuf and the other mission- aries. At last he was conveyed to the village where the chief lived who was to decide upon his fate. The captive presented himself with a perfectly unconcerned air to his supposed uncle, who, after surveying him, talked to him in the following strain : f Nephew, you cannot imagine the joy I conceived, when I understood that you were to supply the place of him I have lost; I had already prepared a mat for you in my cabin, and it was with the utmost satisfaction that I resolved to pass the rest of my days with you in peace : but the condition in which I see you, forces me to alter my re- solution. It is plain that the pains and tortures you endure must render your life insupportable to yourself, and you must think that I do you a service in abridging its course. Those who have mangled you in this manner have caused your death. Take courage, therefore, my dear nephew, prepare yourself this evening to shew you are a man, and that you are superior to the force of 120 STATE OF NATURE: torments.' The captive heard this discourse with the greatest indifference, and only answered with a resolute voice that it was well. The sister of the deceased then served him with victuals, and caressed him in the most affectionate manner, while the old chieftain put his own pipe into his mouth, with the most tender demon- strations of parental love. Towards noon, the captive, at the expense of his supposed uncle, made his funeral feast, and while the inhabitants of the village were assembled around him, he harangued them as follows : ' Brethren, I am about to die; divert yourselves boldly around me; be convinced that I am a man, and that I neither fear death, nor any torture you can inflict.' He then began a song, in which he was joined by the war- riors who were present. He was then presented with victuals, and when the feast was ended he was carried to the place of execution, which is called the cabin of blood (or, heads cut off), and always belongs to the head of the village. About eight o'clock in the even- ing, all the savages of the village being assembled, the young men who were to be executioners of the tragedy, forming the first row round the prisoner, were ordered by one of their infernal elders to behave well, meaning thereby to put him to the most excruciating tortures. The prisoner was then seated on a mat, where his hands were tied, and then rising, he danced round the cabin, singing his death song all the time, and then replaced himself upon the mat. One of the elders then took from him his robe, which he said was destined for a chief whom he named, adding that such a village was to cut off his head, and that another should have his arm, with part of his body, for a feast. Father Brebeuf WAR. 121 having vainly interceded for mercy, receiving no reply, but threats of a like fate if he continued to interfere, encouraged the victim to suffer with the sentiments of Christianity, which he did with the most surprising firmness, without dropping the least reproachable word. He even talked of the affairs of his nation with as much indifference as if he had been at home with his family. Eleven fires had been kindled to torment him ; and the elders said it was of consequence that he should be alive at sun rising, for which reason his tortures were prolonged to that time, when the barbarians, fearing that he would expire without iron (another of their barbarous superstitions), carried him out of the village, and cut off one of his feet, a hand, and his head, which were disposed of as proposed, while his body was thrown into a cauldron." It would be easy to multiply anecdotes of the exe- crable tortures inflicted by the Indians on their pri- soners, but there is a horrid sameness in all the narratives, which renders the task repulsive and dis- gusting. There is, however, a still more revolting practice connected with the subject, on which a few words must be said, cannibalism, the feeding on human flesh, is found in most barbarous tribes ; a practice so revolting to our nature, that its existence anywhere was denied, until it was established by irrefragable evidence. We find in every part of the New World, on the continent and in the islands, entire communities, tribes, and nations, remarkable for this practice. It prevailed in both the Americas, in the Oceanic Archipelago, and in many of the clusters of Polynesia. Even where circumstances had abolished the practice, traces of its G 122 STATE OF NATURE : former existence were preserved in the language. " Let us go and eat that nation," was the phrase by which the Iroquois announced their purpose of making war, though they had ceased to be cannibals before they became known to Europeans. It subsisted in the comparatively civilized empire of Mexico, and relics of it were discovered among the mild inhabitants of Peru. In New Zealand, the eating of human flesh is not merely an excess of occasional revenge, but is actually a luxurious gratification of appetite. Sir Stamford Raffles has given a more complete account of the can- nibalism practised by the Battas, an extensive and populous nation of Sumatra, than we possess of the practice among any other people, and we shall therefore extract a portion of the account from his letter to Mr. Marsden. " I have found all you say on the subject of canni- balism more than confirmed. I do not think you have even gone far enough. You might have broadly stated that it is not only the custom to eat the victim, but to eat him alive. I shall pass over the particulars of all previous information which I have received, and endea- vour to give you, in a few words, the result of a deli- berate inquiry from the Batta chiefs of Tappanooly. I caused the most intelligent to be assembled, and in the presence of Mr. Prince and Dr. Jack, obtained the following inform'ation, of the truth of which none of us have the least doubt. " It is the universal and standing law of the Battas that death by eating shall be inflicted in the following cases: 1st, for adultery; 2nd, for midnight robbery; 3rd, in wars of importance, that is to say, one district WAR. 123 against another, the prisoners are sacrificed; 4th, for intermarrying in the same tribe, which is forbidden, from the circumstance of their having ancestors in common; and, 5th, for treacherous attacks on a house, village, or person. " In all the above cases it is lawful for the victims to be eaten ; and they are eaten alive, that is to say, they are not previously put to death. The victim is tied to a stake, with his arms extended, the party collect in a circle around him, and the chief gives the order to com- mence eating. The chief enemy, when he is a prisoner, or the chief party injured in other cases, has the first selection; and after he has cut off his slice, others cut off pieces, according to their taste and fancy, until all the flesh is devoured. "It is either eaten raw or grilled, and generally dipped in sambul (a preparation of Chili pepper and salt), which is always in readiness. Rajah Bandaharra, a Batta, and one of the chiefs of Tappanooly, asserted that he was present at a festival of this kind, about eight years ago, at the village of Subluan, on the other side of the bay, not nine miles distant, where the head may still be seen. " When the party is a prisoner taken in war, he i eaten immediately, and upon the spot. Whether dead or alive he is equally eaten, and it is usual even to drag the bodies from their graves, and after disinterring them, to eat the flesh. This only in cases of war. "From the clear and concurring testimony of all parties, it is certain that it is the practice not to kill the victim till the whole of the flesh cut off by the party is eaten, should he live so long; the chief or 124 STATE OF NATURE: party injured then comes forward, and carries home the head, which he preserves as a trophy. Within the last three years there have been two instances of this kind of punishment within ten miles of Tappanooly, and the heads are still preserved. " In cases of adultery, the injured party usually takes the ear or ears ; but the ceremony is not allowed to take place, except the wife's relations are present and par- take of it. " In these and other cases, where the criminal is directed to be eaten, he is secured and kept for two or three days, till every person (that is to say, males) is assembled. He is then eaten quietly and in cold blood, with as much ceremony, and perhaps more than attends the execution of a capital sentence in Europe. " The bones are scattered abroad after the flesh has been eaten, and the head alone preserved. The brains belong to the chief or injured party, who usually pre- serves them in a bottle for the purposes of charms, witchcraft, etc. They do not eat the bowels, but like the heart; and many drink ;the blood from bamboos. The palms of the hands, and the soles of the feet, are the delicacies of epicures. " Horrid and diabolical as these practices may appear, it is no less true, that they are the results of much deliberation among the parties; and seldom, except in the case of prisoners of war, the effect of immediate and private revenge. In all cases of crimes, the party has a regular trial, and no punishment can be inflicted until sentence is regularly and formally passed in the public fair. - Here the chiefs of the neighbouring kanipong assemble, hear the evidence, and deliberate upon the WAR. 125 c -ime and probable guilt of the party; when condemned, the sentence is ratified by the chiefs drinking the tuah or toddy, which is final, and may be considered equiva- lent to signing and sealing with us. " I was very particular in my inquiries whether the assembly were intoxicated on occasion of these punish- ments. I was assured it was never the case. The people take rice with them and eat it with the meat, but no tuah is allowed. The punishment is always in- flicted in public. " The men alone are allowed to partake, as the flesh of man is prohibited to women (probably from an appre- hension that they might become too fond of it) . The flesh is not allowed to be carried away from the spot, but must be consumed at the time. " I am assured that the Battas are more attached to these laws than the Mohammedans are to the Koran, and that the number of the punishments is very consi- derable. My informants considered that there could not be less than fifty or sixty men eaten in a year, and this in times of peace; but they were unable to estimate the true extent, considering the great population of the country; they were confident, however, that these laws were strictly enforced, wherever the name of Batta was known; and that it was only in the immediate vicinity of our settlements that they were modified and neglected. For proof, they referred me to every Batta in the vici- nity, and to the number of skulls to be seen in every village, each of which was from a victim of the kind. " With regard to the relish with which the parties devour the flesh; it appeared, that independent of the desire of revenge, which may be supposed to exist 126 STATE OF NATURE : among the principals, about one half of the people eat it with a relish, and speak of it with delight; the other half, though present, may not partake. Human flesh is, however, generally considered preferable to cow or buffalo beef, or hog, and was admitted to be so, even by my informants. " Adverting to the possible origin of this practice, it was observed, that formerly they ate their parents when too old for work; this, however, is no longer the case, and thus a step has been gained in civilization. " It is admitted, that the parties may be redeemed for a pecuniary compensation, but this is entirely at the option of the chief enemy or injured party, who, after his sentence is passed, may either have his victim eaten, or he may sell him for a slave; but the law is, that he shall be eaten, and the prisoner is entirely at the mercy of his prosecutor. " The laws by which these sentences are inflicted, are too well known to require reference to books, but I am promised some MS accounts which relate to the subject. These laws are called huhum pinang an from depang an, to eat law or sentence to eat. " I could give you many more details, but the above may be sufficient to shew that our friends, the Battas, are even worse than you have represented them, and that those who are still sceptical have yet more to learn." The practice of cannibalism, in New Zealand, has been established by the concurrent testimony of all who have visited the country. Those who have had opportunities for close examination, inform us that the revolting practice appears to have originated in the WAR. 127 superstitious belief, that those who partook of the ban- quet would imbibe some portion of the heroism for which the deceased was distinguished. This explanation only applies to those who have been slain in battle, but it is the custom with the New Zealanders to kill and eat their slaves. It is probable, however, that the slaves are offered as sacrifices, and that feeding upon them is an act of homage to the manes of a chief, or to an idol. But however this may be, nothing is more certain, than that a depraved and unnatural appetite, when once formed, has a tendency, not only to continue, but to in- crease. This is notoriously the case with the dirt-eaters of the West Indies, and in a similar instance, which came within the author's knowledge. A young girl, about nine years of age, contracted a habit of chewing cinders; she had indulged it for some time before she was discovered, and then every possible effort was made to cure her of it. The utmost watchfulness failed, and she died a victim, to her depraved appetite. A friend, whose name I am not at liberty to mention, has favoured me with notes of a conversation with a man, who, under pressure of famine at sea, had eaten a part of one of his companions. He declared, that the feeling of disgust disappeared at the second or third meal, and did not return during the five days that the crew were reduced to this horrid fare. He added, that after the lapse of many years, he never thought upon the subject without finding desire strangely mixed with loathing; and finally, that it was this instinctive feeling which rendered him most reluctant to allude to the subject. War, as we have seen, is more frequent among savage than civilized nations ; it is also more sanguinary and 128 STATE OF NATURE : more ferocious, and it is utterly destitute of those redeeming features which throw its horrors into the shade. There is no heroism, no spirit of chivalry, no high and noble daring ; there is nothing but cruelty in the victor, and misery for the vanquished. War is not to be regarded as always an unmixed evil : it is the consequence of the essential diversity of the elements of humanity; its root is inherent in the very nature of the ideas in which the existence of different nations is founded; for these ideas being necessarily partial, bounded and exclusive, are neces- sarily hostile, aggressive and tyrannical. In the first quarrel on record that between Cain and Abel there was a diversity of occupation, and consequently a diverse development of the elements of human nature. "Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a tiller of the ground/' Hostility between these occupations, on a larger scale, meets us in the earliest pages of history. The agriculturists settled in the valley of the Nile, felt that the wandering tribes of Arabia and Palestine were their natural enemies : " every shepherd was an abomination to the Egyptians," they would not eat at the same table with Hebrews, that is, with nomade tribes, as the name properly signifies. The diversity of elements is necessary to life, and war is, to a certain extent, a necessary manifestation of that life. The combats of parties within a given con- stitution, constitute the political life of a people. The same is the case with its external relations. " The conflicts with each other," says Victor Cousins, "of the nations of an epoch, constitute the life of an epoch : none has passed off without war; none could. WAR. 129 War is nothing else than a bloody exchange of ideas made at the point of the sword, and at the cannon's mouth ; a battle is nothing but the conflict of error and truth: I say of truth; for in a given epoch, a minor error is truth in comparison with a greater error, or with any error that has served its time ; victory and conquest are but the victory of the truth of to-day over the truth of yesterday, which to-day has become an error." But this view of war, philosophically just when applied to the contests of civilized nations that is, nations in a state of progress cannot be extended to the conflicts of barbarous tribes. In savage warfare, passion is arrayed against passion, and it is quite in- different who shall be gainer ; in civilized contests idea is opposed to idea, and in the long run the victory must be on the side of humanity. Let it not be imagined that this reasoning is an ad- vocacy of war; on the contrary, we believe that as civili- zation advances, the collision of ideas between nations will lead only to discussions ; the change that has taken place in the internal conflicts of parties, that is, the collision of ideas within the limits of a constitution, justifies such an expectation. In the reign of Charles I. hostile parties met on the field of battle and slaugh- tered each other; in that of Charles II. they met in courts of justice, and hanged each other; the sword and rope were both employed, but to a less extent than formerly at the Revolution. On the accession of the Brunswick dynasty, Walpole was anxious to send the lords Oxford and Bolingbroke to the scaffold, and at a later period Pulteney meditated the same fate for 130 STATE OF NATURE : Walpole. At present the leaders of parties are content to see each other enjoy life and estate in quiet. Nor are there wanting signs of this pacific spirit extending to the discussion of national relations. The Belgic question brought into direct collision the most angry passions, and the most opposite ideas, that ever set Europe in a flame. It has been terminated by shedding ink instead of blood, and by a lavish use of red-tape instead of red-coats. Civilization finds war, like all other elements of humanity, necessarily existing. It does not create the principle, but it controls and modifies its action. Horror after horror is swept away; the captive ceases to be sent to the stake or the cauldron; slavery be- comes an improvement substituted for murder; the enslaved captives are treated with more and more kind- ness, until servitude ceases altogether and prisoners of war are recognised as men and brothers. The on- ward course of civilization is at least, in this respect, distinctly marked; we can see the direction of its progress : an intelligent and moral public opinion is steadily establishing its empire, instead of brute force, and forming a tribunal to decide the disputes of nations, as peacefully as those of individuals. Ideas are only hostile when they are exclusive ; there never was, and there never can be, a contest between absolute truth on one side, and absolute error on the other; all the struggles of nations, or parties, recorded in history, are conflicts between partial truths. But it must be remembered that a partial truth is even a more dan- gerous error than an absolute falsehood ; just as Homer declares that a fog is better for a thief than night. WAR. 131 Civilization, as it advances, removes the partiality and exclusiveness which, in every human opinion, is the element of falsehood; truths deemed to be hostile are then found to dovetail into each other, and to form part of a general stock of intelligence in which there is no further room for conflict or collision. "We see this process going on around us ; we see it operating on individuals, sects, political parties and nations; it is yet far from complete its progress is impeded by many natural and by many artificial causes; but its final process is certain. " Men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into priming- hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." " The commerce between different nations," says Archbishop Whately, "which is both an effect and cause of national wealth, tends to lessen their disposi- tion to war by making them mutually dependent. Many wars indeed have been occasioned by commercial jealousy; but it will be found, that in almost every instance this has arisen, on one side, if not on both, from unsound views of political economy, which have occasioned the general interests of the community, to a very great amount, to be sacrificed, for a much smaller advantage, to a few individuals. The ruinous expen- siveness also of war (which will never be adequately estimated till the spread of civilization shall have gained general admission for just views of political economy) would alone, if fairly computed, be almost sufficient to banish war from the earth." 132 CHAPTER VII. INDIGENCE. "THE poor you have always with you:" indigence is the most prominent, and perhaps the most important evil of the social system ; misery is most striking when it is in close contact with luxury; and it is to the violent contrasts which society frequently presents that we must ascribe the fantastic visions of a golden age which have so often misled the imagination of phi- lanthropists. Indigence, like crime, exists in every state of society ; but as a vigilant police, increasing the number of detections, has often led people to believe that there was an actual increase of guilt, so the exer- tions of the benevolent to relieve distress have some- times created a mistaken opinion respecting the gradual accumulation of misery. There is a tendency in the human mind to confound the discovery of anything with the commencement of its existence : this is ob- servable even in physical science ; several of the oppo- nents of Sir Isaac Newton attacked him, as if he had framed the laws of gravitation, instead of detecting them; and many of the modern adversaries of geology write as if they believed that Lyell, Sedgwick, and Buckland had themselves arranged the strata, disposed the fossil remains, and traced the limits that regulate the geographical distribution of animals. A quaint old writer says, "nobody will give anybody the credit of INDIGENCE. 133 first discovering what everybody might have found out at any time." We have seen that society exists naturally and neces- sarily ; there must consequently be certain laws of social existence; and if their conditions remain unfulfilled, either through accident or design, social suffering is the inevitable consequence. But it is only as society becomes civilized that it takes cognizance of the fulfil- ment or non-fulfilment of these conditions ; and hence we find, that at every epoch when a great advance was made in intelligence, a number of social evils, before undiscovered, were brought into view, and treated by many as if they had been brought into existence. Ecclesiastical corruptions were certainly neither greater nor more numerous at the era of the Reformation than they were in the preceding century, but in the increased light of that time they were more clearly seen, more closely watched, and more diligently recorded. British liberty and the constitutional privileges of the legisla- ture were more respected by the Stuarts than they were by the Tudors, yet the number of recorded viola- tions is far greater under the former than under the latter dynasty. Actions for false imprisonment were far more numerous after the Revolution than before it, though illegal arrests had notoriously diminished. In the same way the science of political economy having for the first time revealed the nature and extent of in- digence as a social evil, the subject excited universal attention, and led many to believe that an evil of such magnitude must have recently come into existence, or at least must have only of late days reached its present extent, or else it would have been long since discovered. 134 INDIGENCE. Some disastrous results have followed from this error; a cry of alarm was raised about the rapid extension of pauperism. Europe was supposed to be menaced by a new Jacquerie, or rather by a social revolution, infi- nitely worse than that threatened by Jacques Bon- homme, or Jack Cade. Landlords, in their excited imaginations, saw their estates invaded, capitalists, their fortunes rent in sunder, and manufacturers their machinery destroyed, by millions of paupers, whose numbers, in their opinion had increased, were increas- ing, and could not be diminished. A change of system, in relation to pauperism, was demanded, for the sake of the rich. This error on one side led to a more dan- gerous error on the other. The poor were induced to believe that the wealth of the rich was derived from their misery, they deemed that the accumulation of property was the cause of poverty ; they began to specu- late on the possibility of reconstructing society on a different basis; and they were easily persuaded to regard measures proposed for the prevention of poverty, or at least for the limitation of its extent, as disguised at- tempts for the degradation, or even for the extermina- tion of paupers. Thus the evil, instead of being viewed in its general relations to society, was regarded only in reference to classes. The ideas formed of it were con- sequently partial and exclusive, what was true of pau- perism in its most limited relation to a class, was taken to be true in its widest relation to the entire commu- nity; and such confusion between relative and absolute truth, is the source of all the mischievous falsehoods that have ever predominated over humanity. Though nothing can be clearer, on the slightest INDIGENCE. 135 examination, than the aphorism, that whatever makes the rich man richer tends also to elevate the poor, and whatever makes the poor man poorer tends equally to depress the rich ; there are, unfortunately, many impe- diments to the universal reception of this truth, and there is, perhaps, no greater difficulty presented to the advocates of civilization and the progress of society, than that arising from the prevalent errors on the subject of indigence. A rigorous examination of the acknowledged evil is therefore necessary; and though a complete ana- lysis would greatly exceed our limits, we trust that we shall be able to offer some considerations which may tend to quiet the alarms of the friends of humanity, and remove some of the suspicions attached to the advance of civilization. It is obvious that there are various degrees of indi- gence ; there is only one stage in which it has an aspect of uniformity the complete and absolute destitution of all means of subsistence at the same instant. But this stage is equivalent to death; such a state may exist, but it cannot continue to exist; its conditions include, in their terms, immediate extinction. Hence arises the common sophism, that indigence is unknown in savage life : with the savage indigence is death ; it begins and ends at the same moment. An unfavour- able season a deficiency in the supply of game a flood, or a drought may assail any land: in the civi- lized country, the calamity is marked by much suffer- ing; in the savage land, it leaves no trace but bleaching bones and unburied corpses. In spite of Mr. CarluVs bitter attack upon statisticians, the fact that the average duration of human life has been sensibly increased by 136 INDIGENCE. the progress of civilization, is an unquestionable proof that cases of absolute indigence, that is, of sheer starva- tion, have been diminished. Belief, for cases of absolute indigence, must come from a reserved fund, accumulated somewhere. It may be a question in civilized states whether this fund be sufficient or insufficient, but in savage life no such thing exists. It is a common mistake to suppose that capital is accumulated exclusively for the benefit of its pos- sessor; but it is easy to shew that capitalists are essential to the well-being of the entire community. Every bad harvest would necessarily generate a famine, unless there were a fund to purchase supplies of food from other countries ; every suspension of demand for the productions of any branch of industry, would be followed by a cessation of employment in that branch, if the capitalist had not a fund on which he could fall back until the market changed. Capital is the security against indigence, belonging not merely to the capitalist himself, but to every labourer in the community. There is no poverty where there is no capital, because death acts as relieving officer, and the tomb is the sole refuge for the destitute. The case of absolute indigence requires no further examination ; but when we come to examine the degrees of relative indigence, we find our path beset by unex- pected difficulties. It is generally agreed that indi- gence consists in a want of the necessaries of life ; it is far from being agreed what are the things necessary to existence, for it is notorious that what in one age or country would be considered extreme poverty, might in a different age or country be regarded as comparative luxury. INDIGENCE. 137 An aboriginal Australian is satisfied with a condition which the most miserable mendicant in Europe would regard with horror : he supports hunger, thirst, and pain, to an extent which passes our comprehension; he eats with delight what we could not name without disgust. Indigence then may be said to be, to a certain extent, created by civilization, for civilization unques- tionably multiplies human wants. Relative indigence, or, as it is commonly called, poverty or pauperism, is measured by its proportion to the general estimate of average comforts formed in any given age or country. The condition which might be considered opulent in nomade life, becomes almost disastrous in societies enriched by all the gifts of industry. The Arab is satisfied with a bowl of milk and a handful of dates ; our Saxon ancestors dwelt in cabins to which we should not entrust our horses ; the respectable citizens of the Middle Ages were worse clothed, lodged and fed, than many of those receiving parochial relief in our towns. Let not this change be attributed merely to the progress of luxury, or to the increased effeminacy of manners ; it has far more noble causes. Human exist- ence is developed and extended by civilization : man lives not only physically, but morally, socially, and intellectually, as he advances by progressive improve- ment. It is because his life is enlarged that the wants of his life are increased. His taste becomes more re- fined, his sensations more delicate, his position more dignified. His moral necessities react on his physical necessities ; there are wants created by opinion which do honour to those who feel them, and which are not less entitled to the attention of those who have the 138 INDIGENCE. power of satisfying them, than the cries of thirst or the clamours of hunger. Mr. Carlile, in his recent work on Chartism, has denounced those who dwell upon the fact that the increased duration of human life proves an increase in the comforts of the poor. His censure would be just, if statisticians used such an argument for stopping at the point to which we have attained; but, on the contrary, they invariably urge it as a motive for in- creased exertion. They do not say because society has done this it need do no more, but because society has done so much it has the power of doing more; its former success is not only a motive, but a positive obligation to perseverance. If civilization had not done something for the benefit of humanity, it would scarcely be fair to expect any advantages from its pro- gress. If science never wrought any improvement in society, it is not easy to understand why it should ever be called to an account for neglect. The statistician does not deny poverty to be an evil, he merely asserts that it is not so fatal an evil as it used to be. He does not aver that one meal a day is a comfortable subsist- ence, but he does aver that one meal is better than none at all. The forms of disease may be multiplied, and yet the actual mortality of a country be diminished, and the phases of poverty may increase, without adding to the cases of sheer destitution. Indigence, in a civilized country, is the result of a failure to fulfil the conditions imposed upon social existence. Undoubtedly these conditions are more onerous in proportion to the advance of the state in civilization, but the means of fulfilling them are at least INDIGENCE. 139 equally multiplied. There is a self-adjusting power in society, the working of which becomes more perfect as knowledge advances, which strikes the balance between what is demanded and what can possibly be supplied. When Lord Falkland was dressing, preparatory to the battle of Newbury, his friends expressed astonishment at his indulging in the luxury of a clean shirt; a private soldier, of the present day, would be censured for leaving his linen unchanged. The peasants of England, two centuries ago, like those of Ireland in the present day, went about with bare feet; but an English beggar of modern times is rarely seen without shoes and stockings. The existence which we call miserable, our ancestors would have deemed luxurious, for we have established conditions to social existence of which they never dreamed. There is unfortunately some necessity for dwelling upon this painful subject : science has been too often represented as the enemy of the poor, political economy has been too recently described as a system for ex- cusing starvation, and civilization itself branded as the creator of social miseiy, by philosophers of too much note, for us to pass over the topic lightly. Let us then examine a few of the new conditions imposed on social existence almost within our own memory, and see whether society has not provided means for their fulfilment. All the cares and toils connected with decency and cleanliness are fortunately in our country reckoned among the first conditions of existence, even in the lowest ranks of society, though in other lands, and in ours at no very distant date, they were dis- regarded as superfluities even by the higher orders. 140 INDIGENCE. Bat has civilization or has science, the exponent of civilization while it imposed the conditions, neglected to supply means for their fulfilment ? The experience even of the very young can answer in the negative. Look to the paving, lighting, and cleansing of our streets ; to the improvements made in drainage, sewerage, and ventilation. If society has required that the present class of labourers should be better dressed than their ancestors, it has also enabled them to procure the better clothes with a less amount of labour than their forefathers were compelled to bestow on the purchase of inferior raiment. Society does not injure any class by imposing these conditions on life ; it is idle to say that wants created by habit or opinion are factitious. Existence becomes more valuable as it becomes more complex ; when man rises beyond mere physical life, he is worth more to society and more to himself than he was before. Society gains, and he gains all the difference. The fact that indigence is less fatal, does not prove that it is more tolerable to the sufferer ; on the contrary the extension of surface over which his life ranges, presents a pro- portionate extension of sensibility to external pressure. Hence the indigent derive two advantages from civili- zation: their condition is in itself actually better, and their minor sufferings are more urgent in their claims for relief, and far more certain of commanding attention than the greater misery of the uncivilized. Millions might perish of famine in ancient Hindustan, without exciting so much sympathy from their countrymen as the death of a single English pauper from the neglect of the relieving officers. INDIGENCE. 141 The subject of indigence would lead to much longer discussion, not perhaps devoid of utility, but enough has been said to shew that its existence is not as has been sometimes said, the opprobrium of civilization. The source of the error is, that relative has been confounded with absolute indigence. The average of comforts enjoyed by the independent labourer, one who is merely a labourer and not an artisan, furnishes in every age and country the limit below which indi- gence commences. It is not an evil that this should be a pretty high standard. Society may to a certain extent rejoice when it sees the circle of individual wants spreading. These wants become new impulses to industry, new incentives to activity and emulation ; as man's faculties are more fully developed, man's life acquires a higher price, his worth is more fully appre- ciated by society or the state. This increase of value is shewn in two ways; there is more care in seeing that he has the means of existence, and far more caution in taking away life. It is not very long ago since a man's life was valued at forty shillings, in a dwelling-house, or at the price of a sheep in a field. Human life has since risen considerably; the progress of society has rendered the members of society more valuable, and the state cannot afford to sell life on such cheap terms. So far is civilization then from being an enemy of the poor, that it is in civilized states alone that the poor receive any consideration. So far is science from crushing the indigent, that it is to it, the indigent owe whatever little proportion of comforts they may possess. The progress of knowledge is beneficial to all classes; but those who must profit most by it, are the great 142 INDIGENCE. mass of the working population. As knowledge ad- vances, their sufferings for the first time become known not only to others but to themselves ; the revelation of the evil, is itself a great step towards the remedy \ it is a sad error to suppose that there is no misery in a country where the cry of misery is not heard, for in such a land silence is merely an aggravation of wretch- edness. We might extend this reasoning, and shew that benevolence, the recognised compensation for indigence, is the child of civilization. There are no hospitals, no dispensaries, no houses of refuge in a savage land. There may be, indeed there are, occasional exhibitions of individual good feeling : the Arab may offer the way-worn traveller the hospitality of his tent, and the Indian afford a stranger the shelter of his wigwam ; but these examples of instinctive yielding to the softer feelings of the human heart cannot with any propriety be called benevolence, and are no more an adequate substitute for it than the meteoric flashes of an autum- nal night are substitutes for the steady light of the celestial luminaries. As those flashes leave the night darker and the sky more gloomy, so do the actions of blind, instinctive, and indiscriminate charity, often end in aggravating the evils of poverty and deepening the horrors of misery. Benevolence, to be advantageous, must be scientific that is, it must be based on know- ledge and experience ; savages are too lazy to acquire the knowledge, and too conceited to profit by the experience, but we cannot blame them severely for such neglect when we meet so many instances of the same ignorance, resulting from indolence and pride, even in advanced stages of civilization. INDIGENCE. 143 But it is said, that as civilization advances there is an increasing tendency to treat poverty as a crime. Undoubtedly this is a matter on which some dangerous errors have been allowed to prevail. There have been times when legislators have yielded to the prevalent alarms about the increasing numbers of the poor, and adopted rules, the policy and justice of which were equally questionable. Indigence has been made to bear the blame of more crimes than it has a right to support, as is at once evident from the fact, that crimes are at a maximum between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, which is precisely the period of life when indi- gence is at a minimum. But if we have reason to censure the aberrations of undue severity on one side, we have infinitely more reason to bewail the errors of unenlightened charity on the other. Without going so far as some have done, and asserting that all the evils of humanity have been wrought with the best intentions, we cannot dis- guise the fact that far more mischief has been wrought by well-meaning ignorance than by prepense malice. There is responsible as well as irresponsible indigence : when society has fixed conditions, and provided means for their fulfilment, it has a right to demand an account of the causes of failure. It must, however, be con- fessed, that the most rigid moralist is often at a loss to distinguish between a crime and a misfortune; there are probably few indigent persons who have not to reproach themselves, either with faults or imprudence ; and there are probably just as few who have not met with reverses which no human foresight could predict, and no human exertions could prevent. We must 144 INDIGENCE. further remark, that the failings which for the most part entail the heaviest social sufferings, are precisely those which the moralist is most ready to pardon. " Taking no thought for the morrow," is the most pregnant source of the misery for which the individuals may be regarded as responsible. Apathetic indolence has produced more misery than criminal passion. In the confusion of ignorance this apathy has been some- times set down in the catalogue of virtues, and dignified with the name of "content;" and to this error Miss Edgeworth alludes, when she wishes that the peasants of Ireland should become discontented. Animal contentment is quite a different thing from the moral and philosophical feeling properly called content. The former is mere apathy and sluggish inertness ; the latter is the result of mental exertion the conclusion of a laborious intellectual process : it is not inconsistent with continued toil, for it does not satisfy desire; its proper end and aim are merely to appease complaint. In truth, the man who is really contented, is precisely the person most likely to make exertions for improving his condition, because he is the most removed from the two great causes of indolence, apathy, and despair. So far as limited experience may be received as an authority, it seems to prove that the most energetic are also the most contented; they calculate that a certain amount of comforts will be produced by exertion, and if disappointed in their expectations, they still look forward to supplying the deficiency by fresh exertions. Moral content can only exist where there is a proper estimate of means and ends ; it is a feeling generated by a wise judgment of INDIGENCE. 145 circumstances, and like all other moral feelings, cir- cumstances must determine when its indulgence will be a virtue and when a vice. The confusion between healthy, energetic content, and sickly desponding apathy, or recklessness, is very common, and it is too often employed as an excuse for not endeavouring to ameliorate the condition of the poor, lest they should be rendered discontented; but the elevation of man's moral dignity, in any way, tends to strengthen all his moral principles, and content among the number. The desire of amelioration is not levss a moral principle, than patience under afflictions; and the use of content is not to destroy, but to regulate and direct it. It is a proof of the beneficial character of civiliza- tion, that, in every country, the errors arising from undue severity are corrected long before those result- ing from the excess of charity are discovered. In the year 1530, the English parliament enacted that while the impotent poor should receive licenses from the justices of the peace to beg within certain limits, all men and women, " being whole and mighty in body, and able to labour," if found vagrant, and unable to give an account of how they get their living, shall be apprehended by the constables, tied to the tail of a cart naked, and beaten with whips through the nearest market-town or hamlet, " till their bodies be bloody by reason of such whipping." Five years afterwards it was added, that if the individual had been once already whipped, he shall not only be whipped again, but " also shall have the upper part of the gristle of his ear clean cut off, so as it may appear for a perpetual token hereafter, that he hath been a contemner of the H 146 INDIGENCE. good order of the commonwealth. " And finally, in 1562, it was directed, that any beggar convicted of being a vagabond, should, after being grievously whipped, be burnt through the gristle of the right ear with a hot iron, of the compass of an inch about, unless some person should agree to take him as a servant of course without wages for a year; that if he twice ran away from such master he should be adjudged a felon; and that if he ran away a third time, he should "suffer pains of death and loss of land and goods as a felon, without benefit of clergy or sanctuary." These barbarous enactments have been long since swept from the Statute-book, but this triumph of humanity is unquestionably due to the progress of civilization ; to the great discovery in social science that indiscriminate severity defeats its own ends, and that disproportionate penalties render laws inoperative, for the simple reason that they cannot be executed. These cruel punishments were adopted because the lawgivers failed to distinguish between responsible and irresponsible indigence : they held that every man was answerable for not fulfilling the conditions imposed on social existence, without any reference to his capabilities or opportunities. Science shewed that such a reference was necessary, and humanity was the gainer. There is little fear that such atrocious enactments should be renewed in the present day; but it is well to keep them in view, because the very same error that was the basis of indiscriminate severity is also the founda- tion of indiscriminate charity. It is so common to describe those who propose that INDIGENCE. 147 benevolence should be regulated by science, that is, by knowledge and experience as enemies of the poor, that we deem it necessary to shew that such regulations are most imperatively required by the poor themselves. Let us take an example. Several years ago, a sum of money was collected in England for the relief of a certain district in the south of Ireland suffering under the pressure of severe distress. A committee was chosen to preside over its distribution. Some of the members proposed simply to purchase fuel, food, and clothing, and distribute them to every applicant according to his need.