CHAPTER XII.

_SIR JOHN LUBBOCK ON TRADITION._

DE MAISTRE'S VIEW.[234]

"We have little knowledge of the times which preceded the Deluge.... A single consideration interests us, and it must never be lost sight of, and that is, that chastisements are ever proportioned to crimes, and crimes always proportioned to the knowledge of the criminal; in such sort that the Deluge supposes unheard-of crimes, and that these crimes suppose a knowledge infinitely transcending that which we possess.... This knowledge, freed from the evil which had rendered it so noxious, survived in the first family the destruction of the human race. We are blinded as to the nature and advance of science by a gross sophism which has fascinated every eye; it is to judge of times when men saw effects in their causes by those in which men painfully ascend from effects to causes, in which they are only concerned with effects, in which they say it is useless to occupy themselves with causes, and in which they do not know what constitutes a cause. They never cease repeating--'Think of the time that has been required to know such and such a thing.' What inconceivable blindness! A moment only was required. If man would know the cause of a single phenomenon of nature, he would probably comprehend all the rest. We are unwilling to see that truths, the most difficult to discover, are very easy to understand.... 'These things,' as Plato says, 'are perfectly and easily learned if any one teaches them, [Greek: ei didaskoi tis]; but,' he adds, 'no one will teach them us, unless, indeed, God shows him the road, [Greek: all oud an didaxeien ei mê Theos yphêgoito].' 'I doubt not,' said Hippocrates, 'that the arts were in the first instance favours ([Greek: theôn charitas]) granted to men by the gods.'... Listen to sage antiquity in its account of the first men: it will tell you that they were marvellous men, and that beings of a superior order deigned to favour them with the most precious communications. On this point there is no disagreement, ... reason, revelation, all human tradition make up a demonstration which the mouth only can contradict. Not only, then, did mankind commence with science, but with a science different from ours, and superior to ours.... No one knows to what epoch remounts, I do not say the early commencements of society, but the great institutions, the profound knowledge, and the most magnificent monuments of human industry and human power.... Asia, having been the theatre of the greatest marvels, it is not astonishing that its people should have preserved a leaning to the marvellous stronger than what is natural to man in general, and than each one recognises in himself individually. Hence it comes that they have always shown so little taste and talent for our science of _conclusions_. One would say rather that they recalled something of primitive science and of the era of intuition. Would the enchained eagle ask for a balloon to raise himself into the air? No, he would demand only that his fetters should be broken. And who knows if these people are not destined yet to contemplate sights which will be refused to the cavilling genius of Europe? However this may be, observe, I pray you, that it is impossible to think of modern art without seeing it constantly environed with all the contrivances of the intellect and all the methods of art.... On the contrary. So far as it is possible to discover the science of primitive times at such an enormous distance, we see it always free and isolated, flying rather than marching, and presenting in all its characteristics something of the ærial and supernatural.[235]... But then comes the corollary.... If all men descend from the three couples who repeopled the universe, and if the human race commenced with knowledge, the savage cannot be more, as I have said to you, than a branch detached from the social tree.... Now, what matter does it make at what epoch such and such a branch was separated from the tree? It suffices that it is detached: no doubt as to its degradation; and I venture to say no doubt as to the cause of degradation, which can only have been some crime. A chief of a nation having altered the principle of morality in his household by one of those prevarications which, so far as we can judge, are no longer possible in the actual state of things, because happily our knowledge is no longer such as to allow us to become culpable in this degree; this chief of a nation, I say, transmits the curse to his posterity; and every constant force being accelerating in its nature, this degradation, weighing incessantly upon his descendants, has ended in making them what we call _savages_. Two causes extremely different have thrown a deceptive cloud over the lamentable state of savages: the one of ancient date, the other belonging to our century.... One cannot for an instant regard the savage without reading the curse written, I do not say only in his soul, but even in the exterior form of his body. He is an infant, robust, yet deformed and ferocious, in whom the flame of intelligence no longer throws more than a lurid and intermittent glare.... I cannot abandon this subject without suggesting an important observation: The barbarian who is intermediate between the civilised man and the savage, has been and may be again civilised by some sort of religion; but the savage, properly so called, has never been so except by Christianity. It is a prodigy of the first order, a species of redemption, exclusively reserved to the true priesthood.[236]... For the rest, we must not confound the _savage_ with the _barbarian_.

