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Title: The Progress of Mankind
Author: Elisée Reclus
Date: 1896
Language: en
Topics: progress
Source: Retrieved on october 2021 from https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k66031x.texteImage
Notes: Originally published in English in Contemporary Review (Londres), December 1st, 1896. Apparently an early version of the final chapter of “L’Homme et la Terre”: “Progress” (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/elisee-reclus-progress)

Elisée Reclus

The Progress of Mankind

I.

THE most serious of all questions which present themselves to our mind

is the improvement of the human race. Comparing ourselves with primitive

peoples and with those still existing savage races which have succeeded

in keeping apart from the “civilizers”―too often destroyers―what sure

advances have we made, what undeniable recoils must we admit, in this

long succession of centuries? Is it possible to measure with any

accuracy the gains and losses of hamanity during its long history?

We ought, first of all, to recognise that some great minds absolutely

deny progress, and reject all idea of a continuous evolution for the

better. So great an historian as Ranke sees in history nothing but “a

succession of periods, each having its peculliar character, and

manifesting diverse tendencies which give a special, unexpected, and

even piquant life to the different pictures of each age and of each

people.”[1] According to this conception the world would be a sort of

museum. If there were progress, said the pietistic writer, then, assured

in the course of successive ages of an amelioration in his lot, man

would not be in “direct dependence on the Deity,” who regards with

impartial eye all the generations that foIIow each other in time as if

they were exactly of equal value.

On the other hand, fixed institutions―monarchies, aristocracies, all

official and formalated religions, established, and as it were walled up

by men who claimcvto have realised perfection itself―presuppose that

every revolution, every change, will be a fall, a return towards

barbarism. The fathers and the grandfathers, panegyrists of bygone

times, contribute, with gods and kings, to disparage the present as

compared with former times, and to foresee in new ideas a fatal tendency

to retrogression. Children incline naturally to consider their parents

as superior beings, as those parents themselves did their fathers; and

the result of all these sentiments settling in men’s minds, as alluvial

deposits on the banks of a river, is to make a veritable dogma of the

irremediable fall of man. In our days is it not still the general costom

to discourse in prose and in verse upon the “corruption of the age”? By

an absolute but almost unconscious want of logic, even those who vaunt

the irresistible progress of humanity, readily speak of a fin de siècle

decadence. Two contrary currents cross each other in their thoughts.

The fact is that the old conceptions clash with the new. The weakening

of religions, caused by the pressure of theories which explain the

formation of the world by a slow evolution, a gradual emergence of

things out of the primitive chaos, rather than by a sudden creation―what

is this phenomenon but progress itself, whether we admit it implicitly

as Aristotle admitted it, or recognise it in exact and eloquent

language, as did Lucretius?[2]

However, it is very necessary to have a clear understanding as to the

meaning of the word “progress,” for with regard to this there might be

unfortunate misconceptions. Thousands are the definitions that the

Buddhists and the interpreters of Buddhism give of Nirvana. In like

manner, philosophers, according to the ideal they place before

themselves, treat as forward movements evolutions the most diverse and

even contradictory. There are some for whom repose is the sovereign

good, and who wish, if not for death, at least for perfect tranquillity

of body and mind. Progress, as these men understand it, is certainly

quite other than it is for valiant souls who prefer a perilous liberty

to a tranquil servitude. For the one as for the other the conception of

happiness takes precedence of all other conceptions in the ideal dreamed

of; but whether progresso brings happiness or not, it ought above all to

be understood as a complete development of the individual, comprehending

the improvement of the physical being in strength, beauty, grace,

longevity, material enrichment, and increase of knowledge―in fine, the

perfecting of character, the becoming more noble, more generous, and

more devoted. So considered, the progress of the individual is

identified with that of society, united more and more intimately in a

powerful solidarity.

If this, then, is progress, and surely it is not possible to conceive it

otherwise, more than one will say that humanity does not progress at

all―that it only changes its position, gaining on one side, losing on

the other―or even that it really grows worse, and that its material

enrichment corresponds to an internal process of degeneracy and

gangrene. Many pessimistic philosophers have insisted on this. Many

explorers, charmed by the simple life of the savage peoples they have

visited, considered them very superior tu us, and one knows how strongly

these narratives impressed the writers of the last century, Rousseau and

Diderot amongst the rest. “Let us return to Nature,” was the universal

cry, and―strange spectacle―the men of the French Revolution, fariously

driven as they were by the whirlwind of passion and the struggles of the

time, seem to have been tormented in their mode of thinking and in their

language by the constant ideas, of a return both to the period of the

ancient republics, Rome and Sparta, and the pure and happy ages of the

primitive tribes.

In our days an analogous movement makes itself felt, and even in a more

serious way by modern society. Expanded to embrace all mankind, its

equilibrium has become much more unstable, and consequently the critics

of the actual state of things seek so much the more eagerly in the past

for arguments. On the other hand, anthropological researches have been

pushed much further, and many travellers of the first rank have bronght

into the debate the decisive weight of their testimony. It is no longer

a question merely of simple, artless narratives, like those of a Jean de

Léry, a Claude d’Abbeville, or a Yves d’Evreux on the Topinamboux and

other Brazilian savages―narratives otherwise possessing a very real

value. The too rapid generalisations of a Cook or of a Bougainville

appear similarly insufficient; but their plea is now strengthened by

formal and well-considered testimony―as, for example, the memorable

passage in the “Malay Archipelago,” published in 1869 by Alfred Russel

Wallace.

This page from the illustrious naturalist may be considered as a

manifesto, a challenge addressed to those who have accepted without

restriction the hypothesis of the indefinite progress of humanity. And

this challenge still awaits a reply. It will not be useless to recall

its terms, and take them as a controlling text in historical studies:

“What, then, is this ideally perfect state towards which mankind ever

has been, and still is, tending? Our best thinkers maintain that it is a

state of individual freedom and self-government, rendered possible by

the equal development and just balance of the intellectual and physical

parts of our nature―a state in which we shall each be so perfectly

fitted for a social existence, by knowing what is right, and at the same

time feeling an irresistible impulse to do what is right, that all laws

and all punishments shall be unnecessary …. Now, it is very remarkable

that among people in a very low stage of civilisation we find some

approach to such a perfect social state. I have lived with communities

in South America and in the East who have no laws or law courts but the

public opinion of the village freely expressed. Each man scrupalously

respects the rights of his fellow, and an infraction of those rights

rarely or never takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal.