* Fortunately the majority insisted that the fund should be summarily used in providing employment proportionate to the abilities of each person capable of labour, and that gratuitous assistance should only be given in the case of actual impotence. By their influence lanes and alleys were cleansed and paved; bye-roads rendered passable ; drainage, sewerage, and ventilation opened in districts where accumulated filth had long formed hot-beds of disease. Not only was immediate relief afforded, but a vast addition was made to the future comforts of the working population. And what was the reward of those who conferred such benefits on their countrymen ? Barely that they were not torn to pieces for having, as it was said, intercepted the natural * A clergyman, equally eminent for his wisdom and benevolence, (the Rev. Dr. Dickenson), furnishes a very similar example of the injurious effects of unregulated charity. " In a district," he says, "with which I am acquainted, provisions were given gratis; the people ceased to work, and became very dissatisfied. In consequence of my recommendations, articles of food, instead of being bestowed, were sold at a moderate price : the people returned to work, and were thankful." 148 INDIGENCE. course of charity ! Many years have since elapsed, and it is doubtful if they have yet been forgiven by those who most profited by their prudence. Indiscriminate charity, the result of ignorant bene- volence, is a positive injury to the poor. This is a truth which cannot be too often nor too strongly im- pressed upon the public mind. Want of discrimination not only diminishes the fund from which the poor is to be supported, but it greatly increases the number of claimants. There are monasteries, at the gates of which food is indiscriminately distributed to all applicants, and the consequence is that the surrounding districts are always on the verge of starvation. " It is not money only," says Rousseau, "which the unfortunate need, and they are but sluggards in well-doing, who know to do good only when they have a purse in their hand." Civilization constantly tends to increase the sphere of active benevolence ; it enables the poor to be bene- volent to the poor, for it shews how very often great good may be effected by humble means. It has been truly said, that " the benevolent are magnificent in their bounty, because they are economical in bounty itself." Science points out to those who desire to con- fer permanent benefits, sources of relief which escape the notice of others, however charitably disposed. The whole result of happiness produced by them seems often to have been the result of a superb munificence which few could command, when it has, in fact, been the result of a strict economy in limiting the application of the means exclusively to the end. Pope's well- known description of the " Man of Ross" affects us not INDIGENCE. 149 merely by the contrast between the amount of good which he effected with limited means, and the smaller amount often reached by the most costly profusion; but far more valuable and far more delightful is his foresight, and quickness of perception in discovering the varied wants that claimed relief; his ministering to every little comfort marked in the provision which he is represented as making, not for gross and obvious miseries only, but for the very ease of the traveller or common passenger. But all our praises why should lords engross? Rise, honest Muse, and sing the Man of Ross ! Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds, And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds. Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow ? From the dry rock who bade the waters flow ? Not to the skies in useless columns tost, Nor in proud falls magnificently lost; But clear and artless, pouring through the plain, Health to the sick and solace to the swain. Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows? Whose seats the wearied traveller repose ? Who taught that heaven-directed spire to rise ? The Man of Ross each lisping babe replies. Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread ! The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread. He feeds yon almshouse, neat but void of state. Where Age and Want sit smiling at the gate, Him portion'd maids, apprenticed orphans blest, The young who labour, and the old who rest. Is any sick? The Man of Ross relieves, Prescribes, attends, the medicine makes and gives. Is there a variance? enter but his door, Balk'd are the courts, and contest is no more. " What is it," says Dr. Brown, " which makes this picture of benevolence so particularly pleasing ? It is 150 INDIGENCE. not the mere quantity of the happiness produced, even when taken in connexion with the seemingly dispro- portionate income, the few hundred pounds a-year which were so nobly devoted to the production of that happiness. It is pleasing chiefly from the air of beau- tiful consistency that appears in so wide a variety of good; the evidence of a genuine kindness of heart, that was quick to perceive not only the great evils which force themselves upon every eye, but the little comforts also which might be administered to those, of whom the rich, even when they are disposed to extend to them the indolent succour of their alms, and sometimes, too, the more generous succour of their personal aid, are yet accustomed to think, only as sufferers who are to be kept alive, rather than as human beings who are to be made happy." We admire, indeed, the active services with which the Man of Ross distributed the weekly bread, built houses that were to be homes of repose for the aged and indigent, visited the sick, and settled amicably the controversies of neighbours and friends, who might otherwise have become foes in becoming litigants; but it is when, together with these prominent acts of obvious beneficence, we consider the acts of attention to less humbler and less obvious wants, that we feel with lively delight and confidence the kindness of a heart which, in its charitable meditations, could think of happiness as well as of misery, and foresee means of happiness which all benevolent men can pro- duce, but which are visible only to those whose bene- volence is enlightened by science, that is, by knowledge and registered experience. Ostentatious benevolence, which seeks the applause INDIGENCE. 151 of crowds, has its reward : enlightened benevolence, which seeks only to be the spreader of happiness or consolation, receives only a small meed of fame, because its benefits spread over too wide an extent to be appre- ciated without more time and trouble than the generality of mankind is accustomed to bestow. This was so prac- tically and usefully brought before the author when he acted as Secretary to the Statistical Section of the British Association at Liverpool, that, at the risk of a little digression, he must venture on adding another illustration. Among the many useful Reports presented at various times to the Statistical Section of the Association, none have been more valuable and more interesting than those on the state and condition of the working classes. They have brought to light a fearful mass of evil, arising from a condition which not only tends to perpetuate indigence, but also to extend vice namely, the dwell- ings of the operatives. From these reports, and from the evidence given in the subsequent discussions, it appeared that vice and indigence were produced to a fearful ex- tent by the want of anything which could properly be called a home. The operatives were found crowded in garrets and in cellars; not only was the same room common to several families, but, in several cases, so many as five or six individuals slept in the same bed. Anything like delicacy, that great safeguard of mo- desty, was impossible; domestic comfort was clearly out of 'the question ; the heads of families were driven to the alehouse by the sheer want of a place where they could sit down. It was, however, gratifying to find that efforts had been made to devise an efficient remedy. 152 INDIGENCE. Mr. Ashton, forty years ago, discovered the importance of a home both in a moral and economic point of view ; he erected round his factory small cottages with gardens attached, and he not only let these to his workmen on moderate terms, but encouraged them to save money for the purchase of the freehold. Very many have taken advantage of the offer, and can now call their homes their own. One simple fact will now prove the efficacy of this system of enlightened benevolence : Mr. Ashton has been forty years at the head of one of the most extensive factories in the county of Lan- caster, and, during that period, there has been only one turn-out of one week among his workmen. This systematic benevolence has produced nearly half a century of continuous good, because it was originally based on knowledge and the results of experience. The labourer and the operative must not be supposed capable of appreciating, in all cases, the general advantages of frugality; it is necessary to set before them some incentive, some desirable means of im- mediate investment, and there is nothingthat so strongly excites the ambition of an Englishman as the desire of possessing a home. It is of some importance to add, that this benevolence will be found not less profitable to the rich than the poor. During these debates, Mr. Shuttleworth, whose authority both as a statistician and philanthropist is deservedly great, declared that many operatives had become actual owners of their tenements on the Duke of Norfolk's property, and that this had not only raised the character of the operatives, but greatly improved the duke's estates. The author may appear to have dwelt at rather dis- INDIGENCE. 153 proportionate length on this topic; but, in shewing the advantages which benevolence has derived from the progress of science and civilization, it was scarcely possible to avoid directing some attention to an ele- ment of improvement which is only just beginning to be appreciated. The physical condition of the working classes must be a primary element in every scheme for their moral improvement. There is a much closer connexion between the physical and moral condition of humanity than is generally imagined. Can we, for instance, doubt that female modesty and female virtue are inevitably perilled in the crowded lodgings that have been just described ? Is it not notorious, that in every great city the worst dens of vice are found where the drainage is bad, and the supply of water is limited ? The remedying of such evils, to be sure, is not likely to have the stimulus of fame ; means of securing health, and comfort and cleanliness, which includes both, will not be recorded in printed reports, nor celebrated in pompous periods; but the genuine philanthropist will remember the counsel of St. Paul, "Despise not the day of small things/' and will attempt to cure evil at the neglected fountain-head, leaving to others the ac- quisition of celebrity, by splashing the water about lower down the stream. Civilization, then, we see has a double efficacy in reducing the amount of misery; it gives to indigence itself a milder type, and it multiplies the means and husbands the resources of benevolence. The absolute amount of wretchedness is diminished, even though the number of cases and the variety of forms should be multiplied; but the remedies are increased in a 154 INDIGENCE. greater proportion, and their application is facilitated by a more thorough investigation of the cases. Civilization is accused not only of having caused indigence on one side, but also of having produced luxury in the opposite direction. Here we have again to complain of the confusion between the absolute and relative signification of a term. Sir Walter Scott tells us of a Highland chief who accused his son of luxury, because, when sleeping in the snow, he rolled some of the snow into a ball for his pillow. Xenophon stig- matizes the Persians of his day as luxurious, because they wore gloves; the use of stockings, in the reign of the Plantagenets, would have exposed the great majority of Englishmen to similar censure. It is more than probable, that a workman of London, with his week's wages, is surrounded with, and can possibly command, more solid comforts than the noblest Roman of the Augustine age, or the most luxurious Greek in the days of Pericles. Horace, indeed, describes a state of gentlemanly and comfortable society; but it wanted a thousand conveniences which habit has ren- dered indispensable even to the poorest amongst us. The most sumptuous banquet would appear unendur- able without spoons, forks, glasses, and table-covers. Walls hung with tapestry would not compensate for unglazed windows, nor the lighter beverages of ancient Italy be an acceptable substitute for tea and coffee. It would not be easy to discover any ancient sweet which could be applied to the countless little luxuries in which sugar is employed ; and most assuredly the woollens of antiquity could not for a moment stand a comparison with the silk and cotton fabrics of Spital- INDIGENCE. 155 fields, Macclesfield, Paisley, and Manchester. Habit has rendered us insensible to the value of these little comforts, we never estimate the amount they contribute to the sum of human happiness until we are accident- ally compelled to do without them. Hence we find that the settlers in new countries always miscalculate the sacrifices they must make, and are too often discontented. It is not sufficient to tell them that each article they are compelled to do without is a trifle, for the aggre- gate of these trifles forms a very large amount in the estimate of human enjoyment. If we appeal to the common sense of mankind if we endeavour to find out what is the common attribute in all things condemned as luxurious, we find that luxury always involves the notion of comparison. "An individual man," says Archbishop Whately, "is called luxurious, in com- parison with other men of the same community, and in the same walk of life as himself : a nation is called luxurious in reference to other nations. The same style of living which would be reckoned moderate and frugal, or even penurious among the higher orders, would be censured as extravagant luxury in a day- labourer : and the labourer again, if he lives in a cottage with glass windows and a chimney, and wears shoes and stockings, and a linen or cotton shirt, is not said to live in luxury, though he possesses what would be thought luxury to a negro prince." Luxury, then, is comparative, and includes in it the idea of dispro- portion, unsuitableness, or impropriety: there is either selfish indulgence, beyond what the circumstances of the individual justify, or ostentation, arising from the possession of something beyond the standard or average 156 INDIGENCE. of persons in the same class of life. The highlander mentioned by Sir Walter Scott, was luxurious because he was the only person in the company who provided a pillow; the Persian gloves appeared luxurious to the Greeks, because they did not wear any coverings to their own hands ; and a beggar in the rural districts of Ireland wearing shoes and stockings would assuredly find little commiseration from the barelegged peasantry around him. Now, disproportionate extravagance, self-indulgence, and ostentation, are not confined to civilized life; on the contrary, they are more prominent in a state of barbarism. " The chief difference," says Archbishop Whately, " is, that the luxury of the savage is of a coarser description, and generally has more connexion with gross sensuality. Barbarians are almost invariably intemperate." It is not until civilization has reached an advanced stage that the evils of luxury are disco- vered, and then there is usually a confusion between old luxuries and new comforts. Sumptuary laws mark this era in the history of most civilized nations ; there are many on the British Statute-book which prohibited what are now deemed positive necessaries of life. We have had laws against pinched shoes, short doublets, and long coats; reports without number on the increas- ing luxuries of the commonalty ; proclamations by the Fourth Edward and Eighth Henry to restrain the in- dulgence of excess in eating and drinking. These, indeed, were all repealed by First James, s. 1, c. 25, but one law against excess in diet continues unrepealed, though it has long since fallen into desuetude. , The complaints of moralists, and the enactments of INDIGENCE. 157 sumptuary legislators, are principally directed against luxury of dress ; but this is, in truth, as much a cha- racteristic of The meanest savage 'mid his clan The rudest portraiture of man, as it is of the most fashionable danglers at the most civilized court. Theodore Irving gives us a very amusing sketch of the dandyism of the desert, which sufficiently proves that conceit and ostentation may be as strongly shewn in paint and feathers as in gold and diamonds. " To dress and ornament himself with trinkets and gewgaws is the delight of a savage. The glittering presents of the whites bear as strong an attraction to the warrior as to the female or the child, though his disciplined habits prevent those loud bursts of applause which escape from them. Scarcely a day elapsed but a little group would collect before our tents for the purpose of ornamenting themselves. They were appa- rently very fastidious in their taste ; for, when hours had been spent by an Indian beau in laying on one streak of paint after another, and' in ogling himself by piecemeal in a small scrap of looking-glass, some defect would appear, and, with an exclamation of dissatisfaction, the whole would be rubbed off. The work would then be recommenced with unabated perseverance, until he succeeded in daubing and ornamenting himself to his entire satisfaction. " When the toilette was completed, a surprising change came over the young warriors. They would fling their blankets ostentatiously around them, and with a lordly air lounge through the town ; looking 158 INDIGENCE. first at one of the young squaws, then at another; and occasionally condescending to speak to some dirty- looking brother, with the patronising air which, in all countries, a well-dressed person is apt to assume in conversing with a ragged acquaintance. When they had finished their perambulations, they would mount upon the top of one of the highest lodges, and stand for hours to be gazed at by the different idlers ; a term which, in truth, might be applied to the whole male population of the town." Extravagance in eating and drinking is so notoriously a characteristic of savage nations, that it is not neces- sary to quote any of the disgusting descriptions of bar- barous feasts with which the narratives of travellers abound. Though they do not possess wine or spirits, few of them have been found that had not discovered means, if not of intoxication, at least of stupefaction ; bang, opium, or the cassava root were substitutes for distilled or fermented liquor, and were not less exten- sively nor less mischievously used. It is a common fallacy with the advocates of ascetic doctrines to represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any degree and in any direction. A love of magnificence, a taste for elegance and beauty, a high relish for the comforts and conveniences of life, are not in themselves bad or depraved feelings. It is true that they may be carried to excess, but it is also true that they may be indulged, not only with safety, but with advantage. In this, as in every other moral question, the entire debate turns on limits : to determine whether any given indulgence is a luxury or a comfort, is, in fact, to estimate the proportion that it bears to sur- INDIGENCE. 159 rounding circumstances. A bed of down would be a luxury in a thatched cabin, a bed of straw would be a shabbiuess in a palace. The effect of civilization is not to increase luxuries, but to multiply the number of comforts which would be deemed luxuries in a barbar- ous country. There are some writers who have praised the speech of an ascetic, when he saw a well-furnished apartment, " What a multitude of things are here which a man could do without!" But, why should he do without them?* If they did not promote his happiness, or what he believes to be his happiness, he would not have them ; hence there is a manifest gain in their use, and it rests on their opponent to point out the correspond- ing disadvantages. It is utter nonsense to talk about the simplicity of nature, a phrase that may mean any thing or nothing as the speaker pleases. Nature gives us only raw material, and by the processes of cookery and the fabrications of art, it is to be wrought to our purpose. If such reasoners are to be concluded by their own arguments, natural life is limited to cropping the spontaneous herbage of the field, for every thing beyond that is artificial; or, in other words, requires the ex- ertion of art and contrivance. A cushioned chair is artificial, but so is the clumsy stool, framed from mis- shapen logs of wood ; nay, so is the heap of stones col- lected by the hermit for a seat. Those who call upon us to reject what is artificial in life, may begin, if they please, with all the gorgeous splendour of Nebuchad- * " Thus," said Diogenes, "do I trample on the pride of Plato" (stamping on his carpet). " And with greater pride of thy own, Diogenes," was Plato's just retort. 160 INDIGENCE. nezzar on the throne of Babylon ; but they cannot, in any consistency, stop until they end with the same Nebuchadnezzar when " he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws." Cowper, in the opening of the Task, has humorously delineated the progress of invention from the stool to the sofa : Time was when clothing, sumptuous or for use, Save their own painted skins, our sires had none. As yet black breeches were not ; satin smooth, Or velvet soft, or plush with shaggy pile: The hardy chief upon the rugged rock Wash'd by the sea, or on the gravelly bank Thrown up by wintry torrents roaring loud, Fearless of wrong reposed his weary strength. These barbarous ages past, succeeded next The birthday of Invention ; weak at first, Dull in design, and clumsy to perform. Joint-stools were then created ; on three legs Upborne they stood. * * * **** But relaxation of the languid frame By soft recumbency of outstretch'd limbs Was bliss reserved for happier days. So slow The growth of what is excellent : so hard T" attain perfection in this nether world. Thus first Necessity invented stools, Convenience next suggested elbow chairs, And Luxury th' accomplish'd sofa last. Now, why should we be called to reverse the process and pass back through these several stages ? Has any one ever seen one of the advocates of the simplicity of Nature select from preference his length even of the finest sand for his bed, and the undressed roots for his supper ? INDIGENCE. 161 Many of the errors prevalent on this subject have arisen from regarding labour too exclusively as the punishment inflicted on man. The toil to which Adam was sentenced after the Fall is strictly limited to such labour as is necessary for mere subsistence ; in every other respect labour must have been from the begin- ning the prerogative and the privilege of man. The world of matter and the world of mind are equally shapeless and void to all man's purposes, until they are moulded and formed by industry and exertion. Absolute truth, ready made, no more presents itself to our mind than finished models of mechanism present themselves ready made to our hand. Original prin- ciples there are doubtless in both, but the development and application of these principles are just as far to seek in one case as in the other. The express words of the Sacred Record shew that man was destined to labour before he was doomed to toil, " the Lord God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it." The kind and degree of labour are not stated, but the fact of some labour is most explicitly recorded. That labour is an essential attribute of humanity appears from the nature of the world and from the nature of man. " The earth he stands upon/' says Dr. Dewey, " and the air he breathes are, so far as his improvement is concerned, but elements to be wrought by him to certain purposes, If he stood on earth, pas- sively and unconsciously, imbibing the dew and sap, and spreading his arms to the light and air, he would be but a tree. If he grew up neither capable .of pur- pose nor of improvement, with no guidance but instinct, 162 INDIGENCE. and no powers but those of digestion and locomotion, he would be only animal. But he is more than this ; he is a man; he is made to improve, he is therefore made to think, to act, to work. Labour is his great function, his peculiar distinction, his privilege." We may add that the necessity for some labour is felt even by the indolent; their work is " killing time/' and very hard work they often find it to be. Nothing more strongly marks the progress of civil- ization than the increased respect, not merely for the rights of industry, but for the honourable character of industry itself. There has, indeed, been always in the world a public opinion derogatory to labour ; but we shall find that this opinion increases in intensity the nearer we approach savage life, and diminishes with similar rapidity as we proceed in the opposite direction. Mr. Irving informs us, that the government of the United States employs a blacksmith to take charge of, and keep in repair, the arms paid as an annuity to the Shawnee tribe, " a measure highly pleasing to the Indians, who detest labour of all kinds, and would willingly travel a hundred miles to get another to perform some trivial job, which they might themselves accomplish with but a few hours' labour." Under circumstances of high excitement, in war and in hunt- ing, there is no being more untiring than the savage; but in peace, and in his own village, he lounges about listlessly, miserable for want of employment, yet unable to overcome his repugnance to labour, and compelling the females of his family to work for him. No greater difficulty has impeded the progress of the missionaries than this repugnance to toil ; it would INDIGENCE, 163 seem, indeed, as if the progress of industry was iden- tified with the progress of civilization, and that idleness and barbarism were nearly convertible terms. Thus viewed, it may be received as a gratifying sign of progress that the epithet, "man of business," which in former ages was a term of reproach, is now a title eagerly sought by the legislator, the statesman, the great fundholder, the wealthy merchants and manu- facturers, and the proprietors of the most extensive estates. Civilization, then, is truly the friend of the poor: though it does not extirpate indigence it removes its most repulsive features and most fatal qualities : if it increases the enjoyments of the palace, it gradually renders its luxuries part and parcel of the comforts of the cottage : if it asserts the necessity of labour, it does not compel the poor to toil alone, it forces the rich to work, both with them and for them. 164 CHAPTER VIII. SUPERSTITIONS AND DETACHED CUSTOMS. THERE is no circumstance connected with savage na- tions which has been the subject of greater curiosity than their religious tenets, and there is none on which our information is more indefinite and unsatisfactory. A great and natural difficulty besets every inquiry into the subject. The Rev. Henry Woodward has very ably shewn that most men are disposed to deduce their notions of the Divine character from an ideal exemplar of themselves, and this is not less true of nations and eras than it is of individuals. It is an aphorism with all modern philosophers, that the mythology of a people is an exponent of its intellectual character, the con- verse is equally true; the general state of society in any country affords important aid to determine the nature and bearing of its religion. If we find a warlike ferocious race, delighting in cruelty and devastation, we may be assured that they will have deities delighting in slaugh- ter, and rites polluted with blood. A more indolent race, whose sloth is only chequered by sensualism, will display deified passions and lustful ceremonies. Tribes scarcely rising above the brute creation, too apathetic to remember the past, or speculate on the future, who possess not in their language a single word to specify cause, will either have no notion of a God at all, or a SUPERSTITIONS. 165 notion so feeble and indistinct that it baffles the search of the inquirer. "Whoever," says Dr. Robertson, "has had any opportunity of examining into the religious opinions of persons in the lower ranks of life, even in the most enlightened and civilized nations, will find that their system of belief is derived from instruction, not dis- covered by inquiry." He will also discover that the instruction is greatly modified by the moral and intel- lectual character of the recipient. If he has never previously considered the subject, he will be astonished to find how necessary the diffusion of intelligence is to the growth of genuine religion. The two fundamental doctrines upon which every religion is founded are, the Being of a God, and the Immortality of the Soul : these presuppose two very important ideas Cause and Purpose, or Destination, ideas not very easy to be acquired, and not very difficult to be lost. " The idea of creation," says Dr. Robertson, " is so familiar, wherever the mind is enlarged by science and illuminated with revelation, that we seldom reflect how profound and abstruse this idea is, or consider what progress man must have made in observation and research, before he could arrive to any knowledge of this elementary principle of religion." We are fre- quently misled by supposing that this idea is possessed by the most ignorant in our own land : it very fre- quently is not; and even when acquired by instruction, it gradually becomes faint and obscure; nay, is often obliterated, unless the mind has made the notion its own by attention and repetition. Let any person go 166 SUPERSTITIONS AND over in his own mind the chain of reasoning by which we ascend from observed phenomena to the knowledge of a First Cause, and he will at once perceive that it is a train of thought which requires some considerable exercise of mental discipline, to be pursued without interruption. What Paley calls an otiose assent to any article of belief, is very likely to pass into utter forget- fulness ; and every active clergyman is aware that not only in the formation, but also in the preservation, of faith, it is necessary to have " line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." Some difficulties have arisen on this subject from confounding unbelief with disbelief. It has been said with truth, that there never was a nation of atheists; that is, an assemblage of men denying that there was a God but a nation ignorant of the fact that there is a God, is a very different matter; they are ignorant simply because they never bestowed a thought on the subject. That such ignorance is possible, does not seem at all inconsistent with what we know of human nature; that such ignorance exists, has been attested by the most trust- worthy travellers. M. Bik, an intelligent officer in the service of the king of the Netherlands, gives us the following account of the natives of the Ami Islands, whom he visited in 1824 : " Of the immortality of the soul they have not the least conception. To all my inquiries on this subject they answered, ' No Arafura has ever returned to us after death, therefore we know nothing of a future state, and this is the first time we heard of it/ Their idea was Mali, Mati, Ludah (when you are dead there is an end of you). Neither have they any notion of DETACHED CUSTOMS. 167 the creation of the world. They only answered, ' None of us are aware of this; we have never heard anything about it, and therefore do not know who has done it at all.' " To convince myself more fully respecting their want of knowledge of a Supreme Being, I demanded of them on whom they called for help in their need when far from their homes, engaged in the Trepang fishery, their vessels were overtaken by violent tempests, and no human power could save them, their wives and children, from destruction. The eldest among them, after having consulted the others, answered, that they knew not on whom they could call for assistance, but begged me, if I knew, to be so good as to inform them. " I was at length tired of asking questions, and did my best to give them a notion of the creation of the world, and of a future state. I remarked to them how wonderful it was that a small grain of seed sprang up into a spreading tree; that the different sorts never mixed; that every thing which surrounded us was in a constantly progressive state of creation and decay; and that all these things could never have taken place but for the superintendence of an All-wise Providence. The Arafuras nodded their heads, to shew that my words appeared to have some truth in them. " At length, one of them, who had listened with par- ticular attention, demanded of me where this All-ruling Being took up its abode. I answered, that the Deity was present everywhere; not only among us, but in every plant which, through his goodness and power, he has furnished us for our food. This idea was too ab- struse for the Arafuras; for one of them answered 168 SUPERSTITIONS AND ' Then this God is certainly in your arrack, for I never feel happier than when I have drunk plenty of it.'" It is, however, only among men in the most unculti- vated state, while their intellectual faculties are so feeble and limited as hardly to elevate them above the brute creation, that we discern this total insensibility to the impressions of any invisible power. The relation between cause and effect is one of our earliest intellec- tual perceptions, and those who want it scarcely rise above the level of animals. An apprehension of some invisible and powerful beings appears in the very first stage of improvement, and is not obliterated until the very last stage of degradation. We find, however, that this notion is not suggested so much by the regular and uniform course of nature, as by some remarkable deviations from it; just as in civilized life we find per- sons careless of religion while their days pass on in an even current of prosperity, but who hasten to seek its consolations in the hour of sickness and adversity. The invariable tendency of ignorance is to multiply causes, to assign a different cause for every different effect; simplification of causes is the great triumph of science. Hence arises the multiplication of superior beings, the countless objects of worship which are found in bar- barous nations; and hence arises the tendency among the uninstructed in civilized nations to extend the number of supernatural agencies. Imagination is a more forward and ardent faculty of the mind than judgment, it bounds over difficulties, and decides with- out hesitation. Hence the extraordinary occurrences of nature, the thunder, the tempest, the earthquake, a sudden drought, an extraordinary mortality among the DETACHED CUSTOMS. 169 cattle, an unusual type of disease, are ascribed to the interposition of some superior being and the principle is the same whether the supposed agency be the malig- nity of a demon-god, the suspended protection of a saint, or the active malevolence of a witch. The New Zealanders, as Mr. Marsden informs us, can with difficulty comprehend that our God is the same as theirs. To his arguments they replied, " But we are of a different colour from you; and if one God made us both, he would not have committed such a mistake as to make us of different colours." In like manner, when the Syrians were defeated by the Israelites, they said, " Their gods are gods of the hills, therefore they were stronger than we, but let us fight against them in the plain, and we shall be stronger than they." In both cases, ignorance confined the Great Cause to a single class of phenomena; it multiplied the number of agencies, and it limited the extent of each separate agency. This tendency of ignorance to polytheism is not con- fined to paganism, it manifests itself in countless shapes among Christians; the belief in miracles wrought by saints discoveries made by ghosts and maladies in- flicted by fairies and witches, is only a modification of polytheism, an ascription of separate causes to separate classes of phenomena. It may also be remarked, that this tendency is greatly increased when religion is based upon the feelings rather than upon the reason. When- ever the feelings are strongly excited, they seek to lay hold on something gross and material. Hence we find that the celebrated Witch-persecution of New England arose at a period when men's minds were strongly excited by disputes involving rather more of passion i 170 SUPERSTITIONS AND than principle. Paganism itself never exhibited greater absurdity than when men were hanged on the evidence of ghosts, and when a dog was publicly executed for allowing his master to take a i-ide upon him through the air. It would be easy to multiply examples; but enough has been said to shew that the multiplication of supernatural agencies is the natural tendency of igno- rance, especially during periods of high excitement, in all places and all times. Ignorance has been ignorantly termed the mother of devotion. * A permanent feeling, such as devotion properly designates, can be based on knowledge only. We find that the religion of savages fluctuates between abject prostration and utter reckless- ness; and the one state has just as little claim to the name of devotion as the other. In all unenlightened nations, the first rites or practices which bear any resemblance to acts of religion, have it for their object to avert evils which men suffer or dread. A religion based on love and gratitude can only exist where there is a knowledge of the manifestations of that love, and a perception of the benefits which call forth that gratitude. These general observations on the nature of barbarous religions may be illustrated further by referring to one common class of superstitions, those connected with disease. We find sickness, especially when it assumes an unusual form, attributed to some supernatural agency. The New Zealanders, we are told, " believe, that when- ever any person is sick, his illness is occasioned by the Atua (their deity), in the shape of a lizard, preying upon his entrails. In some parts of Ireland, an unfor- * It should be called the mother of superstition. DETACHED CUSTOMS. 171 tunate child suffering from rickets or consumption is declared to be fairy-struck. Mr. Paris, who began the witch-persecution in New England, tortured a poor Indian woman until he made her confess that she had bewitched his wife and daughter, because he could in no other way account for the disease. Our blessed Lord often reproved his disciples for adopting the Jewish superstition, that every natural disease was a sign of an offended deity. When they asked, " Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind ?" Jesus answered, " Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents; but that the work of God should be made manifest in him." But perhaps the most singular form which this superstition ever assumed, was when the influenza made its appearance in part of Anatolia. Some dervish gravely informed the people, that a certain demon, called " The Mother of Sore Throats," had recently lost her son, and being enraged at the want of sympathy manifested, had sent the influenza, to compel others to mourn as well as herself. "Whereupon," says the historian, "the people continued for several days running up and down, exclaiming, Pardon us, O Mother of Sore Throats, thy son was dead, and we knew it not ! " We have seen, that a barbarous religion, is a religion of fear, and hence it is almost invariably a religion of cruelty. There are few savage nations in which the practice of human sacrifices has not prevailed to a frightful extent; in many cases torture was added to murder, as if their furious deities could only be pro- pitiated by human blood and human suffering. Such horrid rites seem to have a peculiar charm for unen- 172 SUPERSTITIONS AND lightened imaginations, for we find, that when the Israelites, under the Judges, lapsed into idolatry, they usually adopted its most gloomy and its most san- guinary form. A belief in existence after death is found among most barbarians. Even the Arafurans had some rude notion on the subject, for their answer to M. Bik was rather contradictory : the declaration, that " no Arafura has returned to us after death," intimates their believing such an event possible. In considering this subject, we must again refer to the distinction between unbelief and disbelief; there is a wide distance between the doctrine of annihilation, and the absence of any definite opinion respecting a future state. One of the many controversies which has arisen respecting the Book of Job, turns on this very point. Some have asserted, that in the fourteenth chapter .of that book, the doctrine of annihilation is taught, while others aver, that it clearly intimates immortality. Let us quote the passage from Wemyss' very accurate translation : There is indeed hope for a tree; For if lopped, it may sprout again, And its tender branches may not fail: Though its root have grown old in the earth, And its trunk have become dead in the ground, Through the fragrance of water it may revive, And put forth young shoots as when planted. But when man dies he moulders into dust, When the mortal expires Where is he? The question is not put either as an affirmation or denial of a future state; it is a simple expression of ignorance. It may be true that we find few or no traces in the patriarch's words of the " pleasing hope," DETACHED CUSTOMS. 173 but we assuredly have " the fond desire, the longing after immortality, the shrinking of the soul back upon itself, and startling at destruction." This is, no doubt, far from the Christian faith, "the subsistence of things hoped for, the demonstration of things not seen," but it is scarcely less removed from the belief in utter ex- tinction and endless night. A confusion of this kind has been sometimes made by missionaries in savage lands; they have frequently mis- taken not only ignorance, but indistinctness of belief, for utter rejection of a doctrine. This has been remarkably the case with respect to some forms of Buddhism, and the Mohammedan heresy, called Sufyism : the doctrine of absorption, that is, the belief that the soul after death is absorbed into the essence of the Deity, has been very frequently confounded with the doctrine of annihilation, though it is manifestly not a disbelief in future exist- ence, but a disbelief in separate existence. As the doctrine of absorption has, from the remotest ages, had many followers in the East, it seems not im- probable that it was, to some extent, the basis of the Sadduceari heresy. We are not told that they denied the immortality of the soul, but that they denied the resurrection. The argument by which they were con- futed is just as decisive against the doctrine of absorp- tion as it is against annihilation, and the antithesis between "living and dead" is equally applicable in both cases. The Sadducees admitted the existence of Spirit, for they believed in a God; they denied the existence of spirits distinct from him, and consequently they con- nected no moral feeling with the state of the soul after ]74 SUPERSTITIONS AND death, for they deemed that it would be deprived both of personality and consciousness. Christ, in his reply to them, shews, that not merely continued existence, but distinct personality, is predicted of the patriarchs when Jehovah declares, " I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob." It may be added, that the doc- trine of Nirwana, or Absorption, generally arises in countries where the doctrine of a future state is demo- ralised by speculations on a sensual paradise, such as are presented to us in the heaven of the Hindoos and the immortality promised in the Koran. Sufyism, for instance, is more common in Persia than in Turkey, and the Persians surpass all other Mohammedans in their luxuriant pictures of the sensual delights prepared for the faithful. The Jews, after their return from the Babylonish captivity, seem to have incorporated these degrading notions of futurity in their popular belief : the very question which the Sadducees put to Christ respecting the woman who had seven husbands, and the consequent difficulty of assigning her to any one of them at the resurrection, proves that their heresy was a reaction against the perverse speculations of their countrymen ; and Christ, in his reply, strikes not less effectually against the gross conceptions of the vulgar than against the refined speculations of the Sadducees, " In the kingdom of heaven there is neither marrying nor being given in marriage." Perhaps amongst the reasons for not making rewards and punishments the sanctions of the law, we may assign as one, the low degree of civilization to which the Israelites had at- tained, and the consequent peril of their demoralising the doctrine by injurious notions, such as their Rabbins DETACHED CUSTOMS. 175 have introduced in the Talmud, and Mohammed in the Koran. The notions which barbarians form of a future state are derived from their habits in this life. The Indians of North America allotted the highest place, in their country of spirits, to the skilful hunter, to the adven- turous and successful warrior, and to such as had tor- tured the greatest number of captives, and devoured their flesh. Our Northern ancestors believed that bravery was the best qualification for ensuring admis- sion to the halls of Odin, where they should sit quaffing mead from the skulls of their enemies. The mission- aries assure us that the ideas of the New Zealanders on the subject are not very dissimilar from those of the ancient Germans. The contemplative ascetics of Asia devised the doctrine of absorption as the very consum- mation of luxurious indolence. The western Asiatics invented a heaven of sensual indulgence. It is curious to trace the changes in the mind of Mohammed on this great topic. Dividing the Koran into two portions the chapters revealed at Mecca, and the chapters revealed at Medina and, examining each separately, we shall find two very different religious systems enthusiasm prevailing in the former, and imposture; in the latter. The paradise of the Meccan chapters is far more pure and holy than that in the asserted Medi- nese revelations, and we find the latter rendered still more gross and sensual in the collection of orthodox traditions. This tendency to forming degrading notions of a future state is not confined to Paganism or Moham- medanism ; we find it invariably associated with igno- 176 SUPERSTITIONS AND ranee in every land : examples of monstrous error on the subject might be found in Christian countries, but they are painful to contemplate, and are, besides, suffi- ciently known. We refer, however, to the subject simply as a corroboration of what we have before said, that the interests of true religion are intimately connected with the general progress of intelligence, and that every new discovery, whether in the universe of matter or the universe of mind, directly tends to increase the good of man and the glory of God. When once men have begun to look beyond imme- diate existence, they are irresistibly compelled to pry into futurity. Divination becomes a religious act. The Temple is not so highly valued as the Oracle; the priests are more regarded as soothsayers, augurs, astrologers, and magicians, than as interpreters of the will of the gods. Mohammed evinced a shrewd knowledge of human nature when he chose to found his mission on prophecy rather than on miracles. His venturous pre- diction of the overthrow of the Sassanid dynasty in Persia did more for the success of Islamism than the belief in his having cleft the moon, or rode up to heaven on Al Borak. The human mind is most apt to feel and to discover this vain curiosity when its own powers are feeble and unformed. In the ruder ages of Grecian history the oracle of Delphi was consulted in every important enterprise, but, as civilization advanced, it sunk gradually into oblivion. Auguries and auspices were long matters of state at Rome; but when know- ledge began to assume sway, Cicero expressed his sur- prise that one augur could look at another without laughing. The domestic history of our own country DETACHED CUSTOMS. 