Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/644

Rh 622 ETHNOGRAPHY tion to the belief that language is a divine revelation, or at least a sudden and spontaneous birth in the soul of every race (Renan). This theory, which presupposes the plurality of races, may be very acceptable to philologists, but is one with which most ethnologists do not agree. Where philo logists see a difference in nature, ethnologists see rather a difference in degree ; they object that &quot; it must not be by any means supposed that complexity in language implies excellence or even completeness.&quot; What mere philologists call debasement, philologists who are also philosophers call improvement. Mere artists or calligraphers may deplore the deterioration of hiero glyphics with elaborate drawings into a cursive, demotic writing, which has led to the adoption of our unpicturesque alphabets. &quot; The phonic alteration,&quot; says an able linguist, M. Michel Br6al, &quot;helped the emancipation of thought ; it furthered the first steps of man in the p-ith of abstract thought ; it gave to the human mind the same assistance as algebra gives to the mathematician, when it substituted signs more abstract still.&quot; Mr Sweet (Language and Tkou jkt), considering it an amelioration that English has cast off &quot; an effete inflexional system,&quot; does not lament that &quot;English is to be compared in part with agglutinat ing in part with isolating languages, such as Chinese.&quot; These reservations are made not because ethnologists think little of philology applied to ethnologic research, but rather because they know that alliance to be a vital necessity, and hope by concerted action to increase its usefulness. Philology, like history, was long limited to a study of the Greek and Latin languages, until it was made a totally new science by the discovery of Sanskrit, and by the vocabularies which travellers collected from all parts of the globe. In the hand of modern observers, such as Bopp, Schleicher, Tick, Max Miiller, Friedrich M tiller, Curtius, Pictet, philo logy has become a sort of telescope by which human sight penetrates the night of centuries long past. &quot; By marvel lous efforts of sagacity it has reconstituted the social state, the uses, the ideas, the beliefs of the ancient Aryas, whose moral history is now better known to us than some periods of Roman history. It has discovered bonds of parentage between nations, which, as the Greeks and Persians did, reproached each other with being barbarians, and it has descried a diversity of origin between nations, which, as the Greeks and Egyptians, thought themselves to be closely allied&quot; (Bre&quot;al). How the sagacity of the philo logists adds to the achievements of ethnology is shown by Peschel, who thus sums up the results of their labours for finding out where was the cradle of our Indo-European ancestors : &quot; When the ancient vocabulary of tho primordial Aryan age is restored by collecting the roots common to all the members, we at the same time obtain an outline of the social condition of these nations in the most ancient period. We thus learn that they already tilled the ground, ploughed it with oxen, used carriages with wheels, kept cattle for the production of milk, and ventured on a neighbour ing sea in rowing boats, but did not use sails. It is more than doubtful whether they smelted metals, especially as the name for bellows is not derived from the primordial place of abode. As they were not acquainted there with the ass and the cat, both ancient domestic animals in Africa, they had not as yet inter changed any of the treasures of civilization with the Egyptians. As they had the same terms for snow and winter, and the other seasons afterwards received different names, we may be certain that in ancient Arya there was an alternation of hot and cold months. In these primitive abodes dwelt bears, wolves, and otters, but there were neither lions nor tigers. It lay eastward of Nestus in Mace donia, which in the time of Xerxes was the limit of the European lion. It was also further north than Chuzistan, Irak-Arabi, and even than Assyria, where lions are still to be met with. It cannot have included the high lands of west Iran and the southern shores of the Caspian Sea, for tigers still wander in search of prey as far as those districts. Hence every geographer will probably agree that the Indo-Europeans occupied both slopes of the Caucasus, as well as the remarkable gorge of Dariel, and were in the habit of visiting either the Euxine or the Caspian Sea, perhaps both.&quot; Mr Hyde Clarke shows that the original names of some African weapons are still names of stones, an interesting circumstance, as the belief gains ground in some quarters that the despised Negro invented the smelting and the working of iron, a discovery which ranks second to none, and to which are mainly due the wonders of our modern civilization in this, the true Iron Age. Geiger claims to have proved that, as recently as the Homeric period, men had a very imperfect and even deficient perception of colours. Bolder still is Herr Fick, who has construed some hundreds of proper names by which the &quot; Proeth- nians,&quot; supposed ancestors of the Celts, Germans, and Zends, may have been called before Sanskrit was yet born. Many other proofs might be given that philologists, who quite recently dared not, as it were, lose sight of the Medi terranean coasts, now navigate the most distant seas, far beyond the Ultima Thule of yore. Language is the highest work of a nation, a work of art, and often t nation s only one. The study of languages leads to the study of popular poetry, of songs, of dances, and of music, all subjects upon which we possess a mass of information, but little knowledge. The details are ready, collected from all parts of the world, but the synthesis has not yet been made. It is a curious fact that very accurate and even artistic etchings made on bone or horn, with the point of a flint, are found in the remains of the early stone age, but are wanting not only in the later part of the stone age, but also throughout the so-called bronze period. The orna mentation of pottery was very rude and scanty, progressing very slowly, but in the age following it seems to have taken a start imitations of plants and animals being essayed. The Eskimo are fair draughtsmen. The Indians draw like children. Polynesians do not draw, but carve and paint. The Bushmen and Kaffirs have no idea of perspective, the Chinese very little. Drawing on a flat surface re- quire? a certain degree of thought, and encountered pro bably much prejudice, because it was supposed to catch the shadow, or the soul of the objects. Carvings and mould ings in clay were easier, not to execute, but to attempt. It is beyond question that personal ornament was the be ginning of art. Savages are passionately fond of adorning their persons with painting (probably the hunters of Cro- Magnon, Schussenried, andThayingen bedaubed themselves with the ochre found near their bones), with tattooing, with all sorts of necklaces, bracelets, necklets, armlets, leggings, breast-plates, and stomachers, with fantastic head gear, and quills, pearls, shells, and rings through the nose, ears, and lips. Even the front teeth have been inlaid with shining knobs, as among the Dyaks. We are, in this depart ment, encumbered by a mass of details, which require to be systematically arranged, examined, arid compared, in order that they may become part of a science, or even a science by itself. VIII. Religious Development, Myths and Legends, Magic and Superstition. Controversies have been waged iipon this question &quot; Do any tribes exist which have no kind of religion 1 &quot; What made the dispute interminable, and of little profit, is the fact that the disputants attached different meanings to the same word. Reports of missionaries were quoted, some affirming, some denying. Thus facts have been brought forward to prove either that the* Russian peasants are very religious or very irreligious. The truth is that the religion of these simple-minded people is so mixed up with superstition that rigorous critics who main tain that superstition is the reverse of religion, as much as of morals, have no difficulty in proving that many of these country folks practice real shamanism under the cloak of Greek Christianity. But ethnologists are not expected to be either severe or indulgent; they have to give a defini-