There are none of those wide distinctions of education and ignorance,

wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the product of our

civilisation; there is none of that widespread division of labour,

which, while it increases wealth, produces also conflicting interests;

there is not that severe competition and struggle for existence or for

wealth, which the dense populations of civilised countries inevitably

create ….. Now, although we have progressed vastly beyond the savage

stage in intellectual achievements, we have not advanced equally in

morals …. It is not too much to say that the mass of our populations

have not at all advanced beyond the savage code of morals, and have in

many cases sunk below it.” [3]

But Wallace would be the first to say that one need not be drawn into

paradoxical exaggerations, and certainly one would be wrong in

generalising too absolutely from what the great naturalist has said of

the savages of Amazonia and Insulinde, and to apply it to all the savage

populations of the continents and archipelagoes. The island of Bomeo,

where Wallace has found so many examples of that moral nobleness which

determined his judgment, is also that great land which Bock has

described under the title, “The Country of the Cannibals,”[4] and which

might also be designated “The Country of the Headsmen,” with special

reference to the Dyaks, who, in order to acquire the right to call

themselves men and to found a family, must, by cunnning or in open

fight, have cut off one or more human heads.

In a similar manner,―that marvellous isle of Tahiti, the new Cytheræa of

which the early navigators spoke with naïve enthnsiasm, does not merit

all the praises bestowed upon it by Europeans, enchanted at once by the

beauty of its landacapes and the amiability of its inhabitants. Those

majestic and gentle persons, those venerable old men, who seemed to them

to complete by their noble gravity the charming pictures of the Oceanic

paradise, were not what the newcomers thought. Many of them belonged to

the terrible caste of the Arioi, who, though they doubtless once

constituted a clergy devoted to celibacy, had become an association of

murderers, assassinating their children with infernal rites. It is true

that Tahiti had then long passed the first stages of its development,

and that its population was not any more to be considered primitive. But

what are the tribes that one can consider as still having the authentic

character of savages? In the inquiries that learned men have to make in

order to compare different states of civilisation, the fixing of the

actual point which a people has reached constitutes the capital

dIfficuIty.

In fact, the thousands of tribes whom “civilized” men haughtily call

“savages” correspond to different periods of existence set out at

regular distances on the road of ages and in the infinite network of

environments. One tribe is in full course of progressive evolution,

another in incontestable decay; the former is in its period of becoming,

the latter on the way to decline and death. So that each example in the

great inquiry into progress ought to lie ccompanied, at least mentally,

by the special history of the human group in question, for two points

identical in appearance may have a significance absolutely opposed,

should the one relate to the infancy of an organism, and the other to

its old age.

One primary fact comes out conspicuously from our comparative

ethnographical studies. The essential difference between the

civilisation of a primitive people, little infiuenced by its neighbours,

and the modern civilisation of intermingled peoples consists in the

simple character of the one and the complex character df the other. The

fist, but slightly developed, has, at least, the advantage of being

coherent and conformable to its ideal; the second, immense in its range,

and infinitely snperior in the forces at work, is not only complex and

diverse, but also incoherent; it lacks unity, and pursues contrary

objects at the same time. In the simple societies of the prehistoric and

savage world equilibrium was easily established, and consequently a

primitive tribe, or race, very little developed in knowledge, possessing

only rudimentary arts, and leading a life without much variety, has

often been able, nevertheless, to attain a condition of mutual justice,

well-being, and happiness greatly surpassing that of a modern society

urged on by a continual movement of renovation. The individuals who

compose a clan, a few tens or hundreds of persons, do not see beyond the

bounds of their native world, but they perfectly well know how it works

in every part, and all the members of the social group are considered by

each one as so many fathers or mothers, brothers or sisters. In this

little circle the relations which seem equitable, those that opinion

encourages, and even imposes, are those which, in fact, prevail; the

ideal is at hand, so to speak, and is realised without effort. The ideal

of our modern society embraces the worlds, but does not grasp them.

One may imagine the whole series of men as having formed during both

historical and prehistoric times a continuons succession of swarms, at

first microscopic, then more and more extended, and constantly

increasing in oomplexity, while at the same time their ideal rose, and

became more difficult of attainment. One might compare this human

evolution to the whole of the evolution of living beings, from cellular

aggregations and little distinct colonies, such as the salpas who float

like ribbons in the sea.

The characteristic of each of these little solitary societies is to

constitute an independent organism, and to be sufficient to itself.

None, however, are completely closed to outside influences; encounters,

relations, direct and indireot, take place between one group and

another, and it is thus that, according to internal changes and outside

events, each distinct particle of humanity has interrupted its special

individual evolution, from youth to old age and death, by associating

itself, voluntarily or by force, to another political body, becoming

integrated with it in a superior organisation, and so beginning a new

career of life and progress. But the destinies of these little isolated

societies differ. Among them a great number perish through senile

exhaustion, or by some sanguinary conflict, while the surviving

societies, assimilated successively by larger organisms, succeed at

last, after a series of ages, in forming those great nations which

imagine themselves, and which in reatity are to a certain degree, the

depositaries of all the conquests of civilisation.

Let us, then, take for example one of these very little social cells―a

primitive clan, contrasting with our great modern societies, not only by

the dimensions of the space occupied and the number of the individuals

which form it, but also by a closer solidarity among the members of the

social body, by possession of a more assured personal liberty, a more

humane sense of justice, a less perturbed life, by approaching nearer to

happiness, if happiness be understood simply to imply the satisfaction

of our instincts, our appetites, and our sentiments of affection. Let us

select our specimen as remote as possible from the man of today: among

the Negritos―those primitive tribes whom many naturalists class as a

distinct species from Negroes―the feeble remnant of populations that

formerly occupied the tropical regions, at least in south-eastem Asia,

in the Insulinde, and in Malaysia.

The Aeta of the Philippines―especially those of the island which bears

the racial name, Negroes―have evidently much changed since they entered

into frequent relations wiIth the hispanicised populations and also with

the Spaniards who have taken possession of the archipelago. They had

completely lost their ancient language by about the middle of the

seventeenth century, only preserving a small number of words; they had

likewise abandoned a number of their costums in the vicinity of the

yellow and white races; but soon as they have become, and

notwithstanding their numerical decline, they continue none the less to

differ at every point of view from the surrounding populations. Althongh

so very humble as to bestow on their neighbours a name which testifies

great respect, they are incontestably their superiors in goodness, in

spirit of justice, in rectitude of intention, and in reverence, in the

truth of word and deed. Their life is most simple; as for habitations,

they content themselves with boughs twisted together, or with reed mats,

protected by frames of palm-leaves, which they turn against the wind or

rain, or the too fierce sunshine. But if the individual occupies himself

little with his personal well-being, he is absolutely devoted to the

common interests. The members of the tribe all regard themselves as

brothers, so much so that at birth of an infant the great family comes

together as a whole, in order to decide―what is considered a matter of

capital importance―the name that the new-comer shall receive. Without

interference on the part of the society, or of its representatives,

monogamic unions are founded, devoid in one place of religious

ceremonies, celebrated in another by rites in which the sweetness of

marriage is symbolised by two tufted trees, whose trunks, swaying to and

fro, intermingle their foliage. The sick, the old, are attended to with

perfect devotion, and the “chief”―an office purely nominal as regards

power―is simply the elder whose great age merits the most respect.[5]

Certainly no portion, however insignificant, of our immense modern

political societies, with their huge ambitions, could possibly be

described in like terms.