177 exhibits abundant specimens of the means adopted by superstitious ignorance to gratify idle curiosity; and, as among the Pagans, we find them associated with some religious or with some blasphemous ceremony. We know, from the history of individual minds, that what- ever has tended to weaken the intellect has also tended to increase this form of superstition : sickness, mental anxiety, and solitude, are found almost invariably to produce this effect, in a greater or less degree, according to the amount of intelligence possessed by the indi- vidual. The same remark is applicable to communi- ties : whenever any great calamity has checked the progress of knowledge, and rolled back the tide of civilization, a rapid increase in the number of fortune- tellers, diviners, and necromancers, is immediately per- ceptible. It was so in the Roman empire when the barbarians broke through the frontiers, it was so in England during the civil wars, and it was so in London during the great plague. We have already mentioned the common superstition of ascribing diseases to supernatural causes; and hence, among savages, the chief physicians are priests, con- jurers, or wizards. Incantations, sorceries, and mum- meries of various sorts are used instead of medicine ; but again we must remark that such are the resources of ignorance in every country. The use of spells and charms is not quite banished from our own land. The writer has one in his possession, given him as an in- fallible remedy for toothache, by one who so firmly believed in its efficacy that he made its unfortunate failure a cause of quarrel. It runs thus, i 2 178 SUPERSTITIONS AND As Thomas sat upon a marble stone, Jesus came up to him all alone, Saying, Thomas, swear thus for my sake, And you never will be troubled with the toothache.* The superstitious belief in the power of cure leads naturally to a belief in the power of inflicting disease. "It was a ceremony in use among the heathens," says Bishop Newton, "to devote their enemies to destruc- tion at the beginning of their wars; as if the gods would enter into their passions, and were as unjust and partial as themselves." Balak deemed it a proper preliminary of war to send for Balaam, " Come curse me Jacob, and come defy me Israel :" the very same custom is found among the New Zealanders, it is a common threat with their priests that they will pray their enemies to death. This propensity to cursing, this seeming belief that a superior power might be induced to share in human malignity, is a common attribute of ignorance; the Arabs must have made a considerable advance before they devised the aphorism, " curses are like chickens, they roost at home." The belief in omens, prodigies, and the significance of dreams, is universal in every ignorant population. Captain Dillon declares, that he found no way so effec- tual in checking the importunities of his New Zealand friends, who asked for every thing they saw, than by assuring them that he had dreamed that the favour * A clergyman, of acknowledged worth, to whom this anecdote was related, has supplied the following corroboration : " I know this fact : a gentleman between twenty and thirty years of age, of a leading family in his country, the son of a clergyman who had three parishes, sewed these verses in his sister's petticoat, believing they would ease her of toothache." DETACHED CUSTOMS. 179 they requested would prove a misfortune to them. Some of them were very urgent that he would convey them to India; but, by saying he had dreamed that they would die when they reached the country, he put an end to their solicitations. This superstition was found still more powerful among the Indians of North America : Lafitau devotes a large portion of his work to their system of divination by dreams and visions; and it is curious to observe that, in parts, it bears a very strong resemblance to what is called "second- sight" in Scotland. It is not necessary to enter into any investigation of the extent or amount of Natural Religion as compared with Revealed Religion; neither need we determine whether the existence or attributes of the Deity would be discovered by unassisted reason, or whether the knowledge of them has been in all cases derived from the faint tradition of a primary revelation: our pur- pose is to shew that these notions, however acquired and of whatever amount, may become corrupt, and may even be obliterated by ignorance and barbarism; and that they will advance to perfection and completeness only by the general progress of intelligence. Was not wild Nature in that elder time Clothed with a deeper power? Earth's wandering race, Exploring realms of solitude sublime, Not as we see beheld her awful face ! Art had not tamed the mighty scenes which met Their searching eyes; unpeopled kingdoms lay In savage pomp before them all was yet Silent and vast, hut not as in decay, And the bright Day-star from his burning throne Look'd o'er a thousand shores, untrodden, voiceless, lone! 180 SUPERSTITIONS AND The forests in their dark luxuriance waved, With all their swell of strange ^Eolian sound ; The fearful deep, sole region ne'er enslaved, Heaved, in its pomp of terror, darkly round, Then brooding o'er the images imprest, By forms of grandeur thronging on his eye And faint traditions guarded in his breast : Midst dim remembrances of infancy, Man shaped unearthly presences in dreams, Peopling each wilder haunt of mountains, groves, and streams. It is a singular attribute of Christianity, and one that does not seem to have received ail the attention it merits, that it is the only system of religion which has been found applicable to the most varied stages of society. The Greek mythology, as we find it in Homer and Hesiod, was not the original creed of the Hellenic race ; there was an earlier, a more dread and mysteri- ous mythology, which, like that of most eastern nations, was elementary, that is, consisted in the worship of some mysterious power or principle of nature. When far o er earth the apostate wanderers bore Their alien rites ; for them by fount or shade, Nor voice, nor vision holy as of yore, In thrilling whispers to the soul convey 'd High inspiration : yet in every clime, Those sons of doubt and error fondly sought, With beings, in their essence more sublime, To hold communion of mysterious thought ; On some dread power in trembling hop* to lean, And hear in every word the accents of th" Unseen. As one left lonely on the desert sands Of burning Afric, where, without a guide, He gazes as the pathless waste expands Around, beyond, interminably wide: DETACHED CUSTOMS. 181 While the red haze presaging the Simoom, Obscures the fierce resplendence of the sky, Or suns of blasting light perchance illume The glistening mirage, which illudes his eye: Such was the wanderer man in ages flown. Kneeling in doubt and fear before the dread Unknown. After the age of the poets, the Grecian deities ceased to be symbolical representations, and became moral persons; not that they were models of purity, but that they were invested with the moral nature of man, including its defects as well as its excellencies. As civilization advanced, this creed gradually lost its hold on the mind ; philosophy shook the very foundations of mythology, and even before the age of the Roman invasion, the religion of the schools was a very different thing from the religion of the people. A similar change took place in Rome, at the time of the Augustan age polytheism was worn out; and in its stead there reigned either complete scepticism, or the most degrading su- perstition, without any distinct object or purpose. Sacerdotal religions, such as those of Egypt and India, were manifestly suited only to a special frame- work of society. The ancient religion of Egypt fel irretrievably when the throne of the Pharaohs was overturned; and the religion which the Plotemies esta- blished was an incongruous mixture of Eastern and Western creeds, which changed not merely its aspect but its nature during every year of its existence. Mohammedanism, which should rather be considered a Christian heresy than a distinct religion, exhibits the weakness of falsehood by its inability to meet the changes of times and circumstances. The bigots of Islam have ever resisted the slightest tendency towards 182 SUPERSTITIONS AND progressive civilization, because they felt an instinctive conviction, that an advance in intelligence would be fatal to their creed. They are foes to knowledge, because knowledge is a foe to them. It is not at all unlikely that the political changes at Constantinople herald a more speedy religious change than is generally anticipated; at least, recent travellers assure us, that the authority of the Koran is greatly weakened, and that of the traditions all but overthrown. The progress of intelligence, which has weakened every other religious system, has added fresh strength to Christianity; because the truths on which it is based are all capable of development, and become more in fluential and more convincing as they are developed. Still we cannot doubt that the Christian system is capable of being perverted, that ignorance can corrupt, hide, and even efface some of the truths which it reveals for ecclesiastical history abounds with illustrations of the fact. It deserves also to be remarked, that cor- ruptions of Christianity, arising from ignorance, always assume the aspect of polytheism; that is, they multiply the number of spiritual agencies, as in the -^Eons of the Syrian heretics, the endless calendar of wonder-work- ing saints in the Greek Church, and the superstitions respecting the interference of angels and demons which abound among the Eastern Christians. The same is also true of the Mohammedans : the Sheeahs, who, as a body, are more ignorant than the Soonnees, pay nearly divine honours to AH and the Twelve Imams, and the Mohammedans, in some parts of Hindoostan, have not hesitated to adopt the idolatrous rites of the Hindoo ritual. DETACHED CUSTOMS. 183 Hence it appears very possible, that the knowledge of the " one only living and true God/' may be lost by a nation which once possessed it. We know from Jewish history, that it was, if not wholly lost, yet so greatly impaired as to seem lost at different times among the Israelites, and the decline of the national religion is invariably connected with the decay of civil- ization. When the means of knowledge are given to man, ignorance becomes a crime; and though to know what is right is not always the same as to do what is right, yet the knowledge is certainly necessary to the action. Who hath not seen, what time the orb of day Cinctured with glory seeks the ocean's breast, A thousand clouds, all glowing in his ray, Catching brief splendour from the purple west? So round thy parting steps, fair Truth, awhile, With borrow'd lines unnumber'd phantoms shone; And Superstition from thy lingering smile Caught a faint glow of beauty not her own, Blending her rites with thine, while yet afar Thine eye's last radiance beam'd, a slow receding star. We have dwelt at some length on this subject, because, among the many delusions propagated by the advocates of barbarian innocence, the purity of their primitive religion occupies a conspicuous place. They dwell with great complacency on the simplicity of the doctrines that may be discovered by the Light of Nature; but they do not tell us how that light is kindled, or by what aliment the flame is to be fed. No traces of this boasted light have been found in any of the barbarous races yet discovered; and the natural religion possessed by savages, instead of being pure 184 SUPERSTITIONS AND and simple, has been invariably found gloomy, san- guinary, and complicated. A savage ritual is not only sanguinary, it is generally licentious. Courtesans are notoriously employed as a part of the hierarchy in India. Among the islanders of the South Seas, whose virtues before they came in contact with Europeans were loudly celebrated in poetry and romance, an institution was found by which the debaucheries of a set of privileged libertines were placed under the sanction of religion. "The rites of the Areois" says Mr. Ellis, " were abominable, unutterable; in some of their meetings, they appear to have placed their invention on the rack, to discover the worst pollutions of which it was possible for men to be guilty, and to have striven to outdo each other in the most revolting practices. The mysteries of iniquity, and acts of more than bestial degradation, to which they were at times addicted, must remain in the darkness in which even they felt it expedient to conceal them. I will not do violence to my own feelings, or offend those of my readers, by details of conduct which the mind cannot contemplate without pollution and pain. I should not have alluded to them, but for the purpose of shewing the affecting debasement and humiliating demoralization to which ignorance, idolatry, and the evil propensities of the human heart, when uncontrolled or unrestrained by the institutions and relations of civilized society and sacred truth, may debase men even under circumstances highly favourable to the culture of virtue, purity, and happiness. In their pastimes, in their accompanying abo- minations, and the often-repeated practices of the most unrelenting murderous cruelty, these wandering Areois DETACHED CUSTOMS. 185 passed their lives, esteemed by the people as a superior order of beings, closely allied to the gods, and deriving from them direct sanction, not only for their abomina- tions, but even for their heartless murders. Free from labour or care, they roved from island to island, sup- ported by the chiefs and the priests; and were often feasted with provisions plundered from the industrious husbandman, whose gardens were spoiled by the hand of lawless violence, to provide their entertainments, while his own family was not unfrequently deprived thereby of the means of subsistence. Such was their life of luxurious and licentious indolence and crime. And such was the character of their delusive system of superstition, that for them too was reserved the Elysium which their fabulous mythology taught them to believe was provided, in a future state of existence, for those so pre-eminently favoured by the gods." Of the amusements of savage nations it is not neces- sary to say much. The most prominent and universal is dancing, with which there is generally associated some species of dramatic representation. The character of the representation varies in different countries, ac- cording to the habits and manners of the people. Among the Asiatics, dances are usually licentious exhi- bitions, but among the Americans and New Zealanders they are for the most part " the mimicry of noble war." An immoderate love of gaming seems natural to all persons unaccustomed to the habits of regular industry, and is generally found in all savage tribes. The Indians of North America were frequently known to stake their furs, their dresses, their arms, and their domestic uten- sils, at a favourite game, and when these were lost, to risk even their personal liberty upon a single cast. 186 SUPERSTITIONS AND The eloquence of savage tribes, especially the Red Men of North America, has been often celebrated, and if the praise had been kept within due limits, it might have passed without comment. We all know that the language of passion is, at the moment it is heard, more efficient and impressive than the language of reason; and savage eloquence is exclusively the language of passion, short, energetic, and abounding with highly- wrought figures. It is metaphorical, because the ora- tor's vocabulary is limited, and for the same reason it abounds in repetitions of the same ideas : it is poetical, because the speaker is obliged to deal largely in per- sonification, and to employ pictures in words rather than arguments. It must be added, that we have very few genuine specimens of savage eloquence, those which are usually received as such, being the mere inventions of romance. Father Lafitau tells a very amusing story illustrative of this subject. " He and his brother missionaries/' he says, " while residing among the Hurons of North America, had a servant who did not know a single word of the language of the Indians, but had caught what may be called its accent very correctly, so that he could give a good imitation of the general effect of it upon the ear: and this man, merely to amuse himself, was wont to make long speeches to the savages in a jargon literally having no meaning whatever, to which his hearers used to listen with great attention, and never doubted were addresses in their own language; only, they said, his style of oratory was so elevated, they could not always comprehend him." There can be little doubt that these poor people, in listening to their own DETACHED CUSTOMS. 187 countrymen, had sometimes contentedly taken sound for sense; the ignorant do so in every land, itinerant orators, in our country, have been followed and ap- plauded for jargon, not one whit more intelligible than that of Lafitau's servant. It is usual to enumerate, among the virtues of bar- tjarians, that they are not only satisfied with their condition, but proud of it. But pride is not a proof of real satisfaction, it is often an attribute of degrada- tion: the Byzantines were never more haughty than when they were purchasing the contemptuous forbear- ance of the Turks, nor the Romans than at the moment when they paid tribute to Alaric. The Spaniards of our own day, are infinitely greater sticklers for their national superiority to all other Europeans, than they were in the days of Charles V. ; and the Mussulmans of Hindoostan regard themselves as more entitled to rule over the Peninsula, than they were in the days of Baber, Acbar, and Aurungzebe. It is the pride which not only accompanies, but seems to increase with de- gradation, that renders the reformation of a falling people a work of such extraordinary difficulty. The Pa9ha of Egypt is said to be far more successful in his labours for the regeneration of Egypt, than the Sultan in his exertions to restore the Turks to their rank among European nations ; for to raise the fallen is an easier task than to save the falling. Turkish pride of ascendency will continue long after the ascendency itself is overthrown, and will probably accelerate the ruin of their remaining privileges; for it is especially in the case of a sinking ascendency, that " Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." 188 SUPERSTITIONS AND Many more points of comparison between civilized and savage life could easily be found ; but those already examined are sufficient to shew, that barbarism is not a simple but a highly artificial state, that it is obliged to have recourse to clumsy and complicated expedients for the maintenance of relations, which, in civilized society involves no difficulty whatever. It appears also, that barbarism cannot be natural to man ; for in the various aspects under which it has been examined, we have found that it opposes the growth and development of the faculties implanted in man by nature, or rather by the Author of Nature; finally, we have shewn, that it is not a state of happiness, innocence, or peace, that it is subject to all the storms arising from human passions which agitate civilized society, and must of necessity be the more disturbed; as among barbarians passions rage without the check or control which is always imposed by civilization. To a great extent the question between civilization and barbarism is identical with the question between knowledge and ignorance, and hence it was necessary to examine whether the progress of science has in any way increased the amount of human Buffering. Few, if any great changes, though ever so great improve- ments, can be effected without causing loss or incon- venience to somebody, and the complaints of those who suffer are always far louder than the gratulations of those who are benefited. The coachman in " Slick's Letter-bag of the Great Western/' only echoes the com- plaints of the copyists on the invention of printing. " Them was happy days for Old England, afore reforms and rails turned every thing upside down, and men DETACHED CUSTOMS. 189 rode as nature intended they should, on pikes with coaches and smart active cattle, and not by machinery like bags of cotton and hardware." It is was there- fore necessary to investigate some points belonging rather to comparative civilization than to the extreme of barbarism ; and to shew that every advance of civil- ization, every increase in the amount of knowledge, adds to the moral improvement of individuals, and the general benefit of society. Except in the lowest states of barbarism, we find nothing immutable in human nature ; changes must come, whether we desire them or not, time must generate new ideas, leaving us to arrange their relations to the common stock. If these ideas be developed by knowledge, they will become beneficial truths, if they be appropriated by ignorance, they will generate pernicious falsehoods. 190 CHAPTER IX. VARIETIES OP SAVAGE LIFE. IN the preceding chapters we have examined the most common attributes of barbarism, and shewn that they are such as necessarily result from ignorance every where. We have hitherto found a sad uniformity in all the communities destitute of knowledge and civil- ization ; and our next inquiry their capacity and opportunities for improvement necessarily involves an examination of the varieties of barbarism, and the extent of their influence on humanity. We may class the barbarous races in three divisions : they are hunters, shepherds, or agriculturists. Not, indeed, that any tribe exists deriving its support ex- clusively from the chase, from flocks, or from tillage; but that the different divisions make one or other of these pursuits their main source of subsistence. Hunt- ing always appears to have been a favourite mode of subsistence : it gratifies the love of excitement which is equally the characteristic of human nature in savage and civilized life ; and this excitement is necessarily greater when the hunter is dependent on the chase for the means of subsistence. The pleasure derived from the excitement of the chase is increased when the sport is perilous, " The danger's self is lure alone;" and hence a spirit of daring adventure is formed, which at once gratifies and developes pride and self-esteem. VARIETIES OF SAVAGE LIFE. 191 We find that this mode of life, with all its adventures, perils and hardships, has such attractions that men nurtured in the lap of luxury, will quit the comforts and enjoyments of civilized life to share in the stimu- lating sports of the savage hunter, and will cheerfully endure its privations at least for a season, in order to obtain its pleasures. So delightful does their hunting appear to some of the Siberian tribes, that their most bitter curse is, "May you be obliged to keep flocks and herds ! " Hunting, notwithstanding its pleasures, is so very precarious a mode of subsistence that there can be very few tribes dependent upon it alone. Among the Indians of North America there was always some agri- culture practised, and the chase is exclusively followed only by those who can exchange their peltry with mer- chants for necessaries and conveniences. Those who have adopted this wandering mode of life rarely aban- don it; there are countless examples of white men adopting all the usages of the Indian hunter, but there is scarcely one example of an Indian hunter or trapper adopting the steady and regular habits of civilized life. The Indian tribes, since the discovery of North America, have shewn a greater tendency to exchange the stationary for the nomade life, than to abandon roving habits for settled habitations. The history of the tribe of the Cheyenries in Mr. Washington Irving's Astoria, shews us that the wandering tribes of the prairies did not become hunters from choice, though after having adopted this roving life they displayed aversion to settled habitations. "The history of the Cheyennes," says Mr. Irving, 192 VARIETIES OP " is that of many of those wandering tribes of the prairies. They were the remnant of a once powerful tribe called the Shaways, inhabiting a branch of the Red River, which flows into Lake Winnipeg. Every Indian tribe has some rival tribe with which it wages implacable hostility. The deadly enemies of the Shaways were the Sioux, who after a long course of warfare proved too powerful for them, and drove them across the Missouri. They again took root near the Warricanne creek, and established themselves in a fortified village. " The Sioux still followed them with deadly animo- sity ; dislodged them from their village, and compelled them to take refuge in the Black hills near the upper end of the Sheyenne or Cheyenne river. Here they lost even their name, and became known among the French colonists by that of the river they frequented. " The heart of the tribe was now broken; its num- bers were greatly thinned by these harassing wars. They no longer attempted to establish themselves in any permanent abode that might be an object of attack to their cruel foes. They gave up the cultivation of the fruits of the earth, and became a wandering tribe, subsisting by the chase, and following the buffalo in its migrations. " Their only possessions were horses, which they caught on the prairies, or reared, or captured on pre- datory incursions into the Mexican territories, as has been already mentioned. With some of these they repaired once a year to the Aricara villages, exchanged them for corn, beans, pumpkins, and articles of Euro- pean merchandise, and then returned into the heart of the prairies. SAVAGE LIFE. 193 " Such are the fluctuating fortunes of these savage nations. War, famine, pestilence, together or singly, bring down their strength and their numbers. Whole tribes are rooted up from their native places, wander for a time about the immense regions, become amalga- mated with other tribes, or disappear from the face of the earth. There appears to be a tendency to extinction among all the savage nations; and this tendency would seem to have been in operation among the aboriginals of this country long before the advent of the white men, if we may judge from the traces and traditions of ancient populousness in regions which were silent at the time of the discovery; and from the mysterious and perplexing vestiges of unknown races, predecessors of those found in actual possession, and who must long since have become gradually extin- guished, or been destroyed." The tendency to extinction in hunting tribes, obvi- ously arises from the disproportionately large space which they require for subsistence. When population increases they must either change their mode of life, migrate to another land, or thin their numbers by civil wars. We have no example of hunting tribes remain- ing in their own land and adopting voluntarily an agricultural or even pastoral life, but we have some reason to believe that many pastoral tribes north of the Oxus and east of the Caspian, have been compelled to exchange the care of flocks and herds for the more precarious labours of the chase. The warlike con- querors who have successively appeared in these regions, have almost invariably commenced their career by pro- fessing that they designed to avenge some injury done K 194 VARIETIES OF to their ancestors. Roderick Dhu's vindication of him- self when charged with robbery, is similarly pleaded by the more savage tribes of Tartary, as an excuse for pillaging their neighbours. These fertile plains, that softened vale, Were once the birthright of the Gael : The stranger came with iron hand, And from our fathers rent the land. Where dwell we now? See rudely swell Crag over crag, and fell o'er fell. . . . Pent in this fortress of the north, Think'st thou we will not sally forth To spoil the spoiler as we may, And from the robber rend the prey? In the multitudinous revolutions of Tartary and Mongolia, it is not easy to collect from tradition an authentic series of facts ; but all authorities are agreed, that the tribes of the mountains and the deserts declare that they were driven to these wilds and fastnesses by usurping rivals. The fate of hunting tribes is in a great degree determined by the character of the people in their immediate vicinity. If their neighbours be a people progressively advancing in civilization, they will be driven farther and farther back into the wilds, as the Indians of America have been before the Europeans; but if the nation on their frontiers be weakened by any moral or political cause, the hunting tribes become the aggressors, and migrate into the more civilized country. The incessant civil wars among the pastoral tribes of Tartary, have frequently enabled the ruder hunting tribes to bring them under subjection. The connexion between war and hunting has been SAVAGE LIFE. 195 remarked by almost every writer on either subject. The first conqueror of whom we read was also "a mighty hunter before the Lord." The patience, valour, skill, and discipline, which have been found so valuable in the chase, are not less effective against a human enemy. When hunters become conquerors, they gene- rally commence their career by extermination : it is not until they have learned to appreciate pasturage and agri- culture, that they begin to make slaves ; as they advance they rest contented with taking tribute from the van- quished nations, and the more distant they are borne by the tide of conquest from their homes, the more ready are they to adopt the usages of those whom they have subdued. When once removed from their own wilds and forests, the conquering hunters disappear more rapidly than any other race, and are sooner merged in the general mass of the population. Their breath is agitation, and their life A storm whereon they ride, to sink at last. And yet so nursed and bigotted to strife, That should their days, surviving perils past, Melt to calm twilight, they seem overcast With sorrow and supineness, and so die; Even as a flame unfed, which runs to waste With its own flickering, or a sword laid by, Which eats into itself, and rusts ingloriously. A pastoral life is not necessarily barbarous, it pre- supposes in fact a certain amount of civilization : the art of domesticating animals, and so completely chang- ing their nature as to efface the original type, requires more intelligence than we are accustomed to suppose, and it is not easy to conceive how the attempt could have been originally suggested. It is also very sin- 196 VARIETIES OF gular that the number of domesticated species has not been increased by the lapse of time, though at first sight there are many of the untamed animals which might seem more easy to be brought into subjection than those which have been subdued and rendered serviceable. A stag appears a more manageable animal than a wild bull or a wild boar; the giraffe seems, antecedent to experience, not less fit than the camel for journeying in the desert ; the fox and the wolf are scarcely less prepossessing than the wild dog, and any one of them seems less mischievous than the wild cat. Hence it appears probable that pastoral life, even in its lowest form, was commenced with a stock of knowledge acquired somewhere. We can readily con- ceive how a shepherd may become a hunter, but the reverse process is utterly incomprehensible. The tran- sition from chasing and slaying to guarding and tend- ing, is obviously unnatural; and besides, how could the hunter antecedent to experience find out the animals which he ought to select, and how could he discover that they would repay his care ? Pastoral tribes are generally nomades, and in pro- portion to the extent of their wanderings approximate to the character of the hunting races. The Tartars, for instance, are more erratic than the Arabs ; they are also more cruel to captives, more tyrannical to slaves, and more perfidious to enemies. Nor is this difference to be attributed to national character; wherever circum- stances have compelled the Tartars to adopt a stationary mode of life, they have shewn capabilities for civiliza- tion not inferior to those of any other nation. The Mantchews in China, have adopted the learning, litera- SAVAGE LIFE. 197 ture, and jurisprudence of the vanquished, not less readily than the Goths, Vandals, and Franks did in Europe. But in no instance has a pastoral race, uninfluenced by external circumstances, adopted a new mode of life. The change has always arisen from their being con- quered or conquerors. The Scottish Highlands owe their present state of civilization in no small degree, to the military occupation of the country after the battle of Culloden ; the superiority of the Mantchews to the Tartars of the desert, arises from their occupation of China. In both cases the civilization was taught from without, not evolved from within. In the fifteenth century Tartary was visited by intelligent missionaries, whose narratives have been recently published by the Geographical Society of Paris. Plan de Carpin, the most intelligent among them, has left us a very full and minute account of the usages of the Tartars, and in no particular does he vary from the descriptions given by travellers of the present day. The Tartars of his time were ever ready for plundering and kidnapping expeditions, the Russians know to their cost that they are so now; they exercised the power of life and death in their families, and so they continue to do; their slaves were, and they still are, worse treated than their cattle; the fathers and hus- bands were capricious despots, and so they remain ; finally, indulgence in the worst abominations of licen- tiousness was a common matter of boast, and such it still continues to be. The character of the Tartars appears in fact to be stereotype, and the same repeated page is their moral history for centuries. 198 VARIETIES OF The innocence of shepherds is one of those delusions that poets seem to have rendered inveterate. Lambs are innocent, but shepherds are not lambs; and this is pre- cisely the difference between pastoral poetry and pastoral life. Arcadia, the great locality for the ideas of rural simplicity and happiness, was not chosen as a residence by any of them who celebrated it; indeed, throughout the whole period of its history, it was one of the most degraded districts of the Peloponnesus. The present shepherds of Greece and Italy are described as the very worst part of the population, and those of Spain are notoriously either in connexion with robbers or robbers themselves. In every instance where shepherds form a class unconnected with society, we find them ferocious men, given to violence and brutality, and dangerous neighbours to a civilized community. We are frequently led astray by the pictures of patri- archal life in the Old Testament. We forget that pastoral life is there represented under special circum- stances; the patriarchs continually received guidance and direction from on high; when some among them neglected the heavenly direction, and yielded to their natural impulses, we find them displaying examples of brutal violence and savage sensuality, for instance, in the history of the sons of Jacob. It was while the Israelites were nomades, that their inspired legislator found it necessary to provide against many revolting crimes which disappeared when they became a settled nation. The Bashkirs, a nomadic people, tributary to Russia, sent a contingent to the army which invaded France in 1813, but whether in a friendly or hostile country, it was found equally unsafe to billet them in SAVAGE LIFE. 199 the houses of cities, and they were forced to bivouac in the open squares. In countries where there are many shepherds, but where they do not form a separate caste, their average of knowledge and morality differs very little from that of the rest of the population. It would be vain to seek among them for the features with which pastoral life has been invested in poetry and romance just as " love in a cottage," so long the staple of novels, has no reality, save in, A cottage with a double coach-house, A cottage of gentility. The most marked characteristic of nomade tribes, whether hunting or pastoral, is indomitable pride. They reject improvement and innovation with all the scorn of self-satisfied ignorance. We doubt whether such pride is an element of happiness; it leads inevitably to that contempt for the rights of others evinced by plundering, kidnapping, and butchery to that unrestrained indul- gence of the passions which renders life wretched and uncertain. But this pride is an insuperable obstacle to the progress of civilization; it has prevented the Pawnees from profiting by the example of the Ameri- cans, and the Kirghis from deriving any advantage from the instruction of the Russians. The various missionaries who have visited nomade races, found their labours utterly unavailing, so long as a wandering life continued, and they have only succeeded in bestowing the elements of civilization on those compelled by cir- cumstances to adopt a settled habitation. The progress of civilization, both in North and South America, has been to some degree impeded by the 200 VARIETIES OF introduction of the horse. It is an unquestionable fact, that the equestrian tribes are far more savage and untameable than those which have not as yet become horsemen, for the possession of steeds affords a wider range for the indulgence of nomadic habits, and espe- cially for distant marauding expeditions. The change has already become so great, as to attract the earnest attention of the American Congress ; but the means of prevention are not so easily discovered as the amount of the evil, for colonization, except on a very large scale, would be more likely to degrade the civilized man, than to elevate the savage. The agricultural form of barbarous life is principally found in the islands of the Pacific Ocean. When left to itself, it is found to be not less stationary than the nomade forms; for the New Zealanders of the present day are not one whit more advanced than their coun- trymen when first visited by Captain Cook. But an agricultural race of barbarians offers far greater facilities for civilization than the hunting and pastoral tribes; a greater advance has been made in Hawa'i within a few years, than has been effected among the natives of America since the first discovery of that continent. It has been said that savages have seldom or never chosen civilized life of their own accord, but that civi- lized men have been known voluntarily to adopt the habits and customs of savages. We have seen that this is to some extent true in the case of hunting tribes, whose life of excitement gratifies our natural propensities. The civilized man has only to divest himself of certain tastes, and to forbear the exercise of certain faculties, in order to fit himself for enjoying a SAVAGE LIFE. 01 life of adventure; the savage has the double task of laying aside acquired habits, and rousing into action faculties which have lain dormant from his cradle, and become all but extinct from desuetude. But the change in any case must result from com- parison. The American Indians, subsisting by the chase of the elk, the deer, and the buffalo, offer to the view of the white man a life of capital sport, enhanced, as we have already shewn, by its very privations ; on the con- trary, the Indians are objects of admiration to the white observer, from the superior skill which long practice has given them in detecting the marks of their game, follow- ing the animals to their lair, and baffling their attempts to escape by ingenious devices. But the admiration of the Indian is not excited in turn by the superiority of the white man in ploughing and weaving, since he prefers venison to bread, and skins to cloth. In this aspect, civilized life is not attractive to the Indian, but barbarous life is to the white man ; and hence, on the outskirts of American population we find a savage race of degenerate whites, " the pioneers" of advancement, who push forward like the Indians themselves, when civilization treads too closely on their heels. But among agricultural races of barbarians, this picture is directly reversed. The New Zealanders have no beasts to chase ; they feed upon fish, or upon the vegetables which they rudely cultivate. Here the superiority of the white man is at once evident; the plough, in the eyes of both, is a better agricultural implement than a sharp stick, and both see that it is easier to weave cloth in a loom than with the hand. Indeed, the passion which the South- Sea islanders K 2 202 VARIETIES OF evince for European articles of dress, is in itself a tacit confession of inferiority. While among the noraades of Asia no curse is deemed more bitter, than " May God put a hat on you ! " no higher compliment could be paid to a New Zealander, than to bestow a hat on him. It may, however, be said, that the process of im- provement is likely to be slow; indeed, the reluctance of farmers to adopt any change, however beneficial, has been matter of notoriety from the earliest ages. In Ireland, it was necessary to pass several acts of parliament to prevent fastening ploughs to the tails of the horses, and burning oats in the straw to avoid the labour of threshing ; and it is singular to find that the repeal of these acts was among the chief articles de- manded from the Duke of Ormond, at the treaty of Kilkenny, in 1648. A century afterwards, both prac- tices are noticed as still existing, by Mofiatt, in his Hiberno-neso-graphia : The western isle renown'd for bogs, For lories and for great wolf-dogs, For drawing hobbies by the tails, And threshing corn with fiery flails. None of these practices were adopted by the English settlers ; on the contrary, the Irish gradually adopted the improved system of tillage introduced from Great Britain. It seems, therefore, not unreasonable to con- clude, that the New Zealander will be induced to adopt improvements in the arts by which he subsists, while it seems improbable that the white man would adopt the more clumsy implements and the less productive cul- ture of the savage. SAVAGE LIFE. 203 Climate is the cause of some varieties in savage life ; the colder climates will not admit of such improvidence as is manifested in tropical countries. " Such negli- gence in providing clothing and habitations, and in laying up stores of provisions, as in warm and fertile countries is not incompatible with existence in a very rude state, would, in more inhospitable regions, destroy the whole race in the course of a single winter." Every exertion of industry, of economy, and of foresight, is an advance in civilization, and an impediment to degeneracy. The early inhabitants of the British isles, even in the most barbarous parts, appear to have been very superior to the South-Sea islanders. They were forced to exercise "the proud prerogatives of humanity" labour and ingenuity, and hence it was, even in the earliest time, our national boast MAN is the nobler growth these realms supply, And SOULS aie ripened in our northern sky. 204 CHAPTER X. THE ARTS OF SAVAGE LIFE. IN the history of human inventions,, few things are more remarkable than the sudden checks which the progress of ingenuity appears to have received from apparently trifling obstacles. The Romans seem to have been for many years on the verge of discovering printing ; they used letter-stamps, which might reason- ably be expected to suggest the notion of types, and yet centuries elapsed before any one seems to have thought of combining several stamps together. On the other hand, it is generally difficult to discover by whose ingenuity the obstacle was first removed : the origin of printing is one of the most contested points in literary history, and there is scarcely one great im- provement in machinery that has not been claimed by several inventors. But while there are doubts respect- ing the authors and even the countries of inventions, their dates can for the most part be ascertained with tolerable precision, or at least the periods when they began to be brought into practical operation. On examination, it will be found that most inventions of which we have a record, resulted from some want or necessity, created by the existing state of civilization ; that there is a great harmony observable in the progress of the different arts, and that improvements are for the most part simultaneous, or nearly so, in the principal ARTS OP SAVAGE LIFE. 205 branches of human industry. This harmony is, how- ever, interrupted, when arts are imported from some foreign land; the Russians, for instance, have borrowed several of the most ingenious of the modern processes of manufacture from England and Germany; but a traveller is at no loss to distinguish the imported from the native arts, by the great disproportion of the re- finements in the former to the general average of the country. When we examine barbarous nations, we no longer find the uniformity which is so evident in civilized countries; however low their condition may be, they usually possess one or two processes so far surpassing the intellectual condition of the people, that we can with difficulty believe them to be of native invention. The boomerang of the New Hollanders for instance, is a weapon far surpassing Australian ingenuity; the pecu- liarities of its shape, and mode of use, are such as necessarily to involve a long series of projectile experi- ments before it could have been brought to perfection; but the Australians as we now find them, are utterly destitute of the contrivance, the observation, and the patience, which such experiments would require. It was for some time believed that this weapon was pecu- liar to the islands of the Southern seas, and consequently, that it must have been a native invention ; but on ex- amining the pictured representations on the Egyptian monuments, we find that a weapon similar to the boomerang, was employed by those who hunted water- birds on the Nile; and allusions to a missile of the