HISTORICAL RELATIONS. Tradition Uncertain and Unreliable- All History Recent and Partial Discrepancies in Chronological Systems-Inferences as to Man's Antiquity from the Known Rate of Progress in Civilisation and Refinement-Our Fifth Proposition. ADMITTING man's existing relations, or the position he now occupies in nature, let us next try to discover what light can be thrown on the antiquity of his species relatively to the antiquity of other species. For this purpose we must appeal to History in the first place, and where History fails us we must turn to the record preserved in the earth's rock-formations, and which Geology is striving to interpret. Having obtained some notion of his antiquity, or, in other words, having traced him nearer and nearer to his origin, we may discover some indication of the nature of that origin, and the process by which it was effected. In the prosecution of this inquiry, science has to contend not only with numerous difficulties but with inveterate prejudices-difficulties inasmuch as both historical and geological records are obscure and im perfect, and prejudices arising from early and widelyaccepted beliefs. Notwithstanding these difficulties and prejudices, an attempt must be made; and though science in the meantime may fail in arriving at satisfactory conclusions, she may succeed in indicating the way to more rational convictions both as to the time man has been struggling upwards on this globe, and the nature of the source from which he started. And this, be it observed, is always something gained—the unsettling of former prejudices being next to the establishment of new convictions. In appealing to history for any information respecting the antiquity and origin of man, it will be readily admitted that the response must necessarily be faint and unintelligible. All tradition on the subject is vague and unreliable; all written history is recent, partial, and uncertain. And even where no uncertainty need be, historical facts are so frequently obscured by traditional beliefs that it is often impossible to separate the real from the unreliable. "In the history of ancient nations," as has been truly remarked by Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, "the early portion usually consists of mere fable, either from real events having been clothed in an allegorical garb, or from the substitution of purely fanciful tales for facts in consequence of the deficiency of real data ; to this succeeds an era when, as manners and habits become settled, amidst fable and allegory, some descriptions of actual events are introduced; and, at length, history, assuming the exalted character that becomes it, is contented with the simple narration of fact, and fable is totally discarded. But such is the disposition in the human mind to believe the miraculous, that, even at a period when no one would dare to introduce a tale of wonder unsupported by experience, credit still continues to be attached to the traditions of early history, as though the sanction of antiquity were sufficient to entitle impossibilities to implicit belief." Where fable, fact, and allegory get so commingled, it will be readily seen how little, either direct or suggestive, can be drawn from the historical element of our inquiry. "It is easier, indeed," as remarked by Bacon, "to extract truth from error than from confusion." It would be waste of time, in the present state of our knowledge, to appeal to the chronologies of the Chinese and Hindoos, for even could they be brought within the category of critically-substantiated history, and did carry us back some hundreds of thousands of years, they give no indication of the stages through which man has passed, nor other than the most absurd and fabulous accounts of his origin. There may * series. Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. i. Second Individually, it is the only thing we can really call our own; as we value it for ourselves, let us also respect it in others, whether as in man to man, or as in nationality to nationality. Looking, therefore, at man in his functional relations, our fourth proposition is, that like other animals he has certain duties to perform purely of a physical nature, and which are rendered imperative by the requirements of existence. In virtue, however, of his higher organisation and intellect, he can, within certain limits, subjugate and adapt the forces of nature, and thus acquire a mastery over obstacles which no other animal can, and this mastery will be in direct proportion to his intelligence and cultivation. And further, that while other animals but slowly and within restricted limits affect the distribution of plants and other animals, man becomes a modifier and subcreator as it were-here extirpating and transferring, there cultivating and disseminating; and even as regards his own species, civilising and exterminating, according to the natural capacity or inaptitude of the inferior races for civilisation and advancement. We say civilising and extirpating, for there can be no domestication of man as there is domestication of the lower animals. To domesticate is to enslave, and nature has never yet permitted the institution of permanent |