The philosopher, De Greef, speaking of this primitive system of

equality, finds in it a character rather negative than positive.

According to him, all parts of the social body being still nearly

identical, as in the inferior organisms, there would not be in these

primitive groups sufficient difference of functions to render it

possible to compare them with a modern society.[6] This observation,

however, has only a relative value, for the differentiation of functions

is already very complex in all bodies composed of men and women,

children and old people, residents and travellers, workers in the field,

the meadows, the forests, and the sea. In the evolution of the same

principles,the march of history is in reality continuous from the animal

to man, and it is with perfect justice that we compare little primitive

societies and our great modern humanity, when we state that the first

have been able to attain their more contracted ideal of a well-balanced

and happy life, whilst the human race, taken as a whole, is still very

far from the ideal it dreams of. Since the cycle of the earliest

societies has been broken, the human mind has worked wonders, but there

has been no re-conquest of a normal and harmonions condition.

Having thus referred to the Negritos as a type of a primitive people

with a very narrow horizon, let us take for an example a population

which approaches our own race in the kind of life it leads, and in being

forced into much more complex conditions of labour. The Ounoungonn, who

are called by the Russians Aleutians, after the islands where they have

established themselves, dwell in regions cold enough to compel them to

wear clothing and to construct semi-subterraneous cabins, chiefly formed

of plaited branches covered with a thick layer of hardened dirt; a great

lens of ice is used as a skylight. The necessities of alimentation have

also made the AIentians into a fishing people, clever at constructing

boats covered with skins through which they insert their bodies as into

a drum. The terrific seas they traverse have made them dauntless

mariners, and some among them, especially the whale-fishers, become

well-informed naturalists, uniting in a special corporation which can

only be entered after a long period of trial.[7] The Aleutians, like

their neighbours on the mainland, are sculptors of singular ability, and

very curious objects have been found in their funereal sanctuaries

beneath the vaulted rocks. The complexity of Aleutian life is, moreover,

manifested by their code of social propriety, regulated by custom, and

most energeticallymaintained among relations, between allies and with

strangers. And notwithstanding this relatively high degree of

civilisation, the Aleutians remained up to a recent period, thanks to

their isolation, in a state of peace and perfect social equilibrium. The

first European navigators who entered into relations with them

unanimonsly praise their qualities and their virtues. The Archbishop

Innokenti, better known under the name of Veniaminov, who for ten years

observed their life, describes them as “the most affectionate of men,”

as “beings of incomparable modesty and discretion, who were never guilty

of the least violence of language or action, not a rude word ever coming

from their month.” There is no people in the West of Europe which in

this respect can compare with the Aleutians.

In coming nearer to the state of the nations of the European type

another element presents itself―that of natives of various races, who,

proud of the title “civilised,” have become in the course of ages half

assimilated to their conquerors. In this case, again, it often happens

that the most happy and the best in point of simplicity and purity of

life are those who represente the race called inferior. An example of

this is found in the amiable populations of the Philippine Islands: the

Tagals, Vicols, and Visayas, who, since the Spanish Conquest, have drawn

sufficiently near to the masters of the country to practise devontly

their religious ceremonies and to call themselves “Christians;” who have

leanrt to read Castilian and emptoy the Roman letters in writing their

own language; who even dress as Europeans, following at a distance the

Paris fashions. If their spiral course of civilisation is not quite that

of the modern world, they are, at all events, developing according to a

parallel curve. These natives are hispanicised, but are by no means

Spaniards; their society is almost entirely ignorant of the social

problems of Europe, and leads an existence much less compticated, but

more happy, than that of the European proletariat. In nearly all the

districts of the Archipelago each family has its little bit of field and

orchard-land, its neat little house, well-furnished, and surrounded by

plants of rich verdure and penetrating perfume. The husbandman is his

own master; and not long since large properties were almost unknown.

Even commodities destined for exportation are produced by the small

proprietor. Pauperism is not yet introduced into the Archipelago, and

one may hope that the population will not have, as in countries with

great proprietors, to pass a long time in the sad stage of

proletarianism. Even at his work the Tagal of the Philippines can give

himself up to his passion for music, at Luzon, sowers are to be seen

throwing their handfuls of rice in cadence with the rhythm of the violin

or the clarionet.[8] If such peaceful and kind peasants are now thrown

into the turmoil of war by the oppression of grasping monks, certainly

they are not responsible. The price of blood was on other heads.

To these examples, chosen from successive stages of civilisation, any

one can add others equally significant, found in works specially

treating of ethnology, and can verify for himself the fact that

instances of superior morality, as well as of a mere optimistic

appreciation of life, can be met with in confined societies, barbarous

or even savage, and very inferior to ours in their intellectual

comprehension of things. In the indefinite spiral which humanity runs

without ceasing―evolving by a continuous motion that may vaguely be

compared to the earth’s rotation―it has often happened that certain

parts of the great body are much nearer than others to the ideal centre

of the orbit. The law of alternation will one day perhaps be accurately

known; it suffices at present to state the facts themselves without

drawing from them premature conclusions, and especially without

accepting the paradoxes of discouraged sociologists, who only see in the

material progress of humanity signs of its real decadence.

II.

It is, then, established by the observation of facts and the study of

history that many tribes, so far as the material satisfactions of life

go, arrive at a state of perfect solidarity, both by the common

enjoyment of the products of the earth, and by an equitable distribution

of resources in case of dearth. These groups of savages do not even

comprehend that they could do otherwise. This is what Montaigne has

noticed with reference to the natives of Brazil who were brought to

Rouen in 1557, “at the time the late King Charles IX. was there.” One of

the strange facts which struck them most was that there were “among us

men full and gorged with all sorts of comforts, and that their halves

(their fellow-countrymen) were begging at their doors, emaciated with

hunger and poverty; and they found it strange that these necessitous

halves were able to suffer such an injustice and did not take the others

by the throat or set fire to their houses.” For his part, Montaigne

greatly pitied these natives of Brazil, “for having allowed themselves

to be decoyed by novelty, and having quitted their own sweet climes in

order to see ours!... Out of this commerce will arise their ruin.”[9]

And, in fact, these Topinamboux of the American coast have left no

descendants; all the tribes have been exterminated, and if there still

remains a little native blood it is in course of mixture with that of

the despised proletarians.