same kind, occur in the earlier Greek poets. The advance in the arts among barbarians is usually 206 THE ARTS OF found in weapons of war, or instruments of music. The contrast is very striking between the elaborate workmanship of a New Zealand spear, arid the clumsy appearance of one of their fish-hooks : the wooden club or sword, is a formidable weapon in the South seas : but the substitute for the spade is the most mise- rably inefficient implement that can well be imagined. But among the New Zealanders, proofs have been recently discovered of a greater advance in the me- chanical arts having existed at an unknown age, than they were found to possess when first their country was visited by Europeans. From time immemorial the New Zealanders have been in the habit of burying with their dead the favourite axes, and implements of stone, that were highly prized by their chiefs, while in this state of existence. Some years ago, the removal of one of these articles would have been deemed an act of impious sacrilege; but this feeling is fast disappearing, and the priests, who alone know where these sacred cemeteries are situated, generally die, keeping the secret. But in 1835, Mr. Polack* informs us, "an influential priest was bribed to dispose of an ancient adze, called toki pu tangata by the people: it was extremely ancient, and had been buried in a sandy soil for many years; the place of its interment was only known to the priest, who had noted the spot by the branching of a par- ticular tree called Raid. We afterwards discovered that had the circumstance been known of the priest having sold it, probably the infuriate sticklers for sanctity would have sacrificed the seller to their re- * Manners of New Zealanders, i. 70. SAVAGE LIFE. 207 sentment. The adze was formed of a blue granite, inserted in a handle of the rata, or red pine-wood, carved agreeably to native taste. This instrument, from disuse, is scarcely to be met with in the country." An engraving of the adze is given in Mr. Polack's very interesting work; and both in beauty of execu- tion, and adaptation to its purpose, it is obviously superior to any of the other mechanical implements of which he has given figures. At a future period many oboriginal curiosities will, probably, be discovered by the European colonists, in tilling the ground: Mr. Polack found several pieces of obsidian, or volcanic glass, while turning up a garden on his estate in the Bay of Islands, which doubtless were originally brought from the southward by the natives, for the purpose of making chisels and other implements from the sharp angular points of the crystallized substance. The manu- facture of such instruments from obsidian in that part of the island appears to have ceased at a very remote period, in consequence of the incessant wars between the tribes. It is impossible to look at the specimens we possess of the tattooing of the New Zealanders, and the orna- mental carvings on their boats and door-posts, without feeling convinced that the figures must have had some symbolic signification, the sense of which is lost. It is generally known that the pattern for tattooing is not capricious, but that it has direct reference to the tribe and rank of the individual. " Tribes," says Mr. Po- lack, " are known by such distinctive marks, and many chiefs, whose countenances have never been seen by a distant tribe, are known simply by the distinguishing 208 THE ARTS OF mark which has been peculiarly engraved on their countenances. We had several opportunities of testing this fact, from having taken some likenesses of the chiefs residing at the north, and on shewing them to some families resident at a distance upwards of four hundred miles they were immediately distinguished and named,, though no connexion existed between these persons, or had they even at any period seen each other. Yet to Europeans, unobservant of national characteristics, and to new comers in the country, the marks of the moko appear as if performed by the same person from the same pattern, but the contrary is the fact, an exceedingly marked difference exists." In an- other place he says, " tattooing is the sign-manual and crest of a native chief. In title-deeds of land pur- chases, or receipts, of any description, the moko, or fac-similes, on the face of a chief, are correctly repre- sented by him on paper. The initials, or crest on the seal, attached to the watch, or ring, of a European, is accounted by a native as the moko of its owner." He adds, "they take much pride in adding the various curvatures of the moko to their signatures ; and our risibility has often been excited in viewing an aged chief, whose scant locks had weathered upwards of eighty winters, drawing, with intense care, his signature, with inclined head and extended tongue, as is the wont of young European practitioners in the art of penmanship." There are national differences in the process observ- able among the islanders in the different clusters of the Southern ocean, in the forms which predominate throughout their punctures; and hence there appears to be some reference to a traditionary standard in this SAVAGE LIFE. practice, which, in some form or other, appears to have prevailed almost universally amongst barbarous nations. In the time of Moses it appears to have been a common practice among the Canaanites and the various tribes surrounding Palestine, and to have been connected with idolatry, for it is strictly prohibited in the law: "Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you : I am the Lord." (Levit. xix. 28.) The Picts, Celts, Goths, and Ancient Britons, both painted their flesh and tattooed, or " made cuttings" in it : most writers assert that this was done merely to terrify their enemies ; but it seems not improbable that these punctures had a symbolic signification, and were regarded as a kind of armorial bearings, or cognizances. The hieroglyphics carved on the edifices of the New Zealanders are still more obviously symbols than the punctures on the bodies. They are not approximations to written records, for their signification does not appear to be thoroughly understood by those who use them ; but on the contrary, they appear to have every mark of being the traditionary remains of some former act of recording events Mr. Nasmyth's very interesting lecture on the bricks of Babylon, published in the "Athenaum" of Satur- day March 14th, 1840, gives some singular proofs of the forms of letters having been originally determined by the material used for keeping records, and also of the forms having been preserved long after the materials were changed. Now the hieroglyphics of the New Zealanders are engraved on wood, and yet their forms are such as would seem the least likely to be invented 210 THE ARTS OF by wood-cutters ; the lines are flowing curves with rich flourishes, such as would most likely be formed in some soft and plastic material, so that they at once suggest a belief that their archetype was derived from some other art, and that they were applied to wood only when the original and more appropriate material could not be procured. If this reasoning be correct, we find among the New Zealanders strong evidence of a lost art belonging to a former stage of civilization, more advanced than that which they at present possess. The transition of symbolic records, from significant marks into mean- ingless ornaments, may be witnessed in our own land. Barge-men, lighter-men, and carriers, who can neither read nor write, frequently devise for themselves a species of hieroglyphics which they understand very well, but which are unintelligible to everybody else. It is not at all uncommon to see these copied by their sons or apprentices, and carved as ornaments on boats and walls, without any reference to their signification, and indeed in all the cases where we have made the inquiry, in utter ignorance of their having any meaning. Persons who cannot write, form nevertheless a cor- rect notion of the nature and object of writing ; and, as ordinary experience teaches, often aim at effecting the object by such clumsy expedients as Carlton has de- scribed in his very amusing sketch, the Geography of an Irish Oath. Supposing a number of such persons to emigrate voluntarily, or of necessity, they would attempt to imitate the form of recording which they had witnessed in their native land ; but the tradition of the meaning being originally imperfect, the knowledge SAVAGE LIFE. of it would soon be lost, but the form of record would continue to be copied, either from the natural pro- pensity of man to imitation, or from the sanctity which would soon attach itself to the mystery of the symbol. In the interior of Africa, the musical instruments are superior in construction to the implements constructed for the practical purposes of life, and the same obser- vation is applicable to various tribes of the South-Sea islanders. But it deserves to be remarked, that among the different tribes, different instruments are found in the higher degree of perfection. The Africans, gene- rally, are pre-eminent in stringed instruments; the inhabitants of the Society Isles were celebrated for their flutes, while others seem to have paid most attention to the drum. The following description of a Tahitian flute, given by Mr. Ellis, singularly elucidates the ab- sence of uniformity in barbarian progress, for it exhibits considerable ingenuity in an article of luxury amongst a people who are ignorant of the spade, the hammer, and the chisel. " The vivo, or flute, was the most agreeable instru- ment the Tahitians appear to have been acquainted with. It was usually a bamboo cane, about an inch in diameter, and twelve or eighteen inches long. The joint in the cane formed one end of the flute; the aperture through which it was blown was close to the end; it seldom had more than four holes, three in the upper side, covered with the fingers, and one beneath, against which the thumb was placed. Sometimes, how- ever, there were four holes on the upper side. It was occasionally plain, but more frequently ornamented, by 212 THE ARTS OF being scorched or burnt with a hot stone, or having fine and beautifully plaited strings of human hair wound round it alternately with rings of neatly-braided cinet. It was not blown from the mouth but the nostril. The performer usually placed the thumb of the right hand upon the right nostril, applied the aperture of the flute, which he held with the fingers of his right hand, to the other nostril, and moving his fingers on the holes, produced the music. The sound was soft and not unpleasant, though the notes were few; it was generally played in a plaintive strain, though frequently used as an accompaniment to their pelies, or songs. These were closely identified both with the music and the dances. The ihara, the drum, and the flute were generally accompanied by the song, as was also the native dance." It is important to observe, that no barbarous tribe claims the invention of any of the arts in which it displays special ingenuity. The invention is invariably ascribed to the gods, or to some deified ancestor. The New Zealanders are expert fishermen, though their hooks are clumsy. They ascribe the art of constructing nets to their deity Mawe, and hence it is practised under the sanction of religion. Mr. Polack gives us the following account of the fishing apparatus employed by the New Zealanders. " Fishing nets of various kinds are used, of excellent quality, and have not the rude stamp that characterises the form and substance of the generality of their instru- ments. Some of the seines are of enormous extent, and are made by each family in a village working a certain portion of raw flax, which is quickly ripped with SAVAGE LIFE. 213 the finger-nails into strips, the boon, or useless gummy matter, at the lateral parts, being discarded. These narrow strips are tied up in bundles, and left to dry on poles in the air. Flax nets, thus made, are remarkably tough, and resist decay for a long time. After being made use of, they are carefully folded up (some of them are about two thousand feet long) and placed on a wata, or small scaffold. While in progress of manufacture, the workmen are placed under a strict tapu (religious separation), probably an invention thus introduced by a wise observer, * to attach this fickle people to the attainment of one object at once, which they would be doubtless disinclined to follow without some such sti- mulant. Land-nets are also in frequent use, one of them is in the form of a bag suspended from a hoop, and fixed to a pole; this net is found to be extremely serviceable in fishing for the kolinda, or cray-fish, that congregate among the rocks in certain places very numerously; they are sought after by the feet of the fisher, who places his nets near to the fish, and with a dexterous jerk, tumbles the scaly prize into it. " Fishing baskets, made from a variety of Hands, or creepers, that almost form vegetable nets in the dense forests, formed of a large capacity below, and narrowing to a small compass at the mouth, are also made use of to entrap the finny tribes, from which escape is impossible." The seine is so considerable an advance in art, and so far beyond the average of inventions possessed by the New Zealanders, that we cannot avoid believing, * More probably a superstition derived from the supposed divine origin of the art. 214 THE ARTS OF that owing to the great abundance of fish on the coast it was preserved when the knowledge of other imple- ments was lost, or that it was introduced by some more civilized foreigners. So late as the close of the seventh century, the inhabitants of Sussex had no means of taking the fish that abounded on their coast, until they were taught by Wilfred, the exiled Archbishop of York, and gratitude for this benefit is assigned by the eccle- siastical historians as one of the principal causes of their prompt conversion. But although arts advance simultaneously, they are found to present great discrepancies in their decline. Of all the arts possessed by the people of the Pharaohs, the Copts scarce retain any but the hatching of chickens by artificial heat, but in this they have not been sur- passed by any other nation. The Hindoos retain their skill in the manufacture of jewellery, and the descen- dants of the Peruvians are still eminent as lapidaries, though many useful arts possessed by their ancestors have been forgotten. It would be easy to multiply examples, but those we have mentioned are sufficient for our argument. Mr. Polack, who has with equal care and ability examined the arts and the traditions of the New Zealanders, and compared them with those of other barbarous nations, thus forcibly gives his testimony to the fact, that the elements of civilization which they possess are inherited from ancestors superior to the present race in intel- ligence. After detailing their mythic account of the origin of their nation, he says, " The origin of such fables is lost in the gross traditions of the people, but probably they SAVAGE LIFE. 215 relate to the earliest of the colonial ancestry of the present descendants, who, gifted with a portion of the knowledge of the civilized tribes from whom they emanated in Asia, communicated to their children a limited account of those arts and inventions ; but obliged by the scarcity of animal and vegetable food in the new country, to devote the principal portion of their time and that of their children towards producing sub- sistence ; and deprived of those monuments of art they had been accustomed to view in their own country, and unable to give in idea similar knowledge to their chil- dren, which had been familiar to them in substance, the latter gradually sunk into the barbarism they have displayed for some centuries past ; their superstitions accumulating as each generation was further removed from the earliest inhabitants, whose superior civilization, which they had imperfectly disseminated, inspired those unpolished children with a spirit of divine admiration. Probably aware that religious ceremonials would alone act as a check on a nation without the means of improving their uncivilized state, the dying patriarchs claimed in consequence divine honours, which they were enabled to eifect by improving upon the unqualified devotion displayed by their admiring descendants." We find then, nearly in all barbarous nations, the relics of a more ancient system of civilization far superior to that which they at present possess; and traditions ascribing the invention of each of these better processes to some celestial being. The same fact meets us in the early history of most civilized nations : the ancient Greeks, like the modern islanders of the South Sea, averred that they received the first 216 ARTS OF SAVAGE LIFE. elements of civilization from the gods, that is, from a race of beings more perfect than themselves. There is a universal consent that the first impulses to improve- ment were received from a foreign source, and no tribe or nation has yet been found that asserted the spon- taneous development of its civilization. 217 CHAPTER XL EVIDENCES OF LOST CIVILIZATION. WHEN North America was first discovered by Euro- peans, it was found inhabited by barbarous races, unacquainted with most of the common arts of life. Among the most savage of these Indians were the inhabitants of the wilds on the Mississippi and Ohio, who not only were destitute of civilization, but seemed utterly incapable of appreciating its blessings. Cen- turies elapsed ; the red men, untamed and untameable, retired before the skill, enterprise, and science of the Anglo-Americans; their forests fell beneath the axe, the tangled thickets which covered their soil were cleared away by the cultivator, but their labours instead of revealing a virgin soil, have exhibited to the won- dering colonists unquestionable traces of the existence in these regions, at an unknown but very remote age, of a highly civilized race, whose very name has been lost to history. Vestiges of tumuli, fortified encampments, mounds and trenches, are found in Western America as far north as the range of the buffalo ; their western limit is not known ; but on the south they extend through the isthmus of Darien to Peru.* They vary in con- * It may be necessary to state that part of this description (ui gviddam notum propriumque) is taken from an article contributed to the Athenaeum, by permission of the proprietors. L 218 EVIDENCES OF struction according to the nature of the soil : in the north they are principally built of earth, but on ap- proaching the Cordilleras they are found to serve as bases for massive stone edifices now in ruins. A fortress at Marietta, and another at the mouth of the Great Miami, are described, by competent persons, as constructed with considerable engineering skill. Such works, it is manifest, could not have been raised by the Indians discovered on the Ohio, who were mere untutored savages, unacquainted with any useful arts save those of the rudest manufacture and most simple necessity. They were also divided into small tribes, having little or no connexion with each other, while there is strong evidence for believing that those who erected these monuments formed one people. The larger camps are constructed near watercourses, and at intervals along the stream tumuli have been raised, which would be visible one from the other were the country cleared of its present forest. These remains have very recently attracted the ear- nest attention of American antiquarians, but particularly of the Historical Society of Ohio, which has been in a great degree instituted for their special investigation. Mr. Delafield, at the desire of the Society, has examined several of them personally, and states as the result of his observations, that "a map of North America, de- lineating each of these ruins in situ, would exhibit a connexion between the various groups of ancient walls, by means of intermediate mounds, a signal on which by fire or otherwise would transmit with ease and tele- graphic despatch the annunciation of hostile approach or a call for assistance." Garcilasso de la Vega informs us LOST CIVILIZATION. 219 that such a practice was common among the ancient Pe- ruvians, and that a regular system of telegraphic signals was established throughout the empire of the Incas. But further inquiries have shewn that these encamp- ments were not all constructed for military purposes ; the form, the position, and the arrangement of many, rendering them obviously unsuited to the purpose of a fortress or magazine. There is a remarkable structure at Circleville, described by General Harrison, which seems to have been designed for a place of public assembly. " The square," he says, " has such a number of gate- ways as seem intended to facilitate the entrance of those who would attack it. And both it and the circle were commanded by the mound, rendering it an easier task to take than to defend it." Some of the locations appear to have been chosen with direct reference to the facilities which the soil affords for cultivation. Agri- culture, in ancient times, seems to have been a great cause of men associating together, and the early opera- tions of farming were undertaken by a community, and not by isolated individuals. All the agricultual opera- tions of ancient Egypt were carried on in the vicinity of cities, for we find it distinctly stated in the history of Joseph, " the food of the field which was round about every city laid he up in the same." It does not appear that these agricultural associations were formed merely for defence, they seem to have been rather designed for co-operation. The structures in the state of Ohio, which most probably were erected to facilitate cultivation, give evidence that the neighbourhood was populous by their great extent, but at the same time, 220 EVIDENCES OP they shew by their position and form that they would have been unavailing as defences against a foreign invader. Mr. Delafield informs us that some of the localities have been obviously chosen with reference to the facility of procuring metalliferous ores, smelting them, and manufacturing the metals. "In Liberty township, Washington county, Ohio, are yet to be seen twenty or thirty rude furnaces, built of stone, with hearths of clay, containing pieces of stone-coal and cinder, perhaps used in smelting ore. Large trees are still growing on them, and attest their age. They stand in the midst of a rich body of iron ore, and in a wild hilly and rough part of the country, better adapted to manufactures than to agriculture." This circumstance is the more remarkable, as it has been hitherto generally believed that the use of iron was unknown to the Americans before the discovery of the New World by Europeans. It affords the strongest evidence not only of the possible decline of civilization in a particular country, but also of the possibility of an art being lost, which after having been once possessed would seem almost indispensable to existence. Some of the military mounds are of great extent : there is one on the river Cahokia, nearly opposite St. Louis, which Dr. M'Culloch declares must have occu- pied thousands of labourers for many years. But the magnitude of these works is less remarkable than the ingenuity displayed in their construction; several of them, as has already been noticed, display great engi- neering skill. The fortress at Marietta has a ditch, a LOST CIVILIZATION. 221 covered way, and a subterraneous communication with the river ; that at Miami, has flank defences, bastions placed in perfect accordance with the best principles of fortification, and lines of curtain which General Harrison declares, are " precisely what they should be." In some districts these structures abound more than in others. General Dearborn informs us that the mounds are so numerous in the neighbourhood of Rock river, that he there examined groups or collec- tions of them, at thirteen places within a distance of fifteen miles. They were from seven to forty-three in number at the various locations, and extended along the bank at some points for more than half a mile. "They extend," he says, "from near the mouth of Rock river, through Illinois, far into Wescousin terri- tory, shewing how densely that region must have been populated some five hundred or five thousand years since." The mounds mentioned by General Dearborn are for the most part tumuli, bones and other sepulchral relics having been found in them. It is exceedingly probable that further investigations will enable us to form some correct notion of the advance made by this forgotten nation in the domestic arts, for their tumuli, like the Egyptian catacombs and the New Zealand sepul- chres, exhibit memorials in the chambers of death of the favourite pursuits of life. Some enterprising persons have opened the great mound called the Mammoth mound, situated near Elizabeth town in Virginia; they fitted up the interior as a museum, in order to display the several objects discovered in the course of their excavations. The exhibition was opened to the public EVIDENCES OF in the summer of 1839, and it has proved one of the most interesting in America. The following abridg- ment of the description published by the proprietors, has recently appeared in the London "Athenaeum/' " The workmen commenced at the north wing. They cut an arched tunnel or entrance ten feet high, seven wide, and one hundred and eleven in length, when they struck on the mouth of a vault. This vault was found to be seven feet high, and in length eight by twelve feet, north and south. After commencing the tunnel the first thing discovered was the appearance of charcoal, with fragments of burnt bones, traces of which continued to the entrance of the vault. Within fourteen feet of the mouth of the vault they struck on the original entrance or passage, descending like the entrance of a cellar, apparently supported by timbers. Within this vault were found two skeletons ; the first nearly perfect not one tooth missing supposed to have been placed erect, but it had fallen near the wall, and been preserved by the sand which had crumbled over it. On the opposite side lay another skeleton, the bones much broken. With the latter were found 650 ivory beads, and near the breast an ivory ornament of peculiar construction, about six inches in length. From the centre of this vault they proceeded to cut or excavate an opening eleven feet in diameter, to the top, a distance of sixty-three feet. After proceeding about half way, they struck on another vault, eight feet by eighteen, east and west. In this were found one skeleton and its ornaments, consisting of 1700 ivory beads, 500 sea-shells, 150 pieces of isinglass, and five copper bands, worn round the wrist, weighing seven- LOST CIVILIZATION. 223 teen ounces, also a small stone, about two inches in length and one and a half in width, with marks re- sembling letters and figures, and several other small trinkets." Any person who examines the engravings of these copper bands, published by the Historical Society of Ohio, must at once be convinced that the marks on them are written records, though it is impossible to determine whether they are alphabetical or ideagraphic. In either case, they afford a proof that the art of keep- ing records may be lost in a country, and consequently tend to strengthen the probability of the interpretation of the New Zealand tattooing and carving given in the preceding chapter. The description given of the Mammoth mound, cor- responds very exactly with the few particulars known of the discoveries made some years since at Teatihuacan, when the great pyramid of Cholula was cut through to make the road from Mexico to Puebla. The work- men, after penetrating a brick wall of enormous thick- ness, reached a square chamber, elegantly constructed of polished stone, and having its roof supported by beams of cypress wood. In this sanctuary were discovered two skeletons, some vases, and a number of ornaments, which have been either dispersed or destroyed by the ignorant workmen. Humboldt, who saw the teocalli, or pyramid of Cholula, before it was laid open and partially destroyed, gives us the following description of its stupendous size and grandeur. "At a distance it has the appearance of a natural hill, covered with vegetation. It has four stories all of equal height. It appears to have been constructed 224 EVIDENCES OF exactly in the direction of the four cardinal points. The base of this pyramid is twice as broad as that of Cheops in Egypt, but its height is very little more than that of Mycerinus.* On comparing the dimen- sions of the House of the Sun, in Peru, with those of the pyramid of Cholula, we see that the people who constructed these remarkable monuments intended to give them the same height, but with a basis of length in proportion of one to two. The pyramid of Cholula is built of unburnt brick alternating with layers of clay." This construction recalls to mind that of one of the Egyptian pyramids of Sakkara, which has six stories, and which, according to Pococke, is a mass of pebbles and yellow mortar, covered on the outside with rough stones. Not less remarkable, are the monumental remains of Xochicalco, which some authorities believe to have been a temple, and others a military fortification. It is thus described by Humboldt: " To the south-east of the city of Caeinavaca (the ancient Qualmahuac), on the western declivity of the cordillera of Anahuse, in that happy region designated by the inhabitants under the name of Tierra templada (temperate region), because it enjoys perpetual spring, rises an insulated hill, which, according to the baro- metrical measurement of M. Algate, is one hundred and seven metres high.f The Indians call it, in the Aztec dialect, ' Xochicalco, or the House of Flowers/ The hill of Xochicalco is a mass of rocks, to which the * The length of the base is 1423 feet, and it is 177 feet high. t Nearly 331 feet. LOST CIVILIZATION. 225 hand of man has given a regular conic form, and which is divided into five stories or terraces, each of which is covered with masonry. These terraces are nearly twenty metres* in perpendicular height, but narrow towards the top, as in the teocallis, or Aztec pyramids, the summit of which was decorated with an altar. The hill is surrounded by a very deep and broad ditch, so that the whole entrenchment is nearly four thousand metres in circumference, f The summit of the hill of Xochicalco is an oblong platform, seventy-two metres % from north to south, ninety-six metres from east to west. This platform is encircled by a wall of hewn stone more than two metres high,|| which served as a defence for the combatants. In the centre of this spacious military square, we find the remains of a pyramidical monument, the form of which resembles the teocallis we have already described. Among the hieroglyphical remains of the pyramid of Xochicalco, we distinguish heads of crocodiles spouting water, and figures of men sitting cross-legged, according to the custom of several nations in Asia." Although we shall have occasion to return again to a consideration of the Mexican monuments, we cannot forbear remarking the similarity of this structure to the great temple of Bel, or Belus, at Babylon, as de- scribed by Herodotus. " It is a square building, each side of which is the length of two furlongs. In the midst a tower rises, of the solid depth or height of one furlong, on which, resting as a base, seven other turrets are built in regular succession. The ascent is on the * About 65 feet, f Rather more than two miles and a half. | 236 feet. 315 feet. || About four feet and a half. L2 226 EVIDENCES OF outside ; which, winding from the ground, is continued to the highest tower, and in the middle of the whole structure there is a convenient resting-place." The walls around the edifice of Xochicalco seem to explain the design of the embankments raised around the tumuli of North America, which are particularly remarkable in the monumental remains at Circleville and Marietta. We shall in a future page endeavour to shew that these structures were all erected by men of the same race, who continued their hereditary mode of constructing high places in Mexico and Peru, when they migrated, or were driven from their more northern settlements, with the improvements incident to their permanent location there. Stone took the place of their earthern tumuli; yet the defences were still erected around them for protection from farther pre- datory incursions of their northern enemies. But whatever people may have been the builders of the earthern structures in North America, nothing can be better established than the very remote antiquity of the works themselves. General Harrison's reasoning on this subject is too conclusive and luminous to be withheld ; we shall quote his own words, but we cannot do so without expressing regret that he has fallen into the common American error of overlaying his logic with his rhetoric, and that he has disfigured his argument by the worst ornaments of depraved eloquence. " The sites of the ancient works on the Ohio," he says, "present precisely the same appearance as the circumjacent forest. You find on them all that beau- tiful variety of trees which gives such unrivalled rich- ness to our forests. This is particularly the case in the LOST CIVILIZATION. 227 fifteen acres included within the walls of the work at the mouth of the great Miami, and the relative pro- portions of the different kinds of timber are about the same." Now the aspect of timber to an experienced wood- man affords certain data, established by invariable experience, for ascertaining within certain limits the chronology of the first growth. General Harrison's reasoning on the subject is irresistible: "The first growth, on the same kind of land, once cleared, and then abandoned to nature, on the contrary, is more homogeneous often stinted to one or two, or at most, three kinds of timber. If the ground has been culti- vated, yellow locusts, in many places, will spring up as thick as garden peas. If it has not been cultivated, the black and white walnut will be the prevailing growth. The rapidity with which these trees grow, for a time, smothers the attempt of other kinds to vegetate and grow in their shade. The more thrifty individuals soon overtop the weaker of their own kind, which sicken and die. In this way there is soon only as many left as the earth will well support to maturity. All this time the squirrels may plant the seed of those trees which serve them for food, and by neglect suffer them to remain, it will be vain ; the birds may drop the kernels, the external pulp of which has contributed to their nourishment, and divested of which they are in the best state of germinating, still it will be of no avail ; the winds of heaven may waft the winged seeds of the sycamore, cotton-wood, and maple, and a friendly shower may bury them to the necessary depth in the loose and fertile soil, but still without success. The 228 EVIDENCES OP roots below rob them of moisture, and the canopy of limbs and leaves above, intercepts the rays of the sun and the dews of heaven : the young giants in posses- sion, like another kind of aristocracy, absorb the whole means of subsistence, and leave the mass to perish at their feet. This state of things will not, however, always continue. If the process of nature is slow and circuitous, in putting down usurpation and establishing the equality which she loves, and which is the great characteristic of her principles, it is sure and effectual. The preference of the soil for the first growth, ceases with its maturity. It admits of no succession, upon the principles of legitimacy. The long undisputed masters of the forest may be thinned by the lightning, the tempest, or by diseases peculiar to themselves ; and whenever this is the case, one of the oft-rejected of another family will find between its decaying roots shelter and appropriate food, and springing into vi- gorous growth, will soon push its green foliage to the skies, through the decayed and withered limbs of its blasted and dying adversary, the soil itself yielding it a more liberal support than any scion from its former occupant. It will easily be conceived what a length of time it will require for a denuded tract of land, by a process so slow, again to clothe itself with the amazing variety of foliage which is the characteristic of the forests of this region. Of what immense age, then, must be those works, so often referred to covered^ as has been supposed, by those who have the best opportunity of examining them, with the second growth after the ancient forest had been regained." The chronological inferences derivable from the LOST CIVILIZATION. 229 growth of trees are of great interest and importance. M. de Candolle has shewn that there is no law of nature on whose invariable validity we may rely with greater confidence, than that dicotyledonous trees in- crease annually in size by the deposition of an addi- tional layer between the wood and the bark, and that a transverse section of such trees presents the appearance of a series of nearly concentric irregular rings, the number of which indicates the age of the tree.* Among the trees described as growing on the earthen structures of the Ohio, we find several taxoclia, a transverse section of which would no doubt establish the minor limit of date to the abandonment of the buildings. We have not found many such observations in the American works on the subject, but from the size ascribed to those trees, we should be led to con- clude from analogy, that many centuries were necessary to bring them to their present stage of growth.f The traditions of the native Indians preserve the memory of the superior race of men to whom these remarkable structures are ascribed. The earliest and best account of this primitive race is thus given by Messrs. Yates and Moulton, in their History of New York. " The Lenni Lenape, J according to the tradi- tions handed down to them by their ancestors, resided * See Dr. Pye Smith's Geology, for an application of this principle to an argument against the supposed universality of the Deluge, and Babbage's Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, for an ingenious suggestion respecting a mode of determining the age of strata by the rings of trees imbedded in them. t One instance of the age of a tree at Marietta being thus deter- mined, will be found in a subsequent page. t Called also the Delawares. 230 EVIDENCES OF many hundred years ago in a very distant country in the western part of the American continent. They de- termined on migrating to the eastward, and accordingly set out in a body. After a long journey and many nights' encampment (that is, halts of one year at a place), they arrived on the Nimorsi Sipu,* where they fell in with the Mengive,t who had also emigrated from a distant country, and had struck upon the river a little higher up. Their object was somewhat similar to that of the Delawares; they were proceeding east- wards until they should find a country that pleased them. The territory east of the Mississippi was in- habited by a very powerful nation, who had many large towns built on the great rivers flowing through their land. These were the Alligervi, from whose name those of the Alleghany riverj and mountains have been derived. This famous people are said to have been remarkably tall and stout ; and there is one tradition, that giants were among them people of a much larger size than the Lenapes. They built regular entrenchments and fortifications, whence they would sally, but they were generally repulsed. M. Hocke- welder has seen many of these fortifications, two of which are remarkable ; viz. one near the mouth of the * The river of fish, from namors a fish, and sipu a river. It is now called the Mississippi. f The Iroquois, or five nations. | Viz., the Ohio, as the Iroquois named it; a branch of it still retains the ancient name. The state of Ohio had not been explored when this was written ; the structures described by General Harrison and General Dearborn, far surpass those mentioned by Messrs. Yates and Moulton, but they have only been recently discovered. LOST CIVILIZATION. 231 Huron, flowing into lake St. Clair; the other on the Huron, east of San dusky, six or eight miles from lake Erie. " The Lenape on their arrival, requested permission to settle in their country. The Alligervi refused, but gave them leave to pass through and seek a settlement farther eastward. They had no sooner commenced crossing the Namorsi Lipu, than the Alligervi, per- ceiving their vast numbers, furiously attacked them, and threatened them all with destruction if they dared to persist in coming over. Fired at this treachery, the Lenape now consulted about giving them a trial of their strength and courage. The Mengive, who had remained spectators at a distance, now offered to join them, on condition that after conquering the country, they should be entitled to share it with them. Their proposal was accepted, and the resolution was taken by the two nations to conquer or die. The Lenape and Mengive now declared war against the Alligervi, and great battles were fought, in which many warriors fell on both sides. The enemy fortified their large towns, and erected fortifications, especially on large rivers and near lakes, where they were successively attacked and sometimes stormed by the allies. An engagement took place, in which hundreds fell, who were afterwards buried in holes, or laid together in heaps, and covered with earth. No quarter was given, so that the Alligervi, finding their destruction inevitable if they persisted in their obstinacy, abandoned the country to the conquerors, and fled down the Mississippi, whence they never returned. The war lasted many years, and was very destructive." 232 EVIDENCES OF Mr. Delafield intimates that there exists a tradition of the earthen fortifications having been constructed for the protection against the Mammoth as well as against the attacks of another race. This supposition is not supported by any of the accounts given of the works themselves, and for many obvious reasons appears to be improbable. He states, however, that the line of retreat taken by the conquered people, may be traced by their fortifications to the elevated plains of the Cordilleras, where remains of earthen ramparts may be found, but serving merely as bases, on which are erected massive stone edifices, now in ruins. There are some sceptical writers who assert that stupendous edifices like the Egyptian pyramids, the Hindoo cave-temples, and the great wall of China, are evidences of barbarism rather than civilization, because they have not any obviously useful purpose. It cer- tainly is not very conclusive reasoning to infer that these structures must be useless, or erected merely for ostentation and vanity, because their purpose is not immediately discoverable in modern times; but what- ever force may be attributed to the objection in other cases, it is inapplicable to the case of the earthern struc- tures on the Ohio, for the utility of the edifices is at once apparent. The account given of them by the Rev. Mr. Harris, is so complete that we shall extract it, though at the risk of a little repetition. " The vast walls and mounds of earth discovered in the western country, have excited the astonishment and baffled the researches of all who have seen or heard of them. The works at Marietta are on an elevated plain above the present bank of the Muskingum, on the east LOST CIVILIZATION. 233 side, half a mile from its junction with the Ohio. They consist of walls and mounds of earth, in direct lines, and in square and circular forms. The largest square fort, by some called the town, contains forty acres, encompassed by a wall of earth from six to ten feet high, and from twenty-five to thirty-six feet in breadth at the base. On each side are three openings at equal dis- tances resembling gateways. " From the outlet next the river is a covert way, formed of two parallel banks of earth, two hundred and thirty-one feet distant from each other. On the inside, they are twenty-one feet in height, and forty-two in breadth at the base ; but on the outside, average only five feet high. This passage is three hundred and sixty feet long, and probably reached the river when it was constructed.* Within the walls at each corner are elevated squares a hundred and eighty feet long, a hundred and thirty-two broad, and nine feet high; level on the summit and nearly perpendicular at the sides. Circular mounds are seen thirty feet in diameter and five in height. " Towards the south east is a smaller fort, containing twenty acres, with a gateway in the centre of each side, and one at each corner. These openings are defended with circular mounds. At the outside of the smaller fort is a mound in form of a sugar-loaf. Its base is a regular circle, a hundred and fifteen feet in diameter, and its perpendicular altitude is thirty feet. It is sur- rounded with a ditch four feet deep and fifteen wide, and defended by a parapet four feet high, through * More recent investigations have traced the communication quite to the river. 234 EVIDENCES OF which is an opening or gateway towards the fort, twenty feet wide. " The places called graves are small mounds of earth, from some of which bones have been taken, in their natural position, of a man buried nearly east and west, with a quantity of isinglass (mica membranacea) on his breast. In others, there were some bones, partly burnt, charcoal, arrow -heads, and fragments of a kind of earthenware. " Plates of copper have been found in some of the mounds, but they appear to be parts of armour. These works were covered with a prodigious growth of trees, one of which was felled, and was judged from the con- centric circles to be four hundred and sixty-three years old.* " About ninety miles further up in the country, on a plain bounded by a western branch of the Muskingum, is a train of ancient works, nearly two miles in extent, with ramparts eighteen feet high. "At Licking are extensive works, some different from those at Marietta, and several circular forts with but one entrance. They have a parapet from seven to twelve feet high, but no ditch. " Utensils are found four and five feet below the surface. They are quite different in shape and kind from the stone tools and flint arrows of the Indians, * This circumstance gives a minor limit for the age of the mound, but as the species of tree is not mentioned, we cannot determine whether it was of first or second growth. Later descriptions of Marietta would lead to the inference that the trees are of second or perhaps third growth, which would of course more than double the amount of years that must have elapsed since the abandonment of the fortress. LOST CIVILIZATION. 