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THE DUKE OF ARGYLL ON PRIMEVAL MAN.* THE object of this little brochure, which is written with all its author's usual clearness and strength of thought, is not, as we understand it, to propound any theory, orthodox or otherwise, as to the origin of man ; but to show that the theory best described as the "Darwinian" is not yet proved by evidence, that much of the evidence admitted on all sides is as favourable to the Mosaic account, when fairly read, as to any other. The Darwinian theory, or theory of development, when broadly stated amounts to this : that a particular tribe of Quadrumana did in the course of ages acquire by natural selection faculties which brought them up to a level far beyond that attained by any animal, up to the level of the lowest of the so-called savage races, from which they have very slowly developed into the races we see. This theory, for some reason or other, probably because it is so complete and consistent, annoys orthodox theologians far more than any other, exciting some to a temper of angry ridicule in which they are incapable of argument, * Primeval Man: an Examination of Some Recent Speculations. By the Duke of AMA'. London: Btrahau. 1869. and others to a fury of rage which compels ignorant minds to believe that they are rather afraid of the theory than sincerely contemptuous of it. There is no possibility of rage without an admixture of terror. The Duke of Argyll, being a layman, and consequently not professionally bound to dread results hostile to belief, falls into neither of these mistakes. He starts from the proposition that investigation "must be conducted honestly, and the conclusions legitimately reached must be accepted, with just so much of conviction as is justified by the nature of the data and the nature of the reasoning employed ;" and then, accepting that sound law, he argues that development is not yet proved. The evidence as yet is all the other way. There are fossil molluscs, for example, and fossil fish, but no trace of the links which on the theory ought to have existed between fish and molluscs :—" The Silurian rocks, as regards Oceanic Life, are per- fect and abundant in the forms they have preserved, yet there are no fish. The Devonian Age followed, tranquilly, and without a break ; and in the Devonian Sea, suddenly, fish appear—appear in shoals, and in forms of the highest and most perfect type. There is no trace of links or transitional forms between the great class of mollusca and the great class of fishes. There is no reason whatever to suppose that such forms, if they had existed, can have been destroyed in deposits which have pre- served in wonderful perfection the minutest organisms." More- over, the process, if it once began, ought to be going on now; but it is not going on, no organism at present "producing another which varies from itself in any truly specific character." The absence of evidence in the case of man cannot be supplemented by a priori reasoning, because man possesses a faculty, the power of indefinite mental growth, of which no trace can be found in any animal, and the specific divergence, instead of being slight, is, as Professor Huxley allows, "practically infinite," a divergence of which we can imagine neither beginning nor end. It would take a revelation to enable man to grasp the idea that such a chasm could be filled up by development. Moreover,— "This difficulty is still further increased, if we advert for a moment to the direction in which the human frame diverges from the structure of the brutes. It diverges in the direction of greater physical helpless- ness and weakness. That is to say, it is a divergence which of all others it is most impossible to ascribe to mere natural selection.' The un- clothed and unprotected condition of the human body, its comparative slowness of foot, the absence of teeth adapted for prehension or for defence, the same want of power for similar purposes in the hands and fingers, the bluntness of the sense of smell, such as to render it useless for the detection of prey which is concealed,—all these are features which stand in strict and harmonious relation to the mental powers of Man. But, apart from these, they would place him at an immense dis- advantage in the struggle for existence. This, therefore, is not the direction in which the blind forces of natural selection could ever work. The creature not worthy to be called a man,' to whom Sir J. Lubbock has referred as the progenitor of man, was, ex hypothesi, deficient in those mental capacities which now distinguish the lowest of the human race. To exist at all, this creature must have been more animal in its struc- ture: it must have had bodily powers and organs more like those of the beasts. The continual improvement and perfection of these would be the direction of variation most favourable to the continuance of the species. These could not be modified in the direction of greater weak- ness without inevitable destruction, until first by the gift of reason and of mental capacities of contrivance, there had been established an adequate preparation for the change."
It seems to us scarcely possible to state the " orthodox " side of the argument more clearly or incisively than that, nor can we perceive either the answer or the direction in which an answer may ulti- mately be sought. That a race, or family, of animals should, in defiance of development, become feebler, and yet attain not only a higher brain, but a brain of radically different capacities, is a miracle at least as great as Creation. It is as if a piece of silver ore untouched from without were to develop itself into a highly sensitive photographic plate. The argument is no proof that the Mosaic account is correct, nor does the Duke advance it as a proof ; but it is surely a reason for not assuming that the theory of development has disposed of every other.