This primary law of solidarity and love, which for those who belong to

the same tribe consists in assiduously labouring together in the same

work and in sharing together to the last morsel the common resources,

permeates, so to say, the whole of social morality. Community of work

and of life carries with it a sense of distributive justice, perfect

mutual respect, a wonderful delicacy of feeling, a refined politeness in

words and in acts, a practice of hospitality which goes as far as the

complete abnegation of self and the abandonment of personal property.

What touching histories trustworthy travellers relate on this subject!

Wallace tells us how the Malay worker abstains religiously from

troubling the sleep of his companion, and wakes him up only at the last

extremity, and in order to avoid any disagreeable shock, with ingenious

precautions. Vollmer[10] shows us the King of Samoa rising in the night

to play the flute in the neighbourhood of his guests in order to procure

them agreeable dreams. Those who have not travelled in savage countries,

where hospitality is by tradition a moral law, cannot imagine with what

sweet tenderness, what delicate attentions, what indescribable goodness,

the women welcome a stranger sick, thirsty, or simply wanting rest!

Doubtless feminine devotion finds in our civilised lands equal

opportunities of exercise, but it only manifests itself to a small

number of fortunate people chosen out of the family circle, or among

friends, or exceptionally among the sick in a hospital; a select few can

enjoy it; whereas in many a tribe of savages, red or black, Indians or

Peuls, it is sufficient to be in want of a consolation or of a kind

word, to have it given you with unbounded goodness.

The man in a state more nearly approaohing nature than the civilised man

also possesses another immense advantage. He is more intimately

acquainted with the animals and the plants, with the powerful scent of

the earth, and the gentle or terrible phenomena of the elements; he has

remained in direct communication with the planetary life of which he is

the product, and which we only half see, separated from it by the

artificial life in which we are shut up. He feels in perfect unity with

all that which surrounds him, and of which, in his way, he comprehends

the life as if all things moved with a rhythm which he himself obeyed.

We are no longer able to understand the invocations which he makes to

the spirits of the air and of the forest, and it is with great

difficulty that we interpret the dances in which the savages celebrate

the stars and the seasons. Symbolism conceived in nataral things, very

difficult to understand in our days, because we live in a conventional

world, is among primitive peoples a sort of spontaneous language. It

seems quite natural to the populations of Central India, just as it does

to the Cingalese mountaineers, and to the Aeta of the Philippines, to

figure the union of man and woman by the union of two trees, the one

with strong branches laden with fruits, the other delicate as some

slender tropical plant of the bindweed order, laden with odoriferous

flowers. Each scene of human life is accompanied with corresponding

scenes drawn from the vegetable world. A real friendship is thus born

between men and natural things. Thanks to a survival of a far-off past,

the Walloon peasants still wish a happy new year to the trees of the

field.[11] Finding these objects an integral part of their surroundings,

without any thought of freeing themselves from them, the primitive races

are absolutely resigned to destiny, and surpass civilised men, speaking

generally, in the simplicity with which they meet death. That fine end

of life which in certain historical personages appears to us so

admirable, because it is really exceptional, is the ordinary way of

dying among savages; taught by necessity, they conform themselves

naturally to things. Death is for them the simple continuation of life;

they die in all tranquillity of souI without seeming to think that their

exit will make the least void in the universe. However, it must be said

that populations, if not primitive, at least savage, offer us, with

regard to the act of death, the most opposite examples. Whilst in

rudimentary societies which have remained free from theocratic

institutions, most individuals die with a sublime simplicity, it is not

thus in tribes which submit to the government of magicians or priests,

considered as the masters of life and death, and holding in their hands

the keys of the tomb. No spectacle is more repugnant than that of the

madmen who, by gestures, cries, dances, or hysterical contortions,

pretend to tear the sick man from the death which is carrying him off.

Every change which results in doing away with the isolation of the clan

or nation, and introducing into it forcibly new wants, brings on a

corresponding modification in style of life and in personal morality.

Even when two political bodies meet peacefully, when the stronger does

not begin by a display of force, despoiling, or even exterminating, the

weaker, it none the less produces an internal transformation by which

the two groups, influenced the one by the other, integrate themselves

slowly in order to arrive at the constitution of a superior

individuality. But it is with the mingling of men as with that of the

waters. Two distinct river-currents flow for a long time side by side in

the same bed, whirIing in eddies the whole length of the line of

friction, and it is only at a great distance from the confluence down

the stream that the water presents the same aspect from one bank to the

other. In the same manner two different populations, entering perforce

into a common political circle, become mutually hostile over the whole

surface of contact; they oppose one another, each wishes to remain

faithful to its customs, language, and traditions, to its costume, to

its whims and caprices. Both readily manifest their worst side. It is

curious, in the markets of the Congo villages, to see how differently

traffic is carried on among negroes themselves and between them and the

whites. In the latter case there is continual haggling, chaffering―the

blacks cheat, the whites shout, abuse, and come to blows; whilst the

blacks quietly, or in a few friendly words, exchange with each other

their commodities, the prices of which are known in advance.

Thus every human group, in becoming attached to another group, whether

by the necessity of alliance or by conquest, is bound to recommence its

interior evolution: to the corso suceeeds a ricorso,[12] the spiral

describes a new circle, on a vaster scale when there is increase of men,

of forces, of industry, on a lesser one when stuggles, exterminations,

servitude, have thrown them back. In the preface to his “Histoire

Romaine,” Michelet tells us how Vico, conceiving the world under the

symmetrical form of a city, liked to consider the movement of humanity

as an everlasting circulation, a continual going and returning. But the

French historian adds that if men march in circles, the circles are

always increasing in size. This is certainly true with reference to the

part of humanity to which we belong. But for how many other political

and social groups has it been the contrary? How many times has the wish

of Montaigne with regard to the Topinamboux been repeated by us? Placing

ourselves in imagination in the position which the civilised peoples

have made for the savage races, would it not have been more advantageous

for the Hurons never to have met in the forests of the Laurentides the

French colonists of Canada? Would it not have been happier for the Red

Indians of the United States―the Creeks and Seminoles, the Shoshones and

Sioux, the Wolves and Foxes―never to have come into contact with the

Yankees? And, in the same way, would it not bave been preferable for the

Tasmanians and Anstralians, as well as the Matabele and the Mashonas,

never to have known the name of their English conquerors? And the people

of the Cameroons and the Tanganyika, have they not good right to curse

their German so-called civillsers? Every explorer penetrating into a new

country unknown to Europeans has had to begin by saying to himself, as

he beheld the villages and happy populations, that his very presence was

the preIiminary annonmcement of destruction and massacre. One of these

great travellers, and not the least illustrious, avowed in my presence

that, at the sight of a fine and happy peoplê in Central Africa, he had

felt in the depth of his heart how just destiny would have been had the

blacks assassinated him to prevent him from relating his travels. But he

was spared, and the sad vicissitude of things required this

compassionate man to be among the slaughterers.