235 which are frequently picked up on the surface. They undoubtedly belonged to a people acquainted with the arts. " In some of the mounds have been found plates of copper rivetted together, copper beads, various imple- ments, and a very curious kind of porcelain. The Indians regard them with as much surprise as we do. There are inscriptions engraven on a large stratum of rocks, on the south-east side of the Ohio, two miles below the mouth of Indian or King's Creek, which empties into the Ohio fifty miles below Pittsburgh. The rocks are horizontal, and so close to the edge of the river that at times the water covers them. " At the distance of a few yards from the banks of the river, there are several large masses of the same kind of rock, on which there are inscriptions also of the same kind, which appear, to have been engraven at the same time. "The town of Tomlinson, state of Ohio, is built upon one of these square forts. Several mounds are within a mile ; three of them are higher than the rest. In digging, to build a stable at the end of one of them, many curious stone implements were found ; one resem- bled a syringe ; there was a pestle, and several copper beads. In another mound, in Colonel Biggs' s garden, there was a vast number of human bones, stone tools, and a stone signet of an oval shape, two inches long, with a figure in relievo, like a note of admiration, sur- rounded by two raised rims. Captain Wilson observed, that it was exactly the figure of the brand with which the Mexican horses are marked. "A tumulus twelve feet high, and a parapet of five 236 EVIDENCES OF feet, with only one entrance, was surrounded by a regular ditch. One, called the Big Grave, is sixty- seven feet and a half high, with steep sides; the diameter at top is fifty-five feet, but the summit of the apex forms a basin three or four feet in depth; the base is half an acre. It is covered with large trees, and sounds hollow. Its contents may develope the history of these antiquities. The Rev. Doctor (now Bishop) Madison thinks that these were fixed habitations." Mr. Mill's scepticism respecting the ancient civiliza- tion of the Hindoos is founded on the supposed absence of works of utility. The validity of his reasoning will be examined in a future page, but whatever may be its force, we see that the structures on the Ohio are not open to his objections. Bishop Madison's conjecture that the work at Tomlinson was a fixed habitation has been amply verified by subsequent investigation. Both that and the fortress of Marietta appear to have been similar to the towns which still exist in Mongolia, that is, a collection of detached huts or hamlets, enclosed by a common line of defence. From the account given of Nineveh in the Book of Jonah, it would seem that this great city was built on a similar plan. For the pro- phet's murmurs were checked by the declaration that there were in it " more than sixscore thousand persons who could not discern between their right hand and their left hand, and also much cattle." There is accumulated evidence, to prove that the ancient inhabitants of the Ohio plains were in possession of the arts of working in rnetals, and of making a species of porcelain, both of which were lost long before the discoveries of Columbus. Some authors have, from this LOST CIVILIZATION. 237 circumstance, been led to entertain doubts concerning the high antiquity of the Ohio civilization, and to con- jecture, that the copper-plates were either obtained by traffic, or were the work of some foreign artisans, acci- dently thrown on the American coast. This theory is at once refuted by the great number of these remains, and the wide extent over which they are scattered. We have, in the oldest parts of Scripture, distinct intimation, that metallurgy was one of the earliest arts: describing the situation of the countries adjoining Eden, the historian says, " the land of Havilah containeth gold; there also abdellium and the onyx-stone." It may be remarked, that the Arabic version, instead of the resinous gum called bdellium, reads " pearl;" and as Havilah is gene- rally believed to be the southern part of Persia, it is probable that we have here an allusion to the pearl- fisheries in the Persian Gulf. Tubal Cain is described as a whetter, or " instructor of every artificer in brass and iron;" from the way in which Jabal and Jubal are mentioned in the preceding verses, it seems exceedingly probable that the several branches of industry at that early period were assigned to families or castes, and as we shall subsequently see, this circumstance will account for the arts, at an early period, attaining a high degree of perfection, and then sinking by premature decay. But the most minute account of ancient mining operations is that contained in the Book of Job. The passage is so very remarkable, and has been so sadly mutilated in most modern versions, that we shall quote it at length from Mr. Wemyss's admirable translation. 238 EVIDENCES OF CHAP. xlii. * 1. Truly there is a vein for the silver, And a place for gold which they refine. 2. Iron is dug up from the earth, And the rock produceth copper. 3. Man diggeth into the place of darkness, And diligently exploreth each extremity; The stones of darkness, and the shadow of death. 4. The channels of brooks choaked up with sand, Which, though despised while under the foot, Are sifted and displayed amongst men. .5. The surface of the earth produceth bread, But its interior is the region of fire. G. Among its stones are to be found sapphires, Spotted with small grains of gold. 7. There is a path which no fowl knew, Which the vulture's eye hath not descried. 8. Which the wild beast's whelps have not trodden, Nor hath the swarthy lion stalked over it. 9. Man stretcheth forth his hand to the sparry ore, He overturneth mountains from their roots. 10. He scoopeth channels through the rocks, His eye discerneth every precious gem. 1 1 . He restraineth the oozing of the streams, So that what was concealed becomes radiant. This remarkable passage suggests some considera- tions which must not be omitted. In the first verse we find the refiining of metals mentioned as an instance of human ingenuity, distinct from the searching of them out. In that and the next verse, four metals are speci- fied, gold, silver, iron, and copper. Now, as there are very few, if any, metalliferous veins in Idumea, it ap- pears obvious that the patriarch could have become acquainted with them only by Egyptian or Pho3nician traffic. The extent and accuracy of his knowledge would seem to prove, that commerce between Idumea * In the ordinary translation this is the 28th chapter. LOST CIVILIZATION. 239 and other countries was very frequent and extensive in his age, and that the Book of Job may therefore be received as an accurate account of the general state of civilization in south-western Asia at the period in which it was written. We may therefore use this written record as a standard of comparison in estimating the amount of civilization to which other nations attained, and thus viewed, it will be found that the ancient record and the ancient relics mutually illustrate each other. The different verbs applied to the production of iron and copper are more accurately contrasted in the com- mon translation than in that of Mr. Wemyss. " Iron is taken out of the earth, and brass is molten out of the stone " thus intimating that the art of smelting iron was unknown, and that this metal was only used when found in a pure state. As copper in hardness bears the proportion to iron of about eight to nine, it was not very much inferior to it as a material for manufac- turing implements before the art of forming iron into steel was discovered. The superior ductility of copper, of course, rendered it a preferable metal for the manu- facture of ornaments and utensils. Mr. Delafield's investigations seem to prove that the art of smelting iron was known to the aborigines of the Ohio, and therefore they, in that process, surpassed the western Asiatics of Job's day, and the Greeks in the time of the Trojan war, for we find no mention of iron implements in the days of Homer. But as the remains of furnaces have been found only in one place, it is probable that the art was but in its infancy at the time when it was swept away. On the other hand, we find in the Book of Job, 240 EVIDENCES OF distinct records of extensive mining operations, to which nothing analogous has yet been discovered among the antiquities of America. " The stones of darkness/' in the third verse, are obviously ores hid in the deep recesses of the mine ; and in the fourth verse we have a manifest allusion to the washing and sifting of metal- liferous sands, for the purpose of extracting the grains of gold which they contain. In the sixth verse we have a description of lapis lazuli, with its gold-like specks of iron pyrites; while the seventh and eighth verses describe with great force, the perilous and awful appearance of the shafts and galleries which human eagerness, more ardent than the vulture, and human enterprise more daring than the lion, constructed in the dark recesses of the earth. The ninth verse describes the operation of breaking through the stony strata; the tenth exhibits the ancient system of drainage, so important in all mining opera- tions; and the eleventh carries this still farther, by shewing what means were adopted when the subterra- neous waters burst into the mine in such abundance as to stop the work. Such is the general view which this passage suggests, and we think that thus closely examined it depicts a greater advance in mining skill than is generally suspected by ordinary readers. But skill in metallurgy by no means proves a general advance in all other forms of civilization, since it is mainly produced by the facilities for working mines which nature affords. In the mining districts of England we have always found the engineering and mechanical skill greatest where the mines were richest, but we have not found the general average of civiliza- LOST CIVILIZATION. 241 tion raised in anything like the same proportion. Job clearly describes mining operations in a country where rich metalliferous veins abounded, and where conse- quently nature herself seems to have both invited enterprise and suggested the mode of working. The same is true of the localities where Mr. Delafield found the remains of ancient American furnaces; and there- fore though these afford unquestionable evidence of the palmy state of one great branch of human industry, they by no means justify the extravagant estimates of general civilization which have been thence deduced by some imaginative writers. The use of metallic mirrors is an obvious mark of refinement ; and we find traces of their being employed by JoVs cotemporaries, and by the ancient inhabitants of America. Elihu asks the patriarch CHAP, xxxvii. 18. Hast thou with him spread out the sky, Which is polished like a molten mirror? Some of the plates discovered in the tombs on the Ohio were, from their shape and the remains of polish still observable, designed to act as reflectors. In a future chapter we shall endeavour to establish the unity of civilization in North and South America, and we may therefore be permitted to quote here Ulloa's description of some Peruvian tombs, the opening of which he witnessed. " The tombs were in size according with the rank of the deceased; with them were buried their furniture, and instruments of gold, copper, earth and stone. Out of one graca,* while we were there, were taken a con- * Peruvian sepulchre. EVIDENCES OF siderable quantity of gold utensils. In another, in the jurisdiction of Pastos, great riches were found, some copper axes, small looking glasses of the Inca stone and of the yalinazo or black stone ; the form is circular, and one of the surfaces flat, and as smooth as a crystal mirror ; the other oval, and less polished. I saw one a foot and a half in diameter : its principal surface was concave, and greatly magnified objects ; and the polish of which could not now be exceeded by our best work- men. A hole is drilled to hang them by. " They find also guaqueros,* for drinking chicarf they are made of fine black earth, and some of red earth. They are round, with a handle in the middle; the mouth on one side ; and on the other the head of an Indian, excellently expressed. Where they were made is utterly unknown.^J We find no allusion in the Book of Job to any fictile manufacture beyond coarse earthenware ; and this seems a very striking proof of the high antiquity of the poem, for the Egyptians possessed great skill in pottery at a very remote period. But the specimens of porcelain discovered in North America, unquestionably prove that this branch of industry, which from its connexion with domestic economy is a highly important element of civilization, had been a very extensive and flourish- ing manufacture. But no element of civilization is of more importance than the art of recording events. It is only when man begins to register the past, that he obtains a guide to the future. The patriarch Job, in an admi- rable climax, describes four kinds of writing: Peruvian jugs. f A favourite beverage in South America. t Ulloa, vol. i. p. 368. LOST CIVILIZATION. 243 CHAP. xix. 23. O that even now my words were recorded ! O that they were engraven on a tablet, With a pen of iron upon lead, That they were sculptured for perpetuity in a rock. Here we have first simple writing, probably on the leaf or bark of a tree, secondly, engraving on a wooden tablet, thirdly, a more permanent record on a metallic plate, and finally the enduring sculpture on everlast- ing rock. This appears to be not only a climax of duration, but also of invention. It is not probable that the first attempts at written records should have been made on the hardest substance, and we may very legitimately infer that wherever inscribed rocks are found, there must also have been other less difficult and costly modes of keeping public and private records. It is unnecessary to cumber this subject with any investigation into the origin of alphabetic writing, a subject which Dr. Wall has recently pursued with great learning and sagacity. Indeed he has established the exceeding probability, if not the absolute certainty of the Book of Job having been originally written in hieroglyphics, and it is sufficiently obvious that the patriarch's exclamation is just as applicable to pictorial or hieroglyphic writing, as to alphabetical. We shall shew that the aborigines of Ohio had some mode of recording events, but we do not possess sufficient data for determining the nature or kind of writing which they possessed. Captain Carver, who travelled into the interior of North America in the middle of the last century, informs us, "After leaving Lake Pepin, in ten days I arrived at the Falls of St. Anthony (lat. 44 50') : about 244 EVIDENCES OF thirty miles below them is a remarkable cave, with a lake in it. I found in this cave many Indian hiero- glyphics which appeared very ancient, they were covered with moss. They were cut in a rude manner, upon the inside of walls of soft stone."* Humboldt adds, " Amid the extensive plains of Upper Canada, in Florida, and in the deserts bordered by the Orenois, the Cassiquiare, and the Guainia, dykes of a considerable length, weapons of brass, and sculp- tured stones, are indications that those very countries have formerly been inhabited by industrious nations> Avhich are now traversed only by tribes of savage hunters."t In another place the same intelligent traveller adds, " The Agteck hatchet, made of feld-spar, passing into the real jade of M. de Saussure, is loaded with hiero- glyphics. I am indebted for it to Don Manuel del Hoi, of Mexico, and it is in the king's cabinet at Berlin. " The Mexicans and Peruvians made use of stone hatchets when copper and brass were very common among them. Notwithstanding long and frequent excursions in the Cordilleras of both Americas, we were never able to discover a rock of jade ; and this rock being so scarce, the more are we surprised at the immense quantity of jade hatchets which are found on digging in the plains formerly inhabited, from the Ohio to the mountains of Chili." J Four drawings of the inscribed stone on the Taunton river, were published by Mr. Lort in the third volume of the Archseologia, or Memoirs of the London Anti- * Carver's Travels, p. 64. f Humboldt, vol. i. p. 25. \ Humboldt, vol ii. p. 38. LOST CIVILIZATION. 245 quarian Society. The objects represented are rude figures in outline, and appear as if they Avere the tran- sition between pictorial representations and hierogly- phics. There are engraved rocks at Dighton, in Narra- janset bay, not far from the monument described by Mr. Lort, but the engravings of it published by the Anglo-Americans are so inconsistent with each other, that it is difficult to recognise them as copies of the same original. There are no engraved rocks in the plains of Ohio, for the best of all possible reasons, that no rocks exist in the prairies, inscribed hatchets and plates are found in the tombs. We have thus shewn that there is abundant evidence to prove that the land, which on its first discovery was found peopled by one of the wildest races of savage hunters, had at some former period been possessed by a nation who have left proofs of their civilization in their fortresses, camps, warlike and domestic imple- ments, and in arts, the exercise of which required a high degree of refinement. 246 CHAPTER XII. FURTHER EVIDENCES OF LOST CIVILIZATION. " WHEN I returned from Asia to assume the procon- sular government of Achaia, as my galley sailed slowly up the Saronic gulf, I began to cast a curious gaze upon the surrounding regions. Behind me lay jEgina, before me, Megara, on my right hand the Piraeus, on my left Corinth; cities which, in times gone by, were the brilliant abodes of opulence and power, but now lay prostrate beneath my eye, in the sorrowful desola- tion of their present abandonment. The scene came over my spirit with a train of sad, but high-purposed reflections. What? said I, shall we, feeble creatures of the dust, who by the very tenure of life are only born to die, shall we repine at the decrees of destiny, or impeach the justice of the immortal gods, if one of us do but perish by disease or violence, when here, in these narrow limits, lie the scattered and unsightly ruins of so many of the noblest among the cities of Greece? Wilt thou not chasten the murmuring spirit within thee, and in sight of these fallen monuments of the wise and great and glorious of past generations, remember that thou also art but man ? " * These are the words of Servius Sulpicius, addressed to his friend Cicero, who was sinking under the accu- * Cicero's Letters. LOST CIVILIZATION. 247 mulated weight of severe private loss and portentous public calamity. The great orator and statesman was weeping over the tomb of his daughter Tulliola the young, the beautiful, the blest the treasury in which a father's fondest affections were garnered the fairest flower among the lovely ones of Latium the youthful model unanimously recommended for imitation to the wives of Rome ! The flower faded before its bloom was unfolded Tulliola was arrested by premature disease in the very outset of her bright career " her sun went down while it was yet day;" the doom of early death was pronounced upon her; or, according to the touching superstitions of the ancients, embodied in harmonious verse by a Christian poet,* she received the choicest boon which the gods reserve for their special favourites, an early death. The patriot suffered not less severely than the father; the blood of the best and boldest of the Roman war- riors had been poured out like water on the plains of Pharsalia; hearts that would have dared, and hands that would have achieved, the conquest of a world, were now dull clods of senseless clay. The conscript fathers, the imperial senators, on whose debates the fate of millions had been suspended, had either fallen in the civil contest, or were wandering about in strange lands, * Weep not for those whom the veil of the tomb, In life's happy morning hath hid from our eyes, Ere sin threw a light o'er the spirit's young bloom, Or earth had profaned what was born for the skies. Death chill'd the fair fountain ere sorrow had stain 'd it, 'Twas frozen in all the pure light of its course, And but sleeps 'till the sunshine of heaven has unchain'd it, To water that Eden where first was its source. 248 FURTHER EVIDENCES hopeless, helpless exiles, save those who, self-doomed to a worse fate, bowed in ignoble sycophancy before triumphant despotism, Establish'd violence and lawless might, Avow'd and hallow'd by the name of right. The magnificent institutions of ancient Rome, won against vast odds by her earliest patriots, cherished through successive ages of weal and woe, cemented by the blood and toil of heroes and sages, were now trodden into tbe dust under the iron-shod hoofs of barbarian cavalry, and the coarse feet of traitorous infantry. The majesty of Rome was a senseless carcass, and the eagles had gathered round their legitimate prey. To Cicero, thus standing amid the dissolving frame of his country' s grandeur, Sulpicius pointed out those evidences of decayed civilization, in a land which nature seemed to have formed as the very home and sanctuary of freedom, and where the external world retained, and still retains, all the physical advantages necessary to foster and protect the dignity and the happiness of man. And yet how lovely, in thine age of woe, Land of lost gods and godlike men, art thou ! Thy vales of evergreen, thy hills of snow, Proclaim thee Nature's varied favourite now: Thy fanes, thy temples to thy surface bow. Commingling slowly with heroic earth, Broke by the share of every rustic plough: So perish monuments of mortal birth, So perish all in turn, save well-recorded worth : Yet are her skies as blue, her ways as wild ; Sweet are her groves, and verdant are her fields, Her olive ripe as when Minerva smiled, And still his honied wealth Hymettus yields; OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 249 There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds, The free-born wanderer of her mountain air ; Apollo still her long, long summer gilds, Still in his beam Mendeli's marbles glare; Art, Glory, Freedom fail but Nature still is fair. Since these lines were written, Greece has regained her independence; the iron yoke of barbarism has been broken, and the crescent has sunk before the cross. But still vainly do we seek for patriotism in the country of Phocion and Aristides, for political wisdom in the land of Pericles and Cimon, or for a sense of moral duty in the home of Socrates and Plato. Better, far better is it for the traveller to seek the magic creations of the chisel of Phidias in the shapeless and mutilated fragments of statues, friezes, and temples that he treads beneath his feet. Here is abundant evidence of lost civilization; here too is the still more awful warning, that to destroy is easy, while to restore is all but impossible. The elo- quent silence of ruin here proclaims to those nations which still hold the sacred treasure of civilization, that its continuance depends on incessant vigilance, and its preservation on constant watchfulness. They must ever have "their loins girded, and their lamps burning;" their course runs along the verge of a precipice, and, descent once begun, will proceed with accelerating velo- city. The progress of decline is traced in the well known lines, Facilis descensus Averni, etc., or as Dryden renders them The gates of hell are open night and day, Smooth the descent and easy is the way : But to return and view the cheerful skies, In this the task of mighty labour lies; To few great Jupiter imparts that grace, And those of shining worth and heavenly race. M 2 250 FURTHER EVIDENCES Deeper and harsher are the characters in which this bitter truth is graved upon the favoured fields and sunny slopes of Italy. Italia! oh, Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame; O God ! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and couldst claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress.* " Rome is the grave of Rome," and no " resurgam" is inscribed upon the tomb. We began this argument by quoting the words of " The Roman friend of Rome's least mortal mind ;" we may appropriately conclude it by the parallel re- flections suggested to an intelligent American, Mr. * Lord Byron in this stanza has partly imitated the well-known sonnet of Filicaja : the same sentiments have been no less powerfully expressed by Alessandro Marchetti, which have been thus translated by Mrs. Hemans: Italia ! oh, no more Italia now ! Scarce of her form a vestige dost thou wear. She was a queen with glory mantled; thou A slave degraded, and compelled to bear. Chains gird thy hands and feet ; deep clouds of care Darken thy brow, once radiant as the skies ; And shadows, born of terror and despair Shadows of death, have dimm'd thy glorious eyes, Italia ! oh Italia, now no more. For thee my tears of shame and anguish flow ; And the glad strains my lyre was wont to pour Are changed to dirge-notes ; but my deepest woe Is, that base herds of thine own sons the while, Behold thy miseries with insulting smile. OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 251 Gushing, while travelling through the ruined cities of Spain. " I stood on a hillock of red earth, just variegated by fragments of marble, with half a dozen mutilated columns in the distance, protected by the good monks of San Isidro against the ravages of time. It was all that subsisted of the birth-place of Trajan. To this were the riches and architectural beauty of Italica reduced. A bright expanse of intervale, watered by the meandering Guadalquivir and its tributary stream- lets, stretched out in verdure and fertility far as the sight could reach, breathed upon by the balmy influ- ences of a southern sky. Nature retained Her undying charms ; it was the same lovely landscape on which Seneca and Lucan might have gazed in the olden time, and it was the natal atmosphere of the splendid Trajan. But the men, and the monuments they reared, had passed away together, leaving only the memory of their greatness to ennoble the spot. It was then I felt in its full force the truth so finely embodied in the stanzas of that poet, who is the great intellectual phenomenon of our time, and who, while given up to unspeakable profligacy of conduct, and with principles as perni- ciously false as the habitual course of his life was deplorably corrupt, yet, in his moments of better inspi- ration, struck out some of the grandest conceptions that poet or philosopher has ever uttered. " Alas ! the lofty city ! and alas ! The trebly hundred triumphs ! and the day When Brutus made the dagger's edge surpass The conqueror's sword in bearing fame away ! Alas, for Tully's voice, and Virgil's lay, And Livy's pictured page : but these shall be 252 FURTHER EVIDENCES Her resurrection ; all beside decay. There is the moral of all human tales ; 'T is but the same rehearsal of the past, First Freedom, and then Glory ; when that fails, Wealth, Vice, Corruption, Barbarism at last ; And History, with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page, 't is better written here. " This moral of all human tales, this rehearsal of the past, this one page of all the vast volumes of history, which Sulpicius read from the crushed arches and splintered columns of Corinth, and Byron from the indistinguishable heaps of the Palatine hill of Rome, the eternal truth, deducihle alike from the deep lore of reverend antiquity, and the more superficial wisdom of our own straightforward practical age ; namely, the inseparable connexion between private virtue and na- tional greatness, how could it fail to rise up before me, as I stood on the hill of Santiponce and gazed on the few memorials of Italica, which have survived the fury of the Vandal, the Goth, and the Moor ?"* For Time hath not rebuilt them, but uprear'd Barbaric dwellings on their shatter'd site, Which only make more mourn'd and more endear'd, The few last rays of their far scatter'd light, And the crush'd relics of their shatter'd might. The Roman saw these tombs in his own age, These sepulchres of cities which excite Sad wonder, and his yet surviving page The moral lesson bears, drawn from such pilgrimage. In the preceding chapter we have given evidence that a highly-civilized race once occupied the prairies and forests of Ohio, where barbarism in its worst form was found triumphant when America was first dis- * Cushing's Reminiscences of Spain. OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 253 covered. There are persons who cannot believe that civilization could have fallen so completely as to change this nation, which has left such striking proofs of its advancement, into the wild Indian hunters of more modern times. They declare that the natural character of the Indians renders them incapable of receiving civilization, and they appeal to correct representations of Indian life, as decisive proofs of their theory. Before entering on the investigation of this point, it is but fair to take the picture of Indian character drawn by a contributor to the North American Review,* who claims accurate knowledge of the subject, and whose views are generally received by his countrymen, as the correct results of observation and experience. ''There is nothing pleasing to the imagination in the dirty and smoky cabin of the Indian chief; there is nothing romantic in his custom of sleeping away the days of leisure from the perils of war or the adventures of the chase; there is not a particle of chivalry in the contempt with which he regards his squaw, and the unmanly cruelty by which he binds upon her burdens grievous to be borne. His whole life is surrounded by the dismal accompaniments of poverty, sensuality, ignorance, and vice. In the arts, he has never learned to do more than supply his coarsest animal wants. His taste for ornaments cannot well be more despicable. He rings his nose, as farmers ring their pigs, to keep them out of mischief; he daubs his body over with hideous colours, which give him the appearance of a devil; he puts horns upon his head, or sticks it all over with gaudy feathers; and then he is a finished No. 100. 254 FURTHER, EVIDENCES specimen of the Indian fine gentleman. In his amuse- ments, his taste is equally refined with his taste in dress. His war dances and funeral dances are mere contortions, exhibiting every form of ungraceful bodily action; and these are accompanied by a species of music consisting of a rude movement in time, and certain unmeaning howls, compared with which, the barking of wolves and the growling of bears are melody itself. His warfare is a compound of cruelty and cowardice. His point of honour is, to entrap his enemy unawares, and with no danger to himself; his glory, on returning to his native village, he places in exhibiting the greatest possible number of scalps, torn bleeding from the heads of his murdered victims. His treatment of a captive enemy, is horrible beyond de- scription. His highest enjoyment consists in taunting him with insults and reproaches in the midst of the fiercest death-agonies, which his diabolical skill enables him to invent. His sagacity is bounded to the dis- covery of a trail or track; his wisdom consists in a few wise saws handed down from his ancestors, and treasured up by the old women of the village. When in council, he dresses these scanty ideas with a touch or two of forest rhetoric, and that is his eloquence, and his statesmanship. How can it be any thing more ? To what circle of experience, to what treasuries of knowledge, can he resort for the enlargement of his mind and the cultivation of eloquence ? What occasion has his simple life for any thing more copious in thought, and more polished in language ? His religion is founded upon the simple conception of a Supreme Being, and that is always sublime; but what attributes OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 255 belong to this conception of the Supreme Being, can easily be inferred from the Indian's customs and his conduct. How unworthy of a God, his notions of Him are, it is unnecessary to illustrate, for it is known to all. His views of another life are distinct enough, but utterly insufficient to produce any exalting tendency in his conduct and character in this. They are low, gross, sensual. They have scarcely a glimmering of the light of imagination to redeem them from the most deplorable darkness/'* * It is worth while to contrast this picture with the spirited sketch of Indian character given by the author of Yamoeden. Know ye the Indian warrior race? How thir light form springs in strength and grace, Like pine on their native mountain side That will not bow in its deathless pride ; Whose rugged limbs of stubborn tone, No flexuous power of art will own, But bend to Heaven's red bolt alone ! How their hue is deep as the western dye, That fades in the autumn's evening sky, That lives for ever upon their brow, In the summer's heat and the winter's snow ; How their raven locks of tameless strain, Stream like the desert courser's mane ; How their glance is far as the eagle's flight, And fierce and true as the panther's sight ; How their souls are like the crystal wave, Where the spirit dwells in the northern cave ; Unruffled in its caverned bed, Calm has its glimmering surface spread ; Its springs, its outlet unconfess'd, The pebble's weight upon its breast, Shall wake its echoing thunders deep, And when their muttering accents sleep, Its dark recesses hear them yet, And tell of deathless love or bate. 256 FURTHER EVIDENCES Here are sufficient proofs of the absence of civiliza- tion, but not one particle of evidence to establish the asserted incapacity for civilization. On the contrary, the reviewer unintentionally affords proof that at some former period the Indians were farther advanced in knowledge than they are at present. He speaks of " the wise saws handed down from his ancestors and treasured by the old women of the village;" these aphorisms, often replete with sound sense and intelli- gence, have been noticed by every traveller who has ever visited an Indian tribe. They all record with astonishment, that they find traditionary specimens of eloquence and wisdom far surpasing the powers of invention possessed by the existing generation, but they do not see that this legendary lore is as decisive a proof of former civilization as the ruins of cities and the traces of fortifications. We have endeavoured to shew that the amount of civilization possessed by the race that erected the structures on the Ohio, did not probably surpass the average of Asiatic civilization in the days of Job. The decline of the Indians from such an amount is not greater, indeed is not so great, as that of the Greeks since the days of Alexander, or of the Italians since the last of the Ca3sars, or of the Spaniards since the time of Charles V. It is doubtful if the Greek Klephtes were one whit superior to the North American Indians : the descriptions which travellers have given of the savagery of the Morea, particularly in the Laconian mountains, fully equal the darkest pictures of the savagery of North America. Idumea, which in the days of Job had attained an appreciable standard of OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 257 civilization, which it subsequently far surpassed, as the ruins of Petra fully prove, is now tenanted by a race inferior to all but the lowest tribes in North America. Civilization has disappeared, but the race which once possessed it still continues, conquerors cannot exter- minate a nation; "they only cut down the tallest poppies ;" the dwarfs propagate their kind, and every succeeding crop being carefully weeded of its best plants by the jealous vigilance of those interested in stunting its growth, continues to degenerate until the memory of the strength and beauty of former harvests is lost in utter oblivion. And thus they plod in sluggish misery, Rotting from sire to son, and age to age, Proud of their trampled nature, and so die Bequesting their hereditary rage To the new race of unborn slaves, who wage War for their chains, and rather than be free, Bleed, gladiator-like, and still engage Within the same iirena, where they see Their fellows fall like leaves of the same tree. When the Anglo-Normans had destroyed every thing that was good and great among the Saxons, they taunted them with their mental inferiority, and made it an excuse for increased severity of vassalage. This is the old triad of tyrants, recorded in every page of ancient and modern history; they oppress by their cruelty, they plunder by their rapacity, and as an apology for both, they slander by their malice. Several specimens of genuine Indian speeches have been recently published in America. They are as unlike as possible to the tawdry eloquence invented for " the children of nature," by certain poets and philo- 258 FURTHER EVIDENCES sophers, but they display a shrewdness and power of thought which evince a great capacity for improvement. The late Pushmataha indeed, shewed that in one im- portant science he surpassed a great number of able men among ourselves, for in his defence of polygamy, he proved that he could appreciate and apply the evidence of statistics. When asked, did he not think it wrong to take two wives ? he replied ; " No. Is it not right that every woman should be married ? and how can that be, when there are more women than men, unless some men marry more than one ? When our great father, the President, caused the Indians to be counted last year, it was found that the women were most numerous ; and if one man could have but one wife, some woman would have no husband." An unusual number of Pushmataha' s speeches has been preserved; but the most striking of all is that addressed, just before his death, in Washington, to his Indian friends. " I shall die, but you will return to our brethren. As you go along the paths, you will see the flowers and hear the birds sing; but Pushmataha will see them and hear them no more ! When you shall come to your home, they will ask you, ' Where is Pushmataha?' and you will say to them, ' He is no more !' They will hear the tidings, like the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness of the woods." The exploits of Tecumthe as a warrior, are matter of history. He laboured and partially succeeded in form- ing a union to expel the whites from the valley of the Mississippi ; but his followers could not resist " the rifles of Kentucky:" he fell in defence of national OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 259 independence, and the brutal conquerors, who called themselves civilized men, barbarously mutilated his senseless corpse. Tecumthe exhibited some of the qualifications of a legislator, a statesman, and a philo- sopher. He maintained a very plausible theory of Indian rights, and argued strenuously against the validity of treaties ceding lands to the whites. It was in substance, that as the Great Spirit had given them to all Indians for hunting grounds, and as each tribe had a right to certain tracts of country while they occupied them and no longer, so that one might take possession when another moved away no tribe had a right to alienate that, of which they had only a tem- porary possession ; and consequently that treaties made without the consent of the whole of the tribes, are void. On one occasion, ridiculing the idea of selling a country, he exclaimed, " Sell a country ! Why not sell the air, the clouds, and the great sea, as well as the earth ? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children ?" But the most singular proof of Indian capacity has been afforded by Sequoyah, the inventor of the Cherokee alphabet. It is but fair to say, however, that his father was a white, though as his education was Indian, this circumstance does not in our opinion weaken the argument. His story, as we find it in the North Ame- rican Review, is a pleasant one. " Instead of joining the rude sports of Indian boys, while a child, he took great delight in exercising his ingenuity by various mechanical labours. He also assisted in the management of his mother's property, consisting of a farm, and cattle, and horses. In his 260 FURTHER EVIDENCES intercourse with the whites, he became aware that they possessed an art, by which a name, impressed upon a hard substance, might be understood at a glance, by any one acquainted with the art. He requested an educated half-blood, named Charles Hicks, to write his name; which being done, he made a die, containing a fac-simile, of the word, which he stamped upon all the articles fabricated by his mechanical ingenuity. From this he proceeded to the art of drawing, in which he made rapid progress, before he had an opportunity of seeing a picture or engraving. These accomplish- ments made the young man very popular among his associates, and particularly among the red ladies ; but it was long before incessant adulation produced any evil effect upon his character. At length, however, he was prevailed upon to join his companions, and share in the carouse, which had been supplied by his own industry. But he soon wearied of an idle and dis- sipated life, suddenly resolved to give up drinking, and learned the trade of a blacksmith by his own unaided efforts. In the year 1820, while on a visit to some friends in a Cherokee village, he listened to a conversa- tion on the art of writing, which seems always to have been the subject of great curiosity among the Indians. Sequoyah remarked that he did not regard the art as so very extraordinary, and believed he could invent a plan by which the red man might do the same thing. The company were incredulous ; but the matter had long been the subject of his reflections, and he had come to the conclusion, that letters represented words or ideas, and being always uniform, would always con- vey the same meaning. His first plan was to invent OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 261 signs for words ; but upon trial he was speedily satis- fied, that this would be too cumbrous and laborious, and soon conceived the plan of an alphabet, which should represent sounds, each character standing for a syllable. He persevered in carrying out this invention, and attained his object by forming eighty-six characters. "While thus employed, he incurred the ridicule of his neighbours, and was entreated to desist by his friends. The invention, however, was completely successful, and the Cherokee dialect is now a written language; a result entirely due to the extraordinary genius of Sequoyah. After teaching many to read and write, he left the Cherokee nation in 1822, on a visit to Arkansas, and introduced the art among the Cherokees who had emigrated to that country; and, after his return home, a correspondence was opened, in the Cherokee language, between the two branches of the nation. In the autumn of 1823, the general council bestowed on him a silver medal in honour of his genius, and as an expression of gratitude for his eminent public services. This extra- ordinary man is now with his countrymen west of the Mississippi." General Harrison expresses a very favourable opinion of the endowments and native qualities of the Indians, and bears his testimony to the high susceptibilities of their moral and intellectual nature. He has had fre- quent communication with them, as governor of the north-western territory, and he pays a deserved tribute to many of the Sachems, or chiefs, for high talents and elevated moral worth. We extract the following very interesting anecdote from a recent number of the Quarterly Review ; it forms 262 FURTHER EVIDENCES part of an article evidently written by a person who has had opportunities of closely examining Indian life: "A few years ago, a Pawnee warrior, son of e Old Knife, 3 knowing that his tribe, according to their cus- tom, were going to torture a Paduca woman whom they had taken in war, resolutely determined, at all hazards, to rescue her, if possible, from so cruel a fate. The poor creature, far from her family and tribe, and sur- rounded only by the eager attitudes and anxious faces of her enemies, had been actually fastened to the stake her funeral pile was about to be kindled, and every eye was mercilessly directed upon her, when the young chieftain, mounted on one horse, and, according to the habit of his country, leading another, was seen approach- ing the ceremony at full gallop. To the astonishment of every one, he rode straight up to the pile extricated the victim from the stake threw her on the loose horse, and then vaulting on the back of the other, he carried her off in triumph ! " She is won ! we are gone over bank, bush, and scaur ; They'll have fleet steeds that follow,' quoth young Lochinvar." The deed, however, was so sudden and unexpected and, being mysterious, it was at the moment so gene- rally considered as nothing less than the act of the Great Spirit, that no efforts were made to resist it, and the captive, after three days' travelling, was thus safely transported to her nation, and to her friends. On the return of her liberator to his own people, no censure was passed upon his extraordinary conduct it was allowed to pass unnoticed. On the publication of this glorious love-story at Washington, the boarding-school girls of Miss White's OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 263 seminary were so sensibly touched by it, that they very prettily subscribed among each other to purchase a silver medal, bearing a suitable inscription, which they presented to the young Red-skin, as a token of the admiration of white-skins at the chivalrous act he had performed, in having rescued one of their sex from so unnatural a fate. Their address closed as follows: "Brother! accept this token of our esteem; always wear it for our sakes; and when again you have the power to save a poor woman from death, think of this, and of us, and fly to her relief." The young Pawnee had been unconscious of his merit, but he was not ungrateful: " Brothers and sisters ! " he exclaimed, extending to- wards them the medal which had been hanging on his red naked breast, "this will give me ease more than I ever had, and I will listen more than I ever did to white men. " I am glad that my brothers and sisters have heard of the good act I have done. My brothers and sisters think that I did it in ignorance; but I now know what 1 have done. " I did it in ignorance, and did not know that I did good; but by giving me this medal I KNOW IT!" About twenty years ago the President of the United States recommended to a Pawnee chief who came to visit him at Washington, that he and his tribe, under the superintendence of the missionaries, should cultivate their land like white people. "The unlettered savage," says the Quarterly Reviewer, " after having listened with the greatest attention, made the following speech, translated by a sworn reporter, and which we present 264 FURTHER EVIDENCES to our readers as a fine specimen of unpremeditated oratory. "My Great Father! I have travelled a long distance to see you. I have seen you, and my heart rejoices: I have heard your words: they have entered one ear and shall not escape out of the other: I will carry them to my people as pure as they came from your mouth. " My Great Father, I am going to speak the truth ! the Great Spirit looks down upon us, and I call Him to witness all that may pass between us on this occasion. The Great Spirit made us all: He made my skin red, and yours white. He placed us on this earth, and intended we should live differently from each other. He made the whites to cultivate the earth and feed on tame animals, but He made us red men to rove through the woods and plains, to feed on wild animals, and to dress in their skins. He also intended that we should go to war to take scalps, steal horses, triumph over our enemies, promote peace at home, and the happiness of each other. I believe there are no people of any colour on this earth who do not believe in the Great Spirit in rewards and punishments. We worship Him, but not as you do. We differ from you in religion as we differ in appearance, in manners, and in customs. We have no large houses as you have, to worship the Great Spirit in. If we had them to-day, we should want others to-morrow, because we have not, like you, a fixed habitation, except our villages, where we remain but two moons out of twelve. We, like animals, roam over the country, while you whites live between us and Heaven ; but still, my Father, we love the Great Spirit. "My Great Father, some of your chiefs have proposed OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 265 to send good people (missionaries) among us to change our habits, to teach us to work, and live like the white people. I will not tell you a lie. You love your country, you love your people : you love the manner in which they live, and you think your people brave. T am like you, my great Father ! 