Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/193

 THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MANKIND. 119 CHAPTER IX. THE PRIMITIVE CONDITION OF MANKIND. A GREAT deal of controversy has arisen in scientific circles on the subject of the primal state of mankind. One party has maintained that if man were not originally developed from the lowest animals, he must have been created in a state of great barbarism; and others maintain that the first individuals of our race were placed after their creation in a state which at once developed into civilisation. Now, we have in Australia arrived at the knowledge of many facts relative to the Aborigines which bear directly on the subject under discussion. Any person who has resided long amongst the natives and become well acquainted with their habits will have remarked the singular absence of the faculty of invention which they manifest. The power of calculation they possess in a very small measure, but the power to invent seems to have died out altogether. An Aboriginal will imitate what he sees others do; but it seems impossible for him to originate a fresh way of doing anything, or to improve on the method which he has been taught. Now, some savans have supposed that human languages were developed from the utterances natural to animals. If this were true, we might, therefore, expect to find amongst the natives of Australia a language very little superior to the cries of the beasts of the field. But what do we find?that they possess a language which is remarkable for the complexity of its structure, the number of its inflections, and the precision with which it can be used. Although the number of words contained in it is comparatively smallprobably not more than four thousandyet they seem to the student to be rather the remnants of a noble language than a tongue in process of development. We find the dual number throughout. We also have six cases in each declension of nouns