The Martyrdom of Man, Winwood Reade [best book club books TXT] 📗

old nests.

These animals went on all fours, rising to the upright posture

now and then, in order to see some object at a distance, but

supporting that posture with difficulty, holding on to a branch

with one hand. They were slow in their movements; their body

was almost naked, so scantily was it clothed with hair; the

males had but poorly developed tusks, or canine-teeth; the ears

were flattened from disuse, and had no longer the power of

being raised; the tail as in all great apes had disappeared

beneath the skin. This defenceless structure resulted from the

favourable conditions under which, during many ages, these

animals had lived. They inhabited a warm tropical land; they

had few enemies, and abundant food; their physical powers had

been enfeebled by disuse, But nothing is ever lost in nature.

What had become of the force which had once been expended on

agility and strength? It had passed into the brain.

 

The chimpanzee is not so large a creature or so strong as the

gorilla; but, as I was informed by the natives in that country

where the two species exist together, the chimpanzee is the

more intelligent of the two. In the same manner our ape-like

ancestors were inferior to the chimpanzee in strength and

activity, and its superior in mental powers.

 

All gregarious animals have a language, by means of which they

communicate with one another, Some times their language is that

of touch: cut off the antennae of the ant, and it is dumb. With

most animals the language is that of vocal sound, and its

varied intonations of anger, joy, or grief may be distinguished

even by the human ear. Animals have also their alarm-cries,

their love-calls, and sweet murmuring plaintive sounds, which

are uttered only by mothers as they fondle and nurse their

young. The language of our progenitors consisted of vocal

sounds, and also movements of the hands. The activity of mind

and social affection developed in these animals through the Law

of Compensation, made them fond of babbling and gesturing to

one another, and thus their language was already of a

complicated nature, when events occurred which developed it

still more. Owing to causes remotely dependent on geological

revolutions, dark days fell upon these creatures. Food became

scanty; enemies surrounded them. The continual presence of

danger, the habit of incessant combat, drew them more closely

together. Their defects of activity and strength made them rely

on one another for protection. Nothing now but their unexampled

power of combination could save their lives. This power of

combination was entirely dependent upon their language, which

was developed and improved until at length it passed into a new

stage. The first stage of language is that of intonation, in

which the ideas are arranged on a chromatic scale. We still use

this language in conversing with our dogs, who perfectly

understand the difference between the curses, not loud but

deep, which are vented on their heads, and the caressing

sounds, which are usually uttered in falsetto; while we

understand the growl, the whine, and the excited yelp of joy.

 

The new stage of language was that of imitation. Impelled

partly by necessity, partly by social love, combined with

mental activity, these animals began to notify events to one

another by imitative sounds, gestures, and grimaces. For

instance, when they wished to indicate the neighbourhood of a

wild beast, they gave a low growl; they pointed in a certain

direction; they shaped their features to resemble his; they

crawled stealthily along with their belly crouched to the

ground. To imitate water, they bubbled with their mouths; they

grubbed with their hands and pretended to eat, to show that

they had discovered roots. The pleasure and profit obtained

from thus communicating their ideas to one another led them to

invent conversation. Language passed into its third stage —

the conventional or artificial. Certain objects were pointed

out, and certain sounds were uttered, and it was agreed that

those sounds should always signify the objects named. At first

this conventional language consisted only of substantives; each

word signified an object, and was a sentence in itself.

Afterwards adjectives and verbs were introduced; and lastly

words, which had at first been used for physical objects, were

applied to the nomenclature of ideas.

 

Combination is a method of resistance; language is the

instrument of combination. Language, therefore, may be

considered the first weapon of our species, and was improved,

as all weapons would be, by that long, never-ceasing war, the

battle of existence. Our second weapon was the hand. With

monkeys the hand is used as a foot, and the foot is used as a

hand. But when the hand began to be used for throwing missiles,

it was specialised more and more, and feet were required to do

all the work of locomotion. This separation of the foot and

hand is the last instance of the physiological division of

labour; and when it was effected, the human frame became

complete. The erect posture was assumed; that it is modern and

unnatural is shown by the difficulty with which it is

maintained for any length of time. The centre of gravity being

thus shifted, certain alterations were produced in the physical

appearance of the species; since that time, however, the human

body has been but slightly changed, the distinctions which

exist between the races of men being unimportant and external.

