Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/553

Rh complex growth, can only be thoroughly understood when studied through its entire range; as the past is continually needed to explain the present, and the whole to explain a part. The matters here discussed have been chosen, not so much for their absolute importance as because, while they are among the easiest and most inviting parts of the subject, it is possible so to work them as to bring into view certain general lines of argument which apply not only to them, but also to the more complex and difficult problems involved in a complete treatise on the history of civilization.

The book contains essays upon "Gesture Language"; "Word Language"; "Picture-Writing and Word-Writing"; "Images and Names"; "Growth and Decline of Culture"; "The Stone Age, Past and Present"; "Fire, Cooking, and Vessels"; "Some Remarkable Customs"; "Historical Traditions and Myths of Observation"; "Geographical Distribution of Myths"; and "Concluding Remarks." One or two extracts from the last chapter will give the reader an idea of the spirit in which the inquiry is pursued. The author says:

The facts collected seem to favor the view that the wide differences in the civilization and mental state of the various races of mankind are rather differences of development than of origin, rather of degree than of kind. . . . The state of things which is found is not indeed that one race does or knows exactly what another race does or knows, but that similar stages of development recur in different times and places. There is reason to infer that our ancestors in remote times made fire with a machine much like that of the modern Esquimaux, and at a far later date they used the bow and arrow, as so many savage tribes do still. The foregoing chapters, treating of the history of some early arts, of the practice of sorcery, of curious customs and superstitions, are indeed full of instances of the recurrence of like phenomena in the remotest regions of the world. We might reasonably expect that men of like minds, when placed under widely different circumstances of country, climate, vegetable and animal life, etc., should develop very various phenomena of civilization, and we even know by evidence that they actually do so; but, nevertheless, it strikingly illustrates the extent of mental uniformity among mankind to notice that It is really difficult to find among a list of twenty items of art or knowledge, custom or superstition, taken at random from a description of any uncivilized race, a single one to which something closely analogous may not be found elsewhere among some other race, unlike the first in physical characters and living thousands of miles off. It is taking a somewhat extreme case to put the Australians to such a test, for they are, perhaps, the most peculiar of the lower varieties of man, yet, among the arts, beliefs, and customs found among their tribes, there are comparatively few that can not be matched elsewhere. They raise scars on their bodies like African tribes; they circumcise like the Jews and Arabs; they bar marriage in the female line like the Iroquois; they drop out of their language the names of plants and animals which have been used as the personal names of dead men and make new words to serve instead, like the Abipones of South America; they bewitch their enemies with locks of hair; and pretend to cure the sick by sucking out stones through their skin, as is done in so many other regions. It is true that among their weapons they have one of very marked peculiarity, the boomerang, but the rest of their armory are but varieties of instruments common elsewhere. They show but few exceptions to the general rule that whatever is found in one place in the world may be matched more or less closely elsewhere.

The author believes that "the history of mankind has been, on the whole, a history of progress." Some facts are quoted which bear on the possible degeneracy of savage tribes when driven out into the desert, or otherwise reduced to destitution, or losing their old arts in the presence of a higher civilization; but there seems ground for thinking that such degeneration has been rather of a local than of a general character, and has affected the fortunes of particular tribes rather than those of the world at large.

its earliest form this work consisted of detached sheets for the use of students of chemical practice. Corrected by trial, they were published in book form two years ago. We have now the second edition, in which the authors, guided by their larger experience, have been able better to adapt the work to the average capacity of students. Some experiments have been modified or rejected and others introduced, and another section added to the introduction for the help of teachers. The experiments are chosen to illustrate principles, and in the performance of the experiment the