But, says Sir John Lubbock, there is this bit of evidence for the theory of development, that the further we go back, the more certain does it become that man originally was a barbarian, a savage. He has advanced out of that stage, and why should not the barbarian have advanced out of a previous one? Because, as it seems to us, no advance can account for the positive addition which must be made to the animal brain to turn it into a human one, growth, however protracted, not involving alteration ; but the Duke of Argyll tries to meet him in a more special way, by denying his fact. He holds that savages are not undeveloped men, but degraded men, or at least that the evidence for this view is as strong as the evidence for the other, and spends much labour in proving what seems to us a self-evident proposition, that man is capable of degradation. Of course he is capable. Granted isola.
tion and continuous hunger, and he may be degraded almost to the level of the beasts, may, we are even tempted to believe, though the evidence as yet from the history of famines is very alight, change his colour, the change of all others least ex- plicable if we assume descent from a single pair. (The Duke of Argyll, we may remark, does not seem to be aware that there are some crosses among human beings which distinctly darken colour, the child of a Portuguese, by a Hindoo woman, being darker by many shades than both parents, and the children of such a couple crossed again becoming often blacker than ordi- nary negroes, the tint being blue-black rather than coal-black.) Whole races, as, for instance, the Diggers of New Mexico, and the scarcely human tribe encountered by Sir S. Baker, can be proved to be thus degraded, and one instance, at least, can be traced in modern times. If the Duke of Argyll will ask in his own department for a paper containing the evidence of a Sepoy captured by the Andamanese,—a paper circulated, we think, in 1855,—he will find an absolute demonstration of his theory of moral degradation. Whether the Andamanese came from Madras or, as is more probable, are the descendants of the crew of a wrecked slaver, it is as certain as anything can be that in the island they receded. The Sepoy could not have invented the grand fact of his narrative, which shows a people degraded below the level of any tribe known upon earth, Feejeeans, Fuegians, and Tas- manians included, degraded, in fact, below the level of the higher mammals. But the possibility of degradation does not seem to de- pend, as the Duke thinks, upon the wretched conditions of existence. On the contrary, the lowest race known, the Veddahs of Ceylon, inhabits a country which its other inhabitants consider Paradise, and which will produce anything, while the Tasmanian dwelt in a climate of all others most favourable to development. All, there- fore, that the theory of degradation contributes to our knowledge is that improvement is not inevitable, that under certain condi- tions, of which we know nothing, small sections of the human race, instead of advancing, may retrograde. That is no proof that the human family did not emerge from "savagery," the strong and fortunate advancing steadily, the weak and unlucky advancing up to a point, like the Chinese, or actually retrograding, like the Tasmanians, Esquimaux, or Andamanese. That men can advance unhelped, except, as we should allege, by internal light, even in the realm of morals, is clear. There has been no new revelation since 1600, yet the moral advance among the nations of Western Europe has been so great, that it would almost seem as if a new moral faculty had been developed, the faculty of sympathy, now for the first time in human history a strong motive force. How much or how little can be deduced from the fact that primeval man was savage, that is, a being without knowledge of arts and industries, and a morality little higher than that of animals, may be doubtful ; but the theory is only to be disproved by evidence, and the Duke of Argyll's demonstration that man may recede to his first stage or beyond it seems to us insufficient.
The Duke of Argyle throughout this volume keeps throwing out an idea which he does not expand, but to which he obviously attaches immense importance,—that man as barbarian, that is, while still ignorant of arts, might have a high morale, that he need not because uncivilized be ignorant of duty or of God. Is that assertion past all question or doubt? To be capable of a high morale, to be aware of and obedient to duty, above all, to "know God," a man must be capable of abstract ideas, must be able to correlate them, must be able to suppress his own will, must have his imagination very considerably developed, and very pure. Is it conceivable that a being with such capacities would be unin- ventive, would fail to build well, to till well, to defend himself well, to protect himself from the climate well, would, in fact, fail to acquire, slowly, it might be, but still to acquire, "civilization ?" No such community of savage sages has ever been discovered, and it priori reason seems to us to be very strongly against it. Granting that religion was revealed, or morality, still the capacity to receive either must have been given or have been in existence, and that capacity implies the capacity for civilization. It is not, of course, true to say that men who are civilized are, therefore, truly religious; but is it not true that men who are religious in the highest sense must, therefore, be civilized ? We do not wish to make assertions on so difficult a point; but is it not presumable that all capacities must advance pan i passe, and that the highest men of civilization must be, not indeed better, but able to be better, than any conceiv- able barbarian? Take even the extreme instance, Adam in Eden, as represented in Genesis. Nine-tenths of all the virtues could not have been his at all. He was not so much a good being, as a being solutus a legibus, relieved by his isolation from the obligation of goodness.
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