sight into their
antecedents? Can we understand, what after all is everywhere the most
important and the most instructive lesson to learn, how they have come
to be what they are? There is indeed their language, and in it we see
traces of growth that point to distant ages, quite as much as the
Greek of Homer or the Sanskrit of the Vedas. Their language proves
indeed that these so-called heathens, with their complicated systems
of mythology, their artificial customs, their unintelligible whims and
savageries, are not the creatures of to-day or yesterday. Unless we
admit a special creation for these savages, they must be as old as the
Hindus, the Greeks and Romans, as old as we ourselves. We may assume,
of course, if we like, that their life has been stationary, and that
they are to-day what the Hindus were no longer 3000 years ago. But
that is a mere guess, and is contradicted by the facts of their
language. They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and
what we consider as primitive may be, for all we know, a relapse into
savagery, or a corruption of something that was more rational and
intelligible in former stages. Think only of the rules that determine
marriage among the lowest of savage tribes. Their complication passes
all understanding, all seems a chaos of prejudice, superstition,
pride, vanity, and stupidity. And yet we catch a glimpse here and
there that there was some reason in most of that unreason; we see how
sense dwindled away into nonsense, custom into ceremony, ceremony into
farce. Why then should this surface of savage life represent to us the
lowest stratum of human life, the very beginnings of civilization,
simply because we cannot dig beyond that surface?

Now, I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not claim for the
ancient Indian literature any more than I should willingly concede to
the fables and traditions and songs of savage nations, such as we can
study at present in what we call a state of nature. Both are important
documents to the student of the Science of Man. I simply say that in
the Veda we have a nearer approach to a beginning, and an intelligible
beginning, than in the wild invocations of Hottentots or Bushmen. But
when I speak of a beginning, I do not mean an absolute beginning, a
beginning of all things. Again and again the question has been asked
whether we could bring ourselves to believe that man, as soon as he
could stand on his legs, instead of crawling on all fours