It is not merely little civilisations belonging to clans or to savage

tribes which retrogression has destroyed or deplorably lessened; there

are also great nations which have been condemned to decay by the

difficulties of a perfect integration in one superior national

individuatity. The examples of the Babylonians and the Hittites, of the

Persians and Egyptians, are there to prove that decay can take place on

an enormous scale and so as to strike millions and tens of millions of

men for thousands of years. A recoil of this kind, which, however, was

succeeded by a new oscillation in favour of progress, was brought about

in Greece itself, the educator of the whole modern world. The fact is

that no union, pacific or forced, of two ethnical groups, can be

accomplished without progress being accompanied by at least a partial

regress. A change of this nature always involves a displacement of the

centre of gravity, and by an inevitable consequence certain seats of

action are abandoned and others acquire a sudden importance. An entirely

new organism establishes itself at the expense of the old one; the

dwelling-places change, industries are modified, and the interests

connected with abandoned modes of work suffer severely. Even when the

vicissitudes of conflict have not been followed by destruction properly

so called, they are not the less the cause of local decay, and the

prosperity of some leads to the decline of others, since the different

elements of the society constituting itself anew are in a state of

struggle, and the common solidarity is not yet formed. In such

conditions direct progress cannot be made; oblique, tortuous, it

oscillates in an uncertain manner, following the parallelogram of the

forces which urge it forward.

The word “civilisation” is one of those vague terms of which the

different senses are confused. For most people it means refinement of

manners, especially external habits of politeness, though undoubtedly

men of stiff bearing and abrupt behaviour may have a moral value very

superior to that of the courtier who can frame an elegant compliment.

Others see in civilisation only the sum of all the material improvements

due to science and modern industry. Railways, telescopes, telegraphs,

telephones, and other inventions, appear to them sufficient proof of the

collective progress of society, and they do not seek to know more by

sounding the depths of the immense organism. But those who study the

ocean of humanity, even to its abysses, say that each civilised nation

is composed of classes placed one over another, representing in each age

all the series of the anterior ages, with their corresponding

intellectual and moral culture. The society of to-day contains all the

previous societies in the state of survival; and the immediate contrast

of extreme conditions renders their divergence striking. Even if the

average man be now more prosperous and more happy than he formerly was

when humanity, divided into innumerable tribes, was not yet conscious of

itseif as a whole, it is none the less true that the difference in style

of life between the privileged and disinherited classes is greatly

Increased, and renders the unfortunate man more unfortunate; adding to

his poverty envy and hatred, and aggravating the physical sufferings and

his compulsory abstinence. In a primitive tribe the starving and the

sick have only their bodily pain to bear; among our civiliaed peoples

they have also to sustain the weight of hamiliation, and even of public

loathing, being nearly always inexorably fated to conditions of lodging

and clothing which render them in appearance sordid and repulsive. Are

there not districts in every great city which travellers carefully avoid

for fear of their pestilential odours? No savage tribe inhabits such

lairs. Glasgow, Dundee, and all other industrial cities have quarters

containing groups of filthy habitations, to which it would be difficuIt

to find a parallel in the homes of the primitive peoples. The barbarous

Hindoos, who live in the centre of the peninsula clad in a few coloured

tatters, offer a spectacle relatively gay in comparison with the

proletarians of Iuxurious England, who look so sombre and Iugubrious in

their ragged and dirty garments.

That a nation is merely found much more advanced than another in

science, art and indnstry does not prove that it is in a more rapid

state of progress; it may even have entered upon a period of decline,

while the less advanced population may be moving with spirit on the

upward way. During the period of arrest or even of recoil, caused by

conquest and loss of liberty, or when the struggle for existence does

not leave respite for thought or the quest of new life, man is not in a

really historic stage; his customary life is only distinguished from

that of other animals by a difference in proportion, “it belongs to

human zoology, to natural history, not the history of man.”[13] Besides

this, progress may be achieved in a nation or in several nations,

although a part, or a majority of the individuals, are left outside the

movement. No doubt every cause ought to prodnue its effect in one place

after another, penetrating at last by various ways into every little

human valley; but how slow, how imperceptible at times is this

propagation of movement. At the bottom of the sea, do the animalculæ,

who live in the slime, feel the agitation of the tempests which higher

up are wrecking fleets? Does the man who in the social depths is without

bread to eat or books to read, care about the discovery of a new cereal,

or about some powerful drama which agitates the intellectual world? On

the other hand, how can he rich man who troubles himself about nothing,

who is fed, dressed, carried, who is furnished with everything he needs,

even including the semblance of ideas and ready-made phrases,

participate in progress? Left to himself he would soon fall into

impotence and become the prey of death. In the social hierarchy, he is

deemed the representative of progress par excellence, because all the

products of luxury surround him, and all the ambitious gravitate towards

his person; but he is, on the contrary, a phenomenon of decadence, since

he consumes without producing, and adds absolutely nothing to the common

civilisation.

III.

Thus every change in history compels those who study it to a double

process, analogous to commercial book-keeping. They ought to enter on

the debit side all the losses that have been suffered, on the credit

side all the profits realised. The proof that this social book-keeping

is a very difficult matter is that the discussion as to the reality of

progress taken as a whole still continues, that the question is asked

whether the gains made in a general way are not covered by losses in

happiness and in intimacy with nature. But these very doubts ought to

encourage the inquirer to get exactly at the proportion of gains and

losses.

The last are known, thanks to the study of the small communities which

have reached for a certain time a rhythmic state of social life. We know

that in many tribes not opened to civilisation justice is practised with

real religiousness, that the spirit of solidarity unites as in a single

being all the members of the social body, and that no trace of pessimism

comes to trouble it in the experience of life; finally, in those

societies the relations of man with nature are much more intimate, and

the poetry of existence is felt in a more spontaneous manner.

