enjoyment; that, like savages, they could not postpone the present
to the future; that, like savages, their ingrained sense of morality
was, to say the best of it, rudimentary and defective. But that,
unlike present savages, they had not complex customs and singular
customs, odd and seemingly inexplicable rules guiding all human
life. And the reasons for these conclusions as to a race too ancient
to leave a history, but not too ancient to have left memorials, are
briefly these:--First, that we cannot imagine a strong reason
without attainments; and, plainly, pre-historic men had not
attainments. They would never have lost them if they had. It is
utterly incredible that whole races of men in the most distant parts
of the world (capable of counting, for they quickly learn to count)
should have lost the art of counting, if they had ever possessed it.
It is incredible that whole races could lose the elements of common
sense, the elementary knowledge as to things material and things
mental--the Benjamin Franklin philosophy--if they had ever known it.
Without some data the reasoning faculties of man cannot work. As
Lord Bacon said, the mind of man must 'work upon stuff.' And in the
absence of the common knowledge which trains us in the elements of
reason as far as we are trained, they had no 'stuff.' Even,
therefore, if their passions were not absolutely stronger than ours,
relatively they were stronger, for their reason was weaker than our
reason. Again, it is certain that races of men capable of postponing
the present to the future (even if such races were conceivable
without an educated reason) would have had so huge an advantage in
the struggles of nations, that no others would have survived them. A
single Australian tribe (really capable of such a habit, and really
practising it) would have conquered all Australia almost as the
English have conquered it. Suppose a race of long-headed Scotchmen,
even as ignorant as the Australians, and they would have got from