Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/51

Rh his mother when he was a child, and though he did not know this, had really been as it were stereotyped long centuries before, and was even in those ancient days told in almost identically the same words by people living far away towards the morning dawn and others as far away towards the setting sun. The students and savants would listen, and wonder how a full-grown man, though a pygmy, with a fairly well shaped head but for the great prognathism of the jaws, could delight in such absurd stories and really believe in the truth of many of them. They would soon realise that he could tell them nothing of what they wanted to know, that though he was not an idiot, his reasoning power and his credulity were those of a little child. They would observe that his passions were those of an adult, that his physical strength was great, that he could distinguish objects clearly at a distance that they could only see with a good field-glass, that he could outrun with ease the fleetest of their athletes, and yet that his thoughts were no more lofty than those of the dullest peasant's infant boy.

But the palaeolithic savage restored to life, though he could tell nothing of importance concerning the history or origin or religion of his race, would still be an object of exceeding interest. He could be studied as a workman engaged in the manufacture of timepieces studies the mechanism of a clock, and a very great deal relating to the history of man could be learned in this manner from him. He could not explain the structure of his language, but his words, or the uncouth sounds that issued from his throat and teeth and lips which correspond to words among civilised men, could be taken down and analysed, their meaning could be gradually gathered, the grammatical form in which they were put together to represent ideas could be solved, and a link in the chain of language from its origin to that of the most cultured individual of the present day would be obtained. For this painted savage, disgusting in his habits, almost hideous in his appearance, represented a stage of human existence through which our own ancestors must at one time have passed. That time may have been exceedingly remote, but we cannot get rid of the fact that this repulsive being, who ate and enjoyed the taste of carrion,