And what are the conquests of our modern world in the way of progress?

They are immense. In the first place, humanity has arrived at self

conscionsness. No nation, whatever it may wish, or however it may

protest, has its horizon limited by its own frontiers. The complete

exploration of the earth and of the seas to their boundaries of ice, the

perpetual movement of travellers passing from one world to another, the

presence everywhere of sailors, of colonists and of tourists, have truly

made man the citizen of the placet; and patriotic as he may be, or is

supposed to be, it is impossible for any one not to look beyond his

native soil to the neighbouring or distant countries in which events are

taking place most important to the whole destiny of mankind.

During this half-century universal attention was directed for four or

five years to the plains of the New World, where the question of slavery

was definitely decided. Then all eyes turned towards the East, where, on

the traces of the ancient canal from the Nile to the Red Sea, the great

commercial way was opened ‘which bronght India and Europe some thousands

of miles nearer, and thus suddenly changed the equilibrium of the world.

And did not the centre of the human drama recently move to the extremity

of Asia, where an old nation, altogether outside the circle of Aryan

development, has nevertheless shown itself, in science and the conduct

of war, the equal, if not the superior, of its competitors in the

European west?

Terrestrial explorations, geographical discoveries, tend more and more

to be completed everywhere by an exact topography, so that man can now

look down upon the earth as if he were elevated above it on an

aeroplane, and note the errors his predecessors committed owing to their

living in too confined a sphere. In the whole course of history the

centres of civilisation have always moved along certain carves, and

these local orbits pursued for some centuries―a mere minute in the life

of humanity―have been considered too hastily as the expression of a

definite law. Thus in our own world of Western Europe historians, struck

by the elegant parabola described by the march of civilisation from

ancient Babylon to our modern cities, formulated a law according to

which the centre of human thought moved from east to west, following the

course of the sun.

Before the epoch of Hellenic efflorescence the Egyptians, embracing in

their mind the immense Nilotic world, a universe in itself, gave another

direction to the propagation of thought; they believed that it had come

to them, as the fruitful alluvial deposits came, from south to north.

They were mistaken, since civilisation propagated itsetf in a contrary

direction, from Memphis to Thebes of the “hundred gates.” In other

countries it is clearly along rivers, following the course of the stream

from the source to the mouth, that the movement of culture has given

birth to populous cities, the centres of human labour. In India the

trajectory was from the north-west to the south-east along the banks of

the Ganges and of the Djumna; and in the vast Chinese plains the “line

of life” is distinctly directed from west to east into the valleys of

the Hoang-ho and the Yang-tse-kiang.

These examples are sufficient to show that the so-called law of

progress, displacing the principal scene of the world in the same

direction as the course of the sun, has only a temporary and local

value, and that other laws have prevailed in divers countries according

to the lie of the land, the attractive forces arising from the

configuration of the continents, and the advantages of soil and climate.

And now, thanks to the general spread of inventions and of human

knowledge, these lines imagined by our predecessors on the circumference

of the globe are, so to speak, submerged beneath an inundating flood

which covers all parts of the earth; it is, from another point of view,

that deluge of knowledge, of which the Gospel speaks, which should

spread over the whole worid. The element of space has lost its

importance, for man is able and willing to inform himself concerning aIl

the phenomena of soil, climate, history, and society which distinguish

the different countries. Now, to comprehend each other is already, in a

certain degree, to mingle together. The contrast between land and land,

nation and nation, continues everywhere to exist; but it grows less, and

tends gradually to be neutralised in the comprehension of educated

people.

While geography conquered space, and thus made it possible for mankind

to become conscious of itself from one end of the world to the other,

the historian, turning towards the past, conquered time. The human race,

which is unifying itself from one end of the world to the other, is

equally attempting to realise itself under a form which embraces all the

ages. This is a second conquest not less important than the first. All

anterior civilisations, even the prehistoric, are henceforth more or

leas known to us, and consequently can, in a certain sense, be

incorporated into the life of modern societies. By the succession of

periods, which we can now study as a synoptical table unfolding itself

according to the perfect logic of events, we cease to live merely in the

flying moment; we embrace the past in the ages retraced by the

annalists. In this way we detach ourselves from the strict line of

development indicated by our environment and our race, and we see

unrolled before us all the paths, parallel or divergent, that other

fractions of humanity have followed. The ways are open to us, and we

feel obliged to enter them, for any example given by other men, our

brothers, must appeal to our genius of imitation. As our horizon is

enlarged, in time as well as in space, a greater number of models for

study crowd round us, and among them there is much to awaken in us the

desire to resemble them in one part or another of their ideal. In moving

about, and in modifying ourselves, we have lost a certain part of our

acquisitions, and now we may ask ourselves whether it is not possible to

recover all the baggage abandoned at the different stages of our long

Odyssey through time.

A third conquest of civilisation is the most obvious, and the ordinary

panegyrists of the present day are therefore eager to insist upon it―the

prodigious development of modern industry, due to the discoveries of men

of learning and to the practical genius of the innumerable Prometheuses,

bearers of the sacred fire, who spring from the sohool and the factory.

On the other hand, the over-cultured, the poets, declaring themselves in

love with antique simplicity, affect to despise all this utilitarian

progress of society, though they deign to make use of it to their own

advantage; and if they seek mediæval objects for the ornamentation of

their dwellings, they appreciate on every important occasion in life

rapid locomotion and the almost instantaneous transmission of voice and

thought. Whatever disdain the pessimist may bestow upon this prodigions

growth of human forces, the sincere man is struck with admiration at

these machines, which have more than doubled the power of human work,

and given to our life so great intensity of action. The active worker

can henceforth condense into his short life of sixty to eighty years,

more work than one of his ancestors, reduced to his own force alone,

could have accompIished in a thousand years.

The progress man has realised in the material world he has equally

accomplished in the intellectual. He has gone into the analysis of

things much more deeply, and does not allow himself to be deceived by

superficial appearances; he studies bodies in the intimate grouping of

their cells, and he recognises profound analogies between objects of

dissimilar aspect. Strong in his power of penetrating the infinitely

little, man can turn again to the infinitely great, and resume the

synthesis in its most andacious form, comparing the formation of a grain

of sand with that of the whole solar System, and of the universe in its

immensity. This same power of decomposition and reconstruction which the

modern man applies to nature he equally applies to his like, and the old

adage, “Know thyself,” has never been so near to realisation; for one

can only know oneself by comparison with another, and in these days the

dissection of the human being from an intellectual and moral point of

view is pursued in a systematic manner with astonishing acuteness of

discernment. Psychology has become an exact science, and character

novels, a style formerly unknown, have taken a rank of very high order

in contemporary literature. Man, in learning more narrowly to scrutinise

himself, even in parts of his nature until recently beyond his

conscionsness, discovers for each of the acquisitions and revelations of

his own being corresponding wants; his ideal grows indefinitely in

proportion to the improvement of his mind and the sensibility of his

heart. This is one of those advances which many persons have been

tempted to curse, since in many cases it may excite unrealisable

desires, causing a sadness which can never be consoled. But what truly

noble soul does not prefer the melancholy of an unrealised ideal to the

vulgarity of a commonplace life, without the desire or the will for

something better?

