Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/637

Rh ETHNOGRAPHY 615 animal genera; according to the anthropologist, it has trans formed the races of man; and, according to the ethnologist, it has transformed human thought. It must be confessed that evolution has yet opponents who contend that history records, not progress, but degeneration from a state of inno cence and bliss, from an age of gold or Saturnian cycle. This doctrine, borne out by the unanimous testimony of all tradition, was assumed at one time to be beyond dispute, and had nearly become an article of faith. But in recent times it has not remained unchallenged. In answer to its assailants, the theory of degeneration has, within this cen tury, been reasserted with great ingenuity and vehemence by ultramontane writers, such as De Maistre and De Bonuld, an.l in our own country it has been more recently defended by Whately with characteristic vigour. But an effective reply has been given by such writers as Lubbock and Tylor, especially the latter, who concludes an exhaustive discussion by these words, to which most ethnologists will subscribe : &quot; We may fancy ourselves looking on civilization as in personal figure she traverses the world ; we see her lingering or resting by the way, aud often deviating into paths that bring her toiling back to where she had passed by long ago; but, direct or devious, her path lies forward ; and if now and then she tries a few backward steps, her walk soon falls into a helpless stumbling. It is not according to her nature ; her feet were not made to plant uncertain steps behind her ; for both in her forward view and in her onward gait she is of only human type.&quot; Early Culture, ii. To the facts and reasonings adduced by the natu ralists Mr Herbert Spencer adds the weight of specu lative argument : &quot; Each organism, &quot; he says, &quot; exhibited within a short space of time a series of changes which, when supposed to occupy a period indefinitely great, and to go on iu various ways instead of one way, gives us a tolerably clear conception of organic evolution in general. The whole exhibits one grand scheme of progression.&quot; These words are the substance of the whole philosophy of evolution, which, sketched out by Maupertuis, Lamarck, and Goethe, reasserted and victoriously demonstrated by Darwin and Wallace, and taken up by Huxley, Virchow, Quatrefages, Broca, and Haeckel, now underlies all ethno logical research. In the view of its supporters, evolution has not only in past ages differentiated genera and species, but is at work to-day in transforming the actual types. Here may be the place to advert to the great law, of which Von Baer and Agassiz were the most thorough and successful exponents, namely, &quot; that the development of the in dividual is an epitome of that of the species.&quot; The human embryo, for example, passes rapidly through all the principal phases, in one or other of which whole series of inferior animals stay permanently, in such a manner that every new generation repeats in an abridged manner those that have gone before. Of the many corollaries which follow from this theory, the most important seems to be that, however much some groups of animals may differ from each other in structure and habits, they must have descended from the same parent form, if they are found to pass through similar embryonic stages. This is heredity. Ethnologists, again, have not been slow in borrowing this law from anatomists. The embryo going over the same organic form as the species, they argue that the child too must repeat the intellectual developments of past mankind. 1 arents, and not only the observers among them, had already reversed the opinion of the philosophers that savages are children by saying that children are savages. The remarkable similarity between their ideas, language, habits, and character, though generally admitted, had been regarded merely as a curious accident ; but coin cidences of such vast magnitude are not to be considered as merely accidental. Everybody knowa&amp;gt; and the fact is as important as it is obvious, how boys delight in romping, running, leaping, boating, swimming, and all out-door exercises, and how their favourite heroes are the Red Rover, Robin Hood in the forest green, Robinson Crusoe in the solitude of his island home, .where he had to begin all anew. Peculiar instances of the general law of inheritance have been called atavism. It occurs often that one individual is the exact countertype of his grandfather, or some more remute ancestor. By this law, still a very obscure one, ethnologists explain how men are occasionally met with who live in the midst of our civilization as mere savages. The passion manifested by nrany people for bunting and fishing as a sport, for a tramping roving life, the frequent falling or relapse of Freuch settlers in Canada (the Bois brules) into Indian habits, are supposed to be manifestations of atavism. But our stiff and rigid civilization is averse to those old fashioned individuals, who roam about, living from hand to mouth ; the existing system of law can scarcely be brought to distinguish them from criminals. Moralists attribute to atavism a large number of offences which lawyers attribute to guilty dispositions. Now-a-days more than one Boadicea emerges into a brief celebrity upon bsing sentenced to hard labour in the house of correction ; more than one Cassivellaunus has been severely flogged and sent to penal servitude. Mr Dugdale, an industrious statistician of New York, has traced to its common ancestor a family, the Jukes, consisting of 1200 people, of which the majority are paupers, thieves, or prostitutes, in a greater or less degree, and who are computed to have cost the state in prison maintenance, almshouse relief, &c., something like 260,000. The ancestor was a descendant of the early Dutch settlers, and lived much as backwoodsmen do now upon the Indian frontiers. He is described as a &quot; hunter and fisherman, a hard drinker, jovial and com panionable, averse to steady toil, working hard by spells and idling by turns, becoming blind in his old age, and his blindness has been entailed upon his children and grandchildren.&quot; It is not, however, owing to atavism, but to the mere continuance of an old order of things, that so many of our ill-educated classes, shepherds, agricultural labourers, and even factory hands, are as little developed, and live a life as little intellectual as savages. Latent in our small hamlets and large cities there is more savagery than many reformers are aware of, and it needs but little experience to discover something of the old barbarity lurking still in minds and hearts under a thin veil of civilization. Atavism is a word applied to persons ; survival, an expressive word for which we are indebted to Tylor, has a similar meaning, but is applied to things. Survivals are habits, ideas, or expressions which are senseless and per fectly inexplicable by the light of our present modes of life and thought, but can be explained by reference to similar customs or prejudices which are still to be found among distant tribes, or which are mentioned by ancient writers. The word survival corresponds exactly to the Latin word superstition, meaning the remainder or residue of bygone ages. But as the use of the word superstition is practically restricted to matters pertaining to religion and magic, a more general word had to be coined. &quot; Survivals,&quot; says Tylor, &quot; are milestones on the way of culture.&quot; They are intellectual fossils. Just as spearheads and frag ments of ancient pottery are disinterred by the plough in the midst of our fields, so survivals may be picked out in our daily conversation, in our habits and manners, but it requires a trained intelligence to detect them. Their original meaning has been lost, and they have been modified and distorted to serve modern purposes. Survivals may be compared to those muscles or pieces of