very reason which would seem to make it the most improbable to many writers of our day, viz., because it would be a step in advance so difficult for men in that utter depth of savagery to take, that they would not be able to take it unless they had help from without. This might be given by contact with a more advanced tribe; but if all the tribes started from the same level, that impulse would be impossible in the first instance, and must have been derived from a higher power. And if, because of this statement, anyone take the trouble to say of me what Sir John Lubbock was pleased to say of John Williams, the martyr of Erromanga, because he believed that which Sir John Lubbock disbelieves, "a missionary so credulous and ignorant ought, one might suppose, rather to learn than to teach" ("Origin," Szc, p. 174),[1] I shall be quite content.
And here, as I shall in all probability have occasion to write further on the evidence afforded by the customs of savage tribes as to the development of social organization, it may be well once for all to say a word on a subject to which it will not be necessary for me again to refer.
It has somehow or other come to be thought incumbent upon those who hold what are called "orthodox views" to maintain that all savages were once civilized people; and eminent writers, such as Archbishop Whately and the Duke of Argyll, have advanced much ingenious argument in
- ↑ Compare Sir John's contemptuous words, above quoted, with the gracious declaration which ushers in his fourth chapter—"I shall endeavour to avoid, as far as possible, anything which might justly give pain to any of my readers;" also with his charitable motive for entitling that chapter the Religion rather than the Superstitions of savages—"A reluctance to condemn any honest belief, however absurd and imperfect it may be." He cannot surely suppose that Williams was not honest in his belief. Moreover, that belief is a perfectly fair conclusion from the premises which that brave missionary held; and however "absurd and imperfect" those premises may be in Sir John Lubbock's opinion, his opinion is not quite a final settlement of the questions involved.