[234] I need not remind my reader that these speculations of De Maistre anticipated by many years the analogous, though at the same time independent, conclusions of Archbishop Whately, in his lecture "On the Origin of Civilisation," published in 1854.

[235] "We ought then to recognise that the state of civilisation and of science is, in a certain sense, the natural and primitive state of man. Thus, all oriental traditions commenced with a state of perfection and light, and, I repeat it, of supernatural light; and Greece--lying Greece, which 'has dared everything in history'--renders homage to this truth, in placing its Golden Age at the beginning of things. It is no less remarkable that it does not attribute to the following ages, even to the iron age, the state of savagery, so that all that it has told us of those primitive men living on acorns, &c., puts it _in contradiction with itself_, and can only have reference to particular cases, _i.e._ to some races degraded, and then reclaimed to a state of nature, which is a state of civilisation."--_De Maistre's "Soirées de St Petersbourg"_ i. _Deux: Entretien_, p. 98.

[236] I consider that this remark has been fully substantiated in Marshall's "Christian Missions."

"No language could possibly have been invented, either by a single man, who could not have extorted obedience, or by many who would not have made themselves understood to each other.... But I would wish, before concluding this subject, to recommend to your notice an observation which has always struck me. Whence comes it that in the primitive language of every ancient people, we find words which necessarily suppose a knowledge foreign to these people? Whence, for instance, have the Greeks, three thousand years ago at least, found the epithet 'physizoos' (giving or possessing life), which Homer sometimes gives to the earth?.... Where have they taken the still more singular epithet of 'philomate' (liking or thirsting for blood), given to this same earth in a tragedy? (Euripides, Phoen. v. 179). Æschylus had alluded before 'to the earth drinking the blood of the two rival brothers, the one slain by the other.'[237] Humboldt ('Monum. des Peuples Indigènes de l'Amerique,' Paris, 1816) has said: 'Many idioms which at present belong only to barbarous nations seem to be the remains of rich and flexible languages, which indicate a high culture.... But tell me, I pray you, how it entered the heads of the ancient Latins, at a time when they were only acquainted with the arts of war and of tillage, to express by the same word the idea of prayer and of punishment? Who taught them to call fever the "purifier," or the "expiator"?'[238] Would not one say that there was here a judgment, a veritable knowledge of the cause, by virtue of which the people affirmed the name so justly? But do you believe that these sorts of judgments could possibly have belonged to a time when they scarcely knew how to write, when the Dictator dug his garden, and in which they composed verses which Varro and Cicero no longer understood?... The Greeks had preserved some obscure traditions in this regard--[Mr Gladstone has shown them to be neither few nor obscure],--and who knows if Homer does not attest the same truth, perhaps without knowing it, when he speaks of certain men and certain things 'which the gods called after one manner, and men after another?'"--_Count Joseph de Maistre, "Soirées de St Petersbourg,"_ i. _Deux: Entretien._[239]

[237] Compare with Gainet, i. 92, 93.

[238] "Now it is clear that the train of thought which leads from purification to penance, or from purification to punishment, reveals a moral and even a religious sentiment in the conception and naming of poena, and it shows us that in the very infancy of criminal justice punishment was looked upon (Mr Max Müller is speaking with reference to what I may call briefly the Sanscrit epoch) not simply a retribution or revenge, but as a correction, as a removal of guilt. We do not feel the presence of these early thoughts when we speak of corporal punishment or castigation; yet _castigation_ too was originally chastening, from '_castus_,' pure; and 'incestum' was impurity or sin, which, according to Roman law, the priests had to make good, or to punish by a 'supplicium,' or supplication or prostration before the gods."

[239] Compare with Max Müller, "Chips," ii. 256.

Against this view of De Maistre, which I consider to be indirectly sustained by the testimony of all antiquity, stands the theory of Sir John Lubbock. There is the constant historical tradition and testimony of the human race on one side, and there is the history of "Pre-historic Times" on the other. Nevertheless, I venture to say, that the author of "Pre-historic Times" only takes up with man at the point where De Maistre leaves him.