7 love my country, / love my people, / love the life we lead, and think my warriors brave. " Spare me then, my Father. Let me enjoy my country, let me pursue the buffalo, the beaver, and the other wild animals, and I will trade the skins with your people. It is too soon, my great Father, to send your good men among us. Let us exhaust our present resources before you interrupt our happiness and make us toil. Let me continue to live as I have lived, and after I have passed from the wilderness of my present life to the Good or Evil Spirit, my children may need and embrace the offered assistance of your good people. " Here, my Great Father, is a pipe which I offer you, as I am accustomed to present pipes to all Red-skins who are in peace with us. I know that these robes, leggins, mocassins, bears'-claws, etc., are of little value to you; but we wish them to be deposited and preserved, so that when we are gone, and the earth turned over upon our bones, our children, should they ever visit this place, as we do now, may see and recognise the deposits of their fathers, and reflect on the times that are past." We could easily multiply anecdotes to prove that capacity for civilization is not wanting to the Red race; that they have not benefited by their contact with the European colonists, is simply owing to the tyrannous use which the civilized races have made of their superior power. The whites had the strength of giants, and N 266 FURTHER EVIDENCES they used it like giants. Let us examine the graphic and accurate account of the course pursued towards the Indians, presented to us by the Quarterly Reviewer. " The vast Indian empires of Mexico and Peru have, as we all know, been as completely depopulated by the inhabitants of the Old World, as the little cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were smothered by the lava and cinders of Vesuvius. " In less populous, though not less happy regions, by broadsides of artillery, by volleys of musketry, by the bayonet, by the terrific aid of horses, and even by the savage fury of dogs, the Christian world managed to extend the lodgment it had effected among a naked and inoffensive people. " In both hemispheres of America the same horrible system of violence and invasion are at this moment in operation. The most barbarous and unprovoked attempts to exterminate the mounted Indians in the neighbourhood of Buenos Ayres have lately been made. In the United States upwards of thirty-six millions of dollars have been expended, during the last four years, in the attempt to drive the Seminoles from their hunt- ing-grounds. What quantity of Indian blood has been shed by this money is involved in mystery. The American general in command, it is said, tendered his resignation unless he were granted, in this dreadful war of extermination, the assistance of bloodhounds; and it has also been asserted that, on a motion being made in one of the State legislatures, for an inquiry into this allegation, the proposition was negatived and the investigation suppressed. At all events the aggres- sion against the Seminoles still continues; a pack of OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 267 bloodhounds has already been landed in the United States from the island of Cuba ; and while the Indian women, with blackened faces, are mourning over the bereavement of their husbands and their sons, and trembling at the idea of their infants being massacred by the dogs of war which the authorities of the state of Florida have, it appears from the last American news- papers, determined to let loose, the republic rejoices at the anticipated extension of its territory, and, as usual, exultingly boasts that it is ( going a-head ! ' " In the Old World, war, like every other pestilence, rages here and there for a certain time only; but the gradual extinction of the Indian race has unceasingly been in operation from the first moment of our dis- covery of America to the present hour; for whether we come in contact with our red brethren as enemies or as friends, they everywhere melt before us like snow before the sun. Indeed, it is difficult to say whether our friendship or our enmity has been most fatal. " The infectious disorders which, in moments of profound peace, we have unfortunately introduced, have proved infinitely more destructive and merciless than our engines of war. By the small-pox alone it has been computed that half the Indian population of North America has been swept away. There is something par- ticularly affecting in the idea of the inhabitants, even of a wigwam, being suddenly attacked by something from the Old World which, almost on the self-same day, has rendered them all incapable of providing for each other or even for themselves ; and it is dreadful to consider in how many instances, by the simultaneous death of the adults, the young and helpless must have been left in the lone wilderness to starve !" 268 FURTHER EVIDENCES The American poet Whittier has given a beautiful description of the ravages produced by European diseases in an Indian village, supposed to be narrated by the last survivor of the race. As Whittier's poems are unknown in Europe, we shall quote the passage : There came unto my father's hut A man, weak creature of distress ; The red-man's door is never shut Against the lone and shelterless ; And when he knelt before his feet, My father let the stranger in ; He gave him of his hunter's meat, Alas ! it was a deadly sin ! The stranger's voice was not like ours, His face at first was deadly pale ; Anon 'twas like the yellow flowers, Which tremble in the meadow gale. And when he laid him down to die, And murmured of his father-land, My mother wiped his tearful eye, My father held his burning hand ! He died at last the funeral yell Rang upward from his burial sod ; And the old Fowwah knelt to tell The tidings of the white-man's God. The next day came, my father's brow Grew heavy with a fearful pain ; He did not take his hunting-bow He never saw the woods again ! He died, even as the white man died My mother, she was smitten too My sisters vanish'd from my side, Like diamonds from the sunlit dew. And then we heard the Powwahs say, That God had sent his angel forth, To sweep our ancient tribes away, And poison and unpeople earth. OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 269 And it was so from day to day The spirit of the plague went on ; And those at morning blithe and gay, Were dying at the set of sun. They died : our free, bold, hunters died The living might not give them graves, Save, when along the water-side, They gave them to the hurrying waves. The carrion-crow, the ravenous beast, Turned loathing from the ghastly dead ; Well might they shun the funeral feast By that destroying angel spread ! One after one the red men fell ; Our gallant war-tribe passed away; And I alone am left to tell The story of its swift decay ! " Not only whole families/' continues the Reviewer, "but whole tribes, have been almost extinguished by this single disease, which is supposed to have proved fatal to at least seven millions of Indians. The Pawnee nation have been reduced by it from 25,000 to 10,000. When Mr. Catlin lately visited the Mandan tribe, it consisted of 2000 people, particularly distinguished by their handsome appearance, and by their high character for courage and probity. They received him with affec- tionate kindness, and not only admitted him to all their most secret mysteries, but installed him among the learned of their tribe, and afforded him every possible assistance. He had scarcely left them when two of the fur traders unintentionally infected them with the small-pox, which caused the death of the whole tribe! Not an individual has survived; and had not Mr. Catlin felt deep and honourable interest in their fate, it is more than probable it never would have reached the coast of the Atlantic, or been recorded in history. 270 FURTHER EVIDENCES And thus, by a single calamity, has been swept away a whole nation, respecting whom it was proverbial among the traders, 'that never had the Mandans been known to kill a white man! 3 " But disease, however infectious, has not been so destructive in its influence as the introduction of ardent spirits, which has been sanctioned and encouraged by the American government, and defended by some public writers who affect to be greatly shocked at the British smuggling of opium into China. From the moment that the Indian tastes " the infernal fire-water," he is a ruined man. Even in our own country, with all the moral restraints resulting from a high state of civil- ization, a habitual drunkard is universally deemed irreclaimable. But the uneducated savage, who has never been trained to check any impulse or control any passion, yields to the temptation at once; his strength decays, his health declines, his intellect suffers, his moral powers are overthrown, and the being, thus degraded, is brought before us, and we are gravely asked, does such a creature possess capacities for civil- ization ? Could men of this race have devised and erected structures which we, with all the means and appliances of modern art, can scarcely surpass ? Before we answer such a question before we affirm that capacity for improvement is denied to any race of created men, we demand that the aborigines should be presented to us such as they were found by William Penn and his associates, not such as they have been made by the six or eight hundred traders scattered over the prairies; many, or rather most of whom have fled as outlaws from the world for the most horrible crimes, OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 271 and who are daily employed in deluging the poor Indians with whiskey, in order to obtain their peltries for an inadequate consideration. An extensive and well-devised system has been framed for the demoraliza- tion, the degradation, and the final extermination of the aborigines of North America, and those who are ruth- lessly carrying on the operation, tell us that because a race has declined it can never be improved. But the very fact of the Indians having become degraded is a clear proof that their intellect is not stationary. The fact that they have received corruption, is evidence that they are susceptible of amelioration. We have already shewn that it is far more difficult to civilize hunting than agricultural tribes ; but we did not say that the case of the hunters was utterly hopeless. As enclosed and cultivated land extends, the sheer pressure of want would naturally drive some of them to attempt tillage; but instead of making the attempt to teach the Indians new means of obtaining subsistence, the Americans adopt the easy expedient of driving them beyond the frontiers, to enjoy temporary rest, until a new race of backwoodsmen shoulder their axes and "go ahead" into this new territory. Nor is this all ; the Quarterly Reviewer describes another process of the injustice of the whites, which may best be given in his own powerful words. "There is another mode in which the red man is made to fade away before the withering progress of civilization ; we allude to the rapid destruction of the game necessary for his subsistence. In proportion as the sword, small-pox, and whiskey, have depopulated the country of the Indians, the settlement of the whites 272 FURTHER EVIDENCES has gradually and triumphantly advanced; and their de- mand for skins and furs has proportionally increased. In the splendid regions of the ' far west/ which lie between the Missouri and the Rocky Mountains, there are living at this moment on the prairies various tribes, who, if left to themselves, would continue for ages to subsist on the buffalo which cover the plains. The skins of these animals, however, have become valuable to the whites, and accordingly, this beautiful verdant country, and these brave and independent people, have been invaded by white traders, who, by paying to them a pint of whiskey for each skin (or ' robe/ as they are termed in America), which sells at New York for ten or twelve dollars, induce them to slaughter these animals in immense numbers, leaving their flesh, the food of the Indian, to rot and putrify on the ground. No admonition or caution can arrest for a moment the propelling power of the whiskey; accordingly, in all directions, these poor thoughtless beings are seen furiously riding under its influence in pursuit of their game, or in other words, in the fatal exchange of food for poison. It has been very attentively calculated by the traders, who manage to collect per annum from 150,000 to 200,000 buffalo skins, that at the rate at which these animals are now disposed of, in ten years they will be all killed off. Whenever that event hap- pens, Mr. Catlin very justly prophesies that 250,000 Indians, now living in a plain of nearly three thousand miles in extent, must die of starvation and become a prey to the wolves, or that they must either attack the powerful neighbouring tribes of the Rocky Mountains, or in utter phrenzy of despair, rush upon the white OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 273 population on the forlorn hope of dislodging it. In the two latter alternatives there exists no chance of success, and we have therefore the appalling reflection before us, that these 250,000 Indians must soon be added to the dismal list of those who have already withered and disappeared, leaving their country to bloom and flourish in the possession of the progeny of another world \" It is not our purpose to enter into any examination of the system pursued towards the Indians by the government of the United States. It will be quite sufficient to give the description of that system, sup- plied by the Americans themselves. We quote from an article in the North American Review, from which we have already made some extracts in the course of this chapter. " In point of fact, the amount of the whole matter is simply this. We regard the Indians as independent nations, just far enough to subserve our own interests. We are willing to treat with them for their lands, and hold them to their concessions ; so far they are inde- pendent nations. But when we want more, we take another position; and, as they are not independent nations, and have no standing armies, and cannot enforce their rights and compel us to maintain our own stipulations, we proceed to wrong them, by force or fraud, into other treaties, with similar concessions, to be observed with a similar good faith. We get a few half-breeds on our side, we bribe a few recreant chiefs to make their mark on the parchment, and thus we have another treaty of concession to our avarice, solemnly guaranteed by an independent Indian nation. 274 FUKTHER EVIDENCES with stipulations on our part, sanctioned by pledged national faith ! What trouble we are in at the South ! We are marching our troops down upon the poor Che- rokees, and commissioning our veteran generals to force that independent nation to quit the homes of their childhood and the graves of their fathers, for unknown lands far off in the West. And we are doing it by way of carrying into effect a treaty extorted by the most infamous means ; a treaty against which the Cherokee nation rise up almost in a mass, and will probably carry their resistance to bloodshed. But our regard to the faith of treaties is so delicate, that we persist in driving away, at the point of the bayonet, the plundered inhe- ritors of the soil, careless of all the ties we break, all the lives we shorten, all the scenes of woe we cause." It must not be forgotten, that religious fanaticism has had no small share in producing the systematic degradation of the Indians. The Spaniards were not alone in refusing the rights of humanity to Pagans; the Puritans of New England looked upon the Indians of that region as children of the devil, and therefore only fit for carnage or servitude ; while they looked upon themselves as the favoured sons of heaven, des- tined to inherit a promised land as the Israelites did Canaan. Their whole reasoning is admirably expressed in three resolutions, said to have been adopted by a community in Massachusetts previous to seizing on a fertile Indian territory. 1st, Resolved That the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof. 2d, Resolved That the Lord hath given the inhe- ritance thereof unto his saints. OP LOST CIVILIZATION. 275 3d, Resolved That we are the saints. Those who adopted such resolutions, were of course likely to portray the character of the Indian in the darkest shades; but the Friends of Pennsylvania, by pursuing a different policy, were able to give them a different character. They were proved to be capable of being mollified, by acts of good neighbourhood, into the most disinterested of friends, and the most faithful of adherents. When we are told that the erection of such structures as are found on the Ohio, is utterly inconsistent with the Indian character, as it now is, we may at once assent ; but this by no means proves that even greater works might be consistent with what the Indian character was in a former age. Look to Baalbec, Palmyra, Carthage, to the whole coast of northern Africa, and compare what is, with what has been. Behold the fields unknowing of the plough! Behold the palaces and towers laid low ! See where o'erthrown the massy column lies, While weeds obscene above the cornice rise. Here gaping wide, half-ruined walls remain, There mouldering pillars nodding roots sustain. The landscape, once in various beauty spread, With yellow harvests and the flowery mead, Displays a wild uncultivated face, Which bushy brakes and brambles vile disgrace. No human footstep prints th' untrodden green, No cheerful maid nor villager is seen. E'en in her cities, famous once and great, Where thousands crowded in the noisy street, No sound is heard of human voices now, But whistling winds through empty dwellings blow ; While passing strangers wonder if they spy One single melancholy face go by.* * Rowe's Lucan. 276 FURTHER EVIDENCES Saddening is this picture of desolation, but far more painful is the moral degradation of those who tenant the ruins of former greatness.* It is no wonder that we are tempted to question their parentage, to deny that the Copts are descended from the people of the Pharaohs, that Syria holds representatives of the polished subjects of Zenobia, and that the noble family of the Barcas has left any posterity in Africa. It was not alone the towers and pinnacles of Carthage that fell before the Roman destroyer; the mind of the nation was hewn down; the intellectual and moral destruction far exceeded the physical ruin. Conquerors have ever been the apostles of barbarism; and when we contemplate the havoc they have made, we are almost tempted to lament that they stopped short of exter- mination, and sheathed the sword too soon. Marcius sitting among the ruins of Carthage, has been a favourite theme with poets and painters; not because the fallen city was a type of the fallen conqueror, but because of the contrast between the mind unbent, the spirit unbroken, the soul unchanged, and the inert matter for which there was no hope of restoration. It is the dissimilarity, not the resemblance, which gives * This sentiment is beautifully expressed by Mrs. Hemans, in lines we are unwilling to withhold from the admiration of our readers. Weep not, sad moralist ! o'er desert plains, Strew'd with the wrecks of grandeur mouldering fanes, Arches of triumph, long with weeds o'ergrown, And regal cities now the serpent's own : Earth has more awful ruins one lost mind, Whose star is quenched, hath lessons for mankind Of deeper import than each prostrate dome, Mingling its ashes with the dust of Rome. OF LOST CIVILIZATION. 277 its greatest power to the scene; and we shall probably be pardoned if, to prove this point, we quote the lines of an American authoress, Mrs. Child, on the subject, as they have not before been published in this country. Pillars are fallen at thy feet, Fanes quiver in the air, A prostrate city is thy seat, And thou alone art there. No change comes o'er thy noble brow, Though ruin is around thee ; Thine eyebeam burns as proudly now, As when the laurel crowned thee. It cannot bend thy lofty soul Though friends and fame depart ; The car of fate may o'er thee roll, Nor crush thy Roman heart. And Genius hath electric power, Which earth can never tame ; Bright suns may scorch, and dark clouds lower, Its flash is still the same. The dreams we loved in early life, May melt like mist away ; High thoughts may seem, mid passion's strife, Like Carthage in decay. And proud hopes in the human heart May be to ruin hurl'd, Like mouldering monuments of art Heaped on a sleeping world. Yet there is something will not die, Where life hath once been fair; Some towering thoughts still rear on high, Some Roman lingers there ! That a nation may decline in civilization, that it may fall even into the lowest depths of barbarism, is a fact which we have illustrated by many painful examples. 278 EVIDENCES OF LOST CIVILIZATION. There is then no improbability, that the wandering Indians of the prairies, wretched and degraded as ( we now find them, are yet legitimately descended from a powerful and civilized nation, which either from foreign invasion, internal decay, or more probably from the united influence of both, has sunk into forgetfulness of former glory, and hopelessness of future redemption. O mortal, mortal state ! and what art thou ? E'en in thy glory comes the passing shade, And makes thee like a vision fade away ; And then Misfortune takes the moistened sponge, And clean effaces all the picture out. 279 CHAPTER XIII. IDENTITY OF THE REMAINS OP CIVILIZATION IN NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA. MATERIALS for a complete examination of the extinct civilization of the Red men, are very scanty; much must remain undiscovered in the vast regions over which they extended. It is only by slow degrees that all the wonders of nature, and the relics of ancient art become known even in civilized lands. It is not a century since the cave of Fingal, one of the most wonderful natural curiosities in the world, close to our own shores, remained undiscovered by any one com- petent to describe it : Then all unknown its columns rose Where dark and undisturb'd repose The cormorant had found, And the shy seal had quiet home, And welter'd in that wondrous dome, Where as to shame the temples deck'd By skill of earthly architect, Nature herself it seemed would raise A minster to her Maker's praise. Every day brings us fresh proof of the high state of civilization to which Britain attained under the Romans, and the barbarism into which the nation sunk in con- sequence of the Saxon invasion. The remains of the princely palace at Bignor, its beautiful Mosaic pave- ments, its galleries, its hypocaust, and its baths, have 280 IDENTITY OF THE been brought to light only within the last few years. Herculaneum, Pompeii, Psestum, have been but re- cently restored to our knowledge; and travellers in Asia Minor constantly discover majestic ruins of cities whose names are unknown or doubtful. Dr. Wilde has found it to be a work of great difficulty to identify the spot on which Tyre stood, that city "situate at the entry of the sea, the merchant for many isles, whose borders were in the midst of the waters, and whose builders had perfected her beauty."* Who could gaze on the barren rock where Nature first triumphed over Art, and where Desolation wrested the victory from Nature, without being tempted to exclaim in the words of Ec-khard: A thousand years have rolled along, And blasted empires in their pride, And witnessed scenes of crime and wrong, Till men by nations died. A thousand summer suns have shone, Till earth grew bright beneath their sway, Since thou, untenanted and lone, Wert render'd to decay. The moss-tuft and the ivy-wreath, For ages clad thy fallen mould, And gladden'd in the spring's soft breath; But they grew wan and old. Now, Desolation hath denied That even these shall veil thy gloom ; And Nature's mantling beauty died, In token of thy doom. Alas, for the far years, when clad With the bright vesture of thy prime, Thy proud towers made each wanderer glad, Who hailed thy sunny clime ! * Ezekiel xxvii. 3. REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 281 Alas, for the fond hope and dream, And all that won thy children's trust, God cursed, and none may now redeem, Pale city of the dust ! If on civilized coasts, in lands travelled by men of science, enterprise, and observation; and on sites where history has named and fixed the natural bounds and landmarks, fresh discoveries are daily made, and won- drous monuments of nature and art rescued from " the cold obstruction" to which they have been con- signed for centuries, it is assuredly probable that in the wilds of North America, in the recesses of Mexico, and the mountains of Peru, there are vast antiquarian treasures still unrevealed, which would elucidate what is now dark, and explain what is now intricate. If we add to these considerations, the jealousy of Spain while she possessed these interesting regions, watching them as the degraded guardians of the Harem do the objects of their charge, the more strictly because the capacity of enjoyment is wanting the complete success with which the Spanish govern- ment secluded its natural subjects, both in England and America, from any intercourse that would throw light on the history of nature, or of man; if we further add, the anarchy that has since prevailed in the revolted colonies of Spain, and which has sealed them against intercourse, not less effectually than the bigoted restrictions imposed upon them by former tyranny; finally, if we reflect upon the care with which the Indians hide all they can from their conquerors, we may even now consider American antiquities a subject still in its infancy, notwithstanding the investigations of that enterprising and intelligent traveller, Baron Humboldt. 282 IDENTITY OF THE Mr. Bullock, in his description of ancient Mexico, declares that with " Baron Humboldt's circumstantial account of the group of the pyramids of Teotihuacan, eight leagues from Mexico, in his hands he could obtain no information of them in Mexico. Some of the best informed had heard of them, but supposed that Baron Humboldt had been imposed upon. All inquiries on the road were ineffectual, till at the end of the second day's search, he saw them towering above the hills of Napal; and the platforms were distinctly visible at the distance of two miles. On the top of that of the Moon, they found a small temple, which had a door and windows. Within half a mile was the great pyramid of the Sun, scarcely inferior to that near Cairo, and between them several hundreds of small pyramids laid out like regular streets. From the top he enjoyed the fine prospect of the lake, of the city of Mexico, and great part of the magnificent valley." Little has been done in the exploration of the northern and eastern parts of Asia, subject to the dominion of Russia; but in the southern Siberia, between the Tobol and the Jenesai, and particularly in the steppes in the middle region of the Lena, memo- rials have been found of ancient grandeur, magni- ficence, and culture. Mr. Tooke informs us that in the Museum of St. Petersburgh are preserved multi- tudes of vessels, diadems, military weapons, articles of dress, coins, etc., which have been found in the Tartarian tombs in Siberia, and on the Volga. " In the Siberian tombs,*' says Stahlenberg, " and in the deserts which border that country to the south, are found thousands of cast idols of gold, silver, tin, copper, REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 283 and brass. I have seen some of the finest gold in the form of mountains, harts, old men, and other figures ; all sorts of urns, scimitars, medals of gold and silver, and clothes folded up, such as the corpse is dressed in. Some of the tombs are of earth, and raised as high as houses, and in such number upon the plain, that, at a distance, they appear like a ridge of hills : some are partly of rough-hewn stone, and of freestone, oblong and triangular; others of them are built entirely of stone. Colonel Kanifer told me that the ambassadors of the Chinese Tartars, when passing the city of Jenesai, asked permission to visit the tombs of their ancestors, but were refused ; not, improbably, because they would have seen that they were rifled and demolished. About twenty or thirty years ago,* before the Czars of Russia were acquainted with these matters, the governors of the cities Tara, Tomskoi, Crosnoyar, Batsamki, Iset- skoe, and others, used to give leave to the inhabitants to go in caravans to ransack the tombs, on condition that of whatsoever they should find of gold, silver, copper, jewels, and other things of value, the governors should have the tenth. These choice antiquities were often broken and shared by weight. They have dug for years, and the treasures are not exhausted." Two articles found in the Siberian tombs are parti- cularly worthy of notice ; these are drinking vessels and urns of black earth and delicately pieced emeralds, for both perfectly similar are found in the ruined monu- ments of Mexico and Peru. Materials do not exist for establishing the identity of art beyond the reach of controversy, but we think that enough has been quoted to establish a strong probability that the same system * Nearly a century from the present time. 284 IDENTITY OF THE of civilization once prevailed in these widely separated countries. Although the custom of interring the arti- cles most valued in life with the bodies of the dead ap- pears at some time or other to have prevailed amongst most nations, we nowhere find it carried to such a pitch of extravagance as amongst the tribes that issued from " the great northern line/' the Huns, the Tartars, the Mongols, and amongst the aboriginal inhabitants of America. This custom is still observed among the Indians of North America, and is thus powerfully described by Mr. Longfellow in his " Burial of the Minnisink."* A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Covered the warrior, and within Its heavy folds, the weapons, made For the hard toils of war, were laid; The cuirass woven of plaited reeds, And the broad belt of shells and beads. Before, a dark-haired virgin train Chanted the death-dirge of the slain ;f Behind, the long procession came, Of hoary men and chiefs of fame, With heavy hearts and eyes of grief, Leading the war-horse of their chief. Stripped of his proud and martial dress, Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless, With darting eye and nostrils spread, And heavy and impatient tread, He came, and oft that eye so proud Asked for his rider in the crowd. * The Minnisinks are an almost extinct tribe of Indians t The dirge is too beautiful to be omitted. They sung, that by his native bowers He stood, in the last moon of flowers, And thirty snows had not yet shed Their glory on the warrior's head; But as the summer fruit decays, So died he in those naked days. REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 285 They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle-steed ; And swift an arrow cleaved its way To his stern heart; one piercing neigh Arose, and on the dead man's plain The rider grasps his steed again. Here are manifest traces of the same superstition which Gibbon records in his description of the funeral of Attila. " His body was solemnly exposed in the midst of the plain under a silken pavilion, and the chosen squadrons of the Huns, wheeling round in measured evolutions, chanted a funeral song to the memory of a hero, glorious in his life, invincible in his death, the father of his people, the scourge of his enemies, and the terror of the world. According to their national custom, the barbarians cut off a part of their hair, gashed their faces with unseemly wounds, and bewailed their valiant leader as he deserved, not with the tears of women but with the blood of warriors. The remains of Attila were enclosed within three coffins, of gold, of silver, and of iron, and privately buried in the night ; the spoils of nations were thrown into the grave ; the captives who had opened the ground were inhumanly massacred; and the same Huns who had indulged such excessive grief, feasted with dissolute and intemperate mirth, about the recent sepulchre of their king." Acosta and Gomara* give a very similar account of the usages at the funerals of the kings of Mexico. "When a king of Mexico died, a lock of his hair was cut off as a relic, for therein lay the remembrance of his soul, an emerald was put into his mouth, and * Purchas v. 878. 286 IDENTITY OP THE his body was wrapt in seventeen costly and curiously wrought mantles. Upon the outer mantle was the device or arms of that idol to which he was most devoted, and in whose temple the body was to be buried. Upon the king's face was a vizor, painted with devilish gestures, and beset with jewels ; then they killed the slave whose office it was to light the lamps and make the fire to the gods of the palace. They then carry the body to the temple, with targets, arrows, maces, and ensigns, to throw into the funeral fire. The priests, some of whom are called Papas, and dress in black, receive him with a sorrowful song, and drums and flutes ; and the body is cast into the fire, together with jewels, and a dog newly strangled to serve as a guide. Then about two hundred persons are sacrificed by the priest to serve him. The fourth day fifteen slaves, upon the twentieth day five, and on the sixtieth three, are sacrificed for his soul. The ashes and the lock of hair, with another which had been saved from the time of his birth, were put into a chest, painted on the inside with devilish shapes ; on which chest was the image of the king.* The king of Mechnacan observed the like bloody rites ; many gentlewomen were appointed to office in the service of the deceased, and while his body was burning were killed with clubs, and buried four and four in a grave : slaves and free maidens were killed to attend the gentlewomen." Baron Humboldt has shewn the extraordinary simi- larity between the architecture of the American monu- ments and the structures found in the ancient country A cast or representation of the inmate's countenance is commonly found on the Egyptian mummy-cases. REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 287 of the Mongols ; he has also shewn that the religion of Mexico was radically the same as that of Tartary and Thibet; but his strongest argument is derived from the computation of time, which, as the Rev. Dr. Wiseman justly observes, " affords too marked a coincidence in matters of mere caprice to be purely accidental."* Time is divided into greater cycles of years, and these again are subdivided into smaller portions, each of which bears a certain name; and this system, so obviously artificial and capricious, is in use among the Chinese, Japanese, Kalmucks, Mongols, and Mantchews, as well as among the Tolteks, Azteks, and other American nations ; and the character of their respective methods is precisely the same, particularly if those of the Mexi- can and Japanese be compared. The most incredulous however, must be convinced from a comparison of the zodiac, as existing among the Tibetans, Mongols, and Japanese, with the names given by this American nation to the days of the month. Hieroglyphics of the Days Narshatras; or the of the Mexican Calendar. Lunar Houses of the Hindoos. All, eau, water Cipactli, monstre marin, sea- Mahara, a sea-monster monster Oceloti, tigre, tiger Tigre, tiger Tochtli, lievre, hare Colmati, serpent, serpent Serpent, serpent Acati, canne, cane Canne, cane Teepati, couteau, knife Rasoir, razor Ollin, chemin du soliel, path of Foot-tracks of Vishnu, the Hin- the sun doo god of the sun Ozonatli, singe, monkey Singe, monkey Q,uanlitti, oiseau, bird Itzeuintli, chien, dog Queue de chien, dog's tail Calli, maison, house Maison, house * Wiseman's Lectures on the Connexion between Natural and Revealed Religion ; many of the arguments in this chapter have been suggested by those lectures. 288 IDENTITY OP It will be seen, that the identical signs are sea- monster, tiger, serpent, monkey, dog, etc., in all which it is plain, there is no natural aptitude that could have suggested their adoption in both continents. This strange coincidence is still further enhanced by the curious fact that several of the Mexican signs, wanting in the Tartar zodiac, are found in the Hindoo Shastras, exactly in corresponding positions. As a matter afford- ing some evidence of the probable course of migration, to which we shall again have occasion to refer, we shall insert a table exhibiting the analogy between the zodiac of the Mexicans, and that of the Mantchew Tartars. MEXICAN ZODIAC. ZODIAC OF THE MANTCHEW TARTARS. Oceloti, tigre, tiger Pars, tigre, tiger Tochtli, lievre, hare Taoular, lievre, hare Colmati, serpent, serpent Maghi, serpent, serpent Ozonatli, singe, monkey Petchi, singe, monkey Itzeuintli, chien, dog Nokai, chien, dog Quanhitli, oiseau, aigle, bird, Tukia, oiseau, poule, bird, hen. eagle. The signs wanting in the Mantchew zodiac, are, as we have seen, supplied by the Hindoos ; they are not less arbitrary than those preserved, being a house, a cane, a knife, and foot-prints.* Here, then, we have very positive evidence of an early identity between the aboriginal race of America and the Asiatic family of nations, at least so far as their system of civilization is concerned. We shall conclude the testimony on this point with an extract of a letter from M. Jomard to Baron Humboldt.f " I have recognised in your memoir * See the comparative plates in " Humboldt's Views of the Cor- dilleras," vol. ii. f " Humboldt's Researches," vol. ii. p. 224. REMAINS OP CIVILIZATION. 289 on the division of time among the Mexican nations compared with those of Asia, some very striking ana- logies between the Toltec characters and institutions observed on the banks of the Nile. Among these analogies there is one which is worthy of attention. It is the use of the vague year of three hundred and sixty- five days, composed of equal months, and of Jive com- plementary days, equally employed at Thebes and Mexico, a distance of three thousand leagues. It is true that the Egyptians had no intercalation, while the Mexicans intercalated thirteen days every fifty-two years. Still further, intercalation was proscribed in Egypt, to such a point, that the kings swore on their accession, never to permit it to be employed during their reign. Not- withstanding this difference, we find a very striking agreement in the length of the duration of the solar year. In reality, the intercalation of the Mexicans, being thirteen days on each cycle of fifty-two years, comes to the same thing as that of the Julian calendar, which is one day in every four years, and consequently supposes the duration of the solar year to be three hundred and sixty-five days and six hours. Now such was the length of the year amongst the Egyptians, since the Sothic period was at once one thousand four hundred and sixty solar years, and one thousand four hundred and sixty-one vague years ; which was in some sort an intercalation of a whole year of three hundred and sixty-five days every one thousand four hundred and sixty years. The property of the Sothic period that of bringing back the seasons and festivals to the same point of the year, after having made them pass suc- cessively through every point is undoubtedly one of 290 IDENTITY OF THE the reasons which caused the intercalation to be pro- scribed, no less than the repugnance of the Egyptians for foreign institutions. " Now it is remarkable that the same solar year of three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, adopted by nations so different, and perhaps still more remote in their state of civilization than in their geographical distance, relates to a real astronomical period, and belongs peculiarly to the Egyptians. This is a point which M. Fourier has ascertained in his researches on the zodiac of Egypt. No one is more capable of deciding this question in an astronomical point of view. He alone can elucidate the valuable discoveries which he has made. I shall here observe, that the Persians who intercalated thirty days every hundred and twenty years; the Chaldeans, who employed the era of Nabonassar ; the Romans, who added a day every four years; the Syrians, and almost all the nations who regulate their calendar by the course of the sun, appear to me to have taken from Egypt the notion of a solar year of three hundred days. As to the Mexicans, it would be superfluous to examine how they attained this knowledge. Such a problem would not be soon solved; but the fact of the intercalation of thirteen days every cycle, that is, the use of a year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter, is a proof that it was either borrowed from the Egyptians, or that they had a common origin. It is also to be observed, that the year of the Peruvians is not solar, but regulated according to the course of the moon, as among the Jews, the Greeks, the Macedonians, and the Turks. However, the circumstance of eighteen REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 291 months of twenty days, instead of twelve months of thirty days, makes a great difference. The Mexicans are the only people who have divided the year in this manner. " A second analogy which I have remarked between Mexico and Egypt, is, that the number of weeks, or half lunations of thirteen days, comprehended in the Mexican cycle, is the same as that of the years of the Sothic period, that is, one thousand four hundred and sixty-one. You consider such a relation as accidental and fortuitous; but perhaps it might have the same origin as the notion of the length of the year. If in reality, the year was not of the length of three hundred and sixty-five days, six hours, that is - - days, the cycle of fifty-two years would not contain - -r > T? or thirteen times 1461 days, which makes thirteen periods of 1461 days." Baron Humboldt adds, " A half-civilized people, the Araucans of Chili, have a year (sipantu), which exhibits a still greater analogy with the Egyptian year than that of the Azteks. Three hundred and sixty days are divided into twelve months (ayen) of equal duration, to which are added at the end of the year, at the winter solstice (huamathipantuj, five complementary days. The nycthemerse, like those of the Japanese, are divided into twelve hours (clagantu)" Garcilasso de la Vega, in his History of the Incas, distinctly asserts that the Peruvians calculated by cycles of seven days. "The Peruvians," he says, " count their months by the moon, they count their 292 IDENTITY OF THE half months by the increase and decrease of the moon, and compute the weeks by quarters, without having any particular names for the week-days." It does not appear that this circumstance deserves the weight attributed to it by several writers; the cycle of seven days is not an arbitrary, but a natural division of time, it nearly coincides with the phases of the moon, and is approximately the fourth of a lunation. In all ancient nations where the division into weeks was recognised, we find that the observance of the day of new moon was connected with the observance of one day in seven. It was so amongst the Jews, as is manifest from St. Paul's classing them together in his epistle to the Colossians, "Let no man judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of an holy day, or a new moon, or the Sabbath day." It is obvious that though the phases of the moon change almost every seven days, yet the correspondence is not exact enough to produce, in a lapse of several consecutive months, an agreement between the cycle of seven days and the phases of the moon, and hence nations may easily come to forget the origin of this division of time. It appears that another cycle was partially adopted by the Peruvians, that of nine days, the nearest approximation to a third of a lunation. This circumstance sufficiently shews that the cycle of seven days, or of nine days, is not a cir- cumstance sufficient to establish identity, for both are natural divisions of time, and scarcely less likely to be suggested by the observation of the heavenly bodies than a day, a month, or a year. Baron Humboldt follows Acosta in attributing the cycle of seven days to the number of the planets, but he has left the REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 293 connexion between the two unexplained. The Bishop of Ohio seems to think that it arose from a tradition of the seven days of creation ; but we can discover no traces of the memory of the demi-urgic week in the cosmogonies of America, and assuredly the change of phase in the moon affords a more simple and probable solution. Even amongst the Hebrews the observance of the new moon, as has been already mentioned, appears closely connected with the observance of the Sabbath. The identity of the zodiacal signs and the common use of intercalation, are of greater importance than the correspondence in the division of the year, month, and week, which are so strongly marked by nature that there is little room for variation, and on these we rest for establishing a probability that the American system of civilization was to a great extent the same as the Asiatic. This is further confirmed by the clear traditions we find among the Americans, of man's early history, of the flood, and of the dispersion of the human race, traditions in which the accounts preserved by the Semitic nations of Asia are strangely blended with the Hindoo legends of successive renovations of the uni- verse. Their paintings record four great cycles : at the end of the first, the human race was destroyed by famine; the second was terminated by a conflagration, from which only two human beings escaped ; the third by a series of hurricanes; and the fourth by a general inundation, in which all mankind were destroyed, except Coxcox and Xochiquetzal, a man and woman, who saved themselves in the trunk of an ahuehete, or 294 IDENTITY OF THE deciduous cypress. " The Azteks," says Dr. Wiseman, "Mitteks, Flascalteks, and other nations, had innu- merable paintings of these latter events. Tezpi, or Coxcox, as the American Noah is called, is seen floating in an ark upon the waters, and with him his wife, children, many animals, and several species of grain. When the waters withdrew, Tezpi sent out a vulture, which being able to feed on the carcasses of the drowned, returned no more. After the experiment had failed with several others, the humming-bird at length came back, bearing a green branch in its little beak. In the same hieroglyphic painting, the dispersion of man- kind is thus represented. The first men after the deluge were dumb, and a dove is seen perched on a tree giving to each a tongue, the consequence whereof is, that the families, fifteen in number, disperse in different directions." The great treasury of Mexican Antiquities, published by the late Lord Kingsborough, at once identifies the Mexican art with that of India and Egypt. We have almost exact copies of the ancient pagodas and cave- temples of Hindoostan; and we have pyramids con- structed on the same model as those of Egypt, and apparently designed for the same purpose. We have figures closely enveloped in drapery, so that only the feet below, and the hands on either side, appear, as in Egyptian statues; while the head-dress surrounds the head, and hangs down at each side, pushing forward enormous ears; besides other kneeling figures, where this attire, so characteristic of Egyptian, is still more strongly marked " so that," as Inca Quirius Visconti has remarked, "they might have been copied from REMAINS OP CIVILIZATION. 