Such as they are, they have been produced by differences of

climate and food acting indirectly upon the races throughout

geological periods; and it is also possible that these

distinctions of hair and skin were chiefly acquired at a time

when man’s intelligence being imperfectly developed, his

physical organisation was more easily moulded by external

conditions than was afterwards the case. For while with the

lower animals the conditions by which they are surrounded can

produce alterations throughout their whole structure, or in any

part; with men, they can produce an alteration only in the

brain. For instance, a quadruped inhabits a region which, owing

to geological changes, is gradually assuming an Arctic

character. In the course of some hundreds or thousands of

centuries the species puts on a coat of warm fur, which is

either white in colour, or which turns white at the snowy

period of the year. But when man is exposed to similar

conditions he builds a warm house and kills certain animals,

that he may wear their skins. By these means he evades the

changed conditions so far as his general structure is

concerned. But his brain has been indirectly altered by the

climate. Courage, industry, and ingenuity have been called

forth by the struggle for existence; the brain is thereby

enlarged, and the face assumes a more intelligent expression.

 

Of such episodes the ancient history of man was composed. He

was ever contending with the forces of nature, with the wild

beasts of the forest, and with the members of his own species

outside his clan. In that long and varied struggle his

intelligence was developed. His first invention, as might be

supposed, was an improvement in the art of murder. The lower

animals sharpen their claws and whet their tusks. It was merely

an extension of this instinct which taught the primeval men to

give point and edge to their sticks and stones; and out of this

first invention the first great discovery was made. While men

were patiently rubbing sticks to point them into arrows, a

spark leapt forth and ignited the wood-dust which had been

scraped from the sticks. Thus fire was found. By a series of

accidents its uses were revealed. Its possessors cooked their

food, and so were improved in health and vigour both of body

and of mind. They altered the face of nature by burning down

forests. By burning the withered grass they favoured the growth

of the young crop, and thus attracted, in the prairie lands,

thousands of wild animals to their fresh green pastures. With

the assistance of fire they felled trees and hollowed logs into

canoes. They hardened the points of stakes in the embers; and

with their new weapons were able to attack the Mammoth,

thrusting their spears through his colossal throat. They made

pots. They employed their new servant in agriculture and in

metallurgy. They used it also as a weapon; they shot flaming

arrows, or hurled fiery javelins against the foe. Above all,

they prepared, by means of fire, the vegetable poison which

they discovered in the woods; and this invention must have

created a revolution in the art of ancient war. There is a

custom in East Africa for the king to send fire to his vassals,

who extinguish all the fires on their hearths, and re-light

them from the brand which the envoy brings. It is possible that

this may be a relic of tribe subjection to the original fire

tribe: it is certain that the discovery of fire would give the

tribes which possessed it an immense advantage over all the

others. War was continually being waged among the primeval men,

and tribes were continually driven, by battle or hunger, to

seek new lands. As hunters they required vast areas on which to

live, and so were speedily dispersed over the whole surface of

the globe, and adopted various habits and vocations according

to the localities in which they dwelt. But they took with them,

from their common home, the elements of those pursuits. The

first period of human history may be entitled forest-life. The

forest was the womb of our species, as the ocean was that of

all our kind. In the dusky twilight of the primeval woods the

nations were obscurely born. While men were yet in the hunting

stage, while they were yet mere animals of prey, they made

those discoveries by means of which they were afterwards formed

into three great families — the pastoral, the maritime, and

the agricultural.

 

When a female animal is killed, the young one, fearing to be

alone, often follows the hunter home; it is tamed for sport,

and when it is discovered that animals can be made useful,

domestication is methodically pursued. While men were yet in

the forest they tamed only the dog to assist them in hunting,

and perhaps the fowl as an article of food. But when certain

tribes, driven by enemies or by starvation from their old

haunts, entered the prairie land, clad in skins or bark-cloth,

taking with them their fire-sticks, and perhaps some

blacksmith’s tools, they adopted breeding as their chief

pursuit, and subdued to their service the buffalo, the sheep,

the goat, the camel, the horse, and the ass. At first these

animals were merely used as meat; next, their milk-giving

powers were developed, and so a daily food was obtained without

killing the animal itself; then they were broken in to carry

burdens, to assist their masters in the chase and in war; and

clothes and houses were manufactured from their skins.

 

The forest tribes who settled on the banks of rivers learnt to

swim and to make nets, fish-traps, rafts, and canoes. When they

migrated they followed the river, and so were carried to the

sea. Then the ocean became their fish-pond. They learnt to

build large canoes, with mast and matting sails; they followed

the fish far away; lost the land at night, or in a storm;

discovered new shores, returned home, and again set out as

colonists, with their wives and families, to the lands which

they had found. By such means the various tribes were dispersed

beyond the seas.

 

Thirdly, when the tribes were in the forest condition they

lived partly upon roots and berries, partly upon game. The men

hunted, and the women collected the vegetable food, upon which

they subsisted exclusively during the absence of their

husbands. When the habitations of a clan were fixed, it often

happened that