Of course I do not seek to detach Sir John Lubbock from the evidence he has collected; neither do I forget that he is the representative of an opinion and a school; at any rate, that there is an opinion of which he is the most conspicuous exponent.

So far as my limited acquaintance with the special subjects with which Sir John Lubbock deals extends (and with these I am only indirectly concerned), he appears perfectly straightforward and candid; and, moreover, I must acknowledge my obligations to him, for he has written with remarkable breadth and ability; and it is with the aid of the interesting matter which he has accumulated,[240] expressly in disparagement of tradition, that I venture to undertake to reinstate it in honour.

[240] _Vide_ chapter on Savage Life in "Pre-historic Times."

Neither do I wish to ignore that Sir John Lubbock's main argument is the geological argument derived from the discovery of the fossils and implements in the drift. But on this point I beg to be allowed to say a word in protest.

As a geologist Sir John Lubbock may be entitled to rely mainly upon the geological evidence of a palæolithic age;[241] but as an ethnologist dealing with history and writing on the subject of tradition, his argument, however incontrovertible he may deem it, sinks to the second rank; and secondary I shall take the liberty of considering it. On the same grounds, though I think with more reason, that Sir J. Lubbock seeks to be relieved from "the embarrassing interference of tradition" ("Pre-historic Times," p. 336), I protest, when tradition is the subject-matter of the discussion, against a geological argument being brought to take the ground from under our feet!

[241] It may perhaps be doubtful to what extent Sir J. Lubbock maintains his theory of a Stone Age; although Sir John formally excludes China and Japan from the argument, he nevertheless appears to me to assume the existence of universal transitional periods through which the human race necessarily passed. "It would appear that pre-historic archæology may be divided into four great epochs. Firstly, that of the Drift: when man shared the possession of Europe with the mammoth, &c. This we may call the 'palæolithic period.' Secondly, the later or polished Stone Age; a period, &c. Thirdly, the Bronze Age, &c. Fourthly, the Iron Age." Sir John adds, certainly--"In order to prevent misapprehension, it may be well to state at once, that for the present I only apply this classification to Europe, though in all probability it might be extended also to the neighbouring parts of Asia and Africa. As regards other civilised countries, China and Japan for instance, we as yet know nothing of their pre-historic archæology. [I should rather say, as we as yet have no reason to suppose that they have ever lost the knowledge of metals.] It is evident also that some nations, such as the Fuegians, Andamaners, &c., are _even now_ only in an age of stone. But even in this limited sense, the above classification has not met with general acceptance; there _are still some_ archæologists who believe that the arms and implements--stone, bronze, and iron--were used contemporaneously."--_Pre-historic Times_, pp. 2, 3. I think that the concluding sentence makes it quite clear that Sir John assumes the existence of universal progressive periods as above. In any case it may be proved in this way. Sir John argues upon the hypothesis of the unity of the human race; and I also think that he will not refuse the unbroken testimony to the fact of the civilisation of Europe from Asia. Either, then, the _first_ colonisation took place when Asia was in the state of the "Drift," or in the "later polished Stone Age," or else the migration left Asia with the knowledge of bronze or iron. On the latter supposition the argument I contend for is conceded, and original civilisation and subsequent degeneracy is established. To escape this alternative the universality of a Stone Age in Asia as well as in Europe, must be proved or assumed. This assumption I maintain is essential to Sir John's argument.

In the first place, I beg to urge that if Sir J. Lubbuck's argument be well founded, Professor Rawlinson's reconstruction of Assyrian history cannot be true. Now I assume that the one order of facts is as well established as the other.

If Professor Rawlinson takes back Assyrian history and corroborates history and tradition by the evidence of recent excavations to B.C. 2234, identifies the Erech of Scripture with the Huruk of the cuneiform tablets and the modern Urka; similarly identifies the other three cities of Nimrod; and, finally, identifies Nimrod himself as Bil-Nipru; and if, further, bronze implements are found (Rawlinson,