Thus admirably furnished with tools by its progress in the knowledge of

space and of time, of the intimate nature of things and of man himself,

is mankind at the present time prepared to approach the capital problem

of its existence, the realisation of a collective ideal? Certainly. The

work, if not of assimilation, at least of appropriation of the earth is

nearly terminated, to the profit of the nations called civilised, who

have become by this very fact the nurses and educators of the world;

there are no longer any barbarians to conquer and, consequently, the

directing classes will soon be without the resource of employing abroad

their surplus national energy. The internal problems, which at the same

time will be those of the whole world, will therefore force themselves

irresistibly to the front.

The first of all these problems, no one can doubt, is that of bread for

all. The statistics of the present production no longer permit us to

doubt that the resources of the earth are amply sufficient fully to

nourish all the inhabitants of this planet, and besides, if they were

not enough, why should not the labour of the unemployed crowding round

the gates of the factories be utilised for the increase of the general

wealth of humanity? By singular irony of things―showing the complete

opposition between a moral life and the ruling theories of economy―the

greater part of the land-owners complain of “over-production” and find

their harvest too good, while the consumers declare that the products

are insufficient, since numbers of them remain too poverty-stricken to

buy bread enough to live. We have not here to enter into the discussion

of the means to be employed in order that all the famished may receive

the food which is their due; it is enough that society be what it

pretends to be―a “society of brothers,” in order to render possible the

realisation of its first duty―give bread to all.

Man, moreover, does not live by bread alone. He ought equally to learn

how to develop, not only his muscles, but all the intelectual and moral

forces of his being. In many countries this has already been recognised,

all children receiving a certain instruction described as “primary”; but

what a distance still exists between the affirmation of the principle

and its true realisation! What profitable education do children receive

who are miserably shut up in one of the daily prisons under the eye and

ferule of those whom excess of labour, insufficiency of pay, and want of

liberty, render perforce sullen and traitors to the noble cause they

represent? As to those children who profit in some measure from the

instruction given them, whatever it be, how is their time of study

wasted, how mischievous it becomes when they are taken away from useful

work and put to absurd recitations. How can they fail to be irritated by

such trumpery teaching, which, far from preparing them for social peace,

leads them to revenge?

Let the double ideal―bread for the body and bread for the mind―be

assured to all, and how many other desirable things would thereby be on

the road to accomplishment. One form of progres snever comes alone; it

presents itself again in other forms of progressthroughout the social

evolution. The sense of justice being satisfied by the participation of

all in the material and intelectual possessions of humanity, there would

come to every man a singular lightening of conscience; for the condition

of cruel inequality, which overloads some with superfluous wealth while

it deprives others of everything, even of hope, weighs as remorse,

consciously or unconsciously, on the souls of all, especially of the

fortunate, and always mixes a poison with their joys.

The most important element in producing peace is that no one should do

wrong to his neighbour, for it is in human nature to hate those whom one

has injured and to love those whose presence recalls a sentiment of

one’s own virtue. The moral results of this simple set of justice, the

guarantee of food and instruction to all, would be incalculable. And can

it be maintained that such a wish is beyond the possibility of

realisation when all the material resources necessary are at our

disposal, and when in considerable primitive societies, tribes, peoples

and nations, it has more than once become, as far as realisable in those

remote epochs, an accomplished fact?

If ever―and it appears to lie in the path of evolution―if ever the great

organism of mankind learns to do what social organisms of not very large

dimensions did and are doing―that is to say, if it complies with these

two duties, not to let any one die of hunger or stagnate in ignorance―it

will then be possible to attempt the realisation of another ideal, which

also is already pursued by an ever-increasing number of individuals―the

ideal of reconquering from the past all that we have lost, and becoming

again equal in force, in agility, in skill, in health, and in beauty

with the finest, strongest and most skillful men who have ever lived

before us. Without doubt there is no question as yet of recovering the

use of atrophied organs, the former use of which biologists have

discovered, but simply of knowing how to keep in their plenitude the

corporeal energies which have fallen to our lot, how to retain fully the

use of the muscles which, while continuing to work, have diminished in

elasticity, and threaten before long to be of no value. Is it possible

to prevent this physical decline in man, to avoid the day in whioh he

will be only an enormous brain swathed in wraps to keep him from taking

cold?

Zoologists tell us that man was formerly a climbing animal like the ape.

Why, then, does the modern man permit himself to fail in this abitity to

scale―an ability still possessed in a remarkable manner by certain

primitive peoples, notably those who gather the branches covered with

fruit at the tops of the palm-trees? The child, whose mother never fails

to admire the manual prehension which enables him to hold his body

suspended even for some minutes,[14] loses little by tittte this early

vigour because the occasions to exercise it are carefully withdrawn from

him; it is sufficient that his clothes are threatened with destruction

by his efforts at climbing, that in our society, forced to be

economical, parents should forbid their children to climb trees, the

fear of danger being in this prohibition only a secondary consideration.

Similar reasons have this result that the greater part of our civilised

children remain much inferior to the sons of savages in games of

strength and skill; besides, having no opportunity to exercise their

senses on wild nature, they have not the same distinctness of vision,

the same sharpness of hearing; as animais of beautiful form and refined

senses they have for the most part incontestably degenerated. The

expressions of admiration which the sight of the young men of Tenimber,

exercising themselves in drawing the bow or throwing the javelin, called

forth in European travelers[15] will no doubt be remembered, and we

ought in truth to avow that even among cricketers, golfers, and

hockey-players, who constitute the élite of the nations for corporeal

beauty, the spectators would find it difficult to go into raptures over

the perfectly well-balanced forms of all the champions. No, it is

impossible for us to deny that, taken in the mass, numbers of so-called

lower nations―Negroes, Red Indians, Malays, and Polynesians―in purity of

line, in nobility of attitude and grace of bearing, excel many groups

representing the average type of the Europeans.

There is certainly, on this side, a general retrogression, the result of

our being shut up in houses, and of our absurd costume, which prevents

cutaneous transpiration, the action of the light and the air upon the

skin, and the free development of the members of the body, often cramped

and twisted, and even crippled and maimed, by shoes and corsets.

Numberless examples, however, prove to us that retrogression is not

definitive and without appeal, for those of our young people who are

brought under very good hygienic conditions, and undergo physical

training, grow in form and strength, equalling the most handsome

savages, and, moreover, they have the superiority which confidence in

themselves and the prestige of their intelligence gives them. We have

only to refer to the climbers of the Alps, the Caucasus, and the

Himalayas. Certainly no Jacques Balmat would have ascended Mont Blanc if

there had not existed a De Saussure to encourage him in the effort; and

now the Whympers, the Freshfields, the Conways, have they not become in

strength, in endurance, in knowledge, and in experience the equals, if

not the superiors, of the best mountain guides, trained from youth to

all the physical and moral virtues which are required in dangerous

ascents? Thus the ideal we have conceived, of being able to acquire new

qualities, without losing any we possess, but even recovering those our

ancestors have lost, can perfectly well be realised. It is not in the

least a chimera.

Another superiority of the savage over the civilised man will be more

difficult to reconquer, because of our artificial life in enclosed

spaces, surrounded on all sides by buildings; or else in a pseudonature

spoilt by a thousand details―ugly constructions, trees lopped and

twisted, footpaths brutally cut through woods and forests. Nearly

everything there has been mismanaged―trees and perspectives;

nevertheless, the enjoyment found in the open air, on the brink of

running streams, under the branches which murmur and cast their shadows

upon the verdure, is such that we allow ourselves to be profoundly

affected by it and willingly imagine that we have lived for an instant

in the midst of real nature. It is certainly a great happiness to find

ourselves again, in communion with mother Earth in lands laid out with

rule and line, but sweet as the poetry is that we there enjoy, it is

still inferior to that which enchanted our ancestors. The difference

lies in this, that the collective sentiment of those who in the name of

society and provided with its resources, drawn from the State funds,

have manipulated this nature, has not been a sentiment of respect and

feeling; they nearly always had in view purely industrial or mercantile

interests.

However, there is no need to be despondent, for in many an

out-of-the-way spot, pious lovers of earth know how, in all reverence

and delight, to enjoy its intimacy; night and day, morning and

eveming―in all kinds of places―mountain or sea, moor or forest―they have

created secure retreats, where, like children who come back to the arms

of their mother, they become simple again and share in the great life of

things without bringing into it the thousand little preoccupations of

private life. The sincere man thus finds again his unity with all the

earth’s phenomena―with the river that flows away and the mountain that

remains, with the clouds that gather and dissolve and the vast firmament

where the planets slowly revolve. Lying down out of sight, as if he

would re-enter the primitive cradle, he feels so much the more the

delight of his return to the kindly maternal earth now that he knows it

better in its origins, its forces, its evolution and its products;

science does no injury to the aurora, but even increases its glory,

adding to it an emotion of boundless admiration.

Thus, even for the real intimate comprehension of nature, modern man can

reconquer the past of the savage; but the reconquest will only be

definitive and normal on condition that he includes all men, his

brothers, in this same sentiment of unity with the whole of things.

Here, then, again the social question comes to the front. It is

impossible for any one fully to love nature who does not love men. How

can we admire the charming little individuality of the flower, how can

we call ourselves brother with the animal, feel drawn with tenderness

towards it, as Francis of Assisi was, if we do not also love men our

real brothers? Complete union of Man with Nature can only be effected by

the destruction of the frontiers between castes as well as between

peoples. Forsaking old conventions, it is necessary that every

individual should be able, in all brotherliness, to address himself to

any one of his equals, and to talk freely of all that interests him, of

“all that is human,” as Terence said. Life, brought back to its early

simplicity, admits in that very fact full and cordial liberty of

commerce between men.

Has humanity made real progress in this way? It would be absurd to deny

it. That which one calls “the democratic tide” is nothing else but this

growing sentiment of equality between the representatives of the

different castes, until recently hostile one to the other. Under a

thousand apparent changes in the surface, the work is being accomplished

in the depths of the nations. Thanks to the increasing knowledge men are

gaining of themselves and others, they are arriving by degrees at the

discovery of the common ground upon which we all resemble each other,

and at getting rid of superficial opinions which keep us apart. We are,

then, steadily advancing towards future reconciliation, and, by this

very fact, towards a form of happiness very different in extent to that

which sufficed our forefathers―the animals and the primitive men. Our

material and moral world becomes more vast, and this in itself increases

our conception of happiness, which henceforward will only be held to be

such on condition of its being shared by all; of its being made

conscious and rational, and of its embracing in its scope the earnest

researches of science and the possessions of art.

It is, then, with all confidence that we reply to the question which

every man asks himself: Yes, humanity has really progressed, from crisis

to crisis and from relapse to relapse, since the beginning of those

millions of years which constitute the short conscious period of our

life.

ELISÉE RECLUS.

[1] “Wltgeschichte,” Neunter Theil, ii, pp. 4,5,6, &c.

[2] Marc Guyau, “La Morale d’Epictète.” p. 157.

[3] “The Malay Archipelago,” Wallace, pp. 595, 596. Third edition.

[4] “Unter den Kannibalen auf Borneo.”

[5] Semper, “Nie PhiIippinen und ihre Bewohner”; ― Ferd. BIumentritt,

“Versuch Einer Ethnographie der Philippinen,” Ergänzungsheft zu

Petermann’s Mittheilungen, No. 67.

[6] Guillaume de Greef, “Sociologie Générale Elémentaire,” leçon xi, p.

[7] Alphonse Pinart, “Bulletin de la Société de Géographie,” dic. 1873.

[8] Montano, “Bulletin de la Société de Géographie,” 1881; W. Gifford

Palgrave, “Ulysses; or, Scenes and Studies in Many Lands.”

[9] “Essais.”

[10] “Südseekönige.”

[11] Eugene Monseur, “Cours d’Histoire Réligieuse.”

[12] Giambattista Vico, “La Scienzia Nuova.”

[13]

P. Lavroff, “I’Idée du Progrès dans l’Anthropologie,” p. 17. “Bulletin

de la Société d’Anthropologie de Paris.” Séances de 1er Fév. et 18

Avril 1872.

[14] Drummond, “Ascent of Man,” pp. 101, 103.

[15] Anna Forbes, “Insulinde; Experiences of a Naturalist’s Wife in the

Eastern Archipelago.”