295 the portico at Dendera, whose capitals they exactly resemble." We do not pretend to explain these resemblances, but we think that they are too marked and too striking to be purely accidental. It is curious, that the points of resemblance between the two civilized nations of America, the Mexicans and Peruvians, appear to be less numerous than between either of them and the Asiatic nations; it must, however, be remarked, that this seems to arise not so much from the want of these resemblances as from their not being recorded. All the early writers took the identity of the two races as an established fact. Ulloa says, " if we have seen one American, we have seen all ; their colour and make are so nearly alike." Modern American writers content themselves with the same general declaration, so that it would seem as if the paucity of recorded analogies arose not from their scantiness, but from their super- abundance. Under these circumstances, the following resemblances must be received as part of a greater number, which most probably will be extended by future investigation. The most perfect identity of phy- siological development between the crania found in the mounds on the Ohio, and those of the ancient Mexicans and Peruvians, was demonstrated by Dr. Warren, of Boston, in a paper read before the Medical Section of the British Association. They all exhibited proofs of having been subjected to artificial pressure in early life. Now this custom of cranial compression, peculiar, so far as we can learn, to these races, affords no slight warrant for our belief in an original identity.* * " The Aztecs," says Humboldt, " who do not now disfigure the 296 IDENTITY OF THE The extension of tumuli, etc., through western North America and Mexico to Peru, in an almost unbroken chain, induces a belief that the race which constructed them emigrated thither, and their termination in Peru leads to the conclusion that this civilized race went no farther. These architectural remains appear very similar to each other in character and object, and the most marked differences between them seem to arise from the nature of the materials at the command of the several builders. The traditions of Peru indicate that their country derived its civilization from some northern land in the direction of Mexico ; the Mexican paintings, or pictorial history, unequivocally record an emigration from the north, and exhibit the several halting-places of the wandering race before it reached its final settlement.* And to complete this head of evidence, there are tra- ditions among the western tribes of North America, that they acquired possession of their present country by conquest. We have authentic information that the country between Mexico and Peru was settled by a prominent Mexican tribe on its emigration towards the south. " Copan," says Gulindo,f " was a colony of Toltecas. Its king held dominion over the country extending to heads of their children, represent their principal divinities, as their hieroglyphic manuscripts prove, with a head more flattened than any I have seen among the Caribs." The custom of compressing the crania of infants, according to Garcilasso de la Vega was still practised by some of the Peruvian tribes on the discovery of America by the Spaniards. * A copy of this remarkable document is prefixed to Mr. Delafield's Antiquities of America. f See Arch.Tologia Americana, vol. ii. REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 297 the eastward from that of the Magas, or Yucatan, and reaching from the Bay of Honduras nearly to the Pacific, containing on an average about ten thousand square miles, now included in the modern states of Honduras, Guatemala, and Salvador, and possessing several populous and thriving towns and villages. The aborigines of this kingdom still use the Charti lan- guage, being a mixture of the Toltec dialect with some other still more ancient in those parts." These considerations appear to establish a very strong probability that there was an identity between the system of civilization existing among the race that erected the mounds, and the civilization found in Mexico and Peru when America was first discovered. A probability has also been established, that this system of civilization was in many important points identical with that of eastern and southern Asia. There are, however, two objections of considerable weight which deserve to be examined, namely, the differences of lan- guage, and the differences of religion. The number of different languages spoken by the aborigines of America is almost incredible, and there is very often little or no lexical analogy between those of neighbouring tribes. But it is easy to shew that that multiplication of languages is not peculiar to America, but is everywhere found to be an attribute of the savage state. When families and tribes are insulated, either by accident or design, when the hand of each is raised against its neighbour, "a jealous diversity, and unintelligible idioms are introduced into the jargons which hedge round the independence of the different hordes.* * Wiseman's Lectures, vol. i. 128. o2 298 IDENTITY OF THE This disuniting power is very strongly marked among the tribes of Polynesia. " The Papuans, or Oriental negroes," says Dr. Ley den, " seem to be all divided into very small states, or rather societies, very little connected with each other. Hence their language is broken into a multitude of dialects, which in process of time, by separation, accident, or oral corruption, have nearly lost all resemblance." " Languages in the savage state," says Mr. Crawfurd, " are great in number, in improved society few. The state of lan- guages on the American continent affords a convincing illustration of this fact ; and it is not less satisfactorily explained by that of the Indian islands. The negro races which inhabit the mountains of the Malaya penin- sula, in the lowest and most abject state of social existence, though numerically few, are divided into a great many tribes, speaking as many different lan- guages. Among the rude and scattered population of the island of Timer, it is believed that not less than forty languages are spoken. On Ende and Flores, we have also a multiplicity of languages, and among the cannibal population of Borneo, it is believed that many hundreds are spoken." The same fact has been ob- served among the Australian tribes, as is obvious from an inspection of the vocabularies published in King's Survey. If these causes act thus elsewhere, they must be still more powerful in America, where, as Humboldt has well observed, "the configuration of the soil, the strength of vegetation, the apprehensions of the moun- taineers, under the tropics, of exposing themselves to the burning heat of the plains, are obstacles to com- munication, and contribute to the amazing variety of REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 299 American dialects. This variety, it is observed, is more restrained in the savannas and forests of the north, which are easily traversed by hunters, on the banks of great rivers, along the coasts of the ocean, and in every country, where the Incas had established their theocracy by force of arms."* Lexical conformity, that is, agreement between words, does not exist; but an examination of the structure pervading all the American languages, has established beyond all doubt, that they all form one individual family, closely knitted together in all its parts by the most essential of ties, grammatical analogy. " This analogy," says Dr. Wiseman, " is not of a vague, indefinite kind, but complex in the extreme, and affect- ing the most necessary and elementary parts of gram- mar ; for it consists chiefly in the peculiar methods of modifying conjugationally the meanings and relations of verbs by the insertion of syllables ; and this form led the late W. von Humboldt to give the American languages a family name, as forming their conjugations by what he termed agglutination." Nor is this analogy partial ; it extends over both the great divisions of the New World, and gives a family * " The Basque tongue," says Dr. Wall, " affords a striking in- stance of the rapidity with which new dialects are produced, when the process is not checked either by some peculiarity of circumstance, or by the restrictions which alphabetic writing supplies." Of the mul- tiplied dialects of this language, which are spoken within the narrow limits of the Pyrenean provinces, M. D'Abaddie gives the following description : " La langue Eskuarra compte six principaux dialectes, qui sont le haut-navarsais, le souletin, le bas-navarrais, le labourdin, le guipuzkoan, et le biskaien ou cantabre. Chacun de ces dialectes se subdivise lui-meme, suivant le tribus, avec un incroyable variete d'inflexions et de desinences grammaticales." 300 IDENTITY OF THE air to languages spoken under the torrid and arctic zones by the wildest and more civilized tribes. " This wonderful uniformity/' says Malte Brun, " in the peculiar manner of forming the conjugations of verbs from one extremity of America to the other, favours in a singular manner, the supposition of a primitive people, which formed the common stock of the Ame- rican indigenous nations." The languages of the New World, therefore, when carefully examined, instead of proving diversity of origin, exhibit on the contrary divergence from a common centre of civilization. There was, no doubt, a marked difference between the religious systems of the Mexicans and Peruvians : that of the former was gloomy, sanguinary, and based upon fear; that of the latter was cheerful, mild, and founded upon love. But this marked dissimilitude by no means proves that the two systems may not have been derived from the same root. There is just the same difference between the two great sects of India; the worshippers of Vishnu, the Preserver, and of Siva, the Destroyer. Both religions were elementary; that is, they were based on the worship of some object, power, or principle of nature ; either physical objects, as the sun, the moon, the earth, etc., or abstractions, as the creating, preserving, and destroying ; or, what seems to have been most usual, the object and the principle may have been combined, and the physical phenomena worshipped mainly, or only, as the expres- sions of a creating or destroying power. From this common starting point, it is very possible to derive the most opposite creeds, according to the prevalence of gratitude or fear in the minds of those by whom the REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 301 first elements are wrought into a system. And the system of sacrifice adopted by a nation will at once shew which principle has prevailed in the development of its religion, for sacrifices may be either offerings to testify love, or bribes to avert danger. Wherever there is an organized priesthood, and especially where there is a sacerdotal caste, we find the more gloomy creed and the cruel ritual prevalent; but where circumstances have weakened the sacerdotal power, a tendency to a more cheerful faith and milder observances becomes manifest. The religion of colonies generally exhibits this improvement on the creed and worship of the parent state. The Carthaginians brought the worship of Moloch with them from Palestine, but they never indulged in such sanguinary rites as were used by their ancestors in Canaan. It was among the Grecian colonies of Asia Minor, that the Hellenic religion assumed the poetic form in which it is presented to us by Homer, for in the dramatic poets, and particularly in ^Eschylus, we find traces of a darker creed, which favoured human sacrifices. In the countries adjacent to Hindustan, which indubitably derived their religion along with the first elements of civilization from India, it is not Brahminism which prevails, but Buddhism, a mixed political and philosophical reform of the ancient Hindu faith. The difference between the religious systems of Mexico and Peru is not, in fact, greater than that between those of India and Ceylon, or Brahminism and Buddhism. It is a singular coincidence that the Peruvians had one Buddhistic notion prominent in their creed, the successive incarnations of Deity in the 302 persons of their rulers : there is a perfect similarity between the attributes of the Incas of Peru, and the Lamas of Tibet. It deserves to be added, that in the provinces where the empire of the Incas was not established, human sacrifices were as common as in Mexico. When we compare two systems of religion, which were originally derived from the same elements, but which became wholly different in the course of their respective developments, such for instance as the creeds of the Pelasgi and the Hellenes, of the Brahmins and the Buddhists, and most probably of the Mexicans and Peruvians, we shall find that the system which most closely assimilated the deities to human form was the most favourable to purity of morals and development of intellectual power. In Asia, where the human form was attributed to the gods, it was but a secondary affair; the indispensable means of presenting them to the senses, and nothing more. Hence the greater part of the Asiatic nations never hesitated to depart from the human form, or to disfigure it, in order to strengthen the symbolical representation. The Hindu makes no scruple of giving his gods twenty arms; the Phrygian Diana had as many breasts ; the Egyptians gave their deities the heads of birds and beasts. All these dis- figurations have a common origin; the human form was but a subordinate object, the chief aim was a more distinct designation of the symbol. The Greeks gradually dismissed the symbolical re- presentations, and adopted something more human in their stead. The Buddhists and Peruvians followed a similar course ; for their incarnations were in principle REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 303 the same as the Greek accounts of the gods appearing in definite forms. With fixed forms the gods soon acquired definite characters; they gained life in the conceptions of the people, and were invested with the attributes of moral persons. Heeren has admirably shewn the consequences of this change on the culture and improvement of a country. "The more a nation conceives its gods to be like men, the nearer does it approach them, and the more intimately does it live with them." To this principle may be ascribed the moral supe- riority of the Greeks over the Asiatics, the greater mildness of the Peruvians, and the purer systems of ethics contained in the sacred books of the Buddhists. It may, indeed, be said without presumption, that " God manifest in the flesh" was " the desire of all nations," a moral want felt by humanity, a craving of the heart, sanctioned by the understanding, which prepared, and still prepares, the way for the general reception of Christianity.* * This peculiarity of the Christian religion forms the subject of ArclibishopWhately's Second Essay on the Peculiarities of Christianity, which I had not read when the passage in the text was written. I gladly avail myself of one paragraph in this admirable essay, to shew that my views are supported by high authority. " The religion of those who are called philosophers, whose speculations respecting the Deity have been most exalted and refined has always been cold and heartless in its devotions, or rather has been nearly destitute of devo- tion altogether. " On the other hand, the great mass of mankind, from the same cause (indistinct perceptions of the Divine nature) have, in all ages and countries, shewn a disposition to address their prayers, not to the Supreme Creator immediately, but to some angel, demi-god, sub- ordinate deity or saint (as is the practice of the Romish church), whom they suppose to approach more to their own nature, to form a 304 IDENTITY OF THE It is not pretended that all the difficulties respecting the early civilization of America have been removed, or that the identity of the Mexican and Peruvian systems of civilization with each other, or with the systems of Asia, has been established beyond the reach of con- troversy. Doubts must still remain, which enter into the mysteries of nature, and have their solution involved in those secret laws of her constitution which form her links with the moral government of the universe. The farther we trace back our researches, the more rapid shall we find the growth of languages, institu- tions, and the differences that distinguish races to have been in ancient times. "Truly," says Dr. Wiseman, sort of connecting link between God and man, and to perform for them the office of Intercessor. Thus, while the one class are altogether wanting in affectionate devotion, the other direct it to an improper object ; giving that worship to the creature which is only due to the Creator. " A preventive for both these faults is provided in that manifestation of God in Jesus Christ, which affords us such a display of the divine attributes, as though very faint and imperfect, is yet the best calculated, considering what human nature is, to lead our affections to God. When Christ fed a multitude with five loaves, He made not indeed a greater or more benevolent display of his power, than He does in supporting from day to day, so many millions of men and other animals as the universe contains; but it was an instance far better calculated to make an impression on men's minds of his goodness and parental care. I speak not now of this miracle as an evidence of his pretensions : for that purpose would have been answered as well by a miracle of destruction ; but of the peculiar beneficent character of it. So also in healing the sick, raising the dead, and preaching to the people : though these are not greater acts of power and goodness than the creation of the world and all things in it, yet they are what the minds of men, at least, can more steadily dwell upon, and which there- fore are the most likely to affect the heart." Essays on the Peculiaritiet, etc, 161 3. REMAINS OF CIVILIZATION. 305 " there is a sap in nations as well as in trees, a vigorous inward power ever tending upwards, drawing its freshest energies from the simplest institutions, and the purest virtues, and the healthiest moral action. While these form the soil wherein a people is as it were deeply rooted, its powers are almost boundless ; and as these alter and become exhausted, it likewise will be weakened and decay. Assuredly there was a vigour in the human mind, as compared with ours, gigantic, when the Homeric songs were the poetry of the wandering minstrel, when shepherd -chiefs like Abraham could travel from nation to nation, and even associate with their kings, and when an infant people could imagine and execute monuments like the Egyptian pyramids." We have exhibited unquestionable proofs of the early civilization of America, and shewn that the degraded condition in which the Indians were found by Europeans was neither their primary nor their natural state. The fact of their fall is unquestionable, though the precise causes cannot now be determined: no doubt there is an immense distance between the architects and the hunters on the Ohio ; but man is essentially free, he is consequently capable of change, and even in his organs most flexible; when therefore he once yields to corrupting influences, there are no limits to his degradation, no bounds to his departure from excel- lence, until he sinks to the level of the brute creation. 306 CHAPTER XIV. SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN OF CIVILIZATION. COMPARATIVE anatomy has shewn, that every part of the animal structure has a definite relation to the habits and character of the bird or beast to which it belongs. A single bone enabled Cuvier to tell the class and order of the creature that owned it, as perfectly as if he had seen the entire skeleton. There is not a groove which any single muscle makes upon the bones of the lion, that does not shew his habits and nature ; the smallest joint in the gazelle displays a reference to its timid and fugitive disposition. Organization irre- vocably predestines and predetermines the whole life and conduct of the brute creation ; it would seem as if a change of structure, however minute, might deprive the dove of her tenderness, or the eagle of his rapacity. We can find no such determination of character in human organization ; anatomy reveals nothing to shew that man was designed to doze away his existence like an indolent Asiatic, or to run down the wild deer by his restless chase, like the American Indian. In fact, his organization shews, that through custom or educa- tion he might easily exchange one state for the other. In the pursuits of life, animals exercise no choice ; in- stinct at once leads them to the course of action which SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF CIVILIZATION. 307 their organization fits them to perform, and as this instinct is physical in its nature, so is it strictly limited in its development to the supply of physical wants and necessities. We speak of the ferocity of the wolf, the cunning of the fox, the tenderness of the dove, the rapacity of the eagle, the prudence of the ant, and the ingenuity of the bee, without attaching praise or blame to the animals for the display of these qualities, and we habitually classify them in our minds not less by the difference of their dispositions than of their powers. The accordance of instinct, and consequently of habits, between creatures of the same race is invariable; and it seems to become more and more definite the lower we descend in the scale of creation, so that the very name of an animal at once suggests to us a notion of its character. Now the faculty analogous to instinct in man, exhi- bits itself not in physical manifestations, but in approx- imation of feelings, similarity of affections, and facility of adaptation ; and the perpetuation of these character- istics is secured by the universal gift of speech, an attribute common to the entire race. We have seen that all men display, under circumstances favourable to their development, the power of domestic affections, the disposition to establish and maintain mutual inte- rests, a desire to accumulate and preserve property, and with some trifling deviations, a general agreement on the leading points of the moral code. All analogy then points to the inference that men, however they now differ, were assuredly designed for the same state, and consequently that they must have been originally placed therein. 308 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT We have shewn that man is formed in body and endowed in spirit for a social and domestic life, riot less manifestly than an oyster is organized to lead a motionless life in the waters, or an eagle to traverse the fields of air. He could therefore no more have been primarily placed in a condition directly opposed to the intent and purpose of his structure and endowments, than the sea-shell could be produced on the top of a mountain, or the giraffe amid the icebergs of the pole. No animal can develope its instincts except under the precise conditions to which its structure is accommo- dated; and the failure of these conditions leads to degeneracy, sterility, and extinction. This is obvious to every one who has visited a zoological garden, and observed the difficulties that attend the perpetuation of the breeds of animals. Now man is just as obviously unsuited to the solitude of the forest or the desert, as the lion is to his grated den, or the eagle to his chain and cage. All his faculties fit him for society and improvement, and therefore, in a state of society and improvement, he must originally have been placed; and hence it immediately follows, that savage life can be nothing but a degradation, a departure from the original destiny and position of man. Nature, or rather the Author of nature, has pro- vided for all his creatures the means of exercising those powers with which they are endowed. He has supplied them not only with instinct, but also with the materials by means of which that instinct might be developed. The art of making honey would be useless to the bee, unless flowers existed from which honey may be made. These materials for the exercise of instinct, the animal OF CIVILIZATION. 309 is unable to produce for itself, or to find, save within very narrow limits, substitutes for them in their absence. And hence we find that, by a wise provision of nature, several races of animals hybernate; that is, become torpid and insensible during the season when the objects to which their instincts are directed cease from the earth; while others migrate, directed by some mysterious impulse, to a land where those objects are abundantly produced. Now a certain amount of knowledge, or if we may use such an expression, a stock of civilization, is not less necessary to man for the development of his capacity for improvement, and his other social duties, than flowers are to the bee, or mulberry-leaves to the silkworm. Had he been started on earth perfectly ignorant, ignorant he would for ever have remained. We have seen that no savage nation ever emerged from barbarism by its own unaided exertions; and that the natural tendency of tribes in such a condition is to grow worse instead of better. Civilization could not have been an invention, for the inventive faculty proceeds from something already known; civilization is, in some shape or other, an essential condition of society, and as we have shewn that man was created for society, he must have been enabled to fulfil its conditions. This account of the origin of man, and of civilization, to which we have attained, by a long course of reason- ing, is precisely that which is contained in the oldest book existing the Book of Genesis. "God created man in his own image/' gave him "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth on the earth/' 310 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT and " he put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it," and " he saw that it was not good for man to be alone." Here we have it clearly stated, that man, instead of being placed upon the earth a helpless, untutored savage, was gifted with intelligence, was taught the nature of the different beings by which he was surrounded, was instructed in agriculture, one of the most important arts of life, and was declared to be formed for society. To the truth of this statement, all the traditions of ancient nations, and all the inves- tigations of modern science, bear concurrent testimony; they not only confirm the statement, but they deprive all other theories of the merit even of plausibility. The elements of knowledge were given with the capacity for their improvement, the faculty and the materials for its development were given together. "This," says Dr. Wiseman, "is assuredly more consoling to humanity than the degrading theories of Virey and Lamarck, and yet there is immixed there- with some slight bitterness of humiliation. For, if it was revolting to think that our noble nature should be nothing more than the perfecting of the ape's malicious- ness, yet it is not without some pain and sorrow that we see that nature anywhere sunk and degraded from its original beauty, till men should have been able plausibly to maintain that odious affinity. Yet may this be of sweet use to us in checking the pride which the superiority of our civilization too often excites, by recalling to our minds that we and the lowest savage are but brethren of one family; we are even as they, of a lowly origin, and they, as we, have the sublimest destiny; that, in the words of the divine poet (Dante), we are all equally OF CIVILIZATION. 311 " worms, yet made at last to form The winged insect, imped with angel plumes, That to heaven's justice unobstructed soars." It is not necessary to enter into any of the countless controversies that have arisen respecting the condition of our first parents in Paradise, the causes of their fall, and the nature of their punishment; but, as some writers have insinuated that a desire for knowledge was an essential part of the transgression of Eve, which seems rather inconsistent with the connexion that has been shewn between the progress of knowledge and the advancement of humanity, it may be necessary to enter upon a brief examination of the subject. All com- mentators have felt the difficulty that arises from attri- buting moral results to a purely physical act, and hence many of them have declared that the trees of life and knowledge were sacramental; meaning thereby, if they have any meaning, that their fruits conferred an internal grace and efficacy proportioned to the faith and piety of the recipient. There is no authority for this supposition in the sacred narrative; nor is the theory consistent itself; for the fruit of the tree of life conferred benefit, and that of the tree of knowledge produced evil, without any reference to the frame of mind in which either was used. Every Biblical student is aware that the verb " to know/' and its derivative "knowledge," are used in Hebrew to signify physical perception, at least as frequently as mental reflection.* There are fruits which do, in a very remarkable degree, influence our sensations; opium, hemp-seeds, and the juice of the * See Gen. v. 1. 312 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT grape, for instance, produce soporific and exhilarating effects. It is, therefore, very possible that the fruit of the tree of knowledge might have had a stimulating efficacy, and might, therefore, for obvious reasons, have been prohibited. The love of excitement is universal in the human race, people will often run into extreme peril for the mere sake of determining how they would feel under such circumstances; and the description of an untried sensation, even though it should be a painful one, excites an earnest desire for its perception.* In the prohibition of this fruit, physical results are de- nounced, not as chastisements, but as natural and necessary consequences. " In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die ;" intimating that the fruit would produce constitutional effects which would ren- der mortality inevitable. Thus viewed, the prohibition ceases to be a capricious test; it becomes a salutary warning ; designed, like every other divine law, for the preservation and prosperity of God's creatures. The obedience required of Adam and Eve was not sub- mission to an arbitrary mandate, but the observance of a condition necessary to their continuance in the para- disiacal state ; it was the reasonable adherence to law, not the blind homage to the will of a despot, f * I have actually heard a young lad lament that he had never been flogged at school, in order that he might know how he would have felt. t For obvious reasons it is unnecessary to enter at greater length on the investigation of this subject, but Biblical students will do well to consult a little pamphlet, " De locis difficilioribus Sanctae Scripturae Tractatus Tres," published in Germany, and republished by Mr. Fellowes of Ludgate Hill. Without at all vouching for the correct- ness of the author's conclusions, it may be safely said, that no expla- nation of the circumstances connected with the Fall displays greater learning or ingenuity, or does less violence to the literal sense of the sacred narrative. OF CIVILIZATION. 313 This view of the case appears to be perfectly con- sistent with the Sacred Record; it depends on no strained interpretation, and involves no inconsistency. It would be purely an indulgence of idle curiosity to inquire what series of human sensations, roused into action by the forbidden fruit, changed the condition of primeval innocence; it is sufficient to shew, that the knowledge prohibited was physical and sensual, and that the narrative affords no ground whatever for the suspicion that any, even the highest, degree of intel- lectual improvement was inconsistent with the moral purposes of Providence. After the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise, we find them receiving direct instruction in some of the arts of life. " Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them." This was an important addition to their stock of knowledge ; it taught Adam to apply to practical purposes the information which he had acquired, when the animal creation was brought before him in Paradise, and shewed him what beasts might be trained for human use. The domestication of animals resulted from this Divine communication " Abel was a keeper of sheep." Adam, as we have seen, had previously been taught tillage in Eden, and in this art he instructed his eldest son " Cain was a tiller of the ground." We have more than once seen that the elements of civilization are very prolific ; " a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump ;" but that little must be provided from without. Abel does not appear to have gone farther than the domestication of sheep, and perhaps of dogs as guardians of his flocks, but this suggested p 314 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT the domestication of cattle, which appears to have been an unaided invention in a later period. " Jabal was the father (or founder) of such as dwell in tents, and such as have cattle " The invention of some sort of musical instruments appears to have been combined with this occupation, for JabaFs brother, Jubal, became " the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. " The tending of cattle obviously suggests attention to sound, as a means of recovering strayed herds and directing the flocks. Hence the Arcadian Pan was described as the patron of rustic music, as well as of shepherds; and hence, too, the musical instruments of rude pastoral tribes are generally superior to those of agricultural races in the same scale of civilization. It is remarkable that Tubal-Cain is described as the improver, and not the inventor of metallurgy ; " a whetter or instructor of every artificer in copper and iron." Some knowledge of the use of minerals may therefore be reasonably supposed to have formed part of the original stock of information communicated to Adam, but probably only so much as was necessary to prepare the agricultural implements used in the cul- tivation of Eden ; and this appears the more probable, from the fact that Cain " builded a city," or formed a permanent habitation of a kind superior to huts or tents, which could scarcely have been accomplished without the use of metals. It would seem as if the art of navigation was first taught to Noah : in the slight notices of the arts con- tained in the antediluvian history, there is no mention made of ships or boats, and the directions given for the construction of the ark, intimate that the patriarch OF CIVILIZATION. 315 worked without a model. It may also be remarked, that if ships had been known, a greater number than Noah's family might have escaped from destruction. This consideration deprives the controversy which at present rages, respecting the universality of the deluge, of much of its importance. If there were no ships previous to the ark, the antediluvian race must have been restricted to a portion of the earth's surface, and the cataclysm by which their ruin was effected need only have extended its agency over Europe and Asia. It appears exceedingly probable that the amount of the antediluvian population was very small; the genealo- gical table in the fifth chapter of Genesis very plainly indicates that there was a great paucity of births, and we may not irreverently conjecture that the great longevity of the persons there mentioned, was designed as a compensation for the slowness of multiplication. A small amount of births is not by itself evidence of the happiness or misery of any given race : the pros- perity of a population depends not on the bringing of a number of human beings into the world, but on their preservation when they are in it. A very comfortable population is rarely prolific; and it is established beyond controversy, that an aristocratic class cannot keep up its own numbers. In the space of about five centuries the Anician family, from being the junior, became the senior of the patrician ranks at Rome. A glance at any extensive peerage would shew that our House of Lords could not maintain its numbers without fresh creations, and the extinction of noble houses reduced the aristocracy of Venice to a mere oligarchy. Instead of the longevity of the patriarchs being an argument 316 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT for a rapid increase of population, it has the very opposite tendency; indeed, late marriages appear to have been the prevalent custom among the antedilu- vians ; Enoch is the youngest recorded father, and he had lived sixty-five years before he begat Methuselah. We should also remember that the depravity so early introduced among the antediluvians must neces- sarily have limited population. " God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually " The effects of moral depravity in diminishing the fecundity of the human species, are notorious : the rapid decrease of the population of the South Sea islands within little more than half a century, is a striking instance. As the antediluvians had be- come monsters of iniquity, it follows from all analogy, that their number was really small, and "that it was in a course of rapid progress towards an extreme reduction, which would have issued iu a not very distant extinction."* It is not our purpose to enter into the controversy respecting the universality of the Deluge; our object is to shew that this event, whether general or limited, caused no interruption of civilization. The stock of knowledge, as well as the stock of humanity, was preserved in the ark. The domesticated animals were there, ready for the use of man when the waters had subsided ; the art of husbandry was not forgotten, for Noah planted a vineyard soon after his descent from Ararat ; and the knowledge of the arts connected with building survived, since the mere conception of erecting * Rev. Dr. Pye Smith on Scripture and Geology, p. 310. OF CIVILIZATION. 317 such a tower as Babel, argues considerable skill in architecture. The scriptural account of the origin of civilization terminates with the dispersion of the human race in consequence of the confusion at Babel, and therefore the narrative of this event demands our attention. We are first informed that " the whole earth was of one language, and one speech," or literally, " of one lip and one words/' The ordinary interpretation of the Hebrew version, " one language and one speech," seems to have prevailed from the belief that a miracle was necessary to account for the diversity of languages ; but, as we have abundantly proved in preceding chapters, a miracle would rather have been necessary to secure their uniformity, since all experience teaches us, that a tendency to multiply languages and dialects is universal in barbarous nations. " One lip and one words," more probably mean an agreement in religion, and the principles of government, for the natural consequences of such an agreement appear in the narrative ; they migrate from the east to the plains of Shinar, and they join in the erection of a city. Persons differing in language have very often combined for such a purpose, but not persons differing in religion and politics. The emigrants next resolve to build a tower " whose top may reach unto heaven;" a phrase indicative simply of great height; just as the spies sent among the Canaanites by Moses reported, " the cities are great, and walled up to heaven." It has been strangely enough imagined that the builders had some notion of making this tower a means of escape into heaven, in 318 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT case of a second flood; as if they, or anybody else, beyond the age of infancy, believed the clouds to be a solid flooring, on which they could step from the top of an edifice elevated to their level. Their own account of the matter perfectly exonerates them from any such absurdity, which, indeed, is nothing more than one of the mischievous follies engrafted on the sacred text by presumptuous ignorance.* The purpose of the architects is stated with great clearness and simplicity, " Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad on the face of the earth." Here it is intimated that the name of the nation is to be connected with the great citadel, or tower, which was to be the principal edifice in the new city, and hence arises a strong pro- bability that this tower was destined to be a temple for idol-worship. All the great cities of antiquity were dedicated to some peculiar deity, and grew up round a sanctuary : in many cases the deified founder was the * In a great many schools, notwithstanding modern improvements, children are still taught that heaven is a definite locality above their heads, and hell an equally definite place under their feet. These absurd notions are engrafted on the interpretation of the Bible, and are consequently given and received as articles of faith. When the persons thus instructed acquire even an elementary knowledge of geography and astronomy, they discover the utter folly of such notions; but too often they believe that the absurdity exists in the Bible, and not in the presumption of ignorant teachers. This is one of the most common causes of infidelity among the half-educated, and its influence is far more extensive than is generally imagined. With some sad proofs of the mischief thus produced immediately before our eyes, we may be permitted to question the prudence of making the Bible a school-book, at least until schoolmasters and mistresses are better qualified to explain its peculiar phraseology than they are at present. The error to which reference is made in the text, is derived from the glosses of the Jewish Rabbins, and appears, but in a less absurd form, in Josephus. OF CIVILIZATION. 319 object of worship; and even when the Sun, or some other celestial luminary, was chosen as a patron, the name of the ruler was frequently combined with that of the god. All the eastern traditions relating to Babylon declare that Nimrod was its founder, and also that he was the first despot who commanded that he should be regarded as a god. The sin, then, committed by the builders of Babel was, that they designed to establish a uniform system of idolatry, and that the tower was to be the metro- politan temple of the race. This view of the case at once explains the reason of the Divine interposition: " Let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand each other's speech/' This verse might be more literally rendered, " Let us go down and there confound their lip (unity of purpose) that they may not hearken to, or obey each other's words." Any disuniting principle, such as a dispute about the forms of religion, or of government, would lead to a separation of the several families, and this se- paration would necessarily produce different languages. Thus viewed, the miraculous interposition is freed from the captious objections of the sceptic, for the means are obviously proportioned to the end designed. We have now reached the point where human civili- zation, in its collective form, ceases to depend on the direct interposition of Omnipotence, and where the elements bestowed by the Creator are left for their development to human ingenuity and human industry. But here a question may be raised as to the amount of civilization necessary for a start; and it may be asked what spark of civilization being introduced, will kindle 320 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT a flame. It is not very easy to solve this problem, but the Book of Genesis suggests some considerations which may lead to an approximate solution. In Paradise, Adam was taught the use of language, the nature of animals, or at least of those species which it was most important for him to know, and the art of tillage. We have no record that the use of fire was communicated to him ; but this is rendered probable by the existence of the custom of sacrifices in his family, and by the traditions of almost all ancient nations that fire was derived from heaven. Some moral rules of conduct were given to the first society : Cain refers to retri- butive punishment for crime, as an established and recognised principle " it shall come to pass that every one that findeth me shall slay me." A ritual of worship appears also to have been enjoined, for the sons of Adam made offerings to the Lord. The domestication of sheep and goats was a natural result of the knowledge communicated to Adam in Paradise, and it led subsequently to the taming of other animals. We have already noticed the probable origin of the use of metals. To this stock we find that the art of ship-building was added at the time of the Deluge, and a further revelation of moral law for the guidance of the new society that was to inherit the earth. As cities existed before, and immediately after, the flood, some elements of political knowledge and the laws of society must have been preserved in Noah's family; indeed, the delicacy shewn by Japhet and Shem, when Ham in- sulted their father, is evident proof of a considerable advance in social refinement. OF CIVILIZATION. 321 It is much more difficult to determine whether any, and what means of recording events existed before the Flood. From the scriptural narrative it may fairly be deduced, that some art of writing was known to the antediluvians. The mark set upon Cain was univer- sally understood; Lamech's poetical address to his wives has internally no recommendation to be pre- served by tradition, and there is no discoverable reason why it should have been revived by revelation ; finally, the genealogies of the patriarchs are recorded with an accuracy such as tradition could never have possessed. Another argument for such a probability, is thus stated by the Rev. Dr. Pye Smith :* " It is not irrelevant here to remark, that the earlier part of the Book of Genesis consists of several distinct compositions, marked by their differences of style and by express formularies of commencement. t It is entirely consonant with the idea of inspiration, and established by the whole tenor of the scriptural compositions, that the heavenly in- fluence operated in a concurrence with the rational faculties of the inspired men, so that prophets and apostles wrote from their own knowledge and memory the testimony of other persons, and written documents, to which indeed express appeal is often made.J From * On the Relation between Scripture and Geology, p. 207. t The following appear to be the distinct compositions, yet it must be observed that the evidence is not equally clear in every case. I. Gen. i. 1 to ii. 3. II. ii. 4 to Hi. 24. III. chap. iv. IV. v. 1 to vi. 8. V. vi. 9 to ix. 29. VI. chap. x. VII. xi. 19. VIII. xi. 10 to 26. IX. xi. 27 ; and all that follows may be regarded as separate monuments of the house of Abraham. Chap, xxxvi. a sepa- rate document, inserted in the most suitable place. Smith. $ We have these instances in the Old Testament: Numb. xxi. 14. Josh. x. 13. 2 Sam. i. 18. 1 Kings xi. 41. 1 Chron. ix. 1 ; xxix. P 2 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT the evidence of language and of matter, we have no slight reason for supposing that Moses compiled the chief parts of the Book of Genesis, by arranging and connecting ancient memorials under the Divine direc- tion, and probably during the middle part of his life, which he spent in the retirements of Arabia. Thus, though it is impossible to affirm with confidence such a position, yet it is far from improbable that we have in this most ancient writing in the world the family archives of Amrarn and his ancestors, comprising the history of Joseph, probably written in great part by himself, documents from the hands of Jacob, Abraham, Shem, Noah, and possibly, ascending higher still, authentic memorials from Enoch, Seth, and Adam." Looking upon the Book of Genesis as a collection of documents, and not as a single document, it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion, that some of these records existed before the Flood, and were preserved in the ark. The Rev. Dr. Wall has shewn, if not the com- plete impossibility, at least the great improbability of alphabets being a human invention ; and the universal tradition of ancient nations ascribes the invention to the gods. The poetical address of Lamech for in the original Hebrew it has a decided poetic form bears all the signs of having been recorded by alphabetic means; for it differs essentially from all the specimens of known ideagraphic poetry, as will be at once obvious if it be compared with translations from the Chinese.* There 29. 2 Chron. ix. 29, xii. 15, xx. 34. In the New Testament many of the anecdotal portions in the three first Gospels, and see Luke i. 1, 2 Smith. * See an admirable series of papers on Chinese poetry by Mr. Davis, in the Transactions of the Royal. Asiatic Society. OF CIVILIZATION. 323 appears, therefore, a strong probability that, with the stock of information given to Adam, the means of recording and preserving that information were also communicated. Dr. Wall has shewn, that the common theory which deduces alphabetic from hieroglyphic writing is desti- tute of any plausible foundation. There is nothing in the latter which would suggest the former; but on the contrary, " the ideagraphic use of signs, instead of leading towards the phonetic one, has actually the very opposite tendency, and draws off the mind from the practice adopted in the alphabetic reading, of using the elementary sounds without any signification, and com- bining these to form significant words."* The patri- archal records of Abraham and his family, are more full, and enter into more minute details than any transcript from pure ideagraphic writing with which we are acquainted; and assuredly they could not have been thus recorded in such a hieroglyphic system as that described by Clemens Alexandrinus, and Horus Apollo. Persons acquainted with alphabetic writing, are often led to suppose that ideagraphic would form a superior system. Bishop Wilkins was not alone in his attempts to form a universal character, which, like the Chinese, could be read with equal facility by nations speaking different languages. f Here is the * See Dr. Wall on the Origin of Alphabets, vol. i. p. 80. It may be remarked that the great difficulty in teaching a child the alphabet, is the want of significance in the elementary sounds, and hence pictures are called to the aid of memory A stands for apple, B for bull, etc. f The author is acquainted with several such projectors ; indeed, he may include himself in the number, for he bestowed the labour of some years on the hopeless attempt. 324 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT direct reverse of the modern theory, for here the im- perfection of alphabetic writing the connexion between representation and sound suggested the expediency of an ideagraphic system, where the representation should have reference solely to the sense independent of the sound. The differences by which the distinction between the several records is shewn, seem very clearly to prove that the several parts of Genesis were originally alpha- betical. Had Moses translated them from hieroglyphs, or collected them from independent traditions, there would be a uniformity of style, which unquestionably is not to be found in the Hebrew text, and there would be an absence of particles and connecting links, such as is found in the Book of Job, which bears every mark of being a transcript from picture writing. It is not probable that the elements of civilization enumerated were the only aids divinely given to man when he was allowed by his Creator to become a legis- lator for himself. There are several others, particu- larly those connected with the domestic and social relations, for whose divine origin, at least, plausible conjectures could be assigned. But it is sufficient to shew that some stock of social knowledge was given to the progenitors of the human race by Omniscience, in order that they might enter on that career of life for which they were obviously destined by their physical constitution and moral nature. The particular elements mentioned in the Sacred Record, are precisely those which we have shewn could not have been invented by men for themselves, and they are also those which the concurrent testimony of ancient nations ascribes to the OF CIVILIZATION. 325 interposition of Divine Providence. Thus, the scrip- tural account of the origin of civilization is confirmed by the internal evidence derived from the different phases of barbarism and civilization, and by the external evidence of the earliest traditions in every part of the world. The controversy respecting the extent of the Deluge does not in the slightest degree interfere with the course of this argument ; but some of the circumstances respect- ing the dispersion at Babel, which have been lightly passed over by commentators, seem to merit a brief examination. So far as the geography of the antedilu- vian race can be ascertained, it appears that the principal seat of mankind, before the Flood, was the central plain of Asia, part of which is even now below the level of the sea. After the subsidence of the Deluge, mankind occupied some part of the great mountain chain which extends from the Bay of Bengal to the shores of the Euxine. There are no certain means of determining whether the peak on which the ark rested, was in the Hiinmalaya, the Paropamisan chain, the American mountains, or the Caucasus. The traditions of Asia point invariably to this mountain-system as the cradle of the different races that have founded the oldest empires in that quarter of the globe, and most of them fix the central forms in Upper Thibet. In this they are partly supported by the Sacred Records, which declare that the sons of Noah journeyed from the East when they went to found Babel. In the present state of the science of Ethnography, there are, as yet, but few principles which can be regarded as decisively established; but among those are two that are of great 326 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT importance to the subject under consideration. In tracing the families of languages, not by their lexical conformity, but by their grammatical analogy, it will be found, that the course of the language has been primarily directed by a system of mountains, and sub- sequently by the flow of rivers. This is remarkably the case with the class of languages commonly called the Indo-European family,, extending from the Indian seas to the Atlantic ocean. Now the course of this family has obviously been directed by the great mountain- chain of Asia, and subsequently by the course of the mountainous ranges in Northern Turkey and Southern Germany. The only apparent break was in the Cau- casus, and even there the links wanting have been amply supplied. So late as 1812, Malte Brun described the languages of the Caucasian region, particularly the Georgian and Armenian, as " forming there a family or group apart." But Klaproth, in his journey to the Caucasus, has proved that the language of one great tribe, theOssetes, or Alans, indisputably belongs to the Indo-European family, and that the Armenian language, upon lexical and grammatical examination, was clearly a member of the same group. These observations tend to shew that the first exten- sion of the postdiluvian race was directed over and along a range of heights, for the Deluge must have subsided long before the lower plains could have afforded an opportunity for the march of nations. It is indeed obvious, that the process of dispersion must have commenced before Babel was founded, for its builders could not have anticipated the danger " lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole OF CIVILIZATION. 327 earth" if the symptoms of such an approaching con- summation had not already appeared. Taking the extremes of this family of languages, the Celtic and the Sanscrit, and carefully observing the lexical conformities between them, it does not seem impossible to approximate to the state in which the arts of life were when these dialects were one or nearly one. The chief lexical resemblance is between the numerals and elementary verbal roots ; and the numerals alone are sufficient to prove that when the separation between Celtic and Sanscrit took place, their common parent possessed a greater stock of civilization than is to be found among many of the African and Polynesian tribes, who cannot count beyond five or six. An important element of civilization was developed by the dispersion at Babel, which must long have con- tinued imperfect, had the builders been able to effect their original design; we mean commerce, and the interchange of commodities. The mutual exchange of articles of use and luxury between men in every grade of the scale of humanity is one of the most conclusive proofs of what may be called the sociability of the human species. Man is the only animal that works for himself at the same time that he is working for others; he alone produces articles which others want, in order to obtain articles which he wants himself. Bees and beavers, indeed, work in common, and thus form a species of association ; but their association is that of a family, where production and consumption are equally conjoined : man alone exchanges products ;* and this * " Man," says Archbishop Whately, " might be defined as an animal that makes exchanges ; no other, even of those animals which 328 SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT faculty of exchanging as well as producing, is an essen- tial characteristic of his race. The project of the builders of Babel to prevent dis- persion, to make one name for the whole human race, and to provide a common centre from which all direc- tions should emanate, appears not dissimilar from the theories of some Oriental despots, who claim to be the only landowners and the only merchants in their dominions. They wanted to found a society on an anti-social principle ; a principle involving a restriction on the labourer of going to the place where his labour would be most profitable and productive. For this evil, the dispersion at once provided a remedy; and thus the last recorded act of Divine interference in the general government of the whole human race conferred a new element of civilization, and that the one most extensive in its operations on humanity. We have now examined the scriptural account of the origin of civilization, and have endeavoured to explain some of the details which have been most usually regarded as the difficulties of the narrative. But whatever opinion may be formed of these details, we claim for the general statement the authority of a full demonstration. The scriptural account of civili- zation narrates not what may have been, but what must have been. The argument is thus summed up by Archbishop Whately : " According to the present course of nature, the first introducer of civilization among savages is, and must make the nearest approach to rationality, having to all appearance the least notion of bartering, or in any way exchanging one thing for another." Political Economy, Lecture i. OF CIVILIZATION. 329 be, man, in a more improved state: in the beginning, therefore, of the human race, this, since there was no man to effect it, must have been the work of another being. There must have been, in short, a revelation made to the first, or to some subsequent generation of our species. And this miracle (for such it is, as being an impossibility according to the present course of nature) is attested, independently of the authority of Scripture, and consequently in confirmation of the Scripture accounts, by the fact, that civilized man exists at the present day. " Taking this view of the subject, we have no need to dwell on the utility the importance the antecedent probability of a revelation; it is established as a part, of which a monument is existing before our eyes. Divine instruction is proved to be necessary, not merely for an end which we think desirable, or which we think agree- able to Divine wisdom and goodness, but for an end which we know has been attained. That man could not have made himself, is appealed to as a proof of the agency of a Divine Creator; and that mankind could not in the first instance have civilized themselves, is a proof exactly of the same kind and of equal strength, of the agency of a Divine Instructor"* It is not necessary to add anything to this reasoning, but we may be permitted to remark, that this line of evidence shews the importance of investigating human transactions when we are competent to the task, without an immediate reference to the authority of Scripture, as a sufficient answer to all inquiries. That wondrous * Whately's Political Economy, Lecture v. The reader is earnestly recommended to study attentively the entire Lecture. 330 SCRIPTURAL CIVILIZATION. library, collected in a single volume, which we call the Bible,* imparts to man only that knowledge which he could not otherwise have attained. It is not the history of nature, of civilization, or of man, but of revelation; and consequently it does not supersede the necessity of shewing, from the records of nature, of civilization, and of man, that a revelation was necessary, and that it was bestowed. Although few persons cling to Christianity, to its sublime doctrines and its consoling promises, solely, in consequence of logical demonstration though its motives and evidences may have become incorporated with our holiest affections, elements of our happiness, and an essential part of our consciousness yet the religion of the feelings requires to be both alimented and corrected by the inquiries of reason. Great as our love for the spiritual Jerusalem may be, we are not to sit idly within its walls, in ignorant and indolent reliance on what its guardians are pleased to tell us from time to time; on the contrary, we must " walk about Zion, and go round about her, and tell the towers thereof; we must mark well her bulwarks and consider her palaces, that we may tell to generations following, this God is our God for ever and ever." * Much evil arises from the perverse habit of speaking and thinking of the Bible as a single and uniform book. It has enabled infidels to evade the force of the arguments derived from the concatenation of the events in the moral government of Providence, and from the fulfil- ment of prophecy. They ask, " How can you prove the Bible by the Bible?" If the several books were habitually used as independent records, which they manifestly are, the unity of the system which they reveal would be more striking, and would serve more to confirm the believer, rescue the waverer, and silence the caviller. 331 CHAPTER XV. ON THE STATE OF CIVILIZATION DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK OF JOB. AMONG the various controversies to which the Book of Job has given rise, one fact has been universally con- ceded, namely, that it is an independent record, that it has no connexion with the Hebrew history or code of laws, and that it presents a system of religion differing in all its visible forms from that established by Moses. Thus viewed, the book is a valuable record of a form of civilization such as is nowhere else described; and if any weight be given to the preponderance of authorities, we may with the majority of the commentators ascribe this form to a period anterior to the Mosaic legislation. In the preceding chapter we have seen that the Scrip- tures, or rather the records in the Book of Genesis, enable us to frame some estimate of the amount of civilization bestowed upon the human race when the world was opened for its use ; a test of the accuracy of this estimate is in some degree pi-ovided, when we find that such an amount was actually possessed by the earliest patriarchal race of which we have a distinct and detailed account. The question whether Job was a historical personage or an imaginary character, does not necessarily enter into the consideration of the book as a portraiture of manners, but we may be permitted to hazard a conjee- 332 STATE OF CIVILIZATION ture that a rabbinical error, similar to that which has founded so many legendary fictions on the sixth chapter of Genesis, has been the principal source of all the difficulties against admitting Job's existence. It is now universally conceded that " the sons of God" who took wives from "the daughters of men/' were the pious descendants of Seth who intermarried with the offspring of Cain. If the same principle of interpreta- tion be applied to the historical introduction in the Book of Job, the rabbinical gloss that the sons of God mentioned in the sixth verse of the first chapter were angels, and the Satan or accuser, the devil, will appear a very unnecessary difficulty. The simple meaning would be, that when the pious men of Idurnea assembled to worship Jehovah, the envious spirit of one or more was excited by the prosperity of Job, and the dialogue between the Satan, that is, the accuser or malignant person, would appear to be nothing more than an ordinary oriental mode of describing the struggles between the suggestions of envy and the dictates of conscience. This theory is propounded with all possible humility, but it may be said in its favour that it does no violence to the literal meaning of the text, particu- larly if reference be made to the original Hebrew that it gives a simple and natural explanation of an acknow- ledged difficulty and that it is in strict accordance with the principles of interpretation applied to similar passages in the sacred volume. That the Book of Job alludes in many places to the ministration of angels has appeared doubtful to several commentators, and an examination of the passages in which they seem to be mentioned, would shew that human messengers, IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 333 prophets or priests,, may be intimated rather than spiritual agencies ; just as the angels of the churches mentioned in the Apocalypse unquestionably designate human governors. The religious knowledge possessed in the age of Job was founded on the unity of Deity, both in the creation and government of the universe ; but that this was not a natural theology, a doctrine discovered by unassisted reason, is proved by the reference of Job himself to a revelation, when he declares (chap. vi. 10), " I have not neglected the words of the Holy One ;" and again (chap, xxiii. 12), "I do not neglect the principles of his lips : I have treasured up his words in my bosom." This religion was embodied in formal acts of worship : Job offered expiatory sacrifices for himself and his family, not in the character of a priest, but as patriarch and head of a tribe. We find from the Book of Genesis that sacrifices began to be offered immediately after the expulsion of our first parents from Paradise; and as there cannot be found any reasonable ground for the suggestion of sacrifice to an uninstructed mind, the character of Job's religion, both in doctrine and form, is that of a theology derived from a primitive revelation, and not evolved from barbarism or paganism by any mental process. That the knowledge of the Divine unity was derived by Job from a revelation to himself, or from a former revelation transmitted to him by writing or tradition, appears further proved by his reference to the corrup- tions of religion which were gradually increasing in his time. He describes Sabaism, or the worship of the celestial luminaries, as an error to which he might like STATE OF CIVILIZATION others have been led by his natural propensities, and from which he was protected only by the firmness of his belief in what had been revealed. This is a remarkable confirmation of his having obtained his own knowledge of religion from some external source, for he mentions the superstitious practices connected with Sabaism as customs with which he had been tempted to comply. If I have looked with a superstitious eye, At the sun when he shone in his strength, Or the moon when she walked in her brightness, And my heart hath been secretly enticed, And I have worshipped by carrying my hand to my mouth, I should have been chargeable with a great transgression, For I should have denied the Supreme God. * The religion of Job, the first great element in the patriarchal system of civilization, is thus clearly shewn to possess a derivative character, and the only form of religion which we find to have been self-evolved, was a corruption. It is not to be expected that the ideas of morality formed by the patriarch could be so clearly traced to their source, but there are still proofs of their derivative character in their disproportion to the state of physical knowledge represented in the book. It was not until a very late period in the history of the Grecian philosophy, that moralists discovered the necessity of imposing a restraint on the inward sentiment. Now, we find that Job had anticipated this great principle, for he disclaims not the overt act, but the impure desire which might have prompted to its commission. * The quotations throughout the chapter are taken from Wemyss's admirable translation, and the author has made extensive use of that gentleman's researches and illustrations. IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 335 I made a covenant with mine eyes That I would not gaze upon a virgin, For what portion should I then have in God, Or what inheritance from the Almighty on high? In all the civilized nations of antiquity, and in some which claim to be civilized in modern times, the rights of slaves are ostentatiously disregarded; their persons and properties are at the disposal of their masters. We have shewn in a former chapter, that the worst forms of slavery are to be found in pastoral and nomade races, yet we find Job expressly recognising the rights of his dependents, and asserting their claims to justice with a spirit of equity not to be found in any of the Pagan philosophers, or in some Christian legislators. If I denied justice to my male slave, Or to my female slave when they disputed with me, What then should I do when God maketh inquest? When he inquires what answer should I give ? Did not He who formed me form them ? Were we not fashioned alike in the womb ? Such morality is clearly beyond the general state of knowledge at the period when Job lived; we find nothing like it in any of the pastoral races existing in the East, though there are many of these whose civili- zation, estimated by the advance in the arts and sciences, would appear to be greater than that which was pos- sessed by the Idumeans in the days of the patriarch. This superior purity of the ethical code, so far in advance of the progress made in the other branches of human intelligence, is a strong presumptive evidence that it was derived from a source external to the state of society. We find also that the friends of Job refer to moral 336 STATE OF CIVILIZATION maxims, and principles derived from sages of old, and assert the obligation of the rules which experience had proved to be efficacious. Thus Bildad: Examine, I pray thee, former generations, Inform thyself of the wisdom of their ancestors: (For we are but of yesterday and have no experience; Our days on the earth are but a shadow). Shall they not teach thee and instruct thee? Among the primitive elements of knowledge traced in the former chapter, we noticed the nature and habits of animals which was communicated to Adam before his expulsion from Paradise. The amount of natural history possessed by Job, is greater than he was likely to have obtained from his personal experience, since he not only mentions, but describes animals which were not natives of Idumea, such as the crocodile and the hippopotamus. It is not likely, indeed, that his knowledge of these was derived from tradition, he more probably obtained his information from the commercial travellers who traversed Idumea on their way to Egypt; but it is remarkable, that no animals beyond those he mentions, have been domesticated and rendered useful to man since his day. The shepherd's dog is found to have been used at this early period, and the horses of Arabia are shewn to have been already subjected to the dominion of man. At the same time, the animals which could not be tamed or rendered serviceable, are speci- fied with as much accuracy as could be evinced at the present day. Though the descriptions of the animals are not tech- nical, they are far from being deficient in scientific accuracy; the author has, with extraordinary felicity, IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 337 seized the leading characters of each, and the peculiari- ties by which it is distinguished from its fellow brutes; in a few words, the amount of instinct it possesses, and the application of that instinct to its habits and modes of life, are brought before us ; experience must there- fore have been miraculously aided then, or marvellously neglected since, for the accumulated observation of sub- sequent ages has not added so much to our knowledge of the animals described as would equal the amount possessed by Job. The Scriptures mention the use of metals and musical instruments, as additions made to the stock of human knowledge; we have already noticed Job's acquaintance with mining operations and refining processes, and need not here repeat our estimate of the amount of his skill in metallurgy, but we may direct attention to the fact, that such an amount possessed at so early an age is strongly confirmatory of the antiquity assigned to the invention in the Book of Genesis. Mention is made of bread, cheese, butter, oil, and other manufactured forms of agricultural produce. Wine was preserved in leather-bottles, or skins, as it is still in most parts of the East; and it is curious to find Job referring to the fermentation of new wine, in nearly the same words used by Jesus Christ after the lapse of several centuries. I am overcharged with matter; My mind within me impels me My feelings are like new wine closed up; As vessels of new wine they are bursting. There is reason to believe that men had become accustomed to fixed habitations in Idumea, as we should Q STATE OF CIVILIZATION be led to conclude from the account given of the building of Babel. The mention of cities, indeed, is not decisive, for the Hebrew word so rendered may be applied to assemblages of tents or wagons. But Zophar, in his third address to Job, draws a very manifest dis- tinction between temporary habitations and permanent structures : He had built his house like a moth-worm, Like a booth which the garden- watch man constructs. The various artifices used in hunting, and the instru- ments employed in war, to which Job incidentally alludes, though very interesting to Biblical students, do not come within the scope of our reasoning, because there are no similar references in the early part of Genesis. The art of clothing is expressly mentioned among the communications made to Adam, but in his case it was confined to preparing articles of dress from the skins of beasts ; in Job's time textile fabrics were known, for he says My days are slighter than the weaver's yarn ; They are finished like the breaking of a thread. The first mention of the balance and scales occurs in the history of Abraham, but it is there introduced as an instrument familiarly known, an invention so long in use that no reference is made to its origin. Job speaks of it in terms of similar familiarity : Would to God my grief were weighed in a balance, And my calamity laid in one of the scales! It would be found heavier than the sands of the sea, Therefore my complaints are vehement. We have also an allusion to the practice of sealing IN THE BOOK OP JOB* 339 with a signet-ring, to which there appears no parallel in the Book of Genesis previous to the history of Joseph : At present thou numberest up my devices, Not one of my inadvertencies escapes thee. My offences are sealed up in a bag ; Yea, thou tiest together mine iniquities. No definite account of institutions, and of social or domestic habits, is found in the Book of Genesis pre- vious to the patriarchal record relating to Abraham and his family. Many points of similarity could be found between the habits of Abraham and Job, as might reasonably be expected, since both were emirs or chief's of pastoral tribes. It will, however, be sufficient to notice one or two of the most prominent resemblances, particularly such as best tend to illustrate the state of civilization in the patriarchal age. Great attention was paid to the wisdom and years of Abraham, by the kings and princes among whom he sojourned ; the reverential simplicity of the homage paid to knowledge and expe- rience is, indeed, one of the most delightful traits in the patriarchal history. The reply of the children of Heth to Abraham, when he wished to purchase a burial- ground from them, is an interesting proof of the great respect which he " a stranger and sojourner with them" had acquired, solely by the influence of his personal character. Job could boast of similar marks of re- spectful homage : To me men gave ear and attended, They were silent at my admonition. After I had spoken they replied not, For my reasons dropped on them as dew. They waited for me as for a spring-shower; They opened wide their mouths as for the harvest-rain. 340 STATE OF CIVILIZATION The transaction between Abraham and the children of Heth brings before us another very interesting peculiarity of the earlier patriarchal times, the influence of public opinion in enforcing obedience to the rules of morality. Abraham, in the absence of courts of record and registry- offices, made his purchase in the presence of the general assembly of the people, and thus the multitude became witnesses of the bargain, and judges of its equity. It like manner Job dwells upon the influence of public opinion manifested by a public assembly of the people, as an efficacious sanction for rectitude of conduct : If human -like I concealed my sin, And hid my transgression in my bosom, Let me be confounded before the multitude; Let me be covered with public contempt ; Let me be dumb, nor dare to go abroad. Few circumstances connected with patriarchal life have a more touching effect on the mind, than the hospitality accorded to the wearied traveller and way- worn stranger. So sacred was the obligation of extend- ing such assistance felt to be, that the host looked upon himself as the obliged party, and supplicated guests to give him their company as an honour and a boon. Thus, when the vision appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre, " he lifted up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent-door, and bowed himself toward the ground," and said, u My lord, if now I have found favour in thy sight, pass not away, I pray thee, from thy servant; let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest IN THE BOOK OP JOB. 341 yourselves under the tree : and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts; after that, ye shall pass on; for therefore are ye come to your servant." He then directs Sarah to prepare the bread, while he goes in person to choose the best calf from the herd, and to prepare other provisions for his guests. In the same way, when two angels visited Sodom, Abraham's nephew, Lot, urgently entreated them, as a favour, to become his guests : " Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray, your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early and go on your ways." When they refused, "he pressed them greatly/' as if his house would be honoured by the presence of the strangers. Job lays claim to the exer- cise of the hospitable virtues in their widest extent : If my domestics were not wont to say, " Who is there that hath not been filled with his dainties?" The stranger lodged not in the street, My door was open to every coiner. From the history of Abraham and Esau, it seems evident that polygamy was not so common in the earlier as it was in the later patriarchal ages, and that the marriage union was a connexion on terms of equality, which by degrees changed into the degradation of the weaker sex. Both Sarah and Rebecca appear to have been more influential persons in the households of their husbands, than the the wives of Jacob. Job's wife is also represented as the companion, and not the slave of her husband. In our version, her conduct appears harsh and revolting, because the most important word in her address to the patriarch has been rendered into the very opposite meaning of what was intended. She 342 STATE OF CIVILIZATION is made to say, " Curse God and die." But the Hebrew word (berek] most usually, if not invariably, signifies bless; and any one who looks at the passage, unpre- judiced by the translation, will see that she obviously alludes to the previous declaration of the patriarch: Naked I came from my mother's womb, And naked I shall return to the earth : Jehovah gave; Jehovah hath taken away; Blessed be the name of Jehovah ! This was Job's exclamation when property and family were reft away; but a second course of misery had now fallen upon him, he was smitten with loathsome disease, which covered him externally with ulcers, and racked all his bones with pain; his wife, therefore, exhorts him to reiterate his former words of resignation, to bless God and die. Mr. Wemyss adds, that " she may have deemed his sufferings to have arisen from some trespass or iniquity which required a penitential confession, and therefore she may have uttered the words in the sense in which Joshua advises Achan (Joshua vii. 19), " Bless God, i. e. Give glory to God, by confessing thy sins, hoping also that such confession might avert the divine wrath, and procure to her husband a mitigation of his sufferings." That this is the correct view of her conduct appears evident from the terms of Job's reply : " Thou speakest like a foolish woman; what, shall we then receive good from the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil also?" There is, indeed, some severity in the reproof, but it is not such as the act of blasphemous impiety, imputed to her in the ordinary version, would have required. He seems to assert that she had misunder- IN THE BOOK OP JOB. 343 stood the nature of his case, as his friends did sub- sequently, by regarding it as a punishment for some transgression which required to be confessed, in order that the Moral Providence of God should be justified, and he therefore insists that there is no necessity for such a justification, since he who had conferred prosperity, could, in his sovereign power, inflict adversity. Mr. Wemyss adds, " Neither does the Scripture throw out the least word of reprehension as regards her conduct. She remains with her husband to the last; and at the close of her own and his trials, she becomes again the mother of ten children, and partakes of the renovated happiness of her husband. Nor when the Almighty orders expiation for the improper lan- guage of Job's friends, is there any mention made of her conduct as betraying unbelief, impatience, or impiety." From the very earliest period to which historical information reaches, travellers in the East formed them- selves into caravans, or companies, for the purposes of mutual protection and assistance. Though their first mention in Genesis is in connexion with the history of Joseph, there can be little doubt that they existed much earlier, for the brief notice of Egypt, in the life of Abraham, shews it to have been already a commercial country. But Job, who lived in the land through which the caravans passed, and where they had to encounter their greatest difficulties, supplies the exact circumstances which the sacred historian has omitted. He beautifully compares his friends to a land-flood formed by the melting snows, which had speedily been absorbed in the sands and evaporated by the 344 STATE OF CIVILIZATION summer heat; and he describes the consternation of the caravan from Teman, when they came to the place where torrents were known to descend from the mountains, in the hope of being able not only to slake their thirst but to fill their water-skins, and found the torrent-bed dry and the waters dissipated; he further notices the dismay of the caravan from Sheba, when their associates did not meet them at the appointed place : As to my brethren, they are perfidious like a brook, Like the torrent which rushes through the valley ; Whose waters are swollen by the melting of ice, And turbid by reason of the snow Summer comes and they disappear ; The heat absorbs them and they are dried up. Caravans turn thither on their route ; They perish in the midst of the desert. The travellers of Teman looked anxiously, The caravans of Sheba panted for them; They blushed for their own confidence, They came to the spot and were confounded. In like manner ye are become useless to me; Ye see my misery and recoil with horror. A dissimilarity of habits and customs suffices to shew that the Books of Genesis and Job, while they agree in the general estimate of patriarchal civilization, yet present it to us in different phases, and with such variety of species, as to shew that the records are inde- pendent of each other. The funeral ceremonies of the Hebrew patriarchs, previous to the migration of Jacob's family into Egypt, were remarkable for their severe simplicity. Abraham was an emir of great wealth and power; kings had shewn him respect, and courted his alliance. It might reasonably be expected, that the funeral obsequies of IN THE BOOK OP JOB. 345 such a powerful chieftain, and public benefactor, would have been celebrated with all the pride, pomp, and circumstance of oriental magnificence; but on the contrary, we find him simply borne to the grave by his two sons, unaccompanied by any mourning train, or pompous solemnities. The account which Job gives of the gorgeous pro- cession attending the funeral of a man of rank in his country, affords a striking contrast to the almost naked simplicity of the funerals of Abraham and Isaac. He replies to the assertions of his friends, that adversity is a proof of guilt, by describing the gorgeous obsequies of wicked chieftains in the countries bordering on the Euphrates : He is brought to the grave with pomp ; They keep watch over his tomb. The sods of the valley are sweet to him ; Crowds follow his funeral solemnity; Vast numbers go before it. Another point of dissimilarity between the patriarchal records in Genesis and the Book of Job, is that the Hebrew fathers are never represented as coming into contact with a wretched and miserable race of out- casts; indeed, it would appear, that an average share of comforts was possessed by the various races amongst whom they settled. Job, on the contrary, describes a degraded and impoverished race of exiles, driven out from the fertile portions of the country, to seek shelter in the wilds and wastes of northern Arabia. This circumstance is characteristic of the difference which may exist between the developments of the same system of civilization in different lands. Palestine had neither 346 STATE OP CIVILIZATION organized bands of plunderers, nor such a miserable herd of outcasts, as Job describes, when, as an aggra- vation of his misery, he says, that he was an object of contempt to the most wretched of the earth : But now I am held in derision by my juniors, By men whose fathers I would have disdained To set among the dogs of my flock. Of what value was the power of their hands ? They had neither strength nor vigour in them ; Hardened by hunger and by wretchedness, They retire into the solitude of the desert Into desolate and uncultivated wastes ; They pluck up the mallow among thorns, The root of the broom is food for them ; Should they leave their retreats for a moment, Men cry after them as after a thief; They dwell in cliffs, among the valleys, In crevices of the earth, and in rocks; They bray among the bushes, like wild asses ; They couple beneath the beds of nettles : Brutish people ! without character and infamous, Who were driven in disgrace from their country. The difference between the amount of social indi- gence in Idumea and Palestine, led necessarily to a corresponding difference in the social duties of bene- volence. We find no record of alms bestowed, of assistance rendered, of protection afforded, or of the various works of personal charity, which Job claims to have performed; and this arises, not from any dissimilarity in the moral systems of the patriarchs, but from the difference between their respective social positions. The minuteness, familiarity, and ease with which the writer of the Book of Job describes the characteristics of a state of society different from that IN THE BOOK OF JOB. 347 of the Hebrew patriarchs as recorded in Genesis, is a convincing proof that these books are the work of different authors, and that each is a distinct and inde- pendent testimony to the condition of patriarchal civilization ; whilst each is confirmatory of the other, because the coincidences are undesigned. Nothing but the perverse habit of treating the Bible as one book, and not as a collection of books bound together, could have prevented Biblical students from perceiving that the Book of Job is an indepen- dent testimony, confirmatory of the general accuracy of the Book of Genesis ; and that their attempts to harmonize them, to make them appear the produc- tions of the same individual mind, actually weaken the authority of both. The absence of all allusions to the stupendous chain of miracles in the deliver- ance of the children of Israel from the Egyptian bondage, on the one hand, and the total silence respect- ing Job in the Pentateuch, on the other, are circum- stances sufficient to prove that the authors of the two records were in nowise connected. There is but one historical incident and even of that we must speak doubtfully mentioned both in Job and Genesis, and that is, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Such a fearful incident must have produced a very powerful influence on the minds of all throughout Western Asia, and Job was much more likely to have heard of it by tradition than to have obtained it from the Pentateuchical archives. Indeed, the mode in which he mentions it if, indeed, such be the event to which he alludes clearly shews that he was not acquainted with the narrative as it is recorded in Genesis : 348 CIVILIZATION IN THE BOOK OF JOB. Hast thou observed the ancient tract, That was trodden by wicked mortals ? Who were arrested on a sudden ; Whose foundation is a molten flood. Who said to God, " Depart from us ; What can the Almighty do to us?" Though he had filled their houses with wealth Far from me be the counsel of the wicked. The righteous beheld and rejoiced; The innocent laughed them to scorn, saying, " Surely their substance was carried away, And their riches were devoured by fire." It would be no difficult matter to deduce a very full account of the state of patriarchal civilization from the Book of Job, but such an investigation would lead us too far from our immediate subject; and per- haps we may appear to have been already tempted to digress too freely into our favourite paths of Biblical criticism. It was, however, important to shew that the Pentateuchical account of the origin of human society is fully confirmed by the most complete and authentic description we possess of the earliest form of society the Patriarchal. In such a course it was scarcely possible to avoid noticing the arguments from undesigned coincidents that forced themselves upon our attention even were they less directly connected with the account of the origin of civilization given in the preceding chapter. END OF VOL. I. LONDON: Piinte<l by Manning and Mason, Ivy Lane, Paternoster Row. 39, PATERNOSTER Row, LONDON. UCTOBEH, IS40. 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