The improbability, not to say impossibility, of many of the
conclusions arrived at by the duke appeared more and more
strongly as more became known of the lower tribes of mankind. It
was necessary on his theory to suppose many things which our
knowledge of the human race absolutely forbids us to believe:
for example, it was necessary to suppose that the Australians or
New Zealanders, having once possessed so simple and convenient
an art as that of the potter, had lost every trace of it; and
that the same tribes, having once had so simple a means of
saving labour as the spindle or small stick weighted at one end
for spinning, had given it up and gone back to twisting threads
with the hand. In fact, it was necessary to suppose that one of
the main occupations of man from "the beginning" had been the
forgetting of simple methods, processes, and implements which
all experience in the actual world teaches us are never entirely
forgotten by peoples who have once acquired them.
Some leading arguments of the duke were overthrown by simple
statements of fact